Why weeknotes?
I’ve worked for myself since 2015. There are so many flexibilities that come with freelance work and opportunities to be part of different groupings and partnerships. The flipside is that it often feels there’s no-one to support you, to hold you to account. I have seen other people that I know use weeknotes as a way to document their work, their learnings and also personal reflections.
Although I am now employed in a team half the week, and have great support, I still appreciate the practice of reflecting. There are so few people that will see this website, but this is a space for me to regularly document my ideas, remind myself of what has been achieved and also keep a record of things that I have seen and heard.
2 April 2026
Things I have been working on
- Refining plans for some new research on extraction to make the best use of the team’s time and the data access we have. And all that has already been written.
- Qualitative interviews. Always a joy.
- Summarising 6 months of work into a pithy slide deck.
- Fundraising, always.
- Speaking to Times Radio on 18 March. I had to lie down afterwards. How anyone deals with the emotional exhaustion of media performance day in day out is beyond me.
Things I have been reading/ listening to
6 March 2026
Things I have been working on
- Plotting, planning and strategising key work for the next six months. More focus, and an explicit narrative goal.
- Meeting potential collaborators for work on extractive practices.
- Starting new projects that repeat previous work in a new context.
- Getting rid of subscriptions and admin I no longer need. More agile - what’s the bare minimum I need?
- Learning - with a focus on equity. Went to a great training taster on Neuroinclusive training, and accidently joined a reflection session on language and protected characteristics which left a lot to think about in terms of evolution of words.
- Catching up with a whole host of old colleagues.
Things I have been reading/ listening to
- Vittles on Jamie Oliver in Rotherham, extractivism and community power
- What the Estate Left Makes Possible
- Lots of documents on framing, seeing what people are saying about extraction (not much!)
13 February 2026
Things I have been working on
- Speaking with those in national government about what legislation is already in place and what needs to change to reduce extraction in the care system.
- Running an in person away day with colleagues. A joy!
- Supporting an in person event to set campaign goals.
- Catching up with people I’ve known along the way - some in person, some on rambling phone calls. Working out where we can help each other.
- Saying yes to more work with people I trust, despite a lack of detail as I know it will all work out.
- Focusing on less projects, more depth. 2026 will be about care and housing.
- Being interviewed on a podcast for the first time.
Things I have been reading/ listening to
- Vittles magazine 2: Bad Food
- Amahra Spence’s substack
- Women and Work: Feminism, Labour, and Social Reproduction
16 January 2026
Things I have been working on
- More conversations about care homes. Depressing stuff. But feels like we’re maybe on the cusp of enough people knowing and caring to make a big change. Planning next steps on that.
- Thinking about retrofit again. Going to be supporting with that a bit this year.
- Writing better organisational policies now I’ve had a rest.
- Reviewing the impact report of an organisation I have been coaching to develop a theory of change and measurement approach. It was a joy to read!
- Planning finances for the year; being clear how much extra work I need to search for. It’s doable but I have no motivation to seek out things at the moment.
- Trying Gen AI for the first time, properly. Trying to think of more things I can use it for, but realising I need to do lots more prep to be able to give decent commands to get a good output. I want a flow chart and someone told me to use AI. Feels like everyone is using it all the time to do summaries. I wonder how quickly we will all forget everything…
Things I have been reading/ listening to
18 December 2025
Things I have been working on
- Follow-up from the Ending extraction in the UK care system report. Online seminars, invitations to other people’s events. Learning that its so much worse than it seems. Making connections, plotting for the new year. 2026 will need energy and collaboration.
- Finishing a the report for the survey of partners. Spending a very happy day in Canva editing and formatting. I really needed a day without thinking to end the year.
- Catching up with the new lead for the organisational policy work. Making a plan for my time. Feeling like it’s all more doable.
- Doing the classic “let’s discuss this in the new year”.
- Stopping. Realising how utterly exhausted I am.
Things I have been reading/ listening to
- Listen to the land speak
- Multitudes: how crowds made the modern world
- What Our Boys Are Really Telling Us
14 November 2025
Things I have been working on
- Prepping for and launch of the Ending extraction in the UK care system report. An amazing collaboration. Now to follow up with all the folks interested in doing something about it!
- Presenting the findings of the survey work back to a team on the launch day of the other report and being so tired I really wasn’t at my best. Need more rest time and less plates.
- Facilitating conversations about where to focus next year. Now to write a pithy summary!
- Joining the board of a CIC that uses food as a conduit for supporting families. Excited to support from afar.
- Struggling to find time for all the deep focused work I need to do on organisational policies. Feeling very stretched but also making peace with what I have done and the capacity people have to review the work (low!)
Things I have been reading/ listening to
- Perfection
- Off-White: the truth about anti semitism
- Many erudite LinkedIn posts.
- Vittles on Gails. An intersection of extraction, migration, skills and bad management.
10 October 2025
Things I have been working on
- Coming back rested from a break, straight into a period of travel for face to face workshops in Newcastle, London and Birmingham. Great to be with people in person. And after nearly 20 years I have finally cracked my routine for not burning out when travelling (it’s doing absolutely nothing other than the thing in person… don’t even try to work on trains)
- Managing to have deep, trusting, generative conversations in short periods with folk. Years of relationship building paying off!
- Interviews to go deeper into responses to a survey. Great to chat with brilliant people and hear their perspectives. Although now I have a lot of hand written scribbles to work through.
- Writing progressive organisational policies. How to be generous, yet practical. Clear yet comprehensive. A challenge and the person I was working with got a job so I am going at it alone. Less fun!
- Planning and running online workshops about a range of topics.
- Never-ending, relentless admin. Financial planning, emails.
Things I have been reading/ listening to
- The bastard of Istanbul
- Tributes to Manchán Magan in the Irish Times and from Blindboy
- Dispatches from the Diaspora
- Beautiful dispatches from the Manchester Mill
- Brilliant work from Common-wealth on Who Owns Britain (the design is gorgeous)
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