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2021 in weeknote review

Doug Belshaw — Sun, 19 Dec 2021 08:47:20 GMT

I would definitely like to be the kind of person who does an in-depth look back and analysis of each year. However, I’m usually so mentally and physically exhausted that the idea is anathema to me.

Given that I write weeknotes every week, I had the idea of just writing a short synopsis with a link to each of them. It’s better than nothing. I did 212 days of work and took 41 days of holiday (incl. public holidays) this year. I also took five days of professional development to do a course, and had one sick day.

Week 1 — I went straight from Christmas holidays into preparing for Catalyst work. At this point, I wasn’t entirely sure whether I was going to remain part of We Are Open Co-op (WAO) after some internal drama saw two members leave. I was doing some work for Outlandish around what became Building OUT. We were still homeschooling the kids, had our house on the market, and I’d developed tendonitis from running with my shoes tied too tightly. The attempted coup happened at the US Capitol, just as we thought things in the world couldn’t get much worse after the Australian wildfires.

Week 2 — My son started the process of choosing his GCSE options, and it was my daughter’s birthday (double digits!) I kicked off the Catalyst sector challenge, working with a team I’d put together through Dynamic Skillset, as well as several charities trying to provide some digital assistance for those struggling to apply for Universal Credit. I scaled back my work with Outlandish, and did some strategy work with my WAO colleagues.

Week 3 — Joe Biden was successfully sworn in as 46th President of the USA. My son turned 14. My colleague Laura and I put together a pilot episode for a new podcast that we asked WAO members to fund. They agreed, and it turned into The Tao of WAO. I retired the wiki at neverendingthesis.com which had received almost a million visits before it fell over for the last time. I created a thesis page instead and moved my ebook to it, also making it free in the process.

Week 4 — I had a third-round interview at the Wikimedia Foundation for the Director of Anti-disinformation role which I’d applied for during the WAO turmoil. Ultimately, I didn’t get any further, but the thinking I did was shared in this blog post. All WAO members attended one of Outlandish’s Sociocracy 101 courses. The Catalyst UC project started to become a bit of a rollercoaster. Another Catalyst project, PM’d by Laura, started. I was on the team.

Week 5 — The two Catalyst projects continued, and I tied up my productisation work with Outlandish. I finished planning for a Getting Started with Digital Badges workshop I ran the following week. It rained a lot and, with it, days of migraines and pain disappeared.

Week 6 — This was a tough week on the Catalyst UC project, and I had to have several behind-the-scenes phone calls to straighten things out. I ran the badges workshop, helped Laura plan the other Catalyst work, and practised some sociocratic decision-making in our co-op half-day.

Week 7 — Half-term week, so I took Monday and Friday off to be with the kids. On the other three days, I was in work mode on the Catalyst projects, and thinking about my future career. I potentially slipped a couple of discs in my lower back after landing with a bump on a sledge going down a snowy hill.

Week 8 — More work on the two Catalyst projects, with the UC one really coming together through some prototyping. I watched the sun rise at Cresswell as I couldn’t get back to sleep. The government announced that the UK was coming out of lockdown, which was a relief but also caused anxiety as Hannah and I were still unvaccinated.

Week 9 — I started a new side project called eink.link focused on providing links to websites that work well on e-ink screens (like Kindles). More work on the two Catalyst projects, including some difficulties doing remote user testing. Lots of business development, and we took the house off the market after a chat with a mortgage advisor.

Week 10 — Our children went back to school this week, which they were enthusiastic about. We ran a ‘show and tell’ session for the DWP and other interested parties about the work we’d done on the UC project, and got great feedback. The other Catalyst project felt a lot like ‘teaching’. I still wasn’t doing much exercise due to my back hurting. I read the Deep Adaptation paper and freaked out a little.

Week 11 — I was surprised to get my first Covid vaccine, after being contacted by my GP surgery and being notified that I was on the ‘vulnerable’ list (I’ve got asthma). The UC project entered what I thought was going to be the second-last week, and the other Catalyst project chugged along nicely.

Week 12 — I started a new side project called extinction.fyi as I didn’t think people were taking the climate emergency seriously enough. I attended an RSA Cities of Learning Summit, worked on the playback deck for the UC project, and continued work on the other Catalyst project. I wasn’t yet back at the gym due to residual back pain.

Week 13 — It was the first week of the Easter holidays, so I did a three-day work week with one of those days including a workshop for NEAR. It was the first time WAO did work in the crypto space, and the first time we got paid partly in fiat and partly in crypto! I messed about with ~~older~~ appropriate technology and started a conversation with a neighbour about the climate emergency.

Week 14 — Perhaps because it was the second week of the Easter holidays and I wasn’t doing much exercise, I started another side project called privacy.garden. This is a WordPress site that automatically pulls in RSS feeds from privacy-focused websites, combines them, and displays the resulting ‘megazorded’ feed. I configured a Minecraft server for the kids.

Week 15 — My wife, Hannah, was away for the first time for a week looking after her mother. My mother helped with a range of things while I otherwise solo-parented. WAO ran another workshop for NEAR, worked on the staging site for our new website, and continued the Catalyst project.

Week 16 — I checked myself out of therapy after a marked improvement, and bought my kids a memento mori each as a reminder to ‘seize the day’. My son was stretchered off the football pitch after going into shock when he damaged the nerve between his neck and shoulder. He had the week off school. I bought some KORG Volca synths after cashing in some of my crypto.

Week 17 — We celebrated five years of the co-op on International Workers Day and wrapped up the Catalyst project. The UC project received some continuation funding so we started experimenting with merging two of the prototypes. WAO did some work on a project that still can’t be named with Greenpeace and kicked off some new work with Participate. I spent a ridiculous amount of time researching smartwatches and redesigned my personal website to be under 1KB in size.

