I was expecting a big parliamentary slap-fight today, but the Prime Minister had other ideas, so I’m going to write my week-notes instead - it’s a very short one because we’re about to start the new quarter, so most of my time is taken up with discussions that I can’t write about yet!
Two Things That Happened
One
There’s an art to enabling yourself to do things, at work and at home - and as with anything, there is a balance.
On one hand if you only ever do what you want then there’s going to likely be conflict with those around you. On the other hand if you never do what you want and put everyone else’s needs above your own then this is equally destructive but far more insidious.
Eventually your self-censuring will bottle up your own needs inside you and possibly explode in a very unhelpful way, depending on how you handle stress.
It’s been pointed out to me this week that I have a habit of doing the latter, and getting inevitably frustrated when I don’t get to attend to my needs for an entirely arbitrary and self-imposed reason.
I’ll be trying to keep an eye out for this in future and making an effort to be kinder to myself.
Two
This week Shift have been working with other teams to improve our department-wide business continuity plans - making our answers more efficient/better to questions like
“What do we do if the office is consumed in a tragic X-based accident?”
Where X can be:
- Fire
- Politics
- Blancmange
- Irony
It’s really felt like having multiple pots boiling on the hob which is great for the part of me that loves context switching and dashing from problem to problem but not great for my ability to generally keep calm and collected.
On the flipside, it was a great opportunity for us (Shift) to dive into the nitty-gritty with other teams and show them what we’re able to do - I’ve written a bit about building social capital in previous week notes and this is exactly what we’ve been doing this week.