Last week I gave myself three things to focus on.
- Get more rest
- Mitigate the effects of a soul crushing commute
- Finalise my goals list for 2019
How did I do?
Get more rest
Having gotten out of the ritual of waking up at 6am daily over the Christmas break, it feels like I’m back in the groove. I’m using a combination of the bedtime function on iPhone to ensure I get a minimum of 7 hours sleep (8 being optimum) and a morning Alexa routine to turn the lights on & play music to help propel myself out of bed. There’s loads of hype about the ‘smart home’, but it’s this sort of stuff I find incredibly useful in automating my own behaviour.
Mitigate the commute
Having had a fairly torrid week of train commuting, it felt like it was a good time to experiment with different working patterns. On Thursday I tried getting into work for 10 instead of 8. The morning commute was an absolute pleasure. Picture a largely empty train carriage. I felt less tired when I got to work and my energy levels were pretty even throughout most of the day. The commute home was less pleasant due to having to hang around in the cold for 45 minutes until a train arrived that I could (just about) physically fit on. So, perhaps not a complete solution, but an interesting micro experiment that offered some new data to work with.
Finalise goals for 2019
Didn’t finish these. I know this is one part procrastination and one part not better structuring my time to give myself the best chance at completing it. I hereby solemnly vow to block the time out for the coming week and protect it at all costs. 🤞
Other things…
Digital service development
We’re working with a supplier to finesse our digital services. It’s raised an interesting point about how consumer technology is raising people’s expectations in the digital age and how we are (or aren’t) responding to that. I wrote a post about it if you’re interested.
Training
I spent two days this week receiving training on our business intelligence tool. It spurred a post about matching the sophistication of tools to the skills available. Whilst it’s an incredibly useful and full featured product, it made me wonder how useful it really is without dedicated time + skills to get the most out of it.
And.. lots of other small, unconnected but important things
By all accounts, the remainder of my week has been filled by lots of small but important things that don’t really fit within a specific theme. I need to have a look at Trello and review this to ensure I’m not falling into a responsive pattern at the expense of making headway with planned work.
I’ve been reading…
- Japan’s robot hotel lays off half of robots after they create more work for humans.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/15/18184198/japans-robot-hotel-lay-off-work-for-humans - “Designing around the customer + not over thinking + good judgement + a bias toward action = good things happen”
http://www.bromfordlab.com/lab-diary/2019/1/18/theres-no-guarantees-in-innovation-get-used-to-it - The writing is on the wall for legacy IT systems.
http://www.bromfordlab.com/labblogcontent/2019/1/10/the-writings-on-the-wall - Microsoft finds disconnect between job growth and housing growth (well.. duh!) and intends to build affordable housing.
https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2019/01/16/ensuring-a-healthy-community-the-need-for-affordable-housing/ - The 3L’s of Self-Directed Learning.
http://qaspire.com/2019/01/16/3ls-of-self-directed-learning-insights-from-my-tedx-talk/ - The Faux-Robot Revolution. (I’m loving the term ‘fauxtomation’)
https://medium.com/field-guide-to-the-future-of-work/the-faux-bot-revolution-ebf25481d48d