Week 18 — I managed to get back to some kind of normality with my exercise and so decided on, and bought, a Garmin Venu 2S smartwatch. I worked on Greenpeace, Participate, and Catalyst UC projects. We booked an (expensive!) short holiday for when lockdown restrictions were to be lifted.

Week 19 — Hannah was away again looking after her mother, so I was solo parenting again. While we were apart, we celebrated both 21 years of being together (half our lives!) and her getting a User Researcher contract with the NHS Digital team. I tied up the ends of the UC project, and continued work on Greenpeace and Participate projects, as well as doing some business development.

Weeks 20 & 21 — Laura took three weeks off to go travelling, including the second of these weeks. Team Belshaw also went away just over the border to Scotland for a much-needed break. I started a new regime and approach with Thought Shrapnel.

Week 22 — I spent most of the week on holiday and experimented with not taking L-Theanine for a few days. We converted the weird landing / small room thing next to the bedroom in our loft conversion into an office for Hannah.

Week 23 — I got up early on Wednesday to the first 10k run since hurting my back, running on the beach. I got blisters. Laura was still away, and so I carried on with work for Greenpeace and Participate, as well as providing advice for the founders of gradu.al. Team Belshaw went kayaking as we didn’t get the chance while on holiday due to sea fret. My office roof was re-felted.

Week 24 — Hannah was away for a third time looking after her mother. Laura was back from her three-week holiday full of energy. I facilitated a Catalyst network engagement working group session, recorded another episode of our podcast, and did some consulting around LMS strategy.

Week 25 — A quiet week, work-wise, so I did more writing than usual on the blog and Thought Shrapnel. My family spoiled me with a half-cake for my half-birthday!

Week 26 — I did a marvellous overnight wild camp on the Scottish border which involved a four-hour walk there and a four-hour walk back. Hannah started her NHS 111 contract but then had to fly at short notice to see her mother. We watched a lot of the Euro 2020 football tournament. On the work front I updated an introductory course on badges ready for some client work and handed over the Universal Credit project for further development.

Week 27 — My mother-in-law sadly passed away after what proved to be her final battle in a longer war against the ravages of cancer. I began growing tomato plants up the wall of my office after a neighbour’s gift, and I spent a lot of time researching one-person tents after realising my camping gear is too heavy for me in my forties…

Week 28 — I spent the working week on a Sustainable Leadership and Deep Adaptation course. We kept the kids off school for the last few days of the summer term in case they caught Covid and couldn’t attend their granny’s funeral. After an inordinate amount of research, I bought new camping gear, and I flipped over dougbelshaw.com to a new super-small filesize version.

Week 29 — This was a busy week which included the funeral in Devon as well as kicking off work with Julie’s Bicycle and Outlandish. We’d already planned to be in Devon on holiday anyway, so after the funeral we stayed down there.

Week 30 — We watched a lot of the Olympics during this holiday week. I took the kids cycling along the River Exe from Exeter to Starcross. Our eldest got stung by a wasp and our youngest fell off her bike into a hedge while looking at a plane! I discovered Genesis Foods and, determined to lose pandemic pounds, started ordering their nutritionally complete meal replacement powder.

Week 31 — A relaxing, enjoyable week back home. Hannah was in back-to-back meetings with her new job, and I split my time between Julie’s Bicycle, the Keep Badges Weird project with Participate, and some digital support for charities, funded by Catalyst.

Week 32 — We met up with Hannah’s side of the family in Lincolnshire for an enjoyable weekend, and finally got to the bottom of my son’s neck/shoulder injury after another trip to A&E.

Week 33 — I went camping with my 10 year-old daughter on the North York Moors. There were lots of flying insects and it rained, but we had fun! I ended up doing so little work this week that I thought that it might be worth just having August off next year.

Week 34 — The plan was to do a walk and some wild camping with my son this week, but in the end his neck/shoulder wasn’t up to carrying a rucksack. Work continued to be pretty chill.

Week 35 — I recorded some microcasts over at Thought Shrapnel and stopped updating extinction.fyi as people seemed to have finally cottoned on to the climate emergency. Hannah’s NHS Digital contract was renewed, and I did some more wild camping. I read, and really enjoyed, The Book of Trespass.

Week 36 — Back-to-school week, which in these pandemic times isn’t to be taken for granted. I got stuck into work for Julie’s Bicycle with Laura, and tried to get back into the habit of exercising as part of my recovery from damaging my right rotator cuff. I started what became my September series of microadventuring in my new one-person tent.

Week 37 — Hannah and I went away to celebrate our 18th wedding anniversary and then I did some more wild camping, walking west from Morpeth. I spent some time researching and purchasing equipment to transform the small room-cum-landing next to our bedroom into Hannah’s home office.

Week 38 — I decided this week not to fly anymore, except in extenuating circumstances such as family emergencies. More wild camping. I started working with a neighbour on a plan to start a Climate Café in Morpeth. Northumbrian Water came to do some work on a leak just outside our property.

Week 39 — Work with Participate and Julie’s Bicycle continued while Hannah went to Devon for an NHS Digital meetup and to see her family. We surprised my Dad with a meal out for his birthday, and the saga with Northumbrian Water and our insurance company continued. Laura went on holiday for a couple of weeks, so I was holding the fort both personally and professionally.

Week 40 — I suffered a pretty bad migraine which I tracked down to annatto in one of the additional birthday cakes which we had for my father’s birthday. It knocked me out for a whole working day. I finally got around to going to the physio for my rotator cuff injury, and I had a couple of interviews for jobs from which I subsequently withdrew. A slug slithered across my forehead while I was asleep. Yes, you read that correctly.

Week 41 — I didn’t sleep very well all week after the slug incident. I spoke at Israel EdTech Week and was a guest on the EPALE podcast. It was Hannah’s birthday so we both took the day off and did some walking, eating, and drinking. I continued helping Julie’s Bicycle with recruitment.

