Professional Resilience: Lessons from 25 Years in Tech

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7 min reading time


Posted in Personal, Process

Posts about product resilience abound – writing resilient code, designing resilient interfaces (there’s even a book!), and architecting resilient server infrastructures – all covered from a multitude of angles and perspectives. We need more perspectives on building and maintaining professional resilience, an area I’d argue is just as important as resilience of the work itself.

This post shares mine.

Contextanchor

I want to start with a definition of Professional Resilience to make sure we’re on the same page. I also want to acknowledge some gaps (intentional or not) in this post, because this is a rather broad topic and I had to find a line to draw so it doesn’t become an essay.

Definitionanchor

Professional Resilience (also common is Workplace Resilience) refers to the ability of individuals (and organizations) to adapt, recover, and thrive in their work environment.

Caveatsanchor

  • In trying to keep this post small enough to comfortably read, I’m glossing over a whole lot of tangentially related topics like emotional intelligence, mental health, and fostering resilience across a team/organization. My hope is that it gets you thinking about you own personal resilience with some ideas to get started, not to serve as a comprehensive all-in-one. I’ve shared some resource links at the bottom if you’re interested in diving deeper.
  • I want to acknowledge that there are very valid criticisms and limitations to the concept of professional resilience that I don’t get into as part of this post. For example, systemic problems that are pushed onto the individual which necessitate higher levels of personal resilience, cultural differences that change the dynamic, and its tendency to normalize stress. I have some thoughts, but I think they’re best held for another post.
  • This is written from one cis white guy’s perspective, I’m working on making myself aware of my biases and privileges but I’m sure some of that will be apparent here. If you’re willing to share some feedback, I’m more than eager to hear it and learn from your perspective. Please do get in touch in whatever way is most comfortable for you.

The Impetusanchor

Over my 25 year career as a web development consultant, I worked on so many projects that have pushed me past limits I didn’t even realize I had. Each had their own unique stressors that challenged me in different ways. Project complexity, tight deadlines, strained interpersonal relationships, shifting priorities, you name it.

Despite their differences, over time I started to notice patterns emerging across projects. Similar external triggers would lead to similar internal responses. I came to realize that there were things I could do to offset those responses, and sometimes to even prevent the triggers in the first place.

I started taking notes, trying different things and figuring out what worked for me and my collaborators. These notes eventually grew into a personal toolkit of advance planning, habits, and interpersonal rituals, all designed to help when times got tough. I eventually distilled them down into what I call my resilience reservoir.

Resilience Reservoir?anchor

I know, it sounds strange, but hear me out. Building a resilience reservoir means doing intentional work now before tough moments arrive. Think of it like filling a well during the rainy season – the more you fill it, the longer it sustains you during drought.

It’s intended to help build:

  • a collection of tools to draw from, to short circuit your internal responses
  • strong relationships and support systems, to avoid some triggers before they start
  • awareness of the triggers and their responses, to continue iterating on these tools and relationships

Building a Resilience Reservoiranchor

These activities are just examples that worked for me, they may not be a great fit for you. The hard – but most rewarding – part is building up enough self awareness to find out for yourself what works best for you.

Define Your North Staranchor

Spend some time thinking about what matters most to you, both personally and professionally. How do you want to be remembered? What are your non-negotiables? For me, this exploration ended up becoming my Personal and Professional Mission Statement.

Why? I find that reminding myself of what’s most important to me helps put things into perspective, and motivates me to show up in the ways that I want to be remembered.

Build Psychological Safetyanchor

While more impactful as a team leader, there are things that anyone on a team can do to help create an environment where everyone feels valued and safe to express themselves.

  • Share Gratitude – When someone brightens your day, tell them. You feel that boost of joy just as much as they do, and it’s infectious. I’ve seen this kind of gratitude sharing spread throughout teams – once it starts, it’s hard to stop – and it’s pretty magical when it happens.
  • Team Building – Not a big fan of that term, but it fits. Use the empty time at the start of a meeting to get to know the people you’re working with, ask a fun question during sprint retros.
  • Model Vulnerability – Share your own challenges and mistakes, ask for critical feedback and do your best to act on it right away.
  • Recognize Contributions – Acknowledge and celebrate both individual and team achievements.

Why? Fostering trust among the team leads to more open dialogue, which leads to clearer communication and fewer misunderstandings, which can reduce the frequency of triggers (explained below).

Start a “Good Vibes” Folderanchor

Collect anything that makes you smile, feel appreciated, and reminds you of all the good around you and put them in this folder. Mine is full of chat screenshots celebrating milestones, weird inside joke memes we’ve created together, photos from meetups and conferences, and health goals achieved like the first time I completed a 10k.

