Weeknotes (week ending 16th August)

Hello friends. ’Tis that time again, can you believe it? Someone asked me this week why I write these notes and share them on the internet, and there are many reasons why I find this practice helpful, one of which being that it prevents the weeks from slipping away without pause for thought. So while it seems frightfully soon to be writing again I am glad to be doing so.

I took very few work-related photographs this week, so instead please enjoy these sunflowers 💛

Highlights

• This week I started training our ICT technicians on our new platform, leading three introductory sessions on the main user journeys and expected system behaviours. Although it is only the first step in what will be much longer handover period, I feel a tremendous sense of relief in sharing some of my knowledge and system support responsibilities. I’ve been pushing myself in recent months to keep working even though my body is screaming at me to take a holiday, because I’ve been so conscious that I am one of very few people who knew the system well enough to fix issues, and I can now look forward to an extended bank holiday weekend off knowing it is in safe hands.
• I had my ‘directed discussion’ at work: essentially a structured discussion about what I do at work, as part of an exercise to match jobs to a new pay structure. In the lead up I spent a few hours musing on what I do at work and coming up with a shortlist of my main activities, and it was a powerful reminder of how far I’ve come in the last 12 months or so. There are items on the list which I would have found very intimidating last year that don’t phase me at all now, and my job satisfaction is so much higher for the challenge. Still not quite sure what you would call my job, I guess it’s a mix of delivery manager/business analyst/product manager, but whatever it is I like it.

• Our other delivery manager was on holiday this week leaving me to hold the fort and nothing fell over, which is always a good confidence booster.
• I had a catch up with Alex on lots of things, including running inclusive and accessible conferences. I’ll certainly be referencing their list of ideas in advance of UKGovCamp 2020…

Ideas for inclusive conferences and events

• I set aside some time on Friday for self-directed learning, and explored Einstein Bots on Trailhead. They’re really powerful tools and ngl building a chatbot in less than two hours made me feel very clever! :)
• My French study is going well — I’m on a 15-day unbroken streak on Duolingo and I’m noticing a distinct improvement in my accent as well as my vocabulary. I wish I’d been cognisant of these kinds of tools when I was studying for my GCSEs… I’ve also subscribed to DailyFrenchPod, and although I only understand on average every 3rd or 4th word it’s helping me acclimatise to the sound and pace of the language.

Challenges

• I have so many demands on my time at the moment that are all important, and I’m fighting with my instinct to feel overwhelmed. I have just about enough hours in the day to do everything I need to do, and while I know none of the individual tasks are beyond my capability I’m somewhat intimidated by the density of my upcoming schedule. However, I am buoyed by knowing that being on the edge of my comfort zone is where I stand most to learn, if I can continue to protect my rest time.
• This week has been been full of high emotions and it’s totally knocked me for six. My amazing brother found out he secured his place at Oxford which was the most wonderful news, but that post-excitement crash combined with some challenging reflections from my directed discussion (… changing teams, losing a mentor, unpacking last year’s contract-related anxiety…) meant I was in a bit of a state on Friday evening. Thankfully I’m feeling much better now after two days rest.

That Friday feeling… 😬

• Our team has a sizable ‘summer’ to-do list, and it struck me this week that the end of the summer is not that far away… We’ve taken on a fair bit of reactive work in recent weeks which has pushed the planned tasks further down the list, and I got a bit of a fright mid-week when I realised how much of that was still to do. It’s still possible for us to cover the essential stuff in the next fortnight, but some ruthless prioritisation will be required.

I’ve been thinking about…

• Onboarding — how we get people up to speed as quickly as possible without bombarding them with information?
• Asking the (not-so-)stupid questions — I felt a bit foolish asking ICT folk what ‘clearing the cache’ actually means, but it sparked a really interesting conversation and it transpired that there’s not a particularly clear cut definition. I liked our BA’s description that ‘clearing the cache is the software equivalent of turning it off and on again’.
• Technical vs. non-technical — similar to my thoughts on generalist vs. specialist last week… Is it really that clear a distinction, and why do we accept disparaging comments from one side to the other? Prompted by this tweet:

• Desk artefacts — as someone who’s always hot desked I find it fascinating what things fixed desk people accumulate. I’ve borrowed a couple of others’ workspaces this week and have variously been surrounded by paintings, lists of phone numbers, teapots, star wars memorabilia, scribbled post-its, print offs of memes… Some would say these are pointless or distracting, but I like to think these things provide comfort and a sense of homeliness at work. After all when you spend 35–40 hours of your week at the office why shouldn’t you inject some some personality into the space? :)