I’ve flipped the format around a bit this week, putting all the information up at the front and the analysis towards the end.
This more closely reflects how I actually do the retro process and I think makes more sense so will try it moving forwards.
Place Card Stats
Bit of a down week from last week with $116 revenue.
Not really sure whether there’s any rhyme or reason to these cycles or is just normal flux.
Will be interesting to see what kind of change the New Year brings.
Time
Pretty heavy week on the contracting side at about 33 hours working for others.
Week 39 time breakdown
The main self-motivated bit was working on a fun/silly side-project I’m calling “chat stats” which has been on the back burner
for ages. Everything else is pretty normal.
Notable: I spent less than half an hour on place cards this week.
Combined with the above revenue, that’s the first time place cards has exceeded my consulting rate per hour!
Goal Report Card
| # |
Project / Area |
Goal |
Grade |
| 1 |
Place cards |
Pick something from product backlog. Do something for traction. |
F |
| 2 |
Make / Ship Stuff |
Chat stats alpha live |
A |
| 3 |
Generate Revenue |
Continue pushing / working on other freelancing engagements |
A |
| 4 |
Dimagi |
Continue making useful contributions |
B |
Comments
- As mentioned, did basically no place cards work this week apart from keeping the lights on.
- The alpha is live. I haven’t yet soft launched it because I’m trying to fix a few final bugs and respond
to some feedback that came up in user testing with the wife.
- Picked back up on contract work and got things back into shape this week.
- Seems to be going okay. Still just recalibrating my own expectations to the reduced velocity of larger organizations.
Reflections
Overall it was a good week! I felt rested and motivated, and had fun working on chat stats.
As the year winds to a close I can’t help thinking about 2018 and how I’d like it to be different—as
well as the same—as 2017. Things have felt relatively stable since my return to Dimagi and I find
myself wondering whether that stability might a bad thing?
The most interesting things that have come out of my last year have come in times of fear and uncertainty,
and I would like to continue to do interesting things.
This has me wondering whether I should strive for more fear and uncertainty.
I’ve also been finding that as the amount of self-driven work that I do has gone substantially down,
this retro process has become less and less valuable for me.
So I’m also going to think about whether I want to keep doing it—especially publicly—moving forwards.
If you do read this and enjoy seeing/reading these (or think I should stop) feel free to send me a quick note or a clap on Medium
as that will help send a signal to me that there might be some value in these beyond what I get for myself.
Life
Also got the chance to explore a new hike this week—Elsie’s Peak out of Fish Hoek.
It was very short but quite nice, with interesting terrain and rock formations and nice views of the surrounding lands.
We caught a show at Cape Farmhouse afterwards.
This week’s instagram brought to you by the new AR features that showed up in my camera app.
—Cory