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Microsoft Community Insights Podcast
Episode 37 - Power naps, self care and mental health with Daniel Paulus
Daniel takes us through the unsustainable habits that led to his collapse: working late shifts to avoid interruptions, surviving on takeaway meals and six energy drinks daily, and completely neglecting self-care. The turning point came when he discovered a three-part approach to recovery—the BOSH technique: movement (Bewegen), relaxation (Ontspanning), and social connection (Social).
What makes this episode particularly valuable is Daniel's practical, tested advice for maintaining mental wellbeing in high-pressure tech environments. He explains why walking in nature without technological distractions fundamentally changes how our brains process stress, and shares his precise methodology for power naps that rejuvenate rather than drain energy (hint: it's all about avoiding deep sleep cycles).
Thank you, hello. Hello, welcome to Microsoft Community Insights Podcast, where we share insights from community experts to stay up to date In Microsoft. I'm Nicholas. I'll be your host today. In this episode, we'll dive into a special theme called PowerNaps Self-Care and Mental Health. But before we get started, I want you to follow us on social media so you never miss an episode and help us reach more amazing people like yourself. Today we have a special guest called Daniel Palacos. Can you please introduce yourself? Please, sure, sure, I can.
Speaker 2:So I was just vibing on your intro too, man, it's really really uplifting music it's really cool.
Speaker 2:So I'm Daniel, daniel Paulus, and yeah, as you said, I really want to talk about self-care today and I love to do that with power naps but also being outside in nature and stuff. So I am Daniel, I work with the cloud at the factory. I'm also an Azure MVP, just like Nicholas here, and we know each other from back in the day at the MVP Summit Really nice chatting there. I love communities. I am a longtime DevOpsAce organizer. We run the Amsterdam event every year that also has a meetup event every year. That also has a meetup. And I'm also an organizer for the Go Azure meetup, which is basically a small meetup talking about all the aspects that have to do with Azure.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's cool. When's the next DevOpStay Amsterdam?
Speaker 2:We just had the 225 edition, so that will be in June next year, but there actually will be one soon in the UK, in London.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no there's one in September. I know that I'll go and answer that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's not september. I know that I'm gonna say yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not yeah, the ticket's quite expensive, quite big yeah, really okay, okay, because the venue costs a bit, that's why. That's why I'm that might be cheaper.
Speaker 1:Well, I can see if I can get good to it okay, so it's an interesting title power nab so I'm not sure if that's related to Power Platform or something. Oh no, Okay.
Speaker 2:No, but that might be actually an interesting link to see if we can get something set up with Power Apps or Power Automate to send me a reminder to actually go outside, or or or sleep.
Speaker 1:It's actually oh yeah, so reminder to like exercise, go outside, stretch your legs and stuff yeah, for your mental health yeah, yeah, indeed.
Speaker 2:So. So, like I'm now in it, I think for 15 to 20 years or so, yeah, and at one point we I was at the startup and we were running really, really hard. We were trying to. So we grew from just five people to more than 100 in less than a year, wow. And most of those people were doing Ruby on Rails, and back in the day we didn't have cloud right, so everything was running on servers in a data center. They were pushing us to do deployments of code that didn't work because they didn't have the dependencies installed and stuff like that. There were no containers. It was a mess and we had a team, a team of two people, that was doing all the data center sites all laptops, printers, lights that were broken.
Speaker 1:It's like the rumors say jack of all trades, you do bob everything. Yeah, if it's shut down on, on everything so.
Speaker 2:So as soon as it looked like it was technology or something that was related to technology.
Speaker 2:people came to us, no matter what, like the printer stops working, didn't check if paper was out. No, no, no. They just come to us saying it doesn't work. Yeah, come on, the paper is next to the printer. Spill it yourself, right. And in order to actually get some work done, I started to go later and later into the office so that when I start, like at noon, then when, when it's 5 pm, everybody leaves, I could still get some actual work hours in with focus work.
Speaker 2:So I would. I would have my dinner at the office and then work for a few hours and then go home, sleep and next day do the same same cycle. Right, but with always eating in the office.
