#23 Christmas, Mentoring and a New Year's Eve at the Treehouse

Weeknotes — Monday 22 December – Sunday 28 December 2025 ish

Summary of the week

Christmas week. A proper mix of rest, family, mentoring calls and preparing for the new year.

IAF Conference

IAF conference meeting this week — even over Christmas the work continues, planning away for the big announcement, the tickets going online, and all the social media to support it. Along with the changes happening with the move, across streamlining all the tools used in order to remove redundant ones.

Dot and Dash

Consultancy interview prep this week. Keeping that going alongside everything else, it's been a while since I have had an interview. Mind-mapping all the questions, practicing with AI, using AI to act as different people such as a hiring manager, HR, heads of departments, principals, and leads. I have to rehearse and practice different ways of explaining the work and projects I've done. From those who understand User Centred Design to those who don't.

Meet up with Marzena. It's always a great conversation when we plan our meetups and discuss the angle she's working on, based on her conversations with the target audience for the workshop we're co-designing.

Had a great mentoring call this week, seeing progress and confidence building, this is definitely a great time of year to explore what has been going on. There is something about mentoring conversations in this quieter period of the year that feels more expansive — more space to think.

Surprise call came in with a fellow facilitator who trained me with ICA ToP methods, about some work for next year. Fingers crossed on that one.

Family

Christmas with both sets of parents, lucky for us this year we were hosting the in-laws, which means lots delicious treats, as I get the home cooking geek on and prepare lots of things from scratch. Always good food, good company, a proper pause. We headed to visit my family after Christmas for another Christmas meal, always a great bonus to have another lot of food and present opening.

App Development

Another body doubling Thrive session this week even during the Christmas break, keeping the routine going keeps me accountable too.

Creativity

With time together and with family, we break open the simple games for parents and in-laws, and we get time to play more complex, hour-long board games to immerse ourselves in.

I wonder...how often people connect through playing board games, and just getting into a zone of being away from phones and TV's.

If this resonated, pass it on to someone who might enjoy it. Subscribing is free and you can hop in and out whenever suits you.

To join our community and stay updated on app development, click this link.