Weeknote 3: A good week for deep work
20 January 2026
Hello hello!
Welcome to my weeknote. I’m writing this from home. It’s raining, so I skipped my walk and stayed in with a brew and a homemade sweet potato and aubergine curry instead. Yum!
What I’ve been into
♟️ I’ve been getting deep into Ark Nova strategies, and it’s paying off. My solo-mode win rate is much higher now. When I started, it was closer to one win in twenty.
It takes time to understand value, tempo, and how to think a few steps ahead. You need to be clear on your intent, while knowing the situation can change at any moment.
There’s a lot to hold in your head, so I’m only being mildly annoyed with myself for discarding three game-winning cards and losing a match last night. A right plonker! 😭
🎦 I had a great week at the BEAM theatre cinema in Hertford.
Marty Supreme was a real roller-coaster. I went in wondering how a filmmaker could spend two and a half hours telling a story about table tennis. Turns out, very easily. It was gripping from start to finish, with fantastic performances and strong character development.
I also saw two tear-jerkers: Sentimental Value and Song Sung Blue. The first hit home in lots of ways and felt very personal to me. The second is based on a true story and is both joyful and deeply sad, and, of course, we all know Hugh Jackman loves to sing. I recommend both wholeheartedly.
🎮 I’ve also been doing a lot of base design in Oxygen Not Included. I find it very rhythmic. At times it feels like a virtual paint-by-numbers, and the sound design makes it almost meditative. It’s been a great way to relax.
📖 I walked to the library in the rain to return a book, only to discover my backpack was empty. Whoops! The great thing about libraries is that renewals are free, and I was also able to pick up a book I’d had on reserve: The Anti-Inflammatory Recipe Book by Angela Dowden.
So far, I’m impressed. It’s easy to engage with, and the content design is, well… chef’s kiss. I’m making a list of recipes that interest me, and it’s longer than usual. As ever, the challenge with books like this is not over-planning and then wasting ingredients that I don’t get around to using.
I’d love to see a recipe book that starts with buying a small selection of healthy ingredients first, then groups recipes around that single shopping list. It would reduce a lot of waste.
Deep work
I’ve spent most of the week writing guidance about a complicated process that takes place over several months. I was surprised by how quickly I got into a flow state, and how much deep work I managed to do.
Being distraction-free is a luxury in a role like mine. When you’re running a large service and supporting a team, you often end up chasing small gaps between meetings and trying to be productive inside them. This felt different. I’ve been reflecting on that, and on how I might create these conditions more consistently in the long term.
It made me realise how rare these weeks are, and how much I notice when they don’t happen. Coming back to work has given me a chance to reset old habits and make deliberate changes.
I also spent time with our technical writer thinking about how we keep our team manual up to date, accurate, and useful. We came up with a few ideas, and I left feeling good about what we already do and how we can make some small improvements.
The timing is good. We’ve got a manual mobbing session coming up, where the whole team reviews content together. We get a lot done in a short time, and it’s collaborative and fun. I’m glad we’re improving this rather than pivoting to something new.
They’ll be leaving the team soon after earning a well-deserved promotion. Clever clogs. I promise not to be too sad when they go.
We also talked about using a bot to automate reminders, though I need to spend some time understanding how configurable our tools really are. This links nicely with work I’ve been doing with the accessibility community on keeping a regular focus on our objectives and key results (OKRs).
We have a shared vision for more asynchronous working and less rigid planning. So I’m experimenting with ways to better radiate intent, make commitments to each other, and give and receive help. To do that I’m also playing around with a few ideas for using a Slack bot to prompt conversation and encourage people to plan openly, without relying on the usual team planning structures that you might recognise in your delivery teams such as meetings, planning calls or Jira.
If you’ve done good work in this space, I’d love to hear from you.
Missing glasses
Over Christmas, I ordered a new pair of glasses on the same day Boots switched from one system to another. My money was taken, but my glasses disappeared into the ether.
From what I’ve been told, the order got lost between systems. It wasn’t picked up until I called to ask what was happening.
It might be unhelpful to speculate, but big-bang system changes over the festive period are rarely a good idea - especially without strong error monitoring or retries for failed journeys.
I know the people working on this are doing their best, and the staff in store have been great. I’d just really like my new glasses before my old ones fall apart.
What, so what, now what?
What?
- lots of deep work
- few distractions
- writing guidance and how-tos
- thinking about conditions for asynchronous working in a community of practice
- watching some great films
So what?
- I feel at my best when I’m in a flow state
- I highly value deep focus
- I’ve wanted more deep work in my role for a long time
- motivation isn’t created by nice words alone. It comes from a good experience of doing the work
Now what?
- talk with peers about creating better conditions for deep work
- experiment with chat bots to automate and trigger conversations
- keep making small improvements. As they say evolution, not revolution
That’s it for this week.
Weeks like this remind me how much my energy is shaped by the conditions around me. With that in mind, I’ve got H Is for Hawk and Saipan booked at the cinema next week as little rewards to keep relaxed. Bye!