Weeknotes 13th March 2024
Open Working
Thoughts about the past week /today
10 000 days
For almost every day since I turned 10 000 days old, I have written a short note on the reason that day was worthwhile: a retrospective calendar that asks — did I get some work done? Did I call a friend or see family? Did I do some volunteering? Did I go anywhere useful or interesting?
Unfortunately, I don’t fill it in every day and will leave chunks of time between updating it. Whenever it is too long between updates, I feel a sense of unease at the loss of the potential memories. There is a two month gap in 2021 where I just could not deal with updating it, and sadly, I will never know what I did exactly during that time. It would be good to update the last few weeks of activities soon.
Radical Engineers
Last night, I attended the quarterly trustee meeting of Radical Engineers. It is with gratitude and sadness that one of the founding members, Margreet, has decided she would like to step down as a trustee. We will really miss her — she was a great colleague for years.
I am excited about the subsequent proposal to look for two more trustees to fill her role as this has the potential to bring more energy to the organisation.
FMWC
I did the second round (of 8) of the Financial Modelling World Cup the other day. Either it’s gotten harder, or the competition has gotten tougher — where I rarely was outside the top 100 the last couple of years, I am now coming in at 123rd and 109th respectively for the last two rounds. My time near the top may be coming to an end.
Some small problems with my workflow
The last few days, I’ve really struggled to concentrate on my work. I can identify three likely causes to this lack of focus:
- I went for a cycle ride the other day on a friend’s bike and it was far too small for me. I woke up on Sunday with blinding backpain which is still making it painful to sit up. Maybe I need to do some yoga?
- My partner has been travelling for work and while it’s sometimes fun to have the flat to myself, she’s also part of my daily routine and her absence has thrown me out of it — is this what missing somebody is?
- It feels like I’ve had a lot of work recently and that work hasn’t had much variety. It’s ok when I can go to the client’s office, but if I’m sitting at home every day making the same kind of spreadsheets, I go a little stir crazy.
Thoughts about today / the next week
More meetings and more work to do
Unfortunately, I cannot do much about the abundance of work for the time being. I have more work still to do! I have an amazing new client called Pioneers Post — an online newspaper for the social enterprise community. I’ll be making them a financial model to help them plan for the next few years. I’ve had a couple of days with them already, and the CEO is great to work with and for; I’m just a little fatigued and in a lot of pain from my back. I also have a couple of new leads for more work, excitingly including someone I started talking to about a year ago.
