Weeknotes #2

What were the main things this week??

When I started my maternity leave I really wanted to return with a few time saving automations in place to help reduce the mental load of my admin. So, in those precious hours that I gave myself to get back into the swing of things I set about designing myself a capacity planning spreadsheet with the idea of linking this to my calendar, and eventually to help me with invoicing at the end of each month. This week was the week that I was going to get it finished and working ?? Well, that was the plan that I began the week with anyway…?

What was going well this week??

Returning to work after a while has given me the opportunity to both reset and to reach out to my network and reconnect with some that I may have lost connection with. This week I spent most of the day on Wednesday reaching out to people to say ‘hi’ and get some catch up chats booked in. It’s great to see my calendar start to fill with some calls and to remind myself of the strong and interesting network I have built over the years.?

What was challenging this week?

9 months out has taken its toll a little and hidden some of my knowledge deep down in the memory banks. Remembering how to programme in low-code to get my capacity sheet going was a big effort and felt like moving a huge rock up a mountain. First thing next week I’ll be researching courses to get me back up to speed. Any suggestions are very welcome!

What have I been reading or thinking about this week??

This week the government launched their AI Opportunities Action Plan, I focused my reading time on the Changing lives by embracing AI section, as that’s where my understanding of and interest in AI lies right now. Overall it makes a lot of sense and there are certainly some things that can be adopted relatively quickly and easily by organisations and teams across the charity and social impact space. The most obvious being Using AI assistants to do repetitive tasks faster. And now, with Google Gemini being available to those on non profit workspace plans, this is something we can begin to achieve. I’m not talking about using gen AI to draft your funding proposals (there’s been a lot of talk of that recently) but to support you in responding to those FAQs more efficiently as just one example.?