This content is 4 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.
This week (last week)’s weeknote is a few days late, so here’s what I learned in week 15 of 2021:
- It’s hard coming back to work after taking a complete break for 10 days.
- Autonomy over your calendar is a really important part of wellbeing.
- Flesch-Kincaid readability tests are just a number, but we tend to overestimate people’s reading ability:
- Email, Teams and other “productivity” tools are real “time hoovers” and reactive working is highly stressful. I’m increasing of the view that such tools hinder productivity in favour of reactiveness. It seems that I’m not alone.
- The Microsoft Dynamics 365 HR app for Teams is a much better way to access holiday request info than natively in Dynamics. I did laugh at the message that “Human Resources sent a card” though:
- How to be a good colleague in Ramadan – Ramadan Mubarak!
- Not to rely on the NHS COVID Vaccination site to send notifications of bookings, even when given a phone number and email address. I had to ring 119 and navigate minutes of menus before a very helpful human gave me my reference numbers to make changes. It took around 48 hours for the text message/email to arrive, quickly followed by updated ones for new appointments. I suspect there may be some CSV files and batch jobs in the background… especially as a friend who had a recent birthday was “not 45 enough” to book her vaccination.
- Emailing and asking for someone to do something by Close of Business that day, then emailing at 15:45 and asking them to do it by 16:30 is probably using the wrong channels and setting the wrong expectations…
- Don’t underestimate the value of your network for presenting new opportunities.
- Three pints of IPA may be a good way to avoid side effects of the Oxford-Astra Zeneca COVID-19 vaccine (based on my not at all scientific sample size of one)!