Week 42 — My shoulder started feeling better after doing daily exercises recommended by the physio. Laura and I met with Catalyst and others to figure out how to form a coalition to help cohorts of charities with digital transformation. We helped Julie’s Bicycle with a (successful) Arts Council England funding bid for their work next year.

Week 43 — We went away for a few nights during half-term to Dumfries & Galloway and did some great mountain biking in the Forest of Ae. I was still suffering with residual sleep issues due to the slug incident.

Week 44 — Our 14 year-old son was absolutely wiped out by having both Covid and flu jabs on the same day, and took two days off school. His temperature was sky high and he was shaking. I was notified that the bid to take me over to the Netherlands for the Dutch National Libraries conference was successful, so I started planning my ferry trip…

Week 45 — I got my first cold in a few years this week, so took it easy rather than trying to push through it as I’ve often tried (and failed) to do. Work continued with Julie’s Bicycle and Participate, and I recorded three podcast episodes with Laura. We were supposed to run the first Climate Café, but the neighbour I was organising it with got sick the day before.

Week 46 — A podcast episode I recorded on Open Badges and Verifiable Credentials in the summer was finally published. Some work we’d been developing over the previous six months didn’t go ahead due to procurement issues relating to Brexit. In addition, increasing Covid restrictions in the Netherlands meant that the Dutch National Libraries conference was postponed. We got confirmation of more work with Greenpeace in the new year, some of which I might be involved with.

Week 47 — We celebrated my mother’s 70th birthday after watching an England Women’s game at the Stadium of Light. Storm Arwen wreaked havoc and brought down trees. I pre-recorded a very enjoyable conversation as the panel keynote for the ICoBC Symposium. John told us he’d handed in his notice and so was looking forward to doing more work through the co-op in the new year!

Week 48 — My energy levels plummeted as we crossed the line into December. I tried to get out of the house and work in coffee shops, which was a little problematic due to the rise in Covid cases, but I just needed a change. Hannah’s work travel plans were cancelled for the same reason.

Week 49 — This was my last full work week of 2021. I ate a lot of mince pies, trying every supermarket’s brands rating them accordingly. We had a Christmas light switch-on with our neighbours, followed by a buffet and a nice evening of catching-up with everyone. I bought a Covid-related ornament for our Christmas tree.

Week 50 — I worked two days, then travelled to the Peak District for a walk with Bryan, before getting my Covid booster jab. We had a remote WAO Christmas party, and the en-suite roof was re-plastered and painted.

With Buster Benson’s classic post as a touchstone, it’s clear to me after putting this together that I spent the first part of the year in ‘Flow Mode’ and then the rest of the year I’ve been alternating between ‘Work Mode’ and ‘Recovery Mode’. There’s no normal to return to any more, but I’m really looking forward to some kind of post-pandemic stability. Is that too much to wish for in 2022?

Photo of an end-of-year collage I put together to represent 2021.

The post 2021 in weeknote review first appeared on Open Thinkering.

Weeknote 50/2021

Doug Belshaw — Sat, 18 Dec 2021 20:46:09 GMT

This is my last weeknote of the year. And it has been A Year, just as 2020 was before it. Almost two years into this pandemic and, I’m not sure about anyone else, but I am rocking discombobulation as if it were a lifestyle choice.

I had intended to finish work for the year at the end of last week but, for various reasons including participant availability for a workshop we ran on Tuesday, that wasn’t possible. When you’re running your own business (or co-running our own business in the case of WAO) there’s always little things that trundle on even after marking a line in the sand. In my case, it was a bit of invoicing and admin.

Other than the workshop, which was focused on a digital strategy and product timeline for Julie’s Bicycle, I’ve just been finishing things off and tidying them up. There was a bit of moderation to do in the Keep Badges Weird community, for example, and Laura and I spent a lot of time in spreadsheets.

Straight after finishing work on Tuesday afternoon, I went to see my daughter play for the County football team. She was magnificent, scoring one, assisting another, and receiving Player of the Match. I’m so proud of her. That evening I made my preparations for the next day while the ceiling in our en-suite dried after being re-plastered.

On Wednesday morning, I got up early having all of my walking gear packed and a present for Bryan ready and wrapped. I got down to Sheffield almost an hour before he arrived on the train from London, so I did a bit of wandering around the city where I went to university 20 years ago, and where I met my wife, Hannah.

Bryan and I had a chat in the car on the way to Castleton, where we were due to start our walk. We had a very pleasant five hours together with conversation ranging over a wide variety of topics. Sadly, we didn’t get time to have a drink at one of my favourite pubs, but it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience and I hope we get to do it every year!

Thursday saw me get my Covid booster jab. I was expecting to get Pfizer as my wife had received the previous Saturday, but instead I got Moderna (aka ‘Spikevax’) which I was happy about. I managed to take it easy on Friday while the ceiling of our en-suite was sorted out. We had our WAO online Christmas party. Mid-afternoon, the predictable post-vaccine tiredness overcame me and I slept for five hours before evening.

Today (Saturday) I’ve continued to be a little tired but managed to sort out the new lights in the en-suite, then met my parents at the beach for a walk, and then created an end-of-year collage which I’ll share in my next post…

Photo of the sunset on Tuesday night which I pulled the car over onto the side of the road to take. Glorious!

The post Weeknote 50/2021 first appeared on Open Thinkering.

Sorry! The lifestyle you ordered is out of stock

Doug Belshaw — Fri, 17 Dec 2021 06:54:32 GMT

From where I sit, the day after having my booster jab, I’m more than a little bit concerned about the level of anti-vaxxer disinformation swirling around me. Yes, I wrote my doctoral thesis on ‘digital literacy’ and I think there’s a level of digital illiteracy involved in all of this. However, there’s a confluence of a few things going on here.

