#Weeknotes 69 (12 Apr) — Unstructured time, Norfolk delight, and other reflections on life, work, and parenting
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Work wise:
This week turned out to be a blessing. We were meant to start the next phase of work but due to a complication that led to a delay in getting the statement of work signed, the start date got pushed back a week. This leaves this week to ‘free up’ for other work.
Initially, I was both relieved and anxious. Relieved that there’s a bit of a break between phases of work which frees me up to tackle a growing list of admin and backlog to-dos. Anxious as to the unstructured nature of the week, needing to prioritise and be intentional about how to make the best use of the time. Little did I know at the time that an ‘unstructured’ week outside of billable project work was just what I needed…and desperately!
In the 5 days, I was able to:
- Complete some mandatory training around Artificial Intelligence and learn some useful use cases for ChatGPT and the risks involved
- Have time for internal project reflection, retro, and forward planning so that we can be more effective in our ways of working and delivering better outcomes for us and our clients
- Update my resume per organisation’s requirement. It took way longer than expected to adhere to the predefined templates and seemingly over complicated structure and format. 😖
I’ve learned a lot this week that I wouldn’t have been able to if I just dived straight into project work:
- The importance of having unstructured ‘down’ time. Where instead of jumping from one task to another, you’re more open to exploring new and different things and ideas.
- Having time to reflect is so crucial if we want to break away from our default ways of working. If we want to improve, we need to know where to look first. For that, we need to pause.
- Things always take longer than we expect them to. Face it. We all get distracted easily. Especially if you’re me! 👀 (No thanks to modern technology and its dark design patterns) Being able to anticipate and block out ample time to complete tasks can really do them justice (more often than not!).
I’m reminded of the quote I shared in a previous weeknote that felt especially true for this week at work:
I also had the opportunity to learn from my colleague how to make PowerPoint slides accessible and allow for a better experience for those using assistive technologies such as screen readers to ‘read’ documents. I loved how the 20-minute run-through has now set precedence for how I approach presentation slide creation in the future. Win!
Life wise:
The week on the West Coast side of Norfolk last week was fairly relaxing considering there’s a 2yo in the equation. The backdoor of the place we rented leads right into the sandy beach. This was perfect, especially for the 3 boys who enjoyed running around, playing ball sports and building sand castles. The view was breathtaking. I enjoyed moments when I got to read my favourite book at the moment, Human Kind, on the back porch bench looking out to the sea.
One highlight of the trip was a visit to the town called King’s Lynn. We only found out on the day of our visit that it’s the birthplace of a British Royal Navy officer named George Vancouver. He was best known for his 1791–1795 expedition (when he was just around my age now!) which explored and charted North America’s northwestern Pacific Coast regions. This meant that the places in those regions that had “Vancouver” in their name, including the city I grew up in, were all named after him! This feels like a full circle. And guess who happened to be wearing their home city jumper? Coincidence? 🤔
Things I came across:
I learned a few concepts in the Human Kind book: The Pygmalion effect, its opposite, the Golem effect, and the Extrinsic incentives bias.
On the Pygmalion and Golem effect — Essentially, how we perceive others will affect how others see themselves. Here’s an excerpt: “Every day, we make each other smarter or stupider, stronger or weaker, faster or slower. We can’t help leaking expectations, through our gazes, our body language and our voices. My expectations about you define my attitude towards you, and the way I behave towards you, in turn, influences your expectations and therefore your behaviour towards me.”
It’s a double-edged sword where if we believe in the good and potential in others, it will “influence” them to be so. And vice versa, if we believe negativity and pessimism in others, they may just behave to fit that bill. It speaks to how powerful the way we behave around children how our attitudes and preconceptions towards them can shape what they believe about themselves! I find this revelatory and start to wonder how often I had viewed others as having limited potential solely based on some performance record. I feel guilty and ashamed. After all, who am I to judge others? However, knowing that I have the ‘power’ to negatively impact others gives me shudders and makes me more weary of my preconceived notions of others and how I behave in their presence.
The book goes on to talk about Extrinsic incentives bias where “we go around assuming other people can be motivated solely by money….Taylorism lives on in timesheets, billable hours and KPIs, in doctor pay-for-performance programmes and in warehouse staff where every move is monitored by CCTV”. It’s chilling how well I can relate to this. We’re all forced to conform to robotic metrics that make us become unfeeling productive machines rather than being humans building connections, and relationships and collaborating in listening to and supporting the needs of others (who may be our customers, colleagues, or the general public). I can go on with this topic…
A great podcast episode I listened to this week is the one by The Knowledge Project featuring Chris David. He shared so many insightful nuggets on parenting that I deeply resonated with. I’ll share them here:
On raising privileged kids:
“What doesn’t work is giving your kids a lifestyle where they will feel like a loser if they’re unable to maintain their lifestyle on their own merit.”
On living a content and meaningful life:
“Tomorrow the phone can ring, and somebody could say it’s malignant, or they could say that there’s been an accident. And everything will change. I don’t want at that moment to regret that I didn’t appreciate just how lucky I had today, the day before all that changed.”
All the more reason to live for today, live in the now. =)
Do they resonate with you too?
