anticontent

Not week notes: I love the idea of week notes. I admire people that write them. But they don't work for me. When it comes to the time of week I should be writing them, there always seems to be something more pressing to write. But I think it's useful to note down what's been going on, so I thought I'd try a looser format. Something I can get to when I can. It'll probably be less “what I've been up to” and more “things I've noticed” than your standard week notes, but that's OK. This is the first one.

Making plans: If you follow me on Masto you may have seen me carping about a tricky thing I had to write. To be frank, it didn't go brilliantly. I'd like to think because of things I couldn't control. But still, I've been looking back at what I could have done differently, and one of those things is sharing a plan, or an overview, rather than jumping straight into a first draft. Get down and agree the main topics to cover, then share a second iteration with bulleted talking points, and only then write the damn thing. It wouldn't have solved all the problems we ran into, but it would have helped. There you go: sometimes you overlook the oldest trick in the book, and one we were all taught at school.

Wisdom for life: I came across Mo's brilliant Life's Many Lessons. It inevitably made me wonder what lessons I'd write down. Not many came to mind. That makes me feel like this might be an important thing to have a go at. Surely I've learned a few things by now.

Working on a book: Did I mention I've been working on a book? Not so much lately, but in the months previous. It's essentially a re-write of a book about agile, but which was written in quite formal language. And not all of the advice made sense. The interesting thing was managing a finite amount of time, and the choices that brings with it. It's not the book I'd write on agile left to my own devices. I wouldn't be the best person to write on the topic. So it was a re-stating of the wisdom already in the book, with a few new insights thrown in. It would have benefited from much more outside input. Everyone's busy, and it's been a tough year generally speaking. But it's been really nice to put proper time into long-form. It will make it easier to write my own book one day, if I do. As Alex Horne says: big if.