#34 Early Starts and a Fun Board

Weeknotes — Monday 9 March – Sunday 15 March 2026

Summary of the week

So many early mornings this week! Lots of admin, squeezing in volunteer work either end of the days. Ticking off a Fun thing of our board.

IAF Conference event planning

Back on inbox duties this week. The volume of emails is growing, which means the conference is gaining momentum. I've been scheduling social media posts and cross posting which has taken up hours over the weekend. I caught up with core volunteers across different work areas, to help out with things.

The pre-meeting prep, conference planning, inbox triage all before I start my working day on consultancy work. With only a few weeks to go it really feels like activity is ramping up.

Dot and Dash

The consultancy project is moving along well. I am over halfway through and still uncovering a significant amount in the discovery phase. I love the messiness of a new project, unearthing lots of things and bringing sense and meaning into designing services.

Something that we started this year as co-founders was a fun list. Most of our evenings or weekends involve app development work, and we do our day jobs alongside it. We felt deflated and exhausted, staring at our screens and only discussing app work. So we changed things. We created the 'fun stuff' board. Listing all the things we wanted to do in the next few weeks, months, and year. Adding dates to them and then ticking them off when we did said 'fun stuff' - beats our kanban board of stuff to do!

Feels like we are living life doing more things together this way rather than buried in our work all the time. Love this 'to-do list' it's great to see all our ideas populate on there, it could be 'checked out a new coffee shop', 'go out for a meal at a new restaurant', a bike ride ,absolutely anything we want to experience.

App Development

A great catch-up with Rose, the incubator manager, this week to go through the next phase of plans. Things are moving, and it is satisfying to be working on something with a clear purpose. The community element is something I am grateful for and appreciating the connection with other ND entrepreneurs. I feel the urge to create an ND networking event which is based on the solution cafe and slightly different.

This week, the Skool community welcomed a new member, which always feels like a little win and a boost to the purpose of the work I am doing. Body doubling sessions continue, and the engagement is genuine and really lovely. There is something special about a space where people just show up and work alongside each other.

The Ivy. The Couple. The Photos.

The week ended on a brilliant note. A team away day at The Ivy Asia in Leeds. Lovely food, lovely people (two co-founders), a genuinely lovely afternoon where we talked about our plans for the future with the company and app development.

The highlight — and I use that word loosely was the couple at the table next to us. Absolutely stunning, the pair of them. Spent the entire meal taking photos of each other from every angle, all over the restaurant.

Meanwhile, I was just getting on with eating my food and looking absolutely nothing like a fashion shoot. Wearing my food on my clothes as per usual.

Weekend

A trip to the in-laws over the weekend was a lovely way to decompress after such a full week. Sunday ended with a final prep meeting with Penny Pullan for the visual workshop at the IAF conference.

I wonder ... do you keep a fun-to-do list? Not a bucket list, but a tiny list of things that bring you joy to spark up your week with things to look forward too.

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