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Weekly Braindump #51

The Penultimate One

Neil Tamplin
Weekly Braindump
4 min readNov 6, 2017

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Photo credit: https://twitter.com/rufflemuffin/status/926005777780871168

Hello fellow reader of blog post type things. How’s your week been? Here’s what I’ve been up to…

I’ve been doing…

“BLUUUUEEERRRAAAARRRGH!”.. would be a fairly accurate summary of last week.

Number one source of lethargy feels like tiredness. I’m definitely feeling the affects of the clocks changing and the accompanying dark start and finish to the working day.

I get up at 5:30 every morning to take the hound out for a good run around the countryside in the pitch black (glowing dog ball FTW). Then work. Then home to feed team Tamplin. Then kids bedtime routine. Then there’s the magic hour between 9pm and 10pm where I can do what I like, then bed before 10:30pm so I can do it all again the next day.

Cumulatively, the grind currently starts getting to me around the Wednesday/Thursday mark and by Friday I often feel like I’m flying on fumes. I’ve been through this cycle before.. especially when my babies were actual babies and sleep was very much an optional extra. Previously, it’s taken one or more changes to redress the balance to make me happy and functional again.

Potential Solutions:

  • Clone myself.
  • Add 3 more hours to my day by distorting the space time continnum.
  • Record a Christmas song from which I can dine off the royalties for perpetuity and live a life of luxury.
  • Start doing mindfulness (again).
  • Do less things.
  • Spend less time commuting.
  • Try to inject more flexibility in current role.
  • Find new role with more flexibility.

What else?

When thinking about wrapping up this Braindump (last one next week) I also thought about wrapping up some other activities too. As with work, I often feel like my downfall is trying to cram too many things into every waking hour (see tiredness above). Sometimes, if you really want to do new things you’ve got to stop doing old things to make room. I’ll be using the time in the run up to New Years Eve as a sort of clearing of the decks. This should put me in a good spot for January and give space for whatever new things I want to pursue.

What else?

I submitted my entry for #Unawards17 in the category of ‘Best Digital/Comms Professional’. It’s something I’d never put myself forward for in a million years, but since some kind soul had been nice enough to nominate me for it, putting a bit of effort in to submit the application was the least I could do.

What else?

My Kanban-fu has been slipping a bit of late. This is definitely linked with my motivational levels (symptom or cause??). Some of my outstanding tasks are either outside my immediate control or fuzzy and indistinct in other ways which makes it feel like I’m not making a dent. I need to be better about breaking them down into smaller component parts and methodically tackling them so that I can perceive some measure of progress.

What else?

I signed up for the Cardiff NHS Hackday at the end of January. This goes slightly against my stated intent to ‘do less stuff’ but it was too good an opportunity to pass up. Should be brill couple of days with ace people talking about exciting things!

I’ve been reading…

I’ve been listening to…

  • Team Human: Ep. 61 Tim O’Reilly “Solving for Economic Inequality?”
    http://pca.st/mQkH
Braindump

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Neil Tamplin
Weekly Braindump

Written by Neil Tamplin

2.1K Followers

I do digital/IT delivery for @ValleysToCoast. Interested in the spot where technology & people meet. Often learning. Always curious.

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