EPO

 

In my business, there acronym EPO strikes fear in the heart of every IT/Data Center type.  EPO stands for Emergency Power Off.  If you have been in a Data Center before, you have seen it.  It is the big red button by the doors.  Hitting the EPO button shuts down everything but the emergency lights in the Data Center.  The sole purpose of the EPO is to shut down the room in order to avoid a catastrophic event.  If you are EPOing the room that means all types of alarms are going off.  EPOing a Data Center is not a pretty event, but it beats losing the room to a fire or other significant event.  We all have built in EPO mechanisms, and they perform similar in concept to the EPO in the Data Center.  They are there to protect us from catastrophic events. 

A few names you may be familiar with are, the five senses, fight or flight response, intuition, inner wisdom, and my favorite, spider senses.  I kinda pile them all together under the term, situational awareness, or paying attention to life.  I recall almost six years ago when I had to hit my EPO.  I had burnt up the candle at both ends and the middle.  I was spending more time at the bar than home just trying to deal with some things.  I lost 30 lbs in 30 days, and I felt something catastrophic was on the way so I EPO’ed.  It was not an orderly shutdown, but it sure beat the alternative.

I’ve seen people that did not EPO in time and crashed and burned in a not so good way.  There are times in life where we need to do a total shutdown before we have a meltdown.  Learn to pay attention to your internal monitoring systems.  They will help you avoid the EPO.