Week 43, 2020 - In stillness

On Tuesday, I delivered a 40min talk titled “Learning as a social practice: ideas to increase our range for growth” for Namahn’s Lecture series. I’d been working on shifting my public speaking to be sharing original thinking that was not anchored in a specific methodology or project, so tackling an abstract topic like learning was a milestone. The talk was quite a hard birth. The preparation took a lot longer than usual, from finding a coherent narrative to pulling together material. I’m pleased with the end result and overall response. I added a Mad Tea activity (aka Chatterfall) to the webinar-format for the audience to share sense-making and reflection, which doubles as an in-situ moment for me to get a sense of how people interpreted the main points and what they’d be able to take into their own work. Not sure where I’ll take this body of work myself - perhaps that could have been one of the questions.

Wednesday is my mid-week rest day, space made for important-but-not-urgent activities or de-stressing big tasks like cleaning out my old apartment. (ref Week 34) This week, I had a meandering call with a dear friend who’s going through a period of regeneration. And then I cooked fish as nitsuke (simmered) for the first time, garnished with oyster mushrooms that I’d grown in the living room. And ended with a session with my Liberating Structures practice group. We are starting to gel and it is a beautiful thing.

Speaking of which, I moved my Liberating Structures Fieldnotes out of stealth mode, promoting it a bit on Twitter and LinkedIn. It’s cool to see interest from different people, especially from those whom I wouldn’t have associated with an active interest in facilitation. I’m quite proud of this little series - if anything, my future self will benefit from good notes! - and want to develop this kind of writing practice as a key activity.

Last but not least, Marion and I turned our idea for regular weekend retreats into a long-awaited reality. It’s to be the first of many and I’m writing this post from a tiny village near Chantilly, enjoying the stillness and a full belly.

Week 42, 2020 - The beginning of a city life under curfew

We’re living with a 9pm-6am curfew in Paris now, which I imagine to be another 2020 first for many of us. It’s restrictive but so much lighter than the spring lockdown. Let’s see how it goes.

Week 41, 2020 - New views

It’s been an uneventful week and I’ve managed to enjoy that for the most part. The infection situation is worsening in France - it’s good to stay in without letting yourself feel too cooped up.

Highlights and accomplishments:

• Very first call with our practice group for Liberating Structures. We’ll be meeting every other week and I’m looking forward to having this gentle space for connection.

• Almost done with a full draft of an essay that I’ve been developing with a friend

• Great progress in the heavy planning phases of two new client assignments

• Hit my target training cadence of two CrossFit sessions, one long bike ride and almost daily Indian club swinging

• Tried one new restaurant and got our full of Chinese dimsum!

• Tried a new Asian supermarket. Great for pantry items and some vegetables.

• Saw a friend whom I haven’t seen in a few months

• Figuring out the different cycling pathways in and out of my new street

• Halfway done with constructing my mushroom shotgun fruiting chamber.

Week 40, 2020 - Moved!

Over the years, one difference I’ve found between life in Tokyo and Paris is the degree to which we rely on the resources and goodwill of friends in daily life. In Tokyo, we manage most things self-sufficiently with the use of professional services and established processes. My business is mine to deal with, and yours is yours. Here, we ask for housing tips online, sell and buy things from each other, pitch in to move heavy things, and make use of each other’s couches and extra storage spaces.

With the help of good friends who helped me drive and carry my stuff, a few more who welcomed me to the new neighborhood, a beat-up van rented from a car-sharing platform, and the kindness of apartment staff who lent me their industrial-size dolly that I’m now settled into a new place. I’m savoring the change of pace and having new pathways to discover in the city!

Week 39, 2020 - Packing up

The season is changing. The cycle invites us to creatively destruct what does not serve us anymore so that we may bring forth new ideas.

I’m moving soon, have a few projects wrapping up, and am seeking how else I might clear the slate.

Week 38, 2020 - Be water

I write this on a Sunday morning from my balcony that overlooks the apartment courtyard. There’s a good 150m stretch between the street and our various building entrances and I’ve spent a lot of time looking out to this view, watching the endless stream of people coming in and out. A husband getting in a quick stretch before starting his mission for a fresh baguette, a young man striding back home from a gym session, a kid swiveling his head from the vantage point of the back of dad’s bike, dolled up girls checking their phones, toddlers on their little scooters circling their parents. The courtyard acts as a buffer between home and street, an in-between where our defenses are lowered, and it fascinates me how much inner monologue seems to be expressed in the physicality of how people move through it. I’m moving out soon, and I think the courtyard is what I’ll miss the most.

I overdid it this week with a book club, a facilitation class and two conferences, one for which I was a speaker. I treasure the rich discussions, though.

Conversations

• The distinctions of the role that only someone who’s both a friend and peer can play when you’re delivering a public speaking engagement

• How our insecurities shape how we interpret power in group dynamics

• How communities of practice take years to gain cohesion and there’s just no rushing it

• How to consider where one’s line is between unpaid passion-driven work and leisure, and why that’s a/the key to balance

• What kind of feedback loops lead to feeling deep satisfaction in the work done, and how our individual needs are actually quite different

• Structures that allow us to sit with a question when our initial reaction to it is ambivalence or even boredom

Week 37, 2020 - Chasing the last summer days

Three blissful long rides, two beautiful aha moments and never ending waves of work. I don’t remember much else of this week.