The world is complex, so any simple ‘answer’ to what’s driving particular behaviours are likely to be at best incomplete. For example, I’ve noticed in my interactions with vaccine-hesitant or straight-out ‘anti-vaxxer’ middle-aged white men that there are certain metaphors and tropes that tend to be used.

The rabbithole goes deep, and quickly. It’s likely to be different for varying groups in society, but for those middle-aged white guys I’ve mentioned, there’s at least some pent-up economic frustration going on. I think they also may feel an overall decline in power. At the same time, with the Black Lives Matters movement, increasing equality for women, and wars/climate chaos causing migration, there are culprits for them to pin the blame on.

As a former teacher of the subject, I certainly felt that, until recently, history was the battleground. That’s still the case to some degree, but instead of arguing over representations of the past, we now seem to be arguing over the nation of current reality. Conspiracy theories are rife, and not limited to that weird guy in the pub that you sidle away from after he’s had a few.

If we can’t agree on the past and present, then I’m not sure how we’re going to agree on the future and what it can and should look like. There’s a modicum of consensus that we need to do something about the environment and biodiversity, but how that is going to be acted upon in a period of intense political turmoil is yet to be seen.

Looking back at my TEDx Talk from early 2012 with almost a decade of hindsight, it seems obvious that what started out as playful memes could and would be weaponised for division and political factionism. While my focus at that time was on learning and the technology that can enable it, I feel that I may have been naïve not to see what could have been coming next.

Yet, here we are. Digital literacy is low, political engagement is high. That’s a dangerous and explosive combination, as we saw with the attack on the Capitol building in January 2021. My concern is that we will reap what we have sown and that Big Tech, perfecting algorithms that “give us more of what we want”, will essentially tell us that the lifestyle that we ordered is out of stock, and this will fuel catastrophic rifts in society.

In the face of this, what I can do personally is small and seems insignificant. The same is true of the climate emergency. But individual actions can make a difference, when added together, and we shouldn’t avoid taking small steps just because we can’t take large ones. So, in 2022, having IRL rational and respectful conversations with anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists may be just as important as taking climate action.

The post Sorry! The lifestyle you ordered is out of stock first appeared on Open Thinkering.

Weeknote 49/2021

Doug Belshaw — Sat, 11 Dec 2021 18:15:36 GMT

This week was my last full week of work of 2021. Laura and I listed out all of the things we had to do before sacking off work for the year and decided that, while there were things we could start work on, they can wait until 2022.

That includes planning Season 3 of the podcast. Our guest for Episode 6 couldn’t make it at short notice but, thankfully, we’d done a two-parter for Episode 5. The Tao of WAO is available wherever you get your podcasts.

I think it’s fair to say that I’ve eaten more mince pies than I’ve done sessions of exercise in the past seven days. This is entirely in keeping with my winter philosophy and attitude towards December in particular. The media seem to have an obsession with everyone keeping in amazing shape while also enjoying the usual festive over-indulgence. That’s obviously impossible, so I’m leaning into the carbs.

The Christmas tree went up last weekend, so we’ve had a week to enjoy that as well as the outside Christmas lights, switched on with our neighbours last Sunday. There was a gathering with a buffet and drinks afterwards for the first time, which was lovely.

Talking of the tree, I chose this year’s new ornament for it. In previous years we’ve added a 3D-printed bauble, some icicle-shaped pieces of glass from Iceland, and one featuring pandas that Hannah‘s cousins brought back from China. As we neglected to get one last year, I summed up both 2020 and 2021 with a laser-cut wooden ornament that looks like the COVID-19 spike protein!

Work wise, we rounded off our current contract with Participate for the Keep Badges Weird work and then, after a meeting with Mark and Julie, agree to continue working together for Q1 2022 in the first instance. We’ve built up a good “head of steam” (as Mark called it) with the KBW work, and have around 120 people join the community in less than six weeks. There are a range of badges to be earned, so do check it out!

With Julie’s Bicycle, we delivered v0.9 of the external-facing and internal-facing digital strategy. This comprised two documents and two slide decks laden with Bryan‘s images, with us only being able to get to v1.0 with more input from JB’s staff. We’ve helped them hire a Product Lead for the next iteration of the CG Tools, which is one part of an overall digital platform they’ll be developing — with help from WAO and Outlandish.

All things being equal, our collaboration with JB will continue until at least the end of next year. We’ll phase ourselves out as we build in-house capacity around building and maintaining digital products. There’s plenty to do, but it’s great to see that JB are up for the challenge!

We’ve got the go-ahead for some more Greenpeace work starting in the new year after months of the project getting set up. Laura’s leading it, as with all of the work we do with GP, but I’m hoping to be involved. We’re also hoping to work with a coalition of Agencies for Good organisations (with the support of Catalyst) to develop cohort-based programmes around digital transformation and product development.

So we’re heading into 2022 with a decent amount of work. John is coming back to work with the co-op on at least a part-time basis, and our intern, Anne is really stepping up and helping with client projects. We have capacity for more, but it’s probably the most work we’ve ever gone into a new year with already secured!

Next week, I’m working a few hours on Monday, and then we have a workshop with Julie’s Bicycle and Outlandish on Tuesday afternoon. After that, I’ve finished for the year! I’m meeting Bryan in Sheffield and going walking with him in the Peak District on Wednesday, then getting my booster vaccine on Thursday. Friday is Hannah’s last day at work and the kids’ last day at school, so I’ll be ~~reading philosophy books~~ playing FIFA 22.

Photo of Team Belshaw Christmas tree featuring COVID-19 decoration.

The post Weeknote 49/2021 first appeared on Open Thinkering.

Sage career advice from Baltasar Gracián

Doug Belshaw — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 12:07:47 GMT

One of the books I read on repeat is variously translated as The Pocket Mirror and Art of Prudence or The Art of Worldly Wisdom. I prefer the latter title, but the best translation I’ve found is the Penguin edition with the former.

