Weeknote - Bullet Train
Published: 2 August 2024
The long weekend in bullets
- Had a nice catchup chat with Mathew on Friday. He was in France - Ooh la laa!
- As one person moves out of the home, one moves back in. Robyn is staying for August and has successfully secured some remote work for herself. Interestingly, she is helping out a digital product company.
- My turn to wear the Run Director vest at the great field parkrun. The nearby Weymouth event was cancelled, so our attendance was higher. 387 finishers. Everybody left happy, and the results processing was a breeze! Win.
- My Mum decided to throw a charity concert for her Birthday (nutter!), so we went along and supported her. I love my Mum.
- I may have eaten some fried chicken. I love fried chicken. It doesn’t love me.
- Sunday involved more work sorting things around the house and a big food shop.
- Monday was a day of leave - I went to the pool for a swim and cycled to Weymouth to see the sea. I cheated and got the train home.
The short working week in bullets
- I helped create some needed space to ensure wider strategy and roadmap conversations are happening outside our regular sprint rituals for one of our cyber projects and with a slightly smaller group. This was needed to avoid these topics constantly cropping up and distracting the team, who need (and want) to focus on more immediate problems.
- I really enjoyed contributing to some ideation and ‘could-be’ journey mapping sessions. Working on this with Leo and Liberty in person towards the end of the week was even better. As expected, these emerging outputs are helping with some of my earlier alignment concerns.
- Another team I’m supporting did their first show-and-tell. They packed a lot in and received thoughtful feedback and challenging questions from attendees—a great start.
- Some colleagues described me this week as a ‘secret weapon’. I’ll take that as a compliment, but I am left pondering what sort of weapon I’d like to be - sharp precision blade or big-ass bazooka! (maybe just a water pistol?)
- I had a lovely catchup with Hutch. We shared some observations about some internal work and moaned about online tools like two proper old geezers. Please, More Sharpies and Post-its.
- I had a very quick 121 with Emma. Probably too quick in hindsight. Will need to find more time.
- There has been a lot of async juggling of other minor things via Slack. This has made me want to find time for another Slack channel cull and tidy up next week; finding the signal in the noise is messy and time-consuming.
- Leaving drinks for Zung, Iain, and Jukesie was lots of fun. Although Matt didn’t make it :0(
MOOAR bullets
- I started today in London with a hangover, but this was quickly cured by having a lovely breakfast in the Hackney sunshine with Emily, followed by more sunshine, coffee and hugs with Dom.
- I’ve managed to avoid smoking for six out of seven days. Next week, I plan on lacing up my running shoes more often.
- There has been some progress on the EV front, but it’s slow. I’m not sure I’ll get anything delivered this month, which makes me sad. The sun is out, and I want to go places and do things.
- I gave some feedback to Alex, who created JamComments. This has already resulted in the deployment of new features I suggested and updated docs. Thanks, Alex.
- I want to start meditating again, and I’m writing this down to help me turn my desire into action.
- I have been enjoying Alchemy - The Magic of Original Thinking in a World of Mind-Numbing Conformity on Audible.
- I re-watched a bunch of the newer Planet of the Apes movies because I was tired, and the algorithm suggested it.
- I watched more of the Kardashians with Robyn and some of the new season of The Rookie— gravy for the brain.