Speaker 2:I was also getting more and more takeout like yeah it was the cycle like of, like, bad, bad care right, um, yeah, you don't want that to turn to a bad habit, because you want to eat healthy as well, so be a healthy lifestyle yeah, and I was on a lot of energy drink in the day, which I don't drink at all anymore, but but back then it was like I had like six cans a day of, uh, energy drink stuff, uh, and back in the day I was like, oh yeah, so this special brand is with honey instead of sugar, so that's better for you, which is, of course, bs.
Speaker 2:But uh, I like it was this voice in my head that said, oh no, this is fine, like like that image with all the fires and a little dog on the table, like this is fine, which, of course, it was actually not. So when I did that for like a few months, I got burned out and I was at home for I think like six months before I could actually do something again. And when I was at home, I started to figure out like, okay, what was going wrong, what could I do to cope, to process? And because I was home, the team was just one person. So at least the company figured out okay, this is not sustainable, I need to put more people in the IT team. So something good came from the fact that I got burned out and was at home for six months because they hired three extra IT people so all of a sudden, I was part of a five-person team.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but that shouldn't happen in the first place. Even if the director or CTO is aware of it, that wouldn't happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they were. But they were also like, yeah, but we can't find them, and that like, at that point they, they still really wanted to have internal people. Uh, so, so, not something they could hire as like a freelance gig or anything like they would? They would really want internal people and back in the day it was also like if you were in it, everybody wanted you. Because back in the netherlands here we have an issue with it people. We have two less of them. Um, so, as soon as you are on the lookout for an it professional, that can take a while, especially if you want to have them on the payroll. If you want to have a freelance person, that's easier to get.
Speaker 1:So yeah, not necessarily because you can still hire graduate which would know what they're doing, that have some like qualification, some deal, some experience.
Speaker 2:Yeah it's sometimes it's really easy to find people, especially yeah in the months just after the summer 40 days because then also schools are finished, so people have their certificate, go on the market and stuff. So sometimes it's a little bit easier to find people, but sometimes they're just really stuck. And and then when I was at home I also started to figure out that. Or I saw something about devils and it was completely new to me. Yeah, so a lot of the pain that we had was because of deaf people wanting to deploy software that didn't have the right tests or the right dependencies. So we were deploying it, everything broke. We had to fix it, roll back, hardware broke so we had to go to the data center, fix disks, fix hardware right.
Speaker 2:And then I saw this DevOps movement that came from Belgium, was the first edition in Amsterdam and I actually went there because I was like let's check this out, let's see what this thing is.
Speaker 2:And I came there and I heard the story of all the issues that we had from everyone there and I was like, finally, more people with my exact same issues. So I didn't have a solution yet, but at least everybody had the same pain as I did a solution yet, but at least everybody had my had the same pain as I, yeah and um, and that, I think, helped a long way in except in in accepting the fact that, okay, I'm now burned out, I'm out of energy, I need to recover, but when I recover, I have a plan forward. Right, I, I, I know what I need to change in order to make it better. And then someone told me like it's not really a medic, but it's someone like just below a medic profession, and they had this trick like if you want to recover, you have to go to Bosch, and Bosch in Dutch is a forest, so a forest in Dutchutch is called boss.
Speaker 1:I think that's the better way of saying it so, dc, these are some of the ways that you use to improve your, your healthy lifestyle.
Speaker 2:So whether yeah, yeah, so when I socialize more, move more, exercise more.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So their tip was go to the forest, and that kind of seems, or that seems, or it seems weird that I had to go to the forest, but there were some, some Like Every. It seems weird that I had to go to the forest, but there were some like every first letter of the word has a meaning. So the B stands for movement, in Dutch bewegen, the O stands for chilling on spanning, and the s stands for social, which in dutch is basically the same word it's social. So those three key things movement, chilling and social are really important if you want to recover from almost everything. But for me, the most thing was anxiety. I had to, I was burned out, I was tired, I was. I had so much anxiety in my life, so much stress that had to go out. And then it really helps if you go to a forest just by yourself walk around, move around, like think, but make sure that you're there without technology. So nowadays everybody wants to listen to podcasts, right? That's a huge topic.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Everybody has a podcast. There's lots of minutes consumed in podcasts, but if you're in a forest, don't put any audio in your ears no Spotify, no podcast, nothing. Be there, listen to nature, and only then your mind gets to ease, right, you relax. That's really important. And if you're there anyway, just sit down, bring your food with you, eat something in the forest, in a park, like in a green area, and that's the chilling part. And if, if, then at some point you're feeling a little bit recharged again, take someone with you. Go with the social aspect, right?
