• Well, that was a while since the last one, eh? Tiny bit ashamed. No excuse, really, but after stumbling across my blog this week, I read back a few weekenotes and it brought a smile to face. It was the little things, you see. The small details of the thoughts and things that happen in and around a week that matter.
  • I’ve also realised i’ve missed articulating my thoughts in words here. My own site. My rules. For me, not for you.
  • So what’s been keeping me busy for over two years? Well, there’s been a bit of cycling, but mostly there has been work. Two years ago, I started working at payments fintech, Checkout.com. I started out leading a couple of the product pillars but then, a year ago this week, the head of design announced he was heading off and asked if i’d support in an interim capacity. of course, I said yes.
  • That was a year ago. Time flies. I’ve been leading a team of 30 odd across product design, research, content design and ops. I’m lucky. I have a great boss and i’m learning a ton. My team is fabulous. The work is interesting and Checkout is making a difference to our customers.
  • Last week was quite the week. We relaunched a refresh of the brand (more on that another time). I said today in the design Town Hall that last week it was the lowest drama, no panic, no issues launch of anything i’ve ever worked on in my career. All credit to the teams who did all the hard work for months so that it literally was pressing go on various deployment scripts and boom, done.
  • I’m sat on the train on the way home. It smells in here of cold katsu curry, lager, and an undertone of sweets. Maybe those peppa pig sweets from M&S. It’s gross. I wish for the nasal equivalent of noise cancelling headphones. Wouldn’t it be great? Things that go in your nose but cancel out all odours but leaving you to breathe clearly.
  • Had a good question at the end of the Town Hall today. It was ‘We’re coming up to the end of the year, what is your top of mind thing for next’. After a moment of pondering, my answer was something about focus. And in a very fast moving environment, the critical thing to maintaining focus and delivering to high quality is how one manages energy. Not time. But where, and when, you put in the effort remembering this is very much a marathon and not a sprint. Despite what agile tells us, we cant sprint all the time.
  • I did wrap that up in a little cycling analogy. I could sense (and ignored) the rolling eyes in the audience. They are all so over me talking about cycling but, whatever, in this case they stand up. I talked about climbing mountains on a bike is very similar to working in product teams in technology. It’s about energy management. And making sure you eat and drink. What I didn’t say was it also takes a fair amount of grit, resilience, and bloody-mindedness.
  • That’s enough about work. More on that next week!
  • I’ve got Friday and Monday off for Operation Garage. It is a shit-tip. Floor to ceiling in things that either need to be recycled, upcycled, thrown away, given away, or just sorted out. Honestly, it largely resembles a badly organised hardware store. The price I continue to pay for insisting on learning how to repair things in my own house. The latest thing this morning is fitting a new threshold and letterbox to my leaking front door. Honestly, it’s endless. Every thing I repair seems to need a new power tool, or attachment to an existing one, and some widget, flange, nubbin, or wotsit that I don’t manage to own.
  • My brother is coming to help. Actually, let me rephrase. He’s coming to see what he can steal. He even considered hiring a van. Not a word of a lie.