It’s author, Baltasar Gracián, was a 17th-century Jesuit priest whose aphorisms give advice on being successful in the world without losing, as it were, your soul.

What I like about the 300 pieces of advice is that, four centuries later, it still feels fresh and contemporary. Although there are parts that pertain to court life, these are easily transposed onto any workplace. After all, politics, intrigue, and currying favour are fairly universal human experiences.

There are three aphorisms in particular coming almost one after another that constitute wise career advice for the ages. The first uses the metaphor of appetite to talk about ambition, the second discusses fitting your job to your temperament, and the third focuses on finding the right time to move between jobs or positions. I’ve used the title for each aphorism given in my edition as the subtitles below.

A stomach for great mouthfuls of good fortune

Maxim 102 delves into what I’ve discussed elsewhere as increasing your serendipity surface:

In the body of prudence, not the least important part is a large stomach, for great ability is made up of great parts. A stroke of good luck doesn’t hold back someone who deserves something more substantial: what satiates one person, leaves another hungry. There are many who waste a choice morsel because they don’t have the appetite for it, being neither accustomed nor born to elevated positions. Their dealings turn sour, and the heady perfume of unmerited honour makes them lose their heads. They run real risks in high places and are full of themselves because they have no place for luck. Great men should let it be seen that they still have room for even greater things and should carefully shun anything that might indicate they are narrow-hearted.

In addition to increasing (or ‘rewilding‘) our serendipity surface, this maxim also deals with capacity. We often talk about increasing organisational capacity, bu we rarely talk about increasing the capacity of individuals to deal with situations, events, or other people.

I’m not sure if Gracián self-identified as a Stoic, but he’s certainly included in the tradition by thinkers who come later. What I like about Stoicism is the balance that Donald Robertson so expertly teases out in How to Think Like a Roman Emperor between ‘indifference’ to events and our responsibility to society to use our abilities (and capacity) for good.

Understand what different jobs entail

Maxim 104 contains some of my favourite lines of Gracián’s writing. I’ve highlighted them in bold for the avoidance of doubt:

They are all different and you need great knowledge and observation here. Some require courage, others subtlety. Those that depend on integrity are easier to handle, those on artifice, harder. With the right disposition, nothing else is needed for the former; but all the care and vigilance in the world are not enough for the latter. To govern people is a demanding job, and fools and madmen more so. Twice the wit is needed to deal with someone with non. A job that demands complete dedication, has fixed hours and is repetitive is intolerable; better is one which is free from boredom and which combines variety and importance, because change is refreshing. The best are those where dependency on others is minimal. The worst, one where you are held to account, both in this world and the next.

What I find so useful about this is the healthy relationship that is encouraged between the individual and their work. Instead of fitting oneself into the confines of a job description, or the role of a cog in a machine, Gracián instead encourages us to flourish as human beings.

Gracián wouldn’t have used the term, but this reminds me of the importance of avoiding what the late Dave Graeber called ‘bullshit jobs‘. Not only are these jobs pointless, but they’re psychologically destructive. There are some jobs that are entirely pointless, Graeber contends, and others which contain pointless parts. I think Gracián would have appreciated Graeber’s typology of pointless jobs:

Flunkies, who serve to make their superiors feel important, e.g., receptionists, administrative assistants, door attendants, makers of websites whose sites neglect ease of use and speed for looks;
Goons, who act to harm or deceive others on behalf of their employer, e.g., lobbyists, corporate lawyers, telemarketers, public relations specialists, community managers;
Duct tapers, who temporarily fix problems that could be fixed permanently, e.g., programmers repairing bloated code, airline desk staff who calm passengers whose bags do not arrive;
Box tickers, who create the appearance that something useful is being done when it is not, e.g., survey administrators, in-house magazine journalists, corporate compliance officers, quality service managers;
Taskmasters, who manage—or create extra work for—those who do not need it, e.g., middle management, leadership professionals

Given the prevalence of the above in our society (Graeber suggests that it’s more than half of all jobs) it’s worth using Gracián’s encouragement to focus on virtue and variety in our careers as a north star.

Don’t hang around to be a setting sun

Maxim 110 gives decisive advice for those who are unsure as to whether to stick or twist in their current job:

The sensible person’s maxim: abandon things before they abandon you. Know how to turn an ending into a triumph. Sometimes the sun itself, whilst still shining brilliantly, goes behind a cloud so nobody can see it setting, leaving people in suspense over whether it has or not. To avoid being slighted, avoid being seen to decline. Don’t wait until everything turns their back on you, burying you alive to regret but dead to esteem. Someone sharp retires a racehorse at the right time, not waiting until everyone laughs when it falls in mid-race. Let beauty astutely shatter her mirror when the time is right, not impatiently and too late when she see her own illusions shatter in it.

I’ve used this advice a couple of times in my career so far and it’s worked out well both times. Sticking around because of inertia or ‘golden handcuffs‘ is never a good reason to stay in a position or with an organisation. Although it can be a bit scary to make the change, I’ve found another quotation by the author John Burroughs inspirational: “Leap, and the net will appear.”

Making allowances for context and cultural norms at his period in history, I find this sage career advice from Gracián. For those who haven’t read his work, I’d highly recommend reading these three in the context of the other 297 pieces of advice he dispenses in his book. If you can, get the Penguin edition, you’ll thank me for it!

The post Sage career advice from Baltasar Gracián first appeared on Open Thinkering.

Weeknote 48/2021

Doug Belshaw — Sun, 05 Dec 2021 14:41:15 GMT

Storm Arwen continued to wreak havoc this week. Some parts of Northumberland, the county in which I live, are still without power eight days later.

Thankfully, we were fine where we live in Morpeth, although a short walk up the hill was a stark reminder of the power of 100mph winds coming from the north.

This is the time of the year when my energy levels plummet and my wife finds an extra gear to shift into as part of some kind of Christmas preparatory drive. The mismatch is profound.