Speaker 1:um, there was because you don't you don't really necessarily do it in the forest, but you can do it in the park or your garden. The idea is the idea is to stay away from technology and just have alone time with yourself and stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it really helps if that's a green area right. I live in the city centre for a while. Not that much green out there. Now I live in a way greener area and that really helps. But even when I was in the city center, I just went out, walked through the city center and had the sound of the city around me.
Speaker 2:That also helped, indeed, without technology giving rest to your mind, and it also helped to do one-on-ones with the team while walking outside. One it takes you out of the office in a more relaxed and a more social setting. You can say things that you might not want to say in the office because you're outside, no one can hear you. It's way easier sometimes to do that. So that was also a tip that I got and that I actually did for a while, and if you start to implement that right, that also gives you more benefits. One of them is your health. I've always been on the more heavy side of things, and when I started walking like 10,000 steps a day, sometimes eight, but sometimes 15. Um, it restart started to affect my body as well, and in the end I lost about like, like, not sure in pounds, but I think it's two ish, right. So then it's about five pounds that I dropped weight.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, yeah and because that, yeah, yeah, go, because I think the idea is to be energetic, so move around so you're able to have a healthy lifestyle and live longer. So that's how I say so when you're older, you'll still be fit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is that is one of the goals, right, but that's, that's a goal for for later on. And like if you, if you're like, okay, so what does it bring me now? Right, I want to. It's it's okay if I need to walk outside, but what is the? What is my biggest benefit now?
Speaker 2:And I think that the biggest benefit you get is that it has a positive influence on your mental health, your mood, stress and depression. Because when you walk, you walk in a steady pace. Right, it doesn't have to be fast, you just have to be walking. And then that, because that's a steady pace, that's how that's helping in calming you. It sounds really weird because you're active and you're actively doing something, but because that's that's in a steady pace, that's actually helping to calm the human right, um, and because you're outside without technology, your cognitive stress that we get from technology eases out, it gets away, it's it's, it's it's lowering, and because that it helps us to open our minds and become more creative. So, instead of me talking with Copilot or ChatTPT or whatever, I can go outside for a short walk. Come back and have this idea to fix my coding issue, right? Sure, it takes more time, but it's better for my mind to do it like that.
Speaker 1:I read it somewhere that the only time that you're a peace of mind is when you go to sleep, because you rest and you're in a hibernation. So everything, technology wise, everything. It may be correct, I'm not sure.
Speaker 2:That might be true, but I've also read some research that if you are not in in cognitive rest, so you have stress, right, you have also stress in your sleep and you so your sleep quality is less. You don't get the mental rest that you should get, and that might also have impact on your dreaming, like if you're in a dream state and you have stress that might reflect in your dreams as well. So just going for a walk after your dinner, like in the evening and before you go to bed, actually is really good Also for your sleep quality. But I think that's a totally different talk and a totally different conversation, because that's way more like there's way more sides to it than just take a walk before you go to bed. But uh, one of the things I also found out when I started to to work out with a coach is that the first thing he talked about was not my food plan.
Speaker 2:The first thing he started to talk about is how is your sleep cycle like? At what time do you go to bed? At what time do you wake up and are you feeling refreshed without looking at your apple watch or whatever? How do you feel when you wake up? Do you feel that you sleep, or did you feel that you didn't have any sleep at all while you were were in bed for like eight hours? So by going outside, by having those walks, you also have an impact on your sleep and with those two, you also have an impact on your health benefits because, I don't know sometimes, when you sleep for nine hours, it's still good in a way, because you're still sleeping and you're still resting anything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so too much sleep is also not good for you, which to me sounded weird in the beginning, right, because I'm like, if I sleep for 10 hours.
Speaker 1:I flat for 10 hours.
Speaker 2:What's wrong with sleeping for 10 hours? But it's actually. It can actually be bad bad for your body and your mind as well. So having a steady cycle is the best thing you can have, but yeah, with with with it people, we sometimes have a page of duty things going on so we might not have the best sleep right. So it's at least something to think about, right.
Speaker 1:To have a look at. It. Depends on the circumstances, because people have on-call, which could be any time, and then people have family, kids.
