I’ve got a short weeknotes post this time — it’s a busy Monday.
Video: a murmuration of starlings over the sea as seen from Brighton’s Palace Pier. I left work early one day last week to see this – the starlings will only be doing their sunset ballet for another few weeks.
Goal performance
I worked on a presentation for a pitch that’s happening tomorrow. It’s been a good process so far: clear brief, transparent process, sensible timeline. Now I’m getting the fear, wondering if I’ve put enough time in, whether I’ve done a good enough job, and hoping that I’ll be able to present it well and convey what I want to convey. I want (and need) this work, and I know that I can do a great job for the client. But a lot of it comes down to chemistry. Plus, I’m sure the other people pitching have great experience to bring to bear on the project too. Pitching is an emotional rollercoaster.
I also wrote the latest edition of 10 Things/an article for my website: Advice for content teams about website redesigns. This one was hard. My editor Ruth was on holiday, and I rely on her so much. It was a slower, more careful process than usual. Reading it very slowly, out loud, helped a lot. I used to do this with everything, and I think it’s a habit I need to get back into.
Other than those two biggies, I was getting stuck into prepping for and running sprint planning meetings for the two advisory/coaching-based content strategy projects running at the moment.
Blockers
I think I’ve unblocked something that’s been holding me back for ages. I spent a lot of the weekend (I know) working on my website. I’ve been going back and forth for weeks on what platform to use. I started by prototyping a site in Kajabi, one of the tools I was weighing up. Doing so helped me realise that while it’d be convenient, it’d frustrate me too much. There’s not enough control, and I ended up with a lot of unanswered questions about accessibility and ethics. Sticking with WordPress plus some plugins is going to be the best option for me. It might seem like a waste of time, but it gave me the confidence that I’ve chosen the right tool. My staging site also looked a lot better than I remembered when I went back to it!
Next steps
This week I’m working on:
- More sprint-related activity, as we get work into progress
- The pitch (wish me luck)
- Tuning up the very, very basic design system I’ve been working on for my website
- Developing a set of content guidelines for a client
