Hello, you lovely people. Here I am, back on Medium after a lovely, quiet, sunshiny week in Zurich.
I ate ice cream, delicious pastries and lots (and lots) of toblerone and I didn’t have to worry about a toddler running off or having a tantrum. I went on a boat, and up a mountain, and I nearly bankrupted myself because, when EasyJet flights are cheap, you should always check that you’re not travelling to one of the most expensive cities in the world before you decide to go #lifelessons
Did you even notice I was gone? A week isn’t long in weeknote-land and this will probably just look like a minor blip to anyone reading this, but it felt much longer to me [1].
Its really remarkable how much good a week off can do, it’s good to wind down and relax. It’s doubly remarkable how quickly you forget you’ve been away and find yourself immediately immersed back in work world.
A colleague said to me this week:
When you go away for a week people think, “this can wait till they’re back” so nothing gets done. You need to go away for longer.
Which is really good advice, when you think about it 😉
Also, with a little holiday under my belt, I have come back and realised that my brain had all got rather noisy just before I went away.
Controversially, because I love writing weeknotes and I think there’s huge value in it [1]. I think weeknotes may have been contributing in some part to that noise.
So, even though I want to come back and kick-off S02, I’ve decided to ease some of the cognitive burden by setting myself a template to complete each week.
This will be:
- Overarching feeling of the week
A sentence on how the week felt and whether that was actually right.
2. Achievements
What went well in the week with a brief description about why it was good.
3. Lessons
What didn’t go so well, but more importantly what I learned from it.
5. Microactions for One Team Gov
I’d like to track my microactions and see what they add up to.
6. Ideas for blogs / Things I’m thinking about
At the kick off of Series 1 I wanted to include a spin off section about thoughts and ideas but I’ve been lapse about noting those down and I think they’ve often got lost in the content of my notes.
I want to identify these ideas and expand them into “proper” blogs, because I’ve been worried that I’m currently achieving quantity over quality in my blogging activities.
Plus, I’ve really enjoyed the collaborative blogs which have come about as a result of the last series of weeknotes, so I’m hoping to find more people who will collaborate with me on these. Please do just let me know if you’re interested in any of them.
5. Spotlight
I’d like to use my weeknotes to spotlight another member of my team and help them write a mini weeknote because their work is important, informs mine, and needs to be showcased. Atique Ahmed has hopefully agreed to join on this with me and he is brilliant, so, fingers crossed.
6. Things I’ve read/watched/listened to
Which goes without saying.
I’m going to try this for a set short series again, six posts minimum, ten posts maximum, to see how this works out [3].
See you next week!
[1] #needy
[2] I cannot stress this enough.
[3] Don’t worry, there will still be gifs
