Keep on keepin’ on.
What frustrated me?
I’ve been working on joining two systems up to get rid of some really awful dual entry and generally make things more friction-less and less prone to human error.
This work was already well underway when I picked it up, but it’s been hard 1) trying to unpick someone else’s logic 2) trying to unpick the process itself. I managed to track down a few email interactions and random Word documents that were difficult to place in context. In some ways, it felt like trying to piece together this stuff was harder than starting with nothing.
It made me think about the equivalent of programmers commenting their code. How do we make it easier for someone to walk in cold to a piece of work and understand what’s been done before and what you need to do next?
Previously I’ve tried to address this by making sure all discussions and decisions around a project are openly posted somewhere (Yammer group / Google Docs / Email links to the aforementioned for the less digitally enabled) so if I should disappear overnight, the next person who takes my place has some sort of breadcrumb trail to follow.
What did I do this week that I do every week?
I’ve been really struggling with weeknotes the last couple of weeks. A rough indication of this is how late I end up publishing them. This one is being written around 4 days later than usual.
I’ve observed previously that the most difficult times to reflect are the ones which were a bit ‘beige’… i.e. doing things that are neither failing or succeeding. It feels like a large proportion of my workload at the moment is quite well known and predictable. And whilst challenging in a sense of trying juggle competing priorities, there’s not a huge amount of learning to extract from it because it’s largely maintaining the status quo.
So, perhaps I need to be a little bit patient and recognise that whilst I’m going through a bit of a period of important but not particularly mind expanding work, it won’t always be so. More impetus to get it done and move on to the next thing, right? 🙂
What did I learn?
I am learning that I’m not particularly great with doing ‘routine’ work. I can competently do it, but it does not feel fulfilling. Ideally I’d like to do the hard work to automated the routine and make it go away so I can move onto new and interesting things. Is that bad thing? Answers on a postcard.
I’ve been reading\listening to…
- I loved this weeknote from Katie Attwood which is a great mishmash of brainfood.
- This BBC World Service podcast on 3D printing is really interesting. What happens we democratise the ability to make absolutely anything.. including guns? https://pca.st/IM20
- I really enjoyed Kit Collingwood’s post on being more focused and present in her life. This resonated quite a bit with me.
https://medium.com/@kcollingwood/seeing-the-forest-for-the-trees-8e14537f4949?source=linkShare-1c19cb911141-1533502728
Blog posts currently languishing in my drafts…
- Restorative approaches applied to the design & delivery of technology in organisations.
- Thinking out loud… Office 365 Vs G Suite
- Information Technology and responding to People’s raised expectations
- Thinking out loud… A hackday for social housing part 2: Problem Definition
- Staff away days hint at the future of work.