Restart
This week (and a bit of last week) I’ve been…
- Thinking about why I didn’t do any weeknotes last week and wondering if I should play around with a different format. (Spoiler: I did decide to change the format to try and reinvigorate my weeknoting, the result of which you’re reading.)
- Experimenting with G-Suite to grasp what setup & admin looks like in practice. Also trying to work out how best to get it into the hands of colleagues to a) understand how they work now and b) understand how they could work in the future.
- Wondering what ‘seasons’ practically mean in weeknotes world. Had some very useful responses on this from fellow weeknoters. I ended up thinking that aligning them with quarterly OKR’s made a whole load of sense.
- Writing a post for work’s official public blog about what my job is, what my goals are etc. etc. Considering I like writing (as evident here) and have been doing this for a while, it was surprisingly challenging. I think it’s that thing where you have to write a personal statement and you suddenly perceive yourself as the most boringly bland person on planet Earth.
- Discovering that editing Medium posts on the train is a bad idea because the intermittent signal will make it think that more than one person is editing the post so it stops saving changes so I decide I’ll have to manually re-key the changes in via my laptop when I get home but later discover that approximately 50% of this post has disappeared into the ether upon unlocking my phone. *deep intake of breath* #fml
- Revisiting Mastodon for the first time since it appeared on the scene. Following a string of not brilliant decisions from Twitter, some people have started to think seriously of a Plan B. See this post and this post for more context. I think the federated nature of Mastodon is really interesting. It resolves some of the glaring problems of Twitter, but also introduces some less obvious concerns that may not be entirely obvious to the casual social media user. That may change as the platform matures and as Jukesie rightly put it…
“Unless we make the move nothing will change.”
This week, I’ve consumed…
- This HBR podcast entitled ‘managing someone who’s too collaborative’ triggered me slightly (well, a lot). But having listened to the podcast it made me think about the optimal times to collaborate versus making a decision. It also touches upon the role of gender in collaboration and why women are generally better at it (.. and here it’s stated women suffer because of it. “It’s not the glass ceiling, it’s the sticky floor”).
https://pca.st/h4tG - This post by Ben Proctor on understanding the culture you work in got my brain whirring. I am often told by others that my workplace is quite innovative, and having ‘swam in the water’ for so long, it’s easy to become blind to the existing behaviours that support or repel certain change efforts. Here’s some sage advice on how to see the water.
https://medium.com/the-satori-lab/how-to-see-the-water-555b2d3e721a - The Welsh Assembly’s Economy, Infrastructure and Skills Committee produced a report on the impact of automation on the Welsh economy. Good to see this is on the radar! (… even if the looming shadow of Brexit seems more immediately apocalyptic).
http://www.assembly.wales/en/newhome/pages/newsitem.aspx?itemid=1899
Next week I’ll be…
- Enjoying a 2 day working week.
- Figuring out what I can realistically do in a 2 day working week.
- (Hopefully/Optimistically) being surprised what I achieved in a 2 day working week when I really have to optimise for output.
- Trying to eat less carbs. The past couple of weeks has been carb-tastic and I feel… not good.
Happy Friday! Enjoy your extra long weekend. 🙂 🙂 🙂