Speaker 2:Depends on circumstances, but I would say, just do this that meet your circumstances, but just be active once a while, just remember to have you sleep early and just wake up early yeah, yeah, that's definitely a thing, because, uh and of course I know that that if you have kids or anything, that might be different the tip that I hear a lot is like get a dog or some other animal that you have to walk right, because then it becomes easier to get your steps in okay but yeah and not like, like.
Speaker 2:Another benefit is like if you start to bring people on your walks, then you have also the social aspect to it yeah and um, right, because if you, if you walk in a forest or stuff, and you walk there with someone like I, am on the ADHD spectrum, right. So my mind is really busy most of the time and when I walk outdoors and someone sees things that I miss, like there are mushrooms or there is like, uh, leaves, when it's uh, what do you call the period between summer and you know it's autumn?
Speaker 2:yeah yeah, uh, so when the, when the leaves start to get other colors and stuff, I really like that because, like, the landscape is totally different colors and stuff. But when I walk with someone who actually sees details, for me it's a completely new walk, like if I'm I'm in a new park or in or in a in a new forest which isn't the case because I walk there almost daily but because someone sees different details than I do, it becomes a way interesting walk and yeah, that's that's really interesting. So that's also one of the tips that I want to share. Like, if you like walking alone, try and bring someone. And what really helped me is by making a walking plan. So before I went to the office, or even like at the start of my day or even start of the week, I make a plan on which points of the day can I walk or where do I make time to walk outside. It can be my lunch, but it can also be when I have a few meetings on a day back to back. After that meeting I go outside for half an hour, making sure to de-stress my mind, think about all the things that happened in the past three hours, like, get everything arranged again and actually plan those like they are in my calendar, and that that really helps to to be mindful of your walks and like. There's a few few more tricks that we, that that I implement, and I think some of them still work for me. Others don't, but if I'm in a period of harder work, I also need to make sure that while I work harder, I also need to chill harder, and things that work really well for me are like meditating.
Speaker 2:Um, I always thought that meant that that meditating was when you were on this, on this pillow or like in this weird positions and had to be in the moment and not think about anything. But I learned that you can also meditate in your chair. And I have this app it's not Headspace, it's a Dutch app, but it's called Meditation and they have all kinds of sound experiences, voice control. They have all kinds of sound experiences, voice control. They have all kinds of stuff, and I have a few that I really like. They are from five minutes to half an hour and I can just pick the one that I want sit in a chair for a moment, close my eyes, and it doesn't matter if you drift away right, as long as you come back, uh, to that moment, to be in the moment, yeah, and what I found out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it could just be like resting for 10 minutes, but be in your yourself as stuff being your like in your mind that's it yeah, yeah and uh um breathing for for me that doesn't work really well, uh, but for for some people it really works well to do a breathing technique. Uh, there are also apps that can help you with that. There are certain ways that you can breathe in and breathe out and that helps you to reduce stress and blood pressure and stuff. But what does work really well for me is listening to my favorite music to reduce anxiety and stress, and it's actually fun because when I drive on my motorcycle I always have Dutch pop songs on and that really helps me to be relaxed on the motorcycle. And then there's also this trick for a hand massage.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't try that, but I'm not sure what it is. Just massage your hand to see whether it's like if it makes yourself feel better.
Speaker 2:So there are trigger points in your hand which you can study. Yeah, you can find that online and like by putting some pressure with your tongue, um, on some points of your, of your other hand, that can help you to reduce stress. For me it doesn't really do anything, but it might actually work for you. So that's something to investigate. Just try it out sometime. And what I like, just like you, I come a lot at events. I really like events. I like the socializing part of it. But it can also like it also wears out my social battery. So I have to balance it.