Yesterday, for example, we cut down our own Christmas tree and my wife and kids decorated it before we watched Home Alone, as is our tradition. I put up the outside Christmas lights in time for the official switch-on with our neighbours tomorrow evening, but haven’t yet checked to see if they’re still up after last night’s winds.

I just want to hibernate. Thankfully, I’ve only got a week and two days’ worth of work left to do.

Pre-pandemic, I’d say each year that this was the last December I was spending in the UK. In 2019, we went to Iceland just before Christmas, which was magical. In 2015, I spent several days in Malta as I was speaking at an event at the university.

No chance of doing anything like that for a while due to the pandemic, which is a shame. I miss travelling, I have to say. Especially at this time of year when the place I reside is dark and cold.

I had very few meetings this week, which was a blessing, as I got to work in coffee shops a couple of mornings. I know it’s a chain owned by Coca-Cola, but the Costa coffee above Next in Morpeth really helps me get into the productive spirit on cold, dark mornings. The number of windows really does make the most of the limited amount of winter light allotted to our corner of the earth. I just have to avoid sitting next to people seemingly auditioning for a role in Motherland.

The main thing I worked on with Laura this week on behalf of the co-op was the digital strategy for Julie’s Bicycle. As I’ve mentioned in previous weeknotes, and as she commented on in her newsletter this week, we have different (but often complementary) styles of working. In this particular case, we spent a while discussing how much we should ‘hedge’ our language as opposed to just straight out telling the organisation what they should do. Laura’s written a bit about what we’re up to here.

Other than that, there was a bit of community management to do in the Keep Badges Weird community for Participate. I updated the list of badge-issuing platforms on Badge Wiki and published a blog post about the last decade of Open Badges. The latter was to coincide with the ICoBC Symposium for which I was part of the pre-recorded keynote panel.

Hannah was supposed to be in Leeds this week for an NHS Digital team meetup. Instead, new Covid rules meant that was cancelled and there’s a bit of uncertainty around given the news that NHS Digital and NHSX are merging with NHS England. Her contract is until the end of March and she’ll be fine. Everyone wants good user researchers!

I’m not sure if Hannah’s Christmas party is going ahead (or if she’d want to go down to London anyway at the moment) but I’m looking forward to going for a walk with Bryan Mathers in the Peak District on the 15th. Bryan’s recent TEDx Talk in Galway was released this week and I’d recommend watching it. I quite like going back to mine from almost a decade occasionally to see the comments — especially as it seems some universities require students to watch and/or comment as part of their studies!

Next week is my last full week left at work of 2021 and I don’t mind telling you that I can’t wait to let myself go, eat my own weight in mince pies, and drink an inexcusable amount of Baileys. Before I do that, I’ve got a couple of workshops, some admin, some strategy writing, and some loose ends to tie up.

The post Weeknote 48/2021 first appeared on Open Thinkering.

Weeknote 47/2021

Doug Belshaw — Sun, 28 Nov 2021 17:54:48 GMT

The highlight of this week has been celebrating my mother’s 70th birthday. She doesn’t become a true Aged P. until next week, but this weekend was the best time to herd the familial cats, as it were. Despite Storm Arwen bringing trees down and snow to some parts of the country, Team Belshaw managed to make it both to the Stadium of Light to see England Women beat Austria 1-0, and then to Solberge Hall to for afternoon tea with the rest of the family.

Both my parents are only children, so there were only 10 of us in total around a huge table. My mother loved her presents, and my sister (who really should be a contestant on GBBO) made a Raffaelo-style cake which was delicious. After an overnight stay, a few of us went to Fountains Abbey and then had wonderful Sunday dinner at the Black Bull Inn at Moulton.

Work-wise, I published a post on the evolving badges and credentials ecosystem, and recorded the ICoBC Symposium panel keynote with Kerri Lemoie and Phillip Long. It was a great conversation, and we’ve invited Kerri onto The Tao of WAO podcast. Talking of the podcast, Laura edited and posted two episodes we recorded on remote work. We should be recording the final episode of Season 2 next week with another guest, and then our co-op colleagues have given us the go-ahead for a Season 3 in the new year.

Wednesday saw a co-op half-day which was a bit of a celebration in that John has given notice at the full-time job he’s been doing for the past few years, and so will be able to play more of a role in WAO work in 2022. We’ve a number of contracts and agreed bits of work going into the first quarter of next year, which is nice. We discussed a potential asset lock for our co-op but decided that we’re going to wait until we absolutely need one, as it could potentially cause more problems than it solves.

In other news, I heard that the Dutch National Libraries conference is being rearranged to the end of March, which should be good. It’s for the best given the increasing lockdowns coming into force.

Last Sunday, I hurt my back running in the cold weather. I’m not sure whether it was my poor warm-up or I just tweaked my (suspected) slipped disc from earlier this year, but I didn’t run or go to the gym all week as a precaution. Sure enough, when I went back this afternoon (and a couple of hours after a large Sunday dinner) it was hard work.

The only other thing to mention is that I wrote a blog post that arrived pretty much fully-formed as I lay half-awake and half-asleep in the early hours of Tuesday morning. Entitled That silent disappointment face, the one that I can’t bear it’s a reflection on the role disappointment plays both as a pedagogical, and to some extent philosophical tool in our interactions with others.

Next week, we need to finish off the internal part of the digital strategy work we’ve been doing for Julie’s Bicycle, and work towards finishing off this year’s set of deliverables for Participate. I’ve really enjoyed the Keep Badges Weird project we’ve done with them so far. I’m also hoping that something comes of the conversation I had with Ellie Hale and Debby Mulling from Catalyst about cohort-based digital transformation programmes.

Image based on an original photo I took inside the Cellarium at Fountains Abbey.

The post Weeknote 47/2021 first appeared on Open Thinkering.

