- 27-05-2024
- 03-06-2024
- 10-06-2024
- 17-06-2024
- 24-06-2024
- 01-07-2024
- 22-07-2024
- 29-07-2024
- 05-08-2024
- 12-08-2024
- 19-08-2024
- 26-08-2024
- 09-09-2024
- 16-09-2024
- 23-09-2024
- 30-09-2024
- 07-10-2024
- Replace this text with a one/two sentence description of who you helped this week and how.
- Replace this text with a bullet point list of where you struggled this week.
This space is yours to add to as needed.
- Co-working: small group of familiars just checking in <3
- Reviewed agreements for new collaborations
- Some admin support for the new grant
- 1-1s with Bethan and Yo
- Closing out more historic grants with PEM
- Meeting with lawyers for consultancy agreements for people working with us a lot
- Chair team meeting (badly)
- Sort mileage process
- Some more parts of the finance handbook
- Paying people
- SSI4 check in meeting
- Crowdsourcing some help around the Ally Skills training
- Being sick this week and not quite as much progress as I hoped but things are in a place where I can be away for a bit.
Managed quite a few other things: taxes and peer review for a paper!
- A break from finance things to deep dive into SSI consultancy docs. It was nice to do something else and feel somehow knowledgable.
- Big frog task: Go through all unassigned transactions and unblock budgets going forward.
- 1-1 with Bethan and Yo
- Leadership check-in
- Spontanously creating a draft annual budget
- Scheduled SSI 360 Training
- Exploring some travel policies
- Preparing meeting notes and sorting thoughts on budgets and to a degree also fiscal sponsorship
- Updated all OLS team meetings until the end of the year
- Added various sections of the finance handbook
- Felt not great energy wise as there was a potential cold coming on most of the time. Still feel that I'm not sure I'm overall on track.
Wrote a blog - another item that has been pushed for ages and it's finally done.
- Interesting discussions around neurodiversity and confirmation that all my banging on about user manuals is going the right direction - even if there is still plenty to learn and improve.
- Labeled the right finance inbox properly
- Lots of attempts at scheduling things - and then learning why date polls fail
- Fiscal sponsorship: more invoicing and proper catch up and reporting
- Closing out some old grants with the accountants
- Governance committee meeting
- Some progress on the finance handbook: three more sections written, a few more progressing with the background info to get there next week
- Some project reflection: more to dos that need to be recorded properly
- 1-1 with Yo
- Some support for Bethan working through microgrants
- Didn't tackle the big backlog task. Recognising that I'm making progress even if there's still plenty to do.
- Procrastinated on a few other things when energy was low at the start of the week.
Scottish autumn weather is all over the place. And I'm really struggling to become a 7h work day person.
- Moving the office to the garden for some tasks to make the most of some nice weather.
- Good news on some of the proposals we have been working on.
- Some more Wellcome reporting follow up, prepping a retro
- Professional development chat with Bethan
- Preparing and chairing the team meeting
- Another SSI catch up meeting
- Starting to schedule training for SSI mentors
- Starting on the honoraria tracking spreadsheet
- Reimbursement for Debs
- A few bits on invoicing for fiscal sponsorship
- Reconciliation
- Hosting the co-working
- Kicking off some offboarding GitHub issues
- Read up on CZI reporting, deadlines
- Fighting Stripe
- Some more sections for the finance handbook
- Reviving an idea on a core reading list for OLS
- Felt like the backlog isn't getting smaller and the additional time is just used to tackle new issues that pop up.
Really enjoyed a few days of nice weather and ending work early to make time for reading in the garden.
- Joining the facilitator onboarding session: wasn't super prepared but felt happy improvising and hanging out with the OLS community.
- Planning the finance policy sprint: I have a handbook table of contents and some of the items even link to content!
- A lot of meeting prep: preparing a proper retro/professional development discussion with Bethan, preparing for chairing the team meeting
- I met my coach! Interesting experience and looking forward to learning more.
- 1-1 with Bethan and then Yo, team coffee
- Unassigned transactions
- A lot of budget reallocation and staring at spreadsheets.
- Some more Catalyst financial reporting
- Some catching up and planning of SSI4 work.
- Thought I could progress finance policy more than I thought and then hit a budget issue that felt more urgent.
- Potentially spent a lot of time on small untangible bits.
RSECon24 is over. Not sure about large in-person conferences and their benefit to me. But means there are less things to chase. Having more time to catch up on OLS things so far seems really helpful, brain feels less stressed when things don't go quite to plan.
- Quiet time to catch up on a few things.
- Reconciliation
- Set up Humanitix so we can get money
- Companies house filing
- DRA Canada budget tracking and catch up
- SSI mentorship coworking
- 1-1 with Yo, leadership catch up
- Brain overload: noticed I missed things on GitHub and there are too many slack pings.
How is RSECon already next week. And I'm not prepped :(.
- Wrangling Xero by myself
- Grant budget rework
- Sort some FSC bits just for others to pop up
- Hopefully last round of Wellcome reporting
- More SSI work scoping
- Governance committee
- Team meeting
- Probably more small things that I forgot.
- Time! And abandoned a lot of tasks for next week when they ended up being more complex than they initially looked. Also didn't feel great during the second half of the week which made everything harder.
Goal in sight for RSECon24 org work!
- Talking about pens during co-working :) and ideas on making good use of time during our team meeting
- A lot of meeting scheduling and reshuffling
- Discussing how we might ensure our honoraria info is up to date
- Brainstorming finance sprint more
- Meeting our new PEM contact
- Sorting some unusual honoraria and staff onboarding tasks
- RSEAUNZ FSP update
- OSCARS grant prep discussions
- 1-1 with Yo and Bethan
- WIP on Catalyst reporting and budget tracking
- WIP on processes around closing out old grants
- Quite a few things got pushed again as new tasks popped up. Getting slightly better at not feeling bad about this and creating more realistic to do lists. WIP.
