The Overindulgence

For the last two weeks I’ve been on holiday mostly, but I did work two days this week. More on work later.

Holiday

We went to Avignon, France, and then headed to Cartagena, Spain. I’ve been to both places before but only spent 24 hours in Avignon a few years ago, for a friend’s wedding. Holidays are gastronomy tours for me, and there was lots of eating and drinking done in Avignon and Cartagena. So I’m quite tired now! Definitely overindulged.

What else are you going to do in Provence though? They produce some of the best food and wines in France, and we were anything but disappointed with what was on offer. Check out Aimé, O’Papilles and Carré du Palais if you’re in town. We also rented bikes and cycled over to Châteauneuf-du-Pape, having a glorious picnic along the way: apricots, artichokes, baguette, cherries, cheese, mini saucisson, and a bottle of rosé, all sourced from the farmers’ market. Heaven.

Had two excellent lunches in Cartagena too: at Nuestra Tradicion Venta El Abasto, serving traditional Murcian fare; and at Ricardo Fuentes E Hijos, a little seafood bar run by a fishing company. That was followed by food at Almo in Murcia on the last day, a Michelin-starred place in Murcia. The food was really special, modern twists on local traditional food. Properly loved it.

Reading

Being on holiday also means having enough time for reading. I’m four-fifths through The Three Body Problem, by Liu Cixin. It’s surprisingly engrossing despite being a novel wrapped around an explanation of the laws of physics. Good themes though, on existentialism and planetary-over-national values. Haven’t watched the Netflix series and may not, will probably read it instead.

Tech/digital news

Also read lots of articles and blog posts, and continued following the gradual exposition of what Apple will be introducing at WWDC tomorrow. I mused on how Apple will need to rebuild a lot of trust in Siri or give their AI features a different name, but was surprised by how few people responded or commented (on LinkedIn, Bluesky and Mastodon).

Considering the majority of my network is people working in tech/digital, I see few people posting about developments in the industry. Digital perspective and being an expert in the wider digital economy and advances in technology is on the skills profile for designers and product managers, so you figure there would be more industry chat.

Design systems in government

I’ve been asked to do a talk about managing design systems in government, which I’m really humbled by! It’s giving me the push I needed to consolidate my thoughts on product-managing common platforms in the public sector, and the models of thinking and collaborating that bring out the best. The talk isn’t until October but I’ll blog about it afterwards.

Work

On my first day back, I had fully intended to clear my inbox and get ready for a new product manager joining the team this coming Monday. But instead I went into the office to help psd with a presentation to our director general, which went really well. It meant I had to think about the future and where we’re going, plus how we present that, as the majority of my work so far has been very focused on the now, the next 6 months. I’ve got time set aside (on a train) on Tuesday to write it up more fully, for the team and for an incoming government.

There’s some team design and ways of working niggles being surfaced by the work we did in the design sprint. It’s something I’ll need to address through our strategy and roadmap too, creating a bit more alignment. Some people are in operations mode when in reality we’re still building the minimum viable service – but there’s opportunity to change mindsets in a meeting on Monday. The vision stuff I mentioned earlier will help too.

Running (or the lack thereof)

Having rested it for well over 5 weeks, my hip had started to feel a lot better. But yesterday I decided to test it out, see if it had fully healed, so I went for a 15-minute run. Unfortunately the pain returned which means it’s going to need a lot longer, and that means no running. I’m really sad about that. Like I said in a previous weeknote, running is a huge part of my resilience routine: it’s meditative, it’s a stress reliever, it aids with good sleep, and it makes me a happier person. But I’ll just have to get used to the gym and an elliptical trainer for a few months.

Yesterday afternoon I went for a running gait analysis. Interestingly my running form is ideal for long-distance trail running, but bad for shorter distances on road. Given that I do a mix of those two styles, I’ll have to work on the improvements for road running: leaning forward less, bringing my heels up more, and putting more spring in my step. The technician gave me some exercises that can help, so I can work on those in the gym.

Bookmarks

· Weeknotes

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