Week 18

I think I mentioned how busy last week was - and how draining it was to spend every work day in the London. I’m ordinarily only in the office one day a week, sometimes two. I dislike crowded trains so I tend to board a nice quiet 6.30am train and start my day early, finishing 12 hours later (or more, if there’s a work social) - leaving me pretty wiped.

This week was just one day in London. I had some decent blocks of time for thinking and making - and they were in the “golden” parts of the day where I’m more likely to be alert, creative and thinking strategically. Reflection: this was luck, not planning, but it made such a difference. I need to try and actively engineer this situation more - but that requires me to stop trying to be so darned helpful and accommodating of others (bucking a habit of a lifetime) where it cuts into my “golden” time.

I designed and ran a workshop I’d call “agile UCD mindset”. It was pretty 101, but incredibly well received. Reflection: what’s obvious and basic for you and me really isn’t obvious and basic for people who haven’t been on the journey we’ve been on. Pinpointing significant mental models, using real examples to show change behaviours through different lenses, unpicking sources of discomfort and helping folks reframe. Simple but high value stuff - that I might be loathe to repeat, worried I was teaching folks to suck eggs. Even though I know that you can never really overcommunicate the basics (especially in organisations with quite a high turnover).

I attended a product leader meet-up organised by Scott Colfer. It was interesting - we discussed programmes and products, and reflected on how much product thinking is needed in the programme world to create the conditions for product management. I’d have liked us to have chatted for longer - it felt too short given how much I’m sure we can learn from each other.

I went along to a network “mixer” and there was a game to get us circulating - “people bingo”. We had to go round the room and find the names of people who had done various things listed on the sheet (conference speaking, writing articles, writing blog posts, mentored people, got a masters degree, worked with data science, participated in a hackathon). It was fun and I met a lot of people. And there was a free drag night at the end. I did, however, find myself irritated by the assumptions of the (mostly) men around me - because I kept being asked if I liked baking, if I’d ever been in a book club, if I had a pet. I wasn’t getting the questions about my professional self (which were the majority of the 25 questions on the bingo sheet) - unlike the guy who accompanied me round. Reflection: this bothers me but I’m not sure what I can or should do about the fact that individually these men believed I was more likely to bake than blog (or similar). It’s a reminder I guess of how hard it can be to be taken seriously as a woman in the tech space (or an overweight woman in the tech space)- and I guess a reminder for me of how lucky I am to be in a workplace where it isn’t much of an issue.

I took an “immersive sound bath”. It involved lying on a yoga mat with a blanket over me, while a woman hit singing bowls, played chimes, donged gongs, and generally made a wide range of incredibly relaxing noises that made me fall asleep at least three times in one hour in public. I came out feeling amazingly chill - went home (not much traffic) and entered the Fletcher madhouse where my two had friends round and they were making loads of noise (and mess) excitedly cake-baking in the kitchen. I definitely lost my chill. Reflection: I almost think it would have better not to do the sound bath. The transition from soooooo calm to soooooo frantic was too much for my poor brain, almost physically painful. I wonder whether if I’d just stayed at “relatively stressed out” I’d have found the kids less stressful. Is this a thing? I should look it up.

Four friends and I went to see the Moulin Rouge (stage show) in London. We haven’t seen each other in months and so we had a lot to catch up on. The day started at 12.00 as we were catching the train into town for a matinee. The show was really fantastic - I want to take my mum and sister there, if we can find a way for my mum to travel safely and comfortably to London in her condition. After the show we went to Covent Garden for more chatter and some high quality people-watching, before going for dinner and drinks, returning home around 11pm. Reflection: I was overstimulated by 7pm. Having to be that intensively sociable for such a long stretch of time was hard. I’m an introvert and I know myself - and my friends know me - so it wasn’t too weird when I went quiet and withdrew a little from the conversation after maybe 8pm. As I’ve grown older I’ve grown more confident, I share more (online and IRL), and I’ve grown more sociable - but I’m always going to draw most of my energy from being alone and in my inner world. I love spending time with my colleagues and my family and my friends - it’s truly life enriching - just not too much time. And I’m lucky to be surrounded people who interpret my behaviour as self-regulation rather than rude.