Speaker 2:But I really like to tell everyone be a bee. And why be a bee? Bees are together, they live in a hive and they do work together. They take care of their queen and they do that by working together, building a hive, making a better house. So they work really hard, but they do it together. So the socialing aspect can help with the decrease, to take depression out, to lower anxiety, and it can make you feel happier. And when you socialize, like, we use our brain for memory. Like I know that I met you at the MVP Summit, I know that you stayed there for a while longer, so when I see you again. I I need to think, oh yeah, I need to ask Nick about how that stay was and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:Right, uh, um, and that that also takes my mind off anxiety things, because I yeah we we chat about different things, yeah, and because we're together in a social setting, um, that should bring a sense of safety. I know that's not always the case, but you should feel safe around people. Uh, and because we we are both mv, we also have a sense of belonging because we're both part of the same group and hopefully that's a secure group, we feel safe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's environment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, and if that's the case, then the socializing aspects promote that feeling and makes us feel less anxiety and stuff. And it really helps if I can share with you that I have anxiety or that I have stress and stuff and that can really help with bringing that lower on my side yeah, there's lots of time talking about it.
Speaker 1:It's a bet, is it? Is it?
Speaker 2:uh, it's better than not talk about it, so you need to let it out, but every time keeping all the stress inside yeah, you should let it go, definitely, um, but but just as I, so, while we're being a bee, I also like empty my social battery, right. So sleeping and recharging that social battery is really important. So by having good quality sleep, which I actually, I would recommend everybody investigate your sleep and investigate what you need to do to improve your sleep. But better sleep can lead to better memory and to better concentration. Like we're on our phones the entire day, like we get distracted by everything. Linkedin posts from everybody that they were again an MVP for a year. It's not interesting. Go to sleep, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And if you're in your bed, don't touch your phone anymore. I have this at 10 PM. My phone goes into dark mode, uh, sleep mode. I don't get notification of any app anymore, except for people that are in my zip list. Um, like my parents and my sister, that if they call me that I still get alerted, but everything else is offline. Like, like it's time for me to go to bed to sleep.
Speaker 1:When you sleep, you sleep.
Speaker 2:You don't touch anything, just sleep yeah, and and good sleep improves your mental health, right. So, uh, uh, if you, if you like, in Dutch we say, I think it's the three R's reinheid, regelmaat. So you have to make sure that you're clean, that you eat good, that you sleep well, that you have this constant cycle of doing things, that you sleep well, that you have this constant cycle of doing things, and it really helps with the mental health, and the good sleeping habits are a really big, important part of that. But now we come to the title of this talk, right, or of this session, because it all ties together with power naps.
Speaker 2:Because if I'm working the entire day and I'm in my home office, because I don't power nap at the office, I only do this at home. But as soon as I go for lunch, I eat something quick at home and I take half an hour power nap. And a lot of people say to me but half an hour don't you wake up completely tired? No, because it's not entirely 30 minutes. I figured out for myself what's my deep sleep cycle and the tip or trick is not to get into deep sleep. As soon as you touch deep sleep, you're too far. And then if you wake up in the middle of your deep sleep, you feel tired, but if you just take.
Speaker 2:If you just take that first light sleep cycle, then then your feeling of fatigue is gone, right right, you have rested, you've slept, you have the rest of the day you can power through. You have recharged your cognitive memory, which leads to better creativity and thinking, uh, like innovative thinking. It's all part of this cycle, so I would definitely recommend people to try out sometime.
Speaker 1:Just take don't do power naps, but you can still do it, just to rest a little bit while you recharge a bit.
Speaker 2:Same thing. But if you try a power nap, set your alarm for 20 minutes and try out how you feel afterwards, you will not be more tired than before. I think you'll feel refreshed. You will not be more tired than before. I think you'll feel refreshed. And try to do some experimentation on is it 20 minutes, is it 25 minutes, is it half an hour?
Speaker 2:Try to find a good balance in between, because I also had like when I was experimenting, I also had ones when I was experimenting.
Speaker 2:I also had ones that I was in my deep sleep and then you wake up and then you feel really tired because you're being wakened in the middle of your REM or or or deep sleep. Right, so then I know, okay, so, so either I have to make it longer I had to add five minutes or 10 minutes or make it shorter. So take a few minutes off. And having a smartwatch or a smart device can help you to identify your sleeping pattern and if you look at the data, you can figure out okay. So if I have an ideal sleep, your cycle is light, rem, deep, light, rem, deep, light, rem, deep, and that's a few cycles throughout the night and that can really give you the data like okay, my power nap should not be longer than 20 minutes and you can have multiple power naps, right you just need to experiment to see what duration is better for you, because sometimes you can sleep instantly in 15 minutes, 20 minutes until real sleep.
