Changelog: Week 41

Things I’ve been up to this week, what I’ve read and what I have planned for the upcoming week. See the first Changelog post for some background on this format.

The Weekly Review is a ritual of the GTD® system, some of which I’ve adapted into my own little personal productivity system.

Here’s what happened this past week:

Changelog

More Big Ideas™

These days it seems like my life is entirely post-its, sketches, Scapple boards and Keynote slides. I’m covering a lot of ground, between client work, preparing my talks for Fagfestival ‘18, and generally putting the pieces together on Glue, my collective approach to using various frameworks in guiding product development.

Just this thursday, I completely barfed and starting seeing the big picture, as I mapped current and future todo’s:

From my home office, and yes, that is crayons on the wall. Dang toddlers ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

#JTBD·CPH Meetup № 5

Is well underway, with both a guest speaker and — fingers crossed — a really great venue secured. Hoping to announce this coming week, so keep an eye on the Meetup page!

New content brewing

As a by-product of all those big ideas, I’m channeling some of the energy into blog and social posts as I go along:

The great thing about this approach is how it allows me to test the waters and get a feeling for which ideas ‘stick’.

LIQ · EARTH

If you didn’t know, I happen to be married to an insanely smart woman, who’s just as huge a geek as I am. Only her passion is in beauty, skin care and what makes people feel their best selves. So much so, in fact, that she and a partner founded a tiny business on the side, to publish LIQ, an online magazine.

I help them with tech and a bit of design & form, using Readymag to publish. And, just this week they released № 4, the EARTH issue.

Check it out:

https://earth.liqmag.dk/

Being a Manager of One

Since focusing (even) more on how I get things done, posting these Changelogs for four weeks now, a funny thing has happened:

I feel more in control of my schedule, I don’t stress as much about making ends meet, and, most importantly, I feel like I have the mental space to explore bigger ideas, and just generally taking the time. This is huge, coming from someone who’s been chronically overworked for a hot minute.

I really felt it this friday, as the day unfolded:

  • Had a nice, relaxed breakfast, doing a little prepping for today’s event:
  • Visiting newly-found friends at Operate A/S, to discuss JTBD, Demand Thinking and similar shenanigans with their UX team
  • Coming back from that session, inspiration struck and I banged out an article with 10 tips for presentations (more on that in the newsletter soon!)
  • Then, that post-it soup above spilled over and onto my wall
  • Did some more work on my outline(s) for Fagfestival ‘18, adding details, thoughts, etc.
  • A good friend called, and we decided to grab a spontaneous coffee in the afternoon. No problem, because my schedule had room for it!
  • I picked up the kids to go get a bunch of candy (friday = candy day!), and, since my wife was out, we cheated and got dinner at Mickey D’s. (yes, I know, but they get the job done better than most for this purpose.)

None of this would’ve happened, and come together so beautifully, had I not budgeted out my energy and focus for the week, specifically optimizing for buffer periods and lots of time to work on the business, not just in it.

You should try out this way of being a Manager of One [1] — and do let me know if you do!

Link pack

Here’s my recommendations for the week:

casperk

About Casper Klenz-Kitenge

I live in Copenhagen, Denmark with my wife and our two kids. My day-to-day is about finding solutions to real problems, making my work matter by helping people achieve their goals. You should sign up for my newsletter to get a fresh perspective on work.