Coming back to my open browser tabs on the next working day is good indication for me of where my attention was the day before. A high number of tabs related to different strands of work or thought could be a useful data point for checking if I need to stop and prioritise.
Kudos to colleagues over at Pobl for making this PowerBI Damp and Mould algorithm open for anyone to use. Adding this to my list of examples of ways to work more openly and encourage collaboration.
We closed off another work item this week, which is great. This was an overhaul of pre-existing process that had been quite clunky and time consuming internally and externally. We couldn’t fix both due to time pressure, so we chose to prioritise the external issues first as these were both costly and easier to simplify and standardise.
Having a sustained focus on ‘how do we make this both simple and reusable’ seems to be starting to pay dividends. This does sometimes mean doing more work to get to where you need to be, but the upside is that it’ll be less fragile and *should* minimise technical debt.
I can absolutely recognise the value of external networks and communities of practice. But there are times it’s incredibly difficult to priortise looking outward when internal matters demand attention. And of course, it’s the internal stuff that you’ll be measured on, but it’s sometimes the external that helps unlock new thinking and better ways of doing things. Trying to strike the appropriate balance is a challenge.
It’s been pretty toasty this week and the office (both home and actual) have been edging toward thirty degrees. I know I shouldn’t complain! Most of the summer has seemed like non stop rain so I should find a way to enjoy it whilst it lasts.
I’ve noted an uptick in fellow train commuters post school summer holidays. It might just be that it’s converged people to come back to work all at the same time, or more places are mandating ‘back to the office days’. I do hope we don’t go back to the crammed carriages of the pre-Covid times.
Both children went back off to school. Now that they’re both in secondary, it’s condensed the morning routine by about an hour. And the transition back into the school mode seems to have gone okay for them too. All good stuff.