That silent disappointment face, the one that I can’t bear

Doug Belshaw — Tue, 23 Nov 2021 09:16:58 GMT

Perhaps one of the most powerful tools in the toolbox for parents, educators, coaches is disappointment. Whether real or feigned, once a relationship of respect is established between child or student and the person with “pedagogical authority”, then expressing disappointment can be amazingly effective.

In the film Coach Carter, which I watched again with my son at the weekend, the coach in question establishes a culture of respect in a basketball team. He does this initially through discipline. Once this discipline is established, however, he maintains team performance by conveying disappointment when its members contravene the established rules.

Conveying disappointment can be done in at least three ways. Depending on the skills of the pedagogical authority, this can be done in more or less precise ways. In my experience, the most common way of expressing disappointment is through body language: facial expressions, sighing, turning the back. The child or student needs to be able to connect that body language to the thing they have just done.

The next level is verbal: pointing out what the child or student has done to disappoint the pedagogical authority. This is more precise as the child or student is left in no doubt as to what it is they have done. The third level, however, takes on a longer temporal element in that it is written. In my experience, expressing disappointment in written form is the most powerful way of conveying it to a child or student. Unlike body language and verbal expressions which are transitory, a written expression of disappointment is something they can read several times.

As such, disappointment as a tool needs to be conveyed as precisely as possible. The temptation is to over-use it, especially body language and verbal expressions. This can lead to either the child or student starting to ignore the disappointment, or to do the opposite: to take it all onboard which leads to a feeling of helplessness, and a culture of negativity.

Disappointment as a tool between pedagogical authority and child or student is a form of interpersonal relationship. Another form of interpersonal disappointment happens between friends, lovers, and colleagues. In other words, whereas the previous type involved a hierarchical relationship, this type of disappointment happens between peers.

The same three types of expression (body language, verbal, and written) are the forms taken by this disappointment, in my experience. However, because the power relationship is different, the results also differ. In my experience, expressions of disappointment are much less likely to be precisely articulated and instead conveyed via body language. Sometimes (often?) this is involuntary.

As the connection between what the other person has done and the (involuntary) body language is not clear, the feedback loop is often incomplete. This can lead to confusion and problematic relations between the two people, as the cause of the problem has not been identified precisely. There is a feeling of tension, which contribute to what Alex Komoroske calls ‘coordination headwinds’.

The best thing to do in this situation is for one person to verbalise their disappointment in ways that focus on their emotions. For example, there are techniques in both sociocracy and counselling that include sentence templates such as, “When you do… I feel… because…”

The third type of disappointment is intrapersonal. That is to say, it involves disappointment with oneself. In my experience, this kind of disappointment is often felt rather than expressed in a form that involves words. It is a form of internal body language.

One strategy to explore with disappointment with oneself is to externalise the feelings. This is explored in the book How To Think Like a Roman Emperor by the philosopher and psychotherapist Donald Robertson, who has a special interest in Stoicism and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).

Carrying on with the above theme, then, there are two ways to do this: to verbalise the disappointment and to write it down. CBT is an extremely effective way to verbalise disappointment in oneself, as a trained therapist and guide is there to help you stop spiralling downwards.

Journaling, or maintaining a diary, is a good way to write down the disappointment. Once it’s there on the page in front of you, it either has the power to change your actions going forward, or it looks less of a big deal than it felt in your head. Either way, you can do something about it.

As you may have gathered, I have been both on the receiving end of disappointment and the person conveying it to others recently. This is not a “philosophy of disappointment” as such, although I purposely avoided searching for the term until I’d written the preceding. Perhaps to develop it further I need to read this article in The Independent, watch this 2010 talk by Simon Critchley, and perhaps examine this analysis of the philosophy of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche…

Image based on an original by Monstera. Quotation-as-title via Arctic Monkeys.

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Weeknote 46/2021

Doug Belshaw — Fri, 19 Nov 2021 18:53:11 GMT

I reflected this week on the images I use to accompany my blog posts. After reading this post about why websites shouldn’t used dithered images, I had second thoughts about using them here. That led to an interesting conversation about various compression technologies. However, after some tests with some of the options suggested, I decided that the differences were tiny and I quite like the aesthetic of dithered images.

Elsewhere on the images front, after reading about the SOFA principle I started an art project called (Un)familiar. I also read somewhere about a fulfilling life being about sensory experience, which meant I worked in coffee shops, took my wife out for drinks, and took my son to the cinema (for the first time in almost two years!) to see Dune. We really enjoyed it.

On the work front, a client we’re doing a reasonable amount of work for around digital strategy had their managing director leave this week. It was planned, but the founder and the co-managing director both have Covid. Interesting times. For Participate we welcome new members to the Keep Badges Weird community as well as planning new announcements, badges, and activities.

I’ve also been doing some coordination around the ICoBC Symposium panel keynote with other participants. We’re pre-recording the discussion as being in different timezones makes it difficult to do it live. I’ll be focusing on the last decade of Open Badges and what we’ve learned that helps for future work. I also joined the EdTech Circle, a new community for product managers in edtech. I’m kind of that, and certainly have been in the past. I went along to the first informal chat, which was nice. It’s good to meet new people and be reacquainted with familiar faces.

After recording two episodes last week, Laura and I didn’t record a new one for The Tao of WAO this week. However, an episode of the Speexx Exchange Podcast that I recorded in August with Don Taylor was finally released. They must have spent the last few months removing my ‘ums’ and ‘errs’ because people say I sound like I know what I’m talking about.

Sadly, some work that’s taken six months to happen is now not happening because of Brexit. The European Schools wanted to do some initial work around badges, but they realised reasonably late in the process that their procurement process means they can only do business with organisations based in the EU. We’re trying to find a workaround, but it’s not looking likely.

