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Month: November 2016

Weeknote 44/2016

Posted on by Doug Belshaw

This week I’ve been:

  • Sending out Issue #235 of Doug Belshaw’s Thought Shrapnel, my weekly newsletter loosely focused on education, technology, and productivity. It featured, among other things, monsters of edtech, legacy ports, and daybook journaling. Many thanks to Makers Academy for sponsorship!
  • Recording and releasing Episode 67 (‘Working open’) of Today In Digital Education, my weekly podcast with co-host Dai Barnes.  This week we discussed working ‘open’ (main topic) as well as our experiences of the 2016 Mozilla Festival, my new writing, the new MacBook Pro, the inevitability of being hacked, hypernormalisation, and working remotely. You can join the community to discuss this episode of TIDE in our Slack channel!
  • Recovering from a combination of MozFest and the clocks going back to GMT. I have to say that the period between now and Christmas is my least favourite of the year. This year it’s worse because we haven’t taken our usual holiday in Malta/Gozo to get some sunshine.
  • Cancelling my gym membership after they hiked the price up 50%. It’s not so much that the actual price is so high in comparison with other gyms, it’s just the lack of investment means I don’t think it’s necessarily good value. I guess it’s a protest. My wife has joined a different gym, I’m just going to do weights at home and run more (as I found the problem was actually around raising my heart rate too high, not running per se)
  •  Composing a batch of NewCo Shift GSD posts which will be published over the next week or so.
  • Researching, recording, editing, and releasing Chapter 2 of #uppingyourgame: a practical guide to personal productivity. This update was all about nutrition which I’ve mostly got nailed, although the day before recording I actually managed to eat three egg custards in a row…
  • Debriefing MozFest with my We Are Open co-operators, Bryan Mathers and John Bevan.
  • Running (with Bryan) a Thinkathon for Sunderland City Council around some plans they’ve got to build a consortium to design and deliver a badge-based skills passport.
  • Writing:

Next week I’m working from home on Monday, attending VentureFest on Tuesday, travelling on Wednesday, and then working with Victoria College in Jersey on Thursday/Friday.

Image CC BY-NC Jeff Wallace

Chapter 2 of my new audiobook on productivity is now available!

Posted on by Doug Belshaw

I’m in the midst of creating an audiobook entitled #uppingyourgame: a practical guide to personal productivity (v2). Many thanks to those who have already bought the book as soon as it was released. I’m pleased to announce another chapter is now available.

Chapter 2 is concerned with one of the three ‘pillars’ of productivity: Nutrition. This chapter is full of actionable insights and you should be able to stop listening and start implementing straight away!

As usual, I’m using my OpenBeta publishing model, meaning that this product will get more expensive as I add more content. The earlier you buy into the process, the cheaper it is! If you buy Chapter 1 now, I’ll send you every iteration until it’s finished.


Buy now for £2

(click the button to see the proposed chapter listing)

Need a sample? Here’s a two-minute intro:

Note: I’ll email existing backers and keep posting here when each new chapter is available. The ‘canonical’ page for this audiobook, however, is here. That will always be up-to-date!

How I’m Getting Shift Done

Posted on by Doug Belshaw

NewCo Shift is a publication on Medium’s platform. It launched in April 2016 and covers “the biggest shift in business and society since the industrial revolution”.

This week, they launched a new part of the publication with the title ‘Getting Shift Done’ [GSD], divided into a Management section and a Tips and Tricks section. It’s an experiment, made possible with the help of sponsors Xero (which I use for Dynamic Skillset) and Work Market (which they’re using to manage freelancers for GSD).

I’m pleased to say that I’ll be contributing around five articles a week to NewCo Shift GSD. My first, How to Productively Stalk your Co-Workers using Dropbox Paper is now live (with a creepy, if germane, accompanying image). My focus will be sharing very straightforward ‘howto’-style posts, mostly for tools that I use and recommend.

If you appreciate my work, I could use your support in favouriting, commenting, bookmarking, and otherwise sharing my work on this new platform. Thanks in advance!

Note: I’ll include these posts in my weeknotes and Thought Shrapnel newsletter, rather than cross-post every single one here!

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