Weeknote S2E2: tutti frutti
A week with every flavour of emotion
My working week ended with a rush of activity, so I didn’t have time to reflect or compose a detailed weeknote. Rather than let it slip, I thought I’d jot down a few notes recapping how it went — and largely these are reflections on how lucky I am.
I found the beginning of the week really quite overwhelming. I couldn’t put my finger on why, but I felt unusually anxious (even by my standards…) and uncomfortable in the early part of the week. Whether it was The Situation, its impact on work, concerns for family, or something random my brain latched onto, I felt on edge. Thankfully, opening up to family and colleagues that this was the case really helped, and by mid-week I felt well on top of work and home life. I am really so very lucky to have a supportive, loving family — even more so as I can describe colleagues and friends with these same words.
As millions of others are, my wife and I continue to balance work with home schooling. For me and some of my colleagues, this has meant shifting and/or stretching the working day and treating ‘close of play’ deadlines flexibly. Towards the end of the week, I had to take on full-time daddy/teacher duty for a morning, as my wife spent an unavoidable morning at her school site. I reflected again on how fortunate I was that my son is an absolute angel when it comes to settling down to school work, or creating his own entertainment — punctuated, of course, by garden cricket. It also struck me how rapidly my wife and I have had to accommodate each other’s routines and commitments. We may not have gone as far as one colleague of mine, who has a (partly tongue-in, partly serious) written arrangement with their partner on use of desk facilities, conference call etiquette etc, but we have developed a good understanding of how to balance the working day.
At the end of the week, I found myself in a situation familiar to many these days: rather than Mr Urgent pushing Mr Important to the back of the queue, the two joining forces to become Messers Top Priority. Further, as I’m now formally doing digital things (yay!), I had to cobble together years of learning-by-osmosis to lead a virtual team into action. Time and feedback from colleagues will tell, but immediate reflections on two-and-a-half days of frantic action suggest:
- imposter syndrome is a real thing, and more than once I thought ‘someone somewhere might realise I don’t actually know about much of this.’ Since joining the civil service (and variously beforehand) I’ve worked alongside the whole spectrum of digital and data specialists, from user researchers and developers to delivery managers, content designers, information architects and data scientists — and I was so grateful for everything I’ve learnt from them, and for colleagues being so adaptive to this rapidly changing landscape.
- the question of how to balance Mr Urgent and Mr Important’s needs suddenly left the realm of the abstract and suddenly became very real — and I suspect will remain so this week and beyond. I was again thankful for my network writing things like this by Matthew, which sets out valuable thinking on retaining principles as we move from business-as-usual to crisis, and then on again. Other opinion pieces from allies of government digital such as Matt’s provocative thinking also proved food for thought.
- Lastly, I valued even more the chance to step away from Messers Top Priority. Not just to home life, but to other work-related things — change as good as a rest and all that. I had a great conversation with folks across government expertly convened by Ben and Becky into a show and tell community, about addressing climate change. I shared some reflections from OneGreenGov, others shared their commitment and ideas for taking up the cause. It gave me the warm feeling of hope you badly need on a Friday!
After all, however much The Situation today strikes us as both urgent and important, we have to capture lessons and apply them to climate change — there is no bigger Top Priority.