Weeknotes 18/11/2018 – Week 11

An up and down sort of week. Some challenges at work that I can’t work out how to solve. One of them is the continued battle with getting things out of my head and written down. I wish had a solid understanding of the concept of shared understanding in product management. I think my difficulties with it lie in a number areas, a fear of criticism or my frustration at people pointing out my failings/me having to explain things to people at a higher or lower level. Maybe some fear of people finding out I am an imposter who is winging it. But aren’t we all?

As a way of challenging that fear in a slightly less work related way I agreed to give a talk at Product People North a few weeks ago. The event was last Friday and I really enjoyed speaking and the rest of the event too. It was primarily an event for government product people. I am not a government product person but I wish I had better access to the community of government product people because there are lots of good ones. I talked about my challenges with copying what the Government Digital Service had kick-started.

It went pretty well. I remembered most of my lines, didn’t sweat too profusely, only swore a little bit. People asked good questions afterand they said nice things about it too. It was good to do a talk again with a bit of freedom of the pressures of the office where we don’t really have a culture of standing up and presenting.

The conversations had there also made me realise I am doing some things right and also people were struggling with similar challenges to mine so it is not just me being a bit of an idiot. It was a good all round confidence and knowledge boost. Thanks to Paul or inviting me and to Debbie for organising it.

In non-work world the international football break meant a few friends played football again. The first week I started these week notes back in September we had just played football. I was unwell last time and had reached peak fatness. I have lost over 20lbs since then. This meant I was fractionally more mobile at football. Still absolutrly shit at it mind you and we lost heavily.

Finished reading the first couple of novellas of the Murderbot diaries by Martha Wells. Very good indeed. About a security bit that has gone rogue and is trying to solve the mystery of a mass murder it allegedly committed.

Also finished watching The Marvelous Mrs Maisel which was indeed marvelous. I wanted to see more standup comedy scenes in it because they were my favourite bits. I think I would like to have the ability to be a stand up comedian. I think the quality of my ‘jokes’ in my presentation confirmed that ability does not exist in me.

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