Personal Development

I spent a good part of this week thinking about, talking about, and researching stuff around my personal development. I've finally got a clearer view on what i want to do, how i want to do it and why, but i've found this iteration of pondering about where i want to develop more challenging than normal. Investing my time in learning and developing myself has been something i've done throughout my career, partly through enjoyment and desire, i do really enjoy learning, but also partly with mind to keeping my self relevant, useful and employable (in whatever sense that needs to mean). I need to reflect on why this time around its been harder to nail down what i want to do and why. I think its partly because there are so many areas that i find interesting, making a choice about where i focus my time has been really challenging, as well as filtering out the things i think i should be focused on versus the things i'm interested in and that are also things i should be focused on.

Nailing the message

I've spent a lot of this week trying and failing to complete a piece of work, the peace of work has lots of moving parts and dimensions and i'm at the stage where i need to package up the complexity and communicate it in a clear and compelling way, this sometimes feels like trying to fit a litre of jelly into a thimble. I'm close to getting it done, and leaning on a communication technique i learnt during my last stint in consulting, which is based on Minto's pyramid principle, I know i won't stick rigidly to it, but just looking at my communication challenge through the lense of the technique is helpful and will improve the end result.

Journaling

I'm now Five months into my bullet journaling journey, i've only missed 8 days of journaling since January, which for me is great going. The core elements that i consistently do are:

1. re-writing out my todo list fresh every morning, i've found this useful to help me stay focused on tasks e.g. if i'm re-writing the same action for multiple days in a row then it helps me do something about it (even if that something is decide i'm just not doing the action :))
2. writing a couple of paragraphs of reflection at the end of the day, i've found this helps
3. I fill in a calendar collection ticking off a bunch of things i want to consistently do in a day, e.g. I stick a 'J' in the box if i've journaled that day, 'W' for a walk, 'PR' for a Parkrun, 'P' for photography, etc etc, you get the idea

Its pretty much become a habit now, i don't really think about it, in the early days it did, i almost stopped because it felt like a low level burden or cause of anxiety that i didn't need, but i'm beyond that now, its just something that i do.

Running

No running again this week as my achilles still aren't happy. I've got an appointment with a physio this week and hopefully some shockwave therapy, that seemed to help last time. In the meantime i've switched to doing calisthenics, which i hate, its just hurting yourself in different positions isn't it?