#31 Workshop prep, strategy planning, mentoring and a bit of creativity
Weeknotes — Monday 16 February – Sunday 22 February 2026
A juggling week with mentoring, strategy conversations, and lots of visuals to prep for workshops and three birthday celebrations in Bristol
Dot and Dash
Had a couple of mentoring calls this week, one on the programme I am on with Sheffield Digital, which is about halfway through our time together. Another person interested in the work I do, after finding me on LinkedIn, was curious about the work I do and approaches to getting into it. I'm going to charge for 'picking my brains' as they take up time and it's work I have paid for over the years, and while I don't mind sharing and learning at the moment, my time is super precious. I've got a bunch of resources I collated together which I keep track of in my Notion pages, so I could extract some useful things from them.
One thing in my strategy review was identifying gaps and opportunities. I will launch a paid mentoring service so that people can have a session with me. This has cropped up several times, adding this to my list of services: moving out of the food industry, facilitation, career changes, and user-centred design. I've built up a portfolio of success stories which I need to put out there and be more visible in the array of work I do.
This week is workshop planning for the Pathways of the Plateau programme with Sheffield Digital, and I am working on a version of Participatory Strategic Planning workshops that apply to the small businesses that are attending. Preparing half a day's worth of visuals and interactive exercises so they can do this for their own businesses. I don't have a gigantic wall to display everything on in the space, so I will have to be clear and clever about how I go through the demos of the exercises.
IAF
The usual cadence of conference meetings with PK several times this week, along with keeping tabs on the conference inbox, answering lots of queries, and sorting things out with the venue. Attending the leadership meeting with an update on how things are progressing. The conference preparation is in a focused phase now, and the core team is creeping into their own work streams. I'm missing out on the facilitate Sheffield meet-up as it clashes with my contract work during the day now.
Juggling consultancy, workshops and community work
Contract work continues through the week alongside everything else. I am carving out time at either end of the day for the Skool community, which I am using to focus on any app work as well as creating content for mini experiments people can try out to help their ND brains and run their own businesses.
Pocket of creativity
One of my new, shiny, interesting hobbies has been to try out watercolour painting. I have been doing this before bed for the past week and created a little bookmark. As I am stretching my creativity and trying different media, getting into the flow of things.
App Development
I have been working on the research goals and all the docs for getting the usability testing up and running. It't great being able to work on your own timeline; however, I want to get this first iteration out for the initial concept testing. I am going to try the app with several people I know.
At some point, I need to get a proposal to the Cooper project with the work I can do and run a User Research training session over a lunchtime.
I wonder...how I can sustainability juggle all the conference event planning alongside my contract work, feels like everything has landed at once. (which is great, but there is no downtime for the next few months)
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