Another thing that’s not going ahead at the moment is the Dutch National Library conference. This is due to the partial lockdown that was announced. Thankfully this is merely postponed to March/April 2022. The annoying thing is that my wife had booked flights (she, unlike me, hasn’t made a commitment) and so it looks like we’re down £300. They were the cheapest flights at the time, so don’t allow changes — and insurance policies at the moment only cover illness, not changes in government policy.

Next week we’ll be doing more work with and for Julie’s Bicycle and Participate, and it looks like I might get involved with some planning for stuff WAO is doing for Greenpeace next year. Other than that, we’ve got a co-op day and I’ve got some other business development chats.

Right now, it’s looking like I’m going to regain the ability to take the last three weeks of the year off, which is great. I’ve found that I can only really unwind when I have 20+ days off in a row and what better time to do it than over a time that spans both my birthday and Christmas?

The post Weeknote 46/2021 first appeared on Open Thinkering.

An ending, a beginning

Doug Belshaw — Mon, 15 Nov 2021 09:11:47 GMT

Of all the human constructs that shape our ways of thinking, chief among them has to be our collective understanding of time. After all, dates, months, and years do not exist objectively and separately from human experience. Birds and insects are not arranging to meet at 9pm on Saturday the 22nd.

For anyone who spent any time in formal education in the western world and then has paid taxes, the question of “when does the year start?” might have at least three answers. We might answer with the calendar year (January), the financial year (April), or the academic year (September).

Elsewhere, more than 20% of the world celebrate Chinese New Year, which depending on the moon, happens in either January or February each year. Jews celebrate Rosh Hashanah, their New Year, usually sometime in September. Endings and beginnings are happening all of the time for different people and in different places.

Using the calendar that I, and everyone else I know, use it’s currently the 15th of November 2021. This is the Gregorian calendar and, stepping back from it a moment makes it all sound a bit odd. For instance, months have different lengths, and then there’s the concept of ‘leap years’… which are worked out thus:

Every year that is exactly divisible by four is a leap year, except for years that are exactly divisible by 100, but these centurial years are leap years if they are exactly divisible by 400. For example, the years 1700, 1800, and 1900 are not leap years, but the years 1600 and 2000 are.
United States Naval Observatory

As Wikipedia’s list of calendars shows, there is a plethora of different ways of organising time — and for different reasons.

I’ve discussed many times in my presentations that literacy is a form of power. It’s a way of legitimising certain practices, attitudes, and approaches to the world. The same could be said of calendars, which impose an official way of looking at time. This is why the French Republican calendar, the Soviet calendar, and the Era Fascista calendar exist; they offer a revolutionary break with the past, represented by a rending of time itself.

This is all interesting in and of itself, and I could start getting into the decimalisation of days and weeks, but my main reason for mentioning it is somewhat more prosaic. Ever since discovering the French Republican calendar, I’ve been fascinated by the way that months were named after the weather in Paris at that time of the year.

The days of the French Revolution and Republic saw many efforts to sweep away various trappings of the Ancien Régime (the old feudal monarchy); some of these were more successful than others. The new Republican government sought to institute, among other reforms, a new social and legal system, a new system of weights and measures (which became the metric system), and a new calendar. Amid nostalgia for the ancient Roman Republic, the theories of the Enlightenment were at their peak, and the devisers of the new systems looked to nature for their inspiration. Natural constants, multiples of ten, and Latin as well as Ancient Greek derivations formed the fundamental blocks from which the new systems were built.
[…]
The Republican calendar year began the day the autumnal equinox occurred in Paris, and had twelve months of 30 days each, which were given new names based on nature, principally having to do with the prevailing weather in and around Paris and sometimes evoking the Medieval Labors of the Months. The extra five or six days in the year were not given a month designation, but considered Sansculottides or Complementary Days.

Here is the list of months of the French Republican calendar:

Autumn
– Vendémiaire (from French vendange, derived from Latin vindemia, “vintage”), starting 22, 23, or 24 September
– Brumaire (from French brume, “mist”), starting 22, 23, or 24 October
– Frimaire (From French frimas, “frost”), starting 21, 22, or 23 November
Winter
– Nivôse (from Latin nivosus, “snowy”), starting 21, 22, or 23 December
– Pluviôse (from French pluvieux, derived from Latin pluvius, “rainy”), starting 20, 21, or 22 January
– Ventôse (from French venteux, derived from Latin ventosus, “windy”), starting 19, 20, or 21 February
Spring
– Germinal (from French germination), starting 20 or 21 March
– Floréal (from French fleur, derived from Latin flos, “flower”), starting 20 or 21 April
– Prairial (from French prairie, “meadow”), starting 20 or 21 May
Summer
– Messidor (from Latin messis, “harvest”), starting 19 or 20 June
– Thermidor (from Greek thermon, “summer heat”), starting 19 or 20 July
– Fructidor (from Latin fructus, “fruit”), starting 18 or 19 August

We live about seven lines of latitude north of Paris, but the above is not too far off in terms of a description of the weather where we are. I guess that’s particularly true as climate change warms the planet, meaning that weather which would have been ‘normal’ slightly further south than us in 1792, becomes the ‘new normal’ here in 2021.

More than anyone else I know, the seasons have a great affect upon my energy levels and disposition towards the world. Sometimes I wish it weren’t so, but I am not a robot. I’ve learned to embrace it, giving myself a break and expecting great things of myself at other times of the year.

According to the French Republican calendar we’re almost at the end of Brumaire. I would like to say publicly that Brumaire can get very firmly into the sea. I am looking forward to Frimaire, and then Nivôse starts on (or around) my birthday. But the real action starts in in the month of Germinal, towards the end of March.

Coincidentally, Germinal is also the name of Émile Zola’s masterpiece, an “uncompromisingly harsh and realistic story of a coalminers’ strike in northern France in the 1860s”. It’s one of my favourite novels.

Vive la révolution!

Image CC BY-SA Divadwg

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