After giving myself a couple of weeks just to immerse myself in the new job I worked a bit harder this week to reinstate a few habits and plans to protect my wellbeing a bit this time around.
This feels doubly important as the aftermath of my recent bout of Covid has been especially unpleasant again. I have a cough that I cannot shake, some shortness of breath and pretty low energy levels (and it is not as if I am over endowed with energy at the best of times!) . Nothing like as bad as the first time around in May 2020 but no fun nevertheless.
I managed to get out for a walk either to start or end the day – nothing much – just a 30/40 minute stroll around the block but it is amazing how it helps clear my head and sort my thoughts. Also today is the first Friday I’ve managed to (mainly) not work.
The job continues to be enjoyable – in fact this week flew by as I started to really get my teeth into things. I worked with a couple of the other product people to help them with some things they were a bit blocked on which I loved – drafting problem statements, hypotheses and KPIs – felt like old times. Spent some time updating my team weeknotes guidance and that led me to stumble upon the agile principles for non-software teams stuff I was working on a while ago that I decided to take another run at.
Created an open board on Planner in Teams of all the priority tasks I can see emerging – I really want to work in the open internally as much as possible. I’m going to be asking for a lot more transparency across our teams and I really need to model the behaviour.
More meetings, chats and reading about spend controls, pipelines, prioritisation and transparency. There is a lot going on but the nature of the nascent organisation design and some different understandings of the ask from CDDO etc means it is hard to get my arms around it at the moment – hard but not impossible. Just need perseverance and some detective skills.
There continue to be a lot of meetings – 25 in 4 days this week. I have it easy compared to many though I know. Most of them were useful and well worth it but it never gets less draining. Unfortunately deep in the Microsoft ecosystem it is hard to see an easy way to shift to a more asynchronous & written culture – the tools just don’t support it – especially around collaborative writing.
Despite that I am finding Teams less traumatic this time around – it is less noisy than some places I’ve been and I’ve always found the video stuff decent – it is still a disaster of UX and content design though – just a bunch of things smushed together with no care. I’m also finding Outlook less of a pain than in the past – I wonder if it is because I am using a Windows laptop – though the search still sucks!
Had to email support to find out when I get paid this week – it isn’t like I was hurting but I realised I had no idea. It feels like a really long time – looks like my first payment will be at the start of May after starting in March. I know it isn’t really but still feels a bit meh.
I’m thinking I should get my limited company set up properly after all – I want to be Jukesie Jobs Ltd – can I just pay someone to do it all properly for me?
If you have Amazon Prime video and haven’t yet watched Hacks then drop whatever plans you have and settle in for a binge. It is genuinely brilliant. Funny, thoughtful, emotional and the acting is spot on from everybody. Just wonderful storytelling.
The first two episodes of Slow Horses on Apple TV+ were also first rate. Gary Oldman is something special here. I never really clicked with the books – I tend to dismiss ‘spy shit’ quite harshly – but this is really worth a watch.
Winning Time (Sky Atlantic) – the story of the 80s LA Lakers basketball team who transformed the NBA – is a great story but is a very Adam McKay telling of it – great cast, some brilliant moments but totally in love with how clever it is and pretentious as hell.
I really loved Single Drunk Female on Disney+. I thought it was funny, real and sweet without being mawkish with an amazing central performance.
I read a LOT of Ms. Marvel comics on my iPad – I can’t wait for the show – the trailer looks so true to the spirit of the character.
The Road to 50
I’ll be watching The Godfather Part II and listening to Natty Dread by Bob Marley and the Wailers – both released in 1974.
Digital by Default 