Like most people it was a short week this week, and a chance to catch up on things I’d put off till the New Year. I’d sensibly made myself some ‘do this today’ trello cards for key things coming up, and restarted my habit of reflecting about the ‘3 things I want to accomplish today’ before I open my inbox/slack/chat/twitter etc.
4 (great) things that happened this week:
- I drafted my slides for the Crown Commercial Service buyers conference that I’m speaking at in a couple of weeks time. Matthew gave me some great feedback on them that helped me improve them immensely, and I feel great that I’ve prepared in advance*.
- Not really work related but definitely great – my friend Susie started her 2019 project – Small Actions Today. I think this is an awesome reaction to feeling like it’s an increasingly depressing world and I’m really curious to see what happens to the project.
- After being pretty persistent – and asking ace people like James Arthur Cattell and John Fitzpatrick for advice and help, I’ve worked out how to advertise our short term** vacancies as loans on the civil service jobs site. I’m hoping that by doing this we can attract even more ace people to come and join us in 2019. We’ve got tons of interesting, innovative, challenging stuff to work on, and a genuinely brilliant team culture. Fingers crossed the first ads will go up next week.
- First swim of 2019, on my first day back. Can I manage 51 more? After a successful run up to Christmas where I managed a swim a week, I’m setting myself a 2019 challenge. Once a week, every week.
What I read this week:
This from Janet Hughes before Christmas is a really good guide to blogging:
https://dfedigital.blog.gov.uk/2018/12/18/where-to-start-if-you-want-to-start-blogging/
A great first set of weeknotes from Carolyn Parker
https://dfedigital.blog.gov.uk/2018/12/18/where-to-start-if-you-want-to-start-blogging/
which reminded me of this great post from Sam Villis
https://dfedigital.blog.gov.uk/2018/12/18/where-to-start-if-you-want-to-start-blogging/
I’m promising myself I’ll try some new weeknotes styles this year.
and finally I really liked Louise Cato’s thoughtful first weeknote of 2019
https://dfedigital.blog.gov.uk/2018/12/18/where-to-start-if-you-want-to-start-blogging/
*failing to prepare ahead of time/not giving myself enough time is still (one of) my Achilles heels, one of those lessons I’m possibly doomed to learn again and again. Not this time though, oh no.
https://media.giphy.com/media/FErVqfH6FLq48/giphy.gif
**up to two years
Madebycatemclaur.in 
