#MonthNotes — Hi, I’m continuing with the practice I developed last year of writing MonthNotes. They are reflective notes looking back over the previous month. I use a set of questions to help me reflect. …

#MonthNotes — Hi, I’m continuing with practice I developed last year of writing MonthNotes. They are reflective notes looking back over the previous month. I find writing them helpful. I use a set of questions to help me reflect. The reward of patience is patience. What is this? 1. What did you make a personal impact on that improved something? I’ve been working on…

#MonthNotes — I’ve decided to continue with the practice I developed in 2021 of writing MonthNotes. I’ve taken this decision partly becuause I’ve found reflecting and writing these notes helpful, partly because last year I valued having the record, and partly because I believe in the value of working in the open. 1. What went well? …

8 Arrows for my management quiver from Rands — Ever since I first discovered his writing about four years ago, I’ve been a big fan of Rands (real name Michael Lopp, an experienced leader in software engineering functions in major companies such as Apple, Pinterest, and Slack). His user manual — called ‘How to Rands’, which he wrote way…

A YearNote — 2020 was exceptional in many ways, and, at the end of it, I decided to do a personal retrospective on the year, something I’d never done before, in order to try and get a sense of perspective. I found it helpful, and it led to me writing reflective notes at…

#MonthNotes — Thoughout 2021 I’ve written reflective notes at the end of each month, loosely based on a set of prompts/questions. I’ve found writing these notes helps me to think about, articulate and record things that otherwise I wouldn’t, so having started it as a bit of an experiment, I’ve kept it…

Options, Issues, Questions and a Case Study — For the past few weeks I’ve been thinking on and off about a question: What’s the best way to shareback with others learnings and insights from a training course? I’m no expert in learning & development, but one of my colleagues who works in L&D reassured me that: “This is…

#MonthNotes — This year I’ve been writing reflective notes at the end of each month, loosely based on a set of prompts/questions. I’ve found writing these notes helps me to think about, articulate and record things that otherwise I wouldn’t. The reflective practice is also helping me to learn and develop.

We’re more complex than that — So you know that when under stress, our instinctive reaction is to ‘fight or flight’, right? “The fight-or-flight response to stress is a well-documented phenomenon that has been widely observed in humans and non-human animals.” [1] However, whilst that is an accepted truth (at least it was for me), and…