I’m sure I’ll say this every week, but seriously, it’s flown by! This can only mean one thing — I’ve had fun right 😉

The feeling of the week: Successful

Things I’ve been working on

It’s a good job I write down a daily checklist of things I need to get done, not only so I can make progress in my projects, but when it gets to Saturday morning when I usually write my week notes, I have a complete mind blank of what’s happened in the last five days.

I started the week with a Kick-Off meeting with the Appsmith team to learn more about the second phase of work…

I recently published a weeknote where I realised I’d be contracting for 10 weeks, so thought I’d do an update at the 12-week mark about how the last three months have gone.

Luckily I’ve got a coach who I’m seeing each month and this is helping me acknowledge the key experiences I’m having as a contractor. Even though we’ve had only two sessions, here is what I’ve discovered so far:

I’m actually quite skilled and not just as a designer

Prior to contracting, I had worked at a company for 3 years where I went from an unconfident designer who’d only worked on one product, to someone who had bags…

Another week down — it’s now been 11 weeks I’ve worked as a contractor! Once again, I felt like nothing notably had happened this week, but here we are with a ~5-minute note about my week 👀

The feeling of the week: Proud

Things I’ve been working on

I’ve spent a lot of time wrapping things up and tieing up any loose ends of the project. I’ve focused on documenting all the work that I’ve done so far, all ready to hand over to the Appsmith team. …

My mojo for writing disappeared a month or so ago, and my coach recommended that I try Weeknotes. If you’re not familiar with Weeknotes, Catherine D’Ignazio explained it well when writing for Common Knowledge.

Weeknotes is the practice of publishing a blog, explaining what you’ve been up, generally on a weekly basis. They can come from individuals or groups.
Weeknotes emerged in 2009 at BERG, a London based design consultancy. Writing about their pre-history Matt Webb notes this practice has a longer history on the internet and an even longer one offline.

It's been 10 weeks since I’ve started the…

It’s now been two full weeks working with Rival, a London studio, and our client Appsmith. Rival worked with Appsmith last year and is now working with them again to look at their current product and areas we can improve. For those who haven’t heard of Appsmith before, Appsmith has created a low-code framework that allows developers to quickly and easily create internal tools.

With the initial groundwork completed when I joined the project, I wanted to focus on the research. …

Recently I was reading Elizabeth Uviebinené’s latest book titled “The Rest”. This book looks at how we work and how this can affect how we live and impact the greater community. Chapter two looks at business and what businesses could and should do to make work more meaningful. This chapter covers briefly Flat Hierarchy and has a case study from the founder of Proper. But upon reading, I wonder if the way we view Flat Hierarchy has since been skewed into a framework that no longer makes everyone feel included in a company, or more importantly, valued.

What is a Flat Hierarchy?

Within traditional businesses…

It’s the end of my first full week as a contractor, and I’m starting to realise what people mean when they say there aren’t enough hours in the day. This week has made me realise two things:

1. I relied a lot on my coworkers when in an agency, and
2. Contracting is a test of whether your process really works

Teamwork makes the dream work

It’s interesting to think that only two weeks ago, I was within a team who I had known for three years. I was used to the people, comfortable with our way of working, and I knew exactly how we worked best…

I’m now officially self-employed! 🥳

There ended up being only a day between leaving my full-time role at Inktrap and starting my first contracting role. I was fortunate enough to have spent the last few weeks winding down projects I’d worked on and letting clients know I was leaving, and I had a pretty relaxed notice period.

Meeting the team and understanding the project

The first day of contracting has equally been relaxed. On Thursday, I was warmly welcomed on a video call where we took part in a mini-workshop session defining how we liked to work.

It was a great workshop and something that I’d tried to create before to use…