Weeknote 06th September 2021
Last week
- Did my fantasy football draft for the year. I have less time than I’d like for following the NFL, so I find fantasy football a good way to stay in touch with the league as a whole
- James Bore’s open office on Thursday morning was interesting and useful. If you want to keep an eye on future meetings the best way is to follow James on LinkedIn
- I attended a meeting about a thing that is bad. That’ll go public this week. What do you call an APT that’s more A, more P, and more T than all the other APTs?
- Took part in a regular informal meeting that’s kind of a podcast, but with only hosts and no listeners
- I got over-excited at a potential customer, but I’m less worried about leaning into that these days. As I said at that “podcast with no audience”, if you want 20 ideas I can give you 20, if you want 3, I’ll also give you 20. It’s probably inadvisable commercially, but also “standard issue” consultancy appears to be devoid of any enthusiasm or joy, so my attitude is a market differentiator too
- Attended a hybrid ( online and remote ) meeting of the Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group. It went reasonably well, but I think the benefits and the issues around hybrid meetings are still being explored; and the participants’ enthusiasm and familiarity with each other made a huge difference. I was reminded once again of all the benefits of the format, especially the remote side :- being able to chat afterwards with two contacts, who had to be several hundred and several thousand miles away on the day. Thanks to Andrew Hadley for this picture he took on the day at the location; but due to some of the kit being used our remote impression wasn’t far off this level of clarity:
The Normans besiege Winchester and London after the Battle of Hastings
This week
- Probably stop doing weeknotes with a “this week” header, they’re increasingly optimistic
On that, this article by Oliver Burkeman is worth your time. I particularly liked:
Stop assuming that the way to make progress on your most important projects is to work for longer. And drop the perfectionistic notion that emails, meetings, digital distractions and other interruptions ought ideally to be whittled away to practically nothing. Just focus on protecting four hours – and don’t worry if the rest of the day is characterised by the usual scattered chaos.