at one point this week I had a bit of a breakdown which involved sentences like “I don’t want to be responsible anymore!”. maybe it’s something to do with how much time I’ve spent on the expenses system. no, in reality, I am rational and responsible 94% of the time and I am slowly learning how to be selfish. it’s been tumultuous! no one ever told me that 32 is like 13, but older. is this a thing?
this week has felt exceptionally long, and I’ve been into the coffee shop across from the office enough times that they now only make me flat whites with oat milk, even when I want to go rogue and go cow’s milk. I didn’t mean to turn into a regular, I’ve never been a regular in a coffee shop before and I think I want anonymity again.
a few times this week I’ve felt that half an hour for a 1:1 meeting is much too short, but 40 minutes would probably have felt alright. why do we divide days up like this? would this still be a problem if we used Decimal Time?
we did a With Links on Time quite early on, in With Links’ second iteration. I still think about Mathew’s link quite often: Swatch Internet Time. assume Swatch were inspired by the French Revolution, and not sure why a company thought they’d succeed where the people who overturned the French monarchy failed. but ambition is important, right? be selfish, Swatch! don’t hide behind premonitions of failure, you deserve more!
on Tuesday I went to my first yoga class in months, and it was restorative yoga: did you know that means lying under a blanket in different positions? exceptionally relaxing but I can’t claim it contributed to my WHO-guidelined 150 minutes of moderate exercise a week.
also this week I had lunch with my best friend, who works about 15 minutes from our office. we are going to start having lunch once a week. I’m not sure why we didn’t do that before, but I’m delighted nonetheless.
9am is a very civilised time for a pre-work breakfast meeting near the office. I am accepting invitations.
DOTI Fest was great. not least giving myself permission to go to things that I’m interested in. for a very short period of time, I was going to skip the design x climate crisis workshop, because I had a bunch of office-work to do and I thought, maybe I should just go and do that. then I thought, hey now, why are you preventing yourself from being interested in a thing you’re interested in? have to assume that my occasional problems around giving myself permission to do or show interest in things I want to do is some kind of third-generation Catholic guilt.
we’re already talking about climate in the design team more: 11 minutes at 11 today, and Laurence doing some quality tweeting. in my real life I cycle to the zero waste shop in Nunhead to fill up a jar with organic muesli. in my work life I buy takeaway food and put the container in the bin. I’m hoping that now we’re chatting about this more at work it will close the disconnect between the two.
a general issue of too much work, too little time this week. obviously I didn’t make it easy for myself by being out all day on Thursday to go to DOTI Fest, but frankly I needed a day out of the office getting excited by and interested in the work that other people are doing.
one day this week I got an email that infuriated me so much that I closed my laptop, went for a short walk, and then texted someone at Brixton Cycles to say yes, I will buy that frame you’re selling. minty green Straggler with 650B wheels here I come! it’s been about five years since I first wanted a Surly. when I was growing up my parents taught me about buyers’ remorse and to sit with the idea of buying the thing in order to try to feel any buyers’ remorse before buying something. then you can still avoid buying it if you regret it! I am pretty sure this 5 year incubation period has removed any risk of buyers’ remorse. and somehow I’m never happier than when researching gear ratios!
I did not reply to the infurating email.
‘do you still write like Carles?’ Mark asked last night as we brainstormed more Hipster Runoff-esque content while I wondered out loud “do I have a voice? is this content authentic for me?”. so far: top 10 diary stalking moments. top 5 things I’ve watched on iPlayer in a foreign hotel room. top 10 central-and-eastern European pretzel sticks?
