Week ending 20th January Wins (Finally) completed my house purchase! It’s been a long time coming, and I was delighted and relieved when the estate agent handed me the keys. I’m excited for the creative possibilities of decorating and furnishing my space. Despite that major interruption to my week and…

Week ending 13th January 2023 I’m writing this week’s reflections on the train home from London, somewhere between Reading and Swindon. I’ve had an energising day catching up with colleagues in person and attending a half-day of facilitation training with Circle Indigo. While trips to the capital make for long…

Week ending 8th January On Tuesday I returned to work after a 10-day festive break, a break which I desperately needed after the intensity of 2022. I can’t say I came back feeling completely refreshed, as I spent much of my holiday in the kitchen or chasing solicitors for my…

At the end of September I attended Service Design in Government (SDinGov) conference for the first time. SDinGov is an ‘international community event for anyone involved in designing and commissioning public services’. I was excited to attend to learn more about service design and good practice across the public sector…

Tales from my week. 10th – 16th December 2022 I’ve been spending time reading back over old Weeknotes recently, as I’ve been gradually un-archiving previous series. When I returned to regular writing a couple of months ago I instinctively archived everything as I was worried I’d written something cringey; now…

Tales from my week. 3rd — 9th December Overarching feeling of the week It’s been an up and down kind of week. A non-exhaustive account: On Monday I got very angry about a…

Tales from my week. 26th November — 2nd December Overarching feeling of the week Is it Friday already? I’ve been ‘in the zone’ most of this week. Early workshops on data principles and storytelling helped me see how my contributions fit within the bigger picture of our discovery, and that helped me focus in on…

National Blog Posting Month (or NaBloPoMo for short) is a month-long challenge where participants try to write and publish blog posts more often than usual, typically (but not always) one post a day. This was my first year participating. What I wrote I set myself the challenge of three posts a week, which…

Confidence is not a constant, it waxes and wanes. I mentioned in last week’s notes that the uncertainty of my work and the impending departure of some of my team to new projects has created an opportunity for my self-doubt to kick in. At times like this I refer to…