a fresh start
Hello
In June I accepted a permanent role as an agile coach to start in September. This is (almost) my first job since I took time off after the birth of our twin boys three years ago. I'm very much looking forward to going back to work. I've loved having this time off to get to know the new members of our family, but I have also been a stay at home mum for quite long enough!
In order to facilitate my return to the world of agile coaching I've been going through my old notes and the text books I've previously read as revision. I have such disparate sources of notes (including 20 paper notebooks) that I've decided to digitise and collate everything. Thankfully I can touch type, so copying over my notes is not too taxing. I'm using OneNote with a OneDrive subscription so that I can access my notes anywhere, both for adding to and referencing. I've been amazed with just how many notes I've taken over the last 20 years and how accessible they still are.
Another part of the puzzle for my successful return to work is productivity and organisation. Going back to work adds a lot of extra things that I need to get done in a day, and as such I need to improve upon the general level of organisation that I used to need to maintain gainful employment.
I stumbled upon Tiago Forte's Second Brain methodology recently and I'm now reading his new book on how to create one's own Second Brain. Many of these practices I am doing or have done in the past (like most of the people who would likely read his book). The big novelty of his work for me is that his notetaking system is geared towards producing some kind of creative output. I'm finding it all very inspirational. I'm trying to use starting a new job as a psychological fresh start; a point of enthusiasm and motivation that can help to form new habits.
I love writing and sharing the things I'm learning in various ways. I have been unable to find time to write - or anything I want to write about - while being on parental leave, and I wonder how I'm going to be able to find time while working full time and fulfilling my duties to my family. I used to work a lot of hours on my career and now I need to take it a bit slower so that I can fit it all in. My career aspirations are unchanged, so I need to find a balance that is unclear to me at this time. The one thing I do know is to take baby steps.
My previous newsletter was quite structured, and over time I found that confinement counterproductive, and I grew to resent publishing one each month. In the spirit of learning from my mistakes, I'm going in the extreme opposite direction this time and not giving myself any rules. Sometimes this could a journal like entry (such as this issue), or something more educational, or a curation, or maybe just a bunch of coaching images and questions. I hope that you find this journey as interesting as I hope to, and that it might even inspire you in the future.
Georgina