RSECon seems to be progressing ok. And I'm better at boundaries and days off.
- Chat with another Chief of staff at a small org: interesting insights but also, there's sooo much to learn and do
- Wellcome report submitted
- Next NASA invoice and updated budget documentation
- UK honoraria tracking spreadsheet
- Several small chasing and scheduling tasks
- Proposal review with Malvika
- Finance risk register
- Pushed plenty of things to next week again - struggling to figure out how long things take when plenty of new things pop up throughout the week.
Getting better at keeping to days off and enjoying some of the Fringe.
- Check-in meeting with the SSI around consultancy
- Retro with Yo
- PAYE has been submitted by our accountants
- Reconciliation including several minor follow ups and more closing out of microgrants
- Setting up spreadsheets for tracking NASA finances troughout year 2
- Still blocked on the Wellcome budget but way to move this next week
- Motivation and focus on other tasks, brain struggled with things
- Better at sticking to days off and making use of the sunny weather and reading in the sunshine.
- Need to get a grip on RSECon prep next week!
- Starting to move things to GitHub and reducing the bus factor a little bit
- Lots of catching up on inboxes and writing a decent to do list
- Some Wellcome reporting follow ups
- Some PAYE follow ups
- Governance committee meeting
- Check-in with Bethan
- Reading Paz's paper
- A lot of small-ish catch-ups after the holidays
- Noting down some reflections on the last few months in the new role
- Figuring out the correct salary for myself
- General overwhelm at coming back to a long to do list after holidays
- Feeling slow and unproductive: managed only a small part of my to do list and had to go beyond the contracted time
- Low energy week, feels like I need holiday again.
- Liked the small, quiet co-working to help think through RSE Worldwide overwhelm
- Trying to work on a general healthier work life balance, let's see how that works out.
- Slack reflections on dealing with low energy weeks
- Submitted Wellcome finance report
- Submitted next NASA invoice
- DRA Fellow debrief and contract offer
- 1-1 with Bethan making sure she's set up to cover the next few weeks
- Review budgets for ongoing grant proposals
- SSI contract follow up
- Reviewing resident fellowship write up
- Fiscal sponsorship report
- Director retreat prep
- To do list write up/wind down for holidays
- Motivation to do more than was needed before the break. Definitely more on the do less and recharge side than being super busy before the break.
- Working on better boundaries to ensure things can stay sustainable going forward.
- Attended a call on Remote Team Cohesion and it was validating how difficult this is across the board.
- NASA invoice was paid!
- Finally might be on the right salary
- Catch-up with the accountants and I kind of understood what they were asking
- Last Open Seeds Fellow interview
- Governance committee reflection call
- Bethan 1-1
- Fiscal Sponsorship actions
- Finally writing up the Fiscal Sponsorship processes as I have managed them so far
- Externalising some of the finance backlogs
- General energy levels and trying to keep the brain from losing track on all the things, so ready for a holiday.
- Managed tons of feedback calls for the SSI Fellowship
- Wrangled GitHub for a CW24 write up - almost ready to wrap that up!
- Managed to tick off a few items from the to do list. Bethan's personal user manual is beautiful to read.
- A lot of small item catch-ups and updates for the accountants: equipment, PAYE, salary allocations, etc.
- Training "Finance for non-financial managers"
- DRA Fellow interviews
- Finished onboarding with Bethan
- A lot. General energy and motivation. Feeling inadequate and not in the right place and I don't know if it's just because I need a break or more than that.
- Good news about getting to attend RSECon - need to figure out how that aligns with what I want to do in general. Getting closer to wrap some of the other things up that have cost a lot energy.
- Hosting co-working: it's a great reminder that it's a valuable space for people.
- More Bethan onboarding and exploring of new finance processes
- Some of the outstanding payments
- Preparing DRA Fellows recruitment next steps
- Another chief of staff check in conversation
- Reconciliation
- Updates to our accountants
- Definitely didn't get any forecasting done. Backlog is so big that tasks take so long now and create issues that need not be there if I managed things in a more timely manner.
- Not feeling bad about just working my hours even if that means the backlog isn't going down the way I might want it to.
- I finally managed a day off! And used it to binge Traitors US season 2 in 24h 😂...
- Onboarding Bethan! It's lovely to have someone to check my thoughts and processes and keep me organised!
- Some cleaning up of Emmy's legacy accounts while setting up Bethan
- 2 chats with staff to scope chief of staff work
- Reading terms and conditions and pushing one contract forward
- Some follow up on conversations from last week
- Pushing some hiring organising forward
- Some regular payments
- Fiscal sponsorship process reflection with Rowland
- 1-1 with Yo
- Governance committee follow up
- Some microgrant inbox tidying
- Definitely ended up tired and low on energy at the end of the week. Still feel behind on a lot of things.
- Almost wrapped up CW24! Big pieces are out of the way for a bit at least and I'm close to wrapping up something else. So looking forward to quieter weeks and some recovery.
- Relief: Getting the NASA invoice done!
- Sorting some of the prep for Bethan starting next week.
- Getting some of the Chief of Staff chats scheduled and prepared
- Support Malvika in the governance committee meeting
- Hosted the co-working call
- Catch-up call about some other proposals
- Pushed some tasks further again as the NASA stuff took really long.
- Been to an in-person event again which was ok. Still not great at networking. Weather is getting better and life seems to get a bit quieter.