When I took the SAT in high school, I didn’t study. In the past I’ve told people about it, claiming it was the fault of the standardized testing regime and my not studying was a form of protest. In a lot of ways, the SAT shouldn’t be studied for… the middle word is “Aptitude”. Presumably the SAT measured what you’ve learned in school. I argued that if that were the case, I should take it without studying.

Cross-cutting cleavages of terminology between art and science show up daily my work in socio-technical systems. It feels a little bit natural that we lean on familiar constructs to guide us into new ones. As I’m prepping to talk next month at DevWeek 2022, I cannot help but look back at last year’s conference sharing my perspectives on navigating the difficult headwaters of categories through stories of metaphor.

On-call need not be a solo affair full of fear and anxiety. There are ways we can employ practice and open collaboration outside of incidents to prepare us better. We can learn how to adapt when our systems experience breakdowns at the edges, how to improvise when the answers are elusive, and how to evolve our understanding of the jobs we do by sharing our work together.

Today I was able to re-orient myself quickly to a task through what I am now calling a Brain Pin.

Consider a jazz band you’ve heard or seen live, or really any type of music where improvisation plays an important role. Great bands work together effortlessly, and when things go sideways or “wrong notes” are played, they quickly adapt to the changing conditions in order to keep the music going. This emergent complex system manifests itself in the awesome jams you hear.