Weeknotes 23 -24: Small moments to recharge
I re-started the Shut up and Write meeting while having a chat with a colleague on how to find time to write more (She set up this Design blog and has been contributing posts quite regularly!).
We thought that the theme could be reflection. Reflection moments are less daunting than moments where you have to set goals for the future. There's less pressure to be action-oriented. Also, Friday's are nice to pause a bit and reflect either on something that one learned recently, take stock of all the open tabs, or wrap up some loose ends from the week.
I am inspired by the weeknotes of some folks that I follow on Twitter: Tomomi, Brigette. Here's my first attempt at weeknotes!
What's something I enjoyed?
My colleague organised a Product Design guild session on "Inspiration: The coolest thing I recently saw or learnt". While it was super cool to see what others discovered, it also helped me to get to know my colleagues a bit better - what do they do in their free time, what are they thinking about, what excites them. I feel this can be a cool activity or topic to discuss while hanging out with a group of friends. It can also be a good question to get to know someone. So.. what was a cool thing that you recently saw or learnt?
What did I do differently?
I blocked an afternoon to focus on analysing some ongoing research. After analysing one interview, I felt like I needed a break. So I went on a walk to discover my new neighbourhood. It helped me process all the information that I gathered while soaking in some sun. Definitely made me feel energetic to come back and focus on analysing the second interview.
A picture from my walk
What am I summarising at the moment?
One of the design team's retro outcomes was for me to educate my stakeholders around the effort and time that goes into organising good workshops. So we came up with a few ideas on how I could approach this - a visible calendar with open slots for workshops, gather possible workshop requests for this quarter. On this topic, I decided to do a Deep-dive on Workshops. I started gathering my thoughts on
What is (and NOT) a workshop
When to (and NOT) run a workshop
How to (and NOT) run a workshop
This seems like a nice setup to share my learnings so far (in the context of Mendix and the unit specifically). It can also be a nice way to encourage more folks to set up their own workshops, structure their meetings and use more collaborative methods.
That's all for now! This reflection helped me appreciate my past two weeks and the people I have been working with. Small moments to recharge can go a long way.
So how were the past two weeks? What did you do differently? What was a cool thing that you saw?
