On Being Invincible

I am blogging everyday (or nearly everyday) on The Daily Stoic.

Poise is the stoic for today. Not allowing emotions to interfere with our responses. This is huge for people in security. I see a lot of things in my line of work that can drive a person crazy. The more you get into the field the more you can identify issues. These are technical, regulatory, and political in nature. Prior to studying stoicism I would provide emotional responses to a lot of these things. It’s one of the reasons why alcohol is an issue in our industry. We rely on it to take the pain away. I relied on it. To a point I still do. I’m working on that.

One of the things that has helped is keeping my composure when bad things show up. This has helped me sleep better at night and hopefully made me a better person to be around. I still do get fired up, just not as much. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in IT, is that I can’t do anything about what’s happened. I can look toward fixing it and moving on. Three months from now our security team will find something that we’ll need to respond with poise.

The New Corporation's Persona

I am blogging everyday (or nearly everyday) on The Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done.

The action is to focus on the organization’s values, mission, and vision. Everything else should be outsourced. I’m not exactly sure what that means. Outsourcing in the IT world is hiring cheap labor from other countries. In security there are things like virtual CISOs. Entire teams are outsourced to services. The cloud is another area where infrastructure can be outsourced. These of course have different requirements and regulations depending on the industry. Maybe those then fall into the evaluation of the value, mission, and vision.

The Source of Your Anxiety

I am blogging everyday (or nearly everyday) on The Daily Stoic.

This stoic really started helping me last year work on my anxiety. It gave me control over my emotions. My wants and needs. It showed me that how I thought impacted my ability to get worked up or impact sleep. I’m much better about it a year later. I still have some work to do. Things of uncertainty tend to still get me. So, does venturing into new situations and scenarios. One I had recently was golfing by myself. I had never done it before. I was nervous initially. It all worked out though and I actually felt it was peacfull experience.

Autonomy in Knowledge Work

I am blogging everyday (or nearly everyday) on The Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done.

The action point is to write a work plan that includes your focus, desired results, and deadline. I use a Kanban board for work. I have four columns. Ready, In progress, Holding, and Done. Work that I do are in each of these columns. When I have work that needs to get done I create a ticket and put in there details for completion. With security, I don’t have the luxury always of creating a plan and working on just that to completion. Security incidents can wreck havoc on any plans. I will often start something and then have it drop due to other priorities that seem to pop up. Maybe others in security have a much more stable set of work they can accomplish. I don’t and maybe that’s a culture thing too.

One thing I am trying to be better about is creating acceptance criteria. What things do I need to complete to close the ticket. This could be considered the plan, which involves focus and desired results. The deadline is a bit more tricky. I will ask for a deadline and usually get a cold or hot response. I’m not given a deadline usually. Maybe I should set my own. I don’t. To me it’s done when it needs to get done. When I am given a deadline, my deadline is usually well ahead of the other persons deadline. I’d like to try deadlines, I’m just not sure how they work in security. Then again maybe security isn’t so special and there are other professions with similiar issues and I’m just making excuses.

A Proper Frame of Mind

I am blogging everyday (or nearly everyday) on The Daily Stoic.

This year I’m going to start work on not allowing my impulses drive my decisions. I have noticed that when I give in to my impulses I get disappointed with myself and that puts me in a worse state of mind. I’m trying to set boundaries. There are things that I want to do. Chores that need to get done. I ignore them because of my impulses. That’s something I want to change. I will get in these states for a period of time and then revert back to allowing my impulses to drive me.