Why? When you’re feeling down or need a boost of motivation, there’s nothing quite like opening some random files in this folder to remind yourself of some good times.

Find What Calms & What Motivates Youanchor

I’ve noticed that many of the same things help to both calm me down and boost my motivation, so I’ve put it all together into one list:

  • Write it down – putting to words what you’re feeling helps you understand and process them
  • Take a walk – fresh air and time away helps reset, and gets the blood flowing for a boost of energy
  • Play some music – I have playlists for when I need to relax, and when I need a boost of motivation
  • Make a list – humans weren’t meant to keep so many details in their head, get it out on paper
  • Box breathing – such a simple thing, but it works wonders

Why? It’s harder to think when something triggers an emotional response, knowing your preferred ways to self-regulate is especially helpful in these situations. We all have lists full of less than exciting work, sometimes an extra boost is all we need to keep up the momentum.

Recognizing When You Need Your Reservoiranchor

When you’re deep into the details of your work, it’s easy to lose sight of how those day to day stresses are personally affecting you. Getting to know your triggers is the next step in building an effective system.

Resilience depletion shows up two ways: in the triggers happening around you and how you’re responding to them. When you start noticing these triggers and responses, you know it may be time to turn to your reservoir.

External Triggersanchor

This is all about what’s happening around and to you, stressors that drain your resilience. Here’s a handful that I’ve noticed really affect me, your list may include many of these too:

  • Demanding clients – unclear expectations, constant feedback loops, shifting priorities
  • Apathetic co-workers – uneven workload distribution, carrying more than your share
  • Legacy code – brittle and easily broken, lots of technical debt, slow progress despite effort
  • Tight deadlines – compressed timelines, high stakes, cutting corners, management pressure
  • Slow processes – bureaucracy, long approval processes, blockers, lack of autonomy

Internal Responsesanchor

This is all about how those triggers are making you feel, signs that your resilience is being tapped. Here’s some I’ve noticed about myself:

  • Sleep disruption – staying up too late, waking too early, oversleeping
  • Irritability – snapping at people, frustration over small things, resentment building
  • Reduced productivity – context-switching, difficulty focusing, slow output
  • Isolation – withdrawing from people, skipping social interactions, doomscrolling
  • Uncertainty – doubt about decisions, unclear about what’s right, imposter syndrome
  • Physical tension – especially in the neck and shoulders

Making Use of Your Reservoiranchor

We’ve spent some time building up our reservoir, and have a better understanding of when we need to make use of it, now let’s explore how to put it to action. I find it helpful to think in the short-term (immediate relief) and long-term (prevention).

Short-termanchor

When you need to short circuit your internal responses:

  • Take a walk (or something else from your calming list)
  • Write down what’s going on, get it out of your head to find some clarity
  • Make a list of what you need to accomplish

When you’re feeling less motivated:

  • Play some music (or something else from your motivation list)
  • Scroll through your Good Vibes folder
  • Review your Mission Statement, remind yourself of why you’re doing this

Long-termanchor

As you start to stabilize, spend some time to consider these questions:

  • Are you noticing recurring triggers? Are there steps you can take to slow or prevent them in future?
  • What worked? What didn’t? Use these insights to help refine your personal toolbox.
  • What can you do now to help refill your reservoir?

Your Turnanchor

We’ve covered a lot of ground here – from understanding what professional resilience is, to building the practices and relationships that sustain it, to recognizing when you need to activate them, and finally, how to put them to use when things get tough.

But here’s the thing, this post is just the beginning of your journey.

The examples I’ve shared here worked for me, your resilience reservoir will look different. Your triggers may differ, your calming practices might be completely different, and the relationships that sustain you will be uniquely yours.

So here’s what I’d encourage you to do next:

  • Start small – Pick one practice from the building section. Try it for a week or two. What resonates? What doesn’t?
  • Pay attention – The next time you notice one of those external triggers, pause and observe. What internal response shows up for you? What did you need in that moment?
  • Experiment and iterate – The tools that work for you might be different from mine, and that’s to be expected. This is your toolkit, built for your life and your work.
  • Be patient with yourself – Building resilience takes time, just like filling a well. It won’t be perfect right away, but you’ll start to see incremental improvements over time.

Professional resilience isn’t about never struggling or never failing, the challenges you face aren’t going away – at least not until you retire. With intentional work now, you can build the capacity to handle them when they arrive with less stress and more confidence.

That’s what the resilience reservoir is really all about.

Resourcesanchor

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