The goals less taken

weeknotes

Mar 25

March has been an unroutinely month which has been throwing me off my game. But we’re back, a little sleep deprived, feeling 25, and more optimistic than ever.

Week in a nutshell

Revisiting the hierarchy of one of our services to tie it back up with our gateway service
All efforts into carrying Release 1.1 forward, as we define priorities for the next few releases
Updated some internal sketches for our working release (a tedious task that may lose relevance completely)
1-1s with a few aspiring service designers
Finally completed my self-review ahead of moderation

Who I wanted to be

I spent a few hours on Friday filling out my self review by digging through one performance year’s worth of feedback. Where I work, we do this to evidence the goals we set for ourselves in the first quarter, and these were mine:

Be an advocate for design
- Practice coaching/leading/mentoring
- Demonstrate the value of design to ‘non’ designers
- Act as a voice for design, especially as the sole designer of a project

Be a versatile design champion (hybridise)
- Get comfortable with different roles (i.e. strategy)
- Hone my technical craft
- Expand skillset to the point of delivery (i.e. deliver wireframes as a UX designer)
Be embedded in my niche as a gov/public service designer
- Embarking on my masters in healthcare
- Establish my design specialism (GDS)
- Put myself out there (networking)

In hindsight, I made some pretty good calls: they allowed me to fuel on progression, and helped me navigate decisions like embarking on my masters and the project hats I wanted to wear.

Who I want to be

Looking ahead, there’s a lot here I want to revisit. Sharing goals is scary. It lends to external accountability — i.e. when I signed up for my 10km race, I held back on telling anyone for a while in fear of failure or giving up.

These are the times I remind myself of the value of learning/sharing in the open — not for validation or accountability — but simple, candid honesty and passive collaboration. It means being open about what I’ve done, but also how I sometimes don’t, and inviting myself/others to better feed into my work.

I’m someone that is always goal-hungry, to the point where I forget that even meeting one goal can be an incredibly hard feat (let alone three stacked in different areas of my life). This year, I’d like to be more precious about setting goals that serve me, be more open about what I’d like to achieve, and even invite others with like-minded goals to meet them with me.

Run notes (Week 6/11)

This week I completed 2 out of 3 runs. My easy run felt fresh and HR-happy. I had missed my intervals because my knees were feeling off, but I let my guilt go with a 10k redemption at the end of the week. It was veryyy slow, but felt veryyy good. I hope my joints can keep up with my overly competitive self.

I also finally gave pilates a go, which really humbled me. For ADHD reasons I struggle to enjoy low-intensity exercises (i.e. yoga), but my body is craving low-impact these days. Pilates/barre is slow, but these low-rep, high-effort movements kept me on my toes (literally).