Taskmaster — notes

Sam McLaren
Digital Dorset
Published in
4 min readJun 10, 2021

As part of my #weeknotechallenge I have decided to challenge myself to doing a different style of weeknotes every week. I’m on week 20 now!!

The other weeknotes in the challenge are linked below:

‘Traditional’ Weeknotes , Gif-Notes , Sketch-Notes, Shanty-Notes, Week-quotes, Animal Crossing — Notes , Poster — Notes, Haiku — notes, Achievement — notes, Hanami — notes, Meme — notes, Retro — notes, Comic — notes, Story — notes, Slang — notes, Tweet — notes, Blog — notes, Hansai — notes,Show & Tell — notes

Anyone who knows me knows i LOVE the show Taskmaster! I have even run a couple of team Taskmaster sessions over the various lockdowns.

This week i am taking inspiration from taskmaster and turning my week notes into various tasks i had to complete throughout the week (none as silly or extreme as on the show sadly)

TASK — Stop procrastinating and finish creating your Digital Leaders talk…You have literally all morning!

I feel like i mention this every week in my weeknote. I am hosting a talk on the creation of the Festival of the future next week and i have been slowly adding parts to the structure/design when i get ideas but i really needed to just knuckle down and sort it out.

Does anyone else find working virtually so distracting sometimes or do i have a small attention span?

Well on Monday morning i went on do not disturb and smashed through all prep i needed to do, look out next week for the talk that I’m not at all panicked about… 😬

TASK — Showcase the design work and prompt discussion… you have 30mins

Tuesday i supported a Show & Tell about a piece of design work i have been working on. A review of the Nexus site. It was a great session full of discussion, i couldn’t keep up with the chat which is a great thing!

I might be preaching to the converted but Show & Tells (or Show & Shares) are really important to help create the right culture of being open and transparent with work. Its about stepping out from ‘behind the curtain’ and showcasing what work is going on, the open forum to question and discuss is so important. You can’t work in the shadows!

I would love to show everyone the recording but i just need to get permission from one of the speakers when they are back next week. Keep a look out!

TASK — Finish the leadership/culture course that should take a week… you have 2 hours

One task i had to complete on Wednesday was a course i signed up for on FutureLearn. A while ago it was posted in the team that they were offering a free course sign up and with the 100s available it took a while to choose!

I decided on a course about Leadership and culture because those have become more and more important recently, challenging behaviours, supporting culture change and how to communicate it etc.

Similar to creating the DL session i have been busy with other bits so i blocked out 2 hours to get the first part of the course completed.

It was so interesting learning about leadership styles and how they can affect team/service culture. I’m going to be applying this to my design work moving forward.

TASK — Plan the schedule for an entire festival…you have 2 hours

Thursday i caught up with Lisa & Penny to talk about how the Festival is shaping up for this year! We had so many ideas from the brainstorm sessions and we needed to sort the ideas and start to form sessions. This involved sorted 250+ pieces of paper into what sessions/experiences we would like to organise this year. We managed to do a lot in 2hrs but it felt like we needed 4 at least.

It was a good catchup and lots of incredible ideas coming out which is good because i really want to build on everything from last year (no pressure)… watch this space!

Sneak pic of my notepad and Lisa’s brownie

TASK — Process map governance whilst the sunshine is tempted you… you have all afternoon

Friday i was continuing some process mapping for a piece of work around the process governance takes (reports, agendas etc.)

I always find it really interested when you start process mapping because there if often nothing to start from so those initial conversations can be quite intimidating. Its more about being supportive and understanding so the people you are speaking to can talk through the process, its all about channelling that green energy.

Example of one of my Blank slates

I think thats it for me this week, Catch you next week!

Sam out.

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Sam McLaren
Digital Dorset

Working to promote Dorset as a place to live, work, and visit. DL100 member. Inspiringthefuture volunteer. TED Speaker #SamsBrightIdeas