Speaker 1:but you want to do less, like 15 minutes. You can just go there, get a coffee and relax or something, or just go for like walk around the house. You don't need to go out, parker, you just move around, basically be active.
Speaker 2:Definitely definitely. So I think that was my last yeah, so is there?
Speaker 1:anything. I think that was my last yeah, so I get. Is there any? What are the most challenging things that you had to face when in this, when you had to get burnout, so what? So how did you have to?
Speaker 2:use these tips that you just mentioned to overcome it. Yeah, yeah, so um stage one yeah is is accepting right. You have to accept that, that you are burned out or that you that you have stress like, uh, so this for me was a few years ago, but of course we, we, we had covid like yeah just it feels like a few months ago.
Speaker 2:thankfully it's longer ago, but uh, and during that time my, my mom, was really sick. She had a heart infarct, so I think, with her heart, which she needed open heart surgery for, and at the same time COVID broke out. So I was really afraid that something would happen with her and that had impact on my performance. It got me stressed, but at the same time I didn't feel stressed because work gave me some flexibility, right, so they were not really pressing on. You have to get things done. They understood the situation, but still I had like weird, weird pains, weird stuff, and in the end I went to a medic and um, and they they told me like okay, you don't have stress, but you have fear, and fear is really stressful for your body.
Speaker 1:yeah, uh, it's not exactly the same, but it's linked together. You have fear it's really linked together because it turns into your yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it turns to your anxiety system. Right, and that's that's under pressure all the time and like that too. That took a while to accept and when and then then then the medic gave me some pills that really helped with with easing the stress, pails that really helped with with easing the stress. I was not allowed to take them for a really long time because they were like I understand why people could get like, uh, attractive to to those pills because they really help you getting the anxiety out, uh. But then I had to do everything like all the recovery on my own and that took, I think, a year, uh, while still working, uh, being outside, walking in nature, working out, uh, doing all those things and then, uh, then that helped, but we had covid, so we so we know that a small thing can trigger a really big, longer-lasting event.
Speaker 2:There's all things going on in the world right now. So you need to have a system to cope with anxiety and to deal with stress. For one part, it can be introduced to you through your work You're running too fast, you're doing too much pressure. On the other hand, it can also be with the things that are going on in the world right now. You need to have a system.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can be stressed in different ways. You can be stressed through learning too much, by not taking a break and stuff. But the idea is that don't do too much knowing to limit and get, take frequent break and be like maybe socialize more with the community and stuff while you talk without your phone as well.
Speaker 2:so it helps yes, yes, definitely like, like, like one of the things. So what you just said, like it can be too much learning, but yeah, but it can also be like too much work and stuff, but like it will not be too much if you implement a system where you go, right so take breaks regularly, go outside, be in nature, take good care of yourself and your body and that can be different for everybody, right?
Speaker 2:Like small steps can be huge steps. Like, if you're never going outside for a walk, it can be a huge step to go outside for a walk. Then that is a huge achievement. And you can like don't do everything at once, take small steps and you'll get to your same destination.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's the same bit. It's like look after yourself and then be able to work harder for yourself basically. If you look after yourself, you can work harder.
Speaker 2:And yourself, yeah, because if you look after yourself, you can work harder and you can still do more definitely yeah, and we tend to to always run and like, like I think it's a human thing that we want to go to the destination as fast as possible. Yeah, right, but but we forget that like, and that's also because we see from other people how successful they are or how how much they have achieved and stuff. What we don't know is how they got there. Yeah, because, because some of them never share that story and others, um, under, tell their story. Right, it was, it might.
Speaker 2:Like Rome isn't built in one day and if you take like it, take that in your mind. Of course you have this fancy startup and you want to go to market as fast as you can, but you help no one when your entire team gets burned out trying to get that done right. So, um, take into account that you need to have a system. Go outside, be in nature, be with friends, be with people and be with the community and be on your show and talk about things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, people handle it different ways, but you just have to find what best suits you, yeah, and without being stressful over stress. And then it's all about looking after your mental health, whether taking, like like what you said, more breaks, like whether it's tea breaks, 50 minutes walk around the house and stuff anything there's just a little break, it helps so. So thanks for joining this episode. So hopefully people learned some how important mental health is and they were to learn from some of the challenges you had to overcome when you had stress or get burnt out in the past. Burnout is not a good thing, but you just need to try to avoid it as possible. You never want to do that.
