My aims for the year — how am I doing?
At the start of the year I published my aims for 2018. I thought that by voicing my intentions I’d hold myself accountable, and to a degree that’s been the case. There is something about giving my ideas some fresh air, and checking whether my aims were as good as I thought…
My appraisal recently took place, and with this being half way through the calendar year, this seems to be a good time to reflect on what’s worked and what hasn’t.
So how am I doing so far?
Work / life balance
This hasn’t gone well. But I have learnt a lot from what has happened since January. I’m 2 out of 4 here:
- We are eating good food (batch cooking is the way forward)
- I am working more purposefully (I turn off my email regularly so that I can focus on my task at hand. I’m also using Trello to ensure I’m task focused)
However:
- I have been insanely busy putting our delivery programme together, and this was exacerbated by a member of the team having a serious illness and being out of action at the busiest time of the year. Most importantly he’s a-ok and it’s great to have him back! This has meant that I rarely finished by 6pm. I have recently been much more timely though, and I do tend to get home just after 6pm
- I haven’t been for any cycle rides in my lunch breaks, but Summer’s extended daylight hours have meant that I have been going on at least two bike rides per week. In May I rode 130 miles, which is 130 more than I did in January!
Getting out on the bike has become a hell of a lot easier now that Summer is here. I realise now that what was holding me back was the dark nights, whereas now I can easily jump on a bike even at 8pm. I’ve realised that exercise is so important for my mental health, so I’ve started to think about how I might change my approach during winter. There may be problems afoot as I hate gyms….
Better use of the internet
A lot has happened since I wrote my aims for the year, including the whole Cambridge Analytica scandal that has led to a lot of questioning about how much data Facebook and Google collect. So it turns out that these aims were incredibly timely. Nice work, me!
I’ve done pretty well here:
- I’m no longer using any Google apps on my phone and I’ve got Firefox as my browser with Duck Duck Go as my default search engine on my work laptop too
- I’ve migrated away from using Google Drive to Dropbox and this post was written on Paper, which has some pretty nifty collaboration options. I’m also using Piktures to store my photos in Dropbox.
- I’ve taken the Twitter app off my phone. I’ve been surprised with just how much of a difference this has made — I’m not reaching for my phone as much and I’m using Twitter in a much more controlled way
There have also been some unexpected benefits from all this, particularly for someone whose first language is Welsh. Moving from Google Maps to OSMAnd hasn’t been nearly as painful as I thought it might be, and I now have Welsh language maps, even of England!
I considered using Duck Duck Go as my browser of choice on my phone, but I’ve stuck with Firefox because of the Welsh interface. And I’m glad that I have because Mozilla are continuing to work on their Welsh language development, including through Common Voice, where they are crowdsourcing a large dataset of human voices for use in Welsh language speech technology. Legends!
I’ve also started supporting podcasts that I enjoy on Patreon. As someone who has played in many non-successful bands, just a modest bit of support can make all the difference. I love these podcasts because they offer a different view to the mainstream, and in the same way that I still buy records in an age of streaming (and you should too), I need to put my money where my mouth is if I want these podcasts to continue to exist.
The second reason is that the way we consume media online shapes the internet we access. Much of the discussion around Facebook’s gathering of data has been it’s commercial benefits for the platform. By paying for content instead of accessing it for free with adverts, we have a different model for the internet. It’s well worth checking out Jaron Larnier’s TED Talk on this.
Working out loud
I’ve been relatively consistent with my blogging so far this year, with nine bilingual posts in twenty two weeks at the time of writing, which works out as just under one every two and a half weeks.
Whilst I haven’t been as rigidly transparent about my working week as the Weeknotes crew, I have shared what I’ve learnt from my work in a way that’s hopefully helpful to others, as well as to myself. I’ve purposely looked to capture things that have been learning exercises for me.
Looking back over the posts so far, they can broadly be broken down into the following categories:
Learning how to better lead a team
Both of these posts have been reflections on training I’ve taken part in:
Changing our team’s working practice
Reflecting on learning resources
- A book: Responsibility and public service
- BromfordLab’s Twitterchat: Learning from #Blabchat: Working out loud
- Recording our podcasts: Data is not a silver bullet
Anything else?
I’ve always loved reading English literature, but I found the Welsh books that I read in school a bit of a slog. My partner Kelly bought me Welsh language fiction for Christmas, which has opened up a new world to me. Even the Guardian, which has published some horrific things lately about indigenous languages and Welsh in particular (a piss-take on Welsh Scrabble and an article on Welsh language education harming children — I have only linked to rebuttals because the originals aren’t even worth reading) has published an article on the golden age of Welsh language literature.
So I’m really happy with where things are at generally. Must do better on the work / life side of things though, and that’s definitely doable. Writing this reflection has been a helpful way of seeing what’s working and what isn’t. It’s also helped me keep myself accountable by giving my intentions some oxygen and reflecting on the effect that this exercise has had, so I’ll write another post at the end of the year to see where I am.
I hope 2017 is going well for you all so far, and cheers to everyone who has taken the time to read my posts and comment — it’s much appreciated!
