Overall was a very productive week, with some purposeful time carved out to get my head down on a couple of projects, and refreshing some old skills. Enjoyed a trip to the top secret comedy club and spent some good time with family before we enter the chaos Christmas season over the next month.

Work

  • Slightly less meeting intensive this week, to facilitate more head down time, however back end of the week ended up being slightly more chaotic than anticipated due to the next steps of our voluntary severance program.

Time in meetings: 15hrs + some hidden time

  • Content design for confidential project: Getting my hands dirty with the initial content design for a confidential project launching early 2026. This involve some initial competitor research, SEO research, internal SH research, and finally content mapping. Moving onto content briefing next week.
  • 2026 Strategy: Wrapping up the design of our strategy for 2026, presenting first round to boss and team next week.
  • Navigating downfalls of org. project management: Early this week yet evidenced again some shortfalls in a wider organisation issues of project management and governance. Decisions weren't cascaded to me, leading to some potential wasted time, I did react frustrated, which on reflection needs to be better controlled.
  • Fostering inter-team collaboration: Managing some inter-team relationships that have broken down recently, and trying to find a path and solution moving forwards that works for all.
  • Pseudo-classes & Motion: Research, scoping and briefing for a new project brining hover, active and disabled classes into our design system.
  • Informing tough decisions: Making some decisions on our team direction in 2026.

Read 📚

Work

  • Delineation of Front End Development: https://bradfrost.com/blog/post/front-of-the-front-end-and-back-of-the-front-end-web-development/
  • Nano banana pro: https://blog.google/technology/ai/nano-banana-pro/

Fun

  • Started reading Shuggie Bain, Douglas Stuart

Listen 🎧

Focus

  • Gareth Southgate on leadership: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2QdyK3as4mSGiH9W6Dvowl?si=f58458a1dc8246ea
  • Next generation of European tech start-up funding: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2WTSMlyjG8g1wLxAHRyDVv?si=ruMTp1eWTXm9yZ2r08HXyw
  • Vibe coding & Graphs in CSS: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5V91oc3nKBHdxVETtltdc9?si=ad57468717ae4e17
  • The standard EMQs + Rest is Politics + Foreign Desk for my weekly politics

Play 🕹ī¸

Sports

  • Strava:
    • Run - 19.4km
    • Workout - 1hr37mins

Other

  • Piano lesson
  • Went to top secret Comedy Club on Friday, saw Elliot Steel and five other comedians
  • Visited parents and dogs on Sunday