Speaker 2:No, you don't want to get there. And if you ever get there, feel free to always hit me up. I'm no medical expert, but I'm always, always willing to listen and listen and uh, maybe uh help you some small advice to get you going on your first, first around the forest or at the park.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you don't really need to do forest and park, but you can do walk around in your neighborhood, something like that, just to be energetic. Really, it doesn't need to be green, like Dan said, it just needs to be more walk.
Speaker 2:Yes, it has to be a walk, yeah, and it doesn't have to be green. That's more of a bonus.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah okay, no, all right, thanks for joining, so hopefully people have learned so how important mental health is against constipation in it. Everything's happened, but we're still young. We can still learn more and still do more, but you need to. We need to learn more to look after ourself more as well before we can do more for people. Yeah, you.
Speaker 2:You have to first take take attention to yourself, and then you can maybe try to help others as well okay, no worries.
Speaker 1:Uh, so what? We always want to learn a bit more about people. So what do you normally do in your spare time, daniel?
Speaker 2:do you normally just ride your bike, motorcycle, or you got like a club to join so actually, uh, I like fishing, carp fishing so at a lake with a rod and waiting till they bite, but indeed also motor riding, like next weekend. I will go with a friend of mine on the motorbike to Germany to be off for a weekend without technology. Well, a motorcycle is also technology, but without IT technology.
Speaker 1:Yeah, mobile phone, those type of things, yeah and same thing with the fishing.
Speaker 2:Actually, because we try. If we go out fishing, we try to have as little technology as possible with us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, fishing it's quite a lot, lot, but it's good for you because it lends you to have patience. Yeah, but it's sometimes it can. It's not good for people that doesn't have patience, because I know?
Speaker 2:yeah, that is definitely the case. It can be really annoying.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, aside from your hobbies and stuff, are you going to any events next? Is there any DevOps events or any community events you're into? Sure?
Speaker 2:That's actually a good question. I haven't really checked my calendar yet. Let me quickly see what's coming up.
Speaker 1:How about Microsoft Ignite? Are you going to try to go to Ignite?
Speaker 2:No, no, no, I will. I will not be at Ignite because that's all the way in the U S and I try not not to travel that much, okay, um, so actually it's now July. It Try not to travel that much, okay, so actually it's now July, it's now 7. It's July, so I think the next one will actually be Azure Fest, which is a Dutch conference. Yeah, I think.
Speaker 1:I think August or September or go, so september something.
Speaker 2:I saw something there yeah, yeah, it's actually in september, so that will be. That will be my first first thing. Uh, as as we're now in a holiday season in the netherlands, like all the schools are off and all the people go on holidays for like two months, or in a period of two months, they will not be all gone for two months. So the next big thing will be on the 17th of September, which will be Azure Fest.
Speaker 1:Okay, where is that? In Amsterdam or in Netherlands? No, it will be in Nieuwegein, which is near to Fest. Okay, where is that? In Amsterdam or in Netherlands?
Speaker 2:No, it will be in Nieuwegein, which is near to Utrecht, so it's a really big city in the middle of the Netherlands.
Speaker 1:And you probably can take a train. You can definitely take a train.
Speaker 2:Yes, so if you go to London and you come by train to the Netherlands, I think the train will continue to Utrecht.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So you will definitely be able to get there, and then take a bus.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, that's quite cool, because I know that there's one. I think there's an AI day in December as well. Oh, I haven't seen that yet. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So please send me the data, if you have it, then I will have a look to see if I can get there as well.
Speaker 1:You're saying, you're probably nearby.
Speaker 2:Well, technically everything in the Netherlands is close together, right? If you're in the most down point and you have to go all the way to the other side, to the next top point on the other side of the netherlands, then it's four to five hours drive but from like from where I live to to Utrecht. It's it's an hour with traffic yeah, and so, um so, almost everything is reasonable.
Speaker 1:Uh, distance for us okay no worries, I'll send you a link. I think it's sometime December thing, it's. It's the AI, one of the AI thing, remember? I'll let you know. I sent it to you.
Speaker 2:There will be a lot right AI tour everywhere.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Okay nice. All right, Thanks for joining Daniel.
