Security Catalyst Office Hours Recap for March 12, 2021

Another fantastic office hours in the books. I love the open dialogue that encourages people to share experiences, challenges, and how they are finding success.

Here are the ideas we explored 

The power of the Schultz Hour

When things feel a bit hectic, give yourself the power of a Schultz Hour. We talked about the concept. While Schultz started with some structured journaling, the idea is to give yourself time to just be. Without guilt. An opportunity to engage in a break from technology and other distractions. We talked about the benefit of noise canceling headphones for this exercise, too. 

Sensing the world of clutter

The conversation about noise-canceling headphones lead to a great discussion about the often hidden impact of visual and auditory stimuli and clutter — when working at home, in an office, and when traveling. It was comforting to know we are not alone. It was useful to learn from each other. 

How are you investing in yourself?

The opening question of the week prompted some great stories about investing in ourselves by taking courses, reading, making time for office hours, and other ways to make investments. We acknowledge the challenge of finding the time during periods of chaos – and pledged to keep exploring it and supporting each other. 

Is it important to keep up with the entire industry?

The challenge of time prompted the question about keeping up with the changes and currents of the industry. It started as “how do you,” but quickly shifted to “is it important to?” And after an interesting conversation, the short answer is no, it’s not important. More important is investing in yourself and improving your grasp of the fundamentals of your area (or role) and how to apply them successfully. 

Do you know what to ask and where to look?

Instead of keeping up with the industry or daily news — both of which offer distraction — instead focus on honing the ability to ask better questions. Knowing where to look and what to ask is almost like having a superpower. The risk is substituting familiarity for competence. 

Collecting ideas versus doing things 

We explored the challenge of balancing collecting ideas and information with action and knowing what to keep and what to discard. We had a cool discussion about Markov Chains and the Euler method — demonstrating the power of learning from other fields and applying the concepts to the problems we are trying to solve. 

“IDE cables are cheap” 

Sometimes it’s more expensive to store things — like IDE cables — than to replace them in the future. The struggle is recognizing the sunk cost and moving on. Part of managing growth is maturing or discarding ideas and information. We have digital clutter just as we have visual and physical clutter – and the more we have, the more it impacts us (and slows us down). 

Consider joining us next Friday at Noon Eastern… 

BRING YOUR PROBLEMS TO ME

And we’ll solve them together

https://Securitycatalyst.com/officehours