I spoke to someone this morning about wanting to build up a really strong user-centred design community across our directorate. in perfect timing, job ads for two senior service designers are now very much live. you too could watch the Thick of It from your room in a hotel run by an American chain! no seriously, it’s v interesting work. feel free to get in touch with me if you’re tempted to apply and want to talk about it more before doing so.
made a point in a meeting which prompted someone to send me a message saying “Smashed it with that comment”, bring me into your meetings for witticisms and hard-hitting, evidence-based truthbombs.
except don’t bring me into your meetings because did I mention I have a lot of work on right now? I’d have to run your meeting through my Monday morning prioritisation exercise and my WIP quota is really quite full.
an agency I won’t name once rejected me from a job because I couldn’t explain Kanban properly. they told me I didn’t know enough about agile and I thought, god, it’s not hard though is it? (an entire industry disagrees with me.)
obviously I’m always banging on about pensions in terms of civil service benefits but do we mention on Civil Service Jobs that the Cabinet Office VPN allows you to watch iPlayer when abroad? we do not. is that an open goal missed? it is.
Lauren Currie mentioned You’re Doing Great in her opening talk of the Service Design Fringe Festival. apparently it’s an example of service designers levelling up! Funny that 1. a tiny thing me, Sam and Iso started to get Iso feeling better about freelancing is now being mentioned as…well, something bigger than hanging out with a couple of your fave morons 2. oh how we don’t acknowledge our achievements - I spent some of the first half of the year berating myself over lack of progress on side projects, but YDG keeps bubbling away as a useful thing to have put into the world - so I should take some credit for that eh.
a designer at GDS shared the slides for an “intro to service design presentation” by Kate Tarling and Ben Holliday. it’ll be from a few years ago as Ben was still at DWP according to the slides. it’s a very good set of slides and I imagine the talk was equally excellent. however because it is so good, I have a (slightly tongue-in-cheek) suggestion: a single deck for these talks that all service designers in gov use - communism for service design talks basically - because how much human capital is spent making new, slightly edited versions of the same talk? Sometimes I feel like I spend half my life making slightly different versions of the same deck (your mileage may vary)
yes, someone in a meeting this week said human capital - more pleasing than human resources I thought, but maybe that’s because it sounds a bit like Das Kapital and clearly that’s where I’m at right now.
stories from a plane: I had a connecting flight this week. the first flight was late leaving Heathrow and I nearly missed the next plane. but I didn’t, because at the connecting airport they put me straight in a lil minivan, like the kind we had at school to go to hockey matches at other schools, and drove me and the other two passengers for the next flight straight to the plane. how do I get more of that Taylor Swift airport treatment cos I am very here for it.
on the way back I got berated for not having a red tag on my hand baggage. I used the electronic check in machine so I didn’t have to queue at a desk and had no idea I needed a red tag. “I didn’t know” I said, “you have to read” in response. here’s an idea: don’t offer electronic check in if you need to see people’s luggage to put a tag on it. Austrian Airlines, you build me up then you bring me down. I thought you loved me but it seems you just don’t care.
Congresswoman
Congresswoman
Congresswoman
one last service design moan (if a service designer moans, is it always a service design moan? almost inevitably): we’re off to the Royal Festival Hall tonight to see Hannah Gadsby. obviously when I bought the tickets I said we’d pick them up cos what’s with £3.50 or however much it is? I have been known to use the postal service and I don’t believe it’s that much for a stamp, an envelope and some human processing time. anyway. Catherine went to pick up the tickets on Wednesday cos we’ll both be a bit squeezed for time tonight. “oh, there’s been a process change, we sent them out last week. it takes 10 working days for them to arrive. we can only reprint on the day of the show.” 1. 10 days means the tickets arrive after the event 2. ain’t no one told me they were posting the tickets 3. srsly if that’s the policy, say so and then busy people won’t waste their lives getting off the 68 before they have to.
lest this turn full moan, our plumber texted us the fix for our broken boiler this week, so now not only has my girlfriend shown a natural aptitude for plumbing, but it means we have TWO yes TWO qualified people we can text about house repairs and renovations. it’s a far cry from choosing people based on the latest East Dulwich Forum posts like I used to. do you need a plumber in SE London? call Dave from McHow, you’re welcome!