Week 36, 2020 - Homemade energy bars

I baked a big platter of energy bars for the first time. As I wait for them to cool, I feel a quiet sense of accomplishment from being able to “provide” for my future cycling and the symbolic act of preparing an energy source that will enhance my endurance for greater exploration.

I managed to get in three CrossFit workouts this week, too. Patting myself on the shoulder. I read a news article a few years ago that pointed out two indicators of economic downturn: people workout more, and they watch more Zombie movies. It makes sense, right? When things feel out of control, it feels good to invest in our physical bodies. We cannot escape our bodies, no matter how much technology advances. It’s also more straightforward than taking care of our mental state. The Zombie movies are an escapist fantasy where our own wits determine our survival; not the Boss or immigrants or rich people or whomever we feel has more control over our destiny than they should.

I’m not a 🧟‍♀️ 🧟‍♂️ fan but have plenty of other fantasies to escape to. And I’m committed to working out regularly to maintain a baseline of strength and endurance, even if I’m not hitting any PRs these days!

Conversations

• The difference between consulting, mentoring and coaching. What makes a good mentor, anyway?

• Are all sales processes the same if abstracted enough?

• If we keep asking “why”, will we arrive at the same existential answers regardless of the question we started with?

• What is an evolved form of online communities of practice?

Week 35, 2020 - Highs and lows

Infection numbers are rising again. We timidly go about the city, wondering what the next few months might look like. My week has been full of high highs and low lows. I’m tired, and tired of feeling tired.

Three hours later….
Weeknotes is a form of journaling. The power of journaling is that the process helps us reflect and reset intentions. I often find myself updating a weeknote hours after publishing it, adding an idea that the writing process helped me flesh out or an experiment that was triggered by a reflection.

This week’s entry was no different. After realizing that I’d let myself be down for too long, I went shopping, cooked a nice dinner, and prototyped a new calendar format. In the past month, I’ve been making tweaks to how I use Google Calendar in order to reclaim agency over my time. But having multiple calendars to separate work and personal activities, other people having permission to book such a big part of my day, food and health and hanging out with friends and family relegated to unclaimed time… it’s just not a great model to begin with. So I’m going to try something with a different mental model. Let’s see!

I’m grateful for this space that helps me figure things out. It’s more freeing to be writing here on my own website instead of Medium with awkward claps and pageview dashboards. I always seem to feel better, and often more energized, after writing and editing an entry 😊

Conversations

• What it means to advance the field of user research

• The role that music can play in expressing identity in a community

• What is it we care most in life and what are the challenges in investing in it

• How many bikes do I really need??

Week 34, 2020 - Starting four day work weeks

I’ve switched to a four day work week to have more time to think and write and cycle and rest. It’ll be Wednesdays off, which I chose by process of elimination.

• Monday - This would probably have the most negative impact on my teams and projects since I’d be MIA for a lot of planning activities.

• Tuesday - “Starting” on Monday and then stopping on Tuesday feels too abrupt. Tuesdays are also good for longer work sessions, so I prefer to keep it.

• Wednesday - Sweet spot!?

• Thursday - This would put a lot of pressure on the lone Friday to wrap up the week. I also tend to have workshops or user interviews on Thursdays.

• Friday - I’ve failed with a rhythm of every other Fridays off in the past, typically giving up in the middle of the week to work a five-day stretch instead. My current thinking is that it’s better to work Fridays but stop at a decent hour and start off the weekend on the right foot.

In the month leading up to flipping the switch, I made many arrangements to my workload and started being more conscious of where to draw the boundaries. The reactions of people I’ve told have been interesting. My colleagues’ reactions ranged from disinterest to “you deserve a break”. Friends have been universally curious and encouraging; some got really excited and helped me think through it while others shared their experiences. I hadn’t realized that so many had or have four day work weeks. It normalized the idea for me. I’m glad to receive guidance, too. I feel amazed to have this kind of agency, guilty when so many people are struggling in uncertain economic times, and relieved after more than a decade of grinding.

So this was the first week but it was a weird one being right after the holiday. I’d taken Monday off as an extension of the company break but was on Slack since it was everyone else’s first day back, started Tuesday at 7am to run an APAC-timezone workshop, took Wednesday off, put in fourteen hours on Thursday and then had a normal Friday. It was hard, with the upside being that it re-affirmed that I want to commit to a structural change.

Excited to see how next week goes. It’s almost la rentrée, too, so that momentum will carry me into September.

Conversations

• Late night discussions about love and what’s important in life

• Finding an artist that you seek to emulate in how they make artistic and life and business decisions

• How a fashion student makes sense of where they stand as they prepare to enter an industry grappling with how to balance expression, business and ethics

• Listened in on a wonderful EPIC roundtable event about “Regional Strategy in a Globalized World”

• Cheered on the Research Repositories project team during our best attended ResearchOps community Town Hall yet. So much good stuff, so much fun.