- 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
- 21-10-2024
- 28-10-2024
- 04-11-2024
- 11-11-2024
- 18-11-2024
- 02-12-2024
- 09-12-2024
- 16-12-2024
- 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.
- Many meetings that were deep conversations with really, really useful input to reflect on. Plus the weather was fine most of the time, so it felt like overall one of the best weeks in a long time.
- A lot of executive meeting time.
- 1-1 with Bethan
- Catching up with some of the last minor bits of the CZI budget, it might be ready for submission now.
- Deep dive into salary allocations, double checking all of OLS's historic allocations and figuring out how to do better going forward
- Answering finance questions for a fellow
- Trying to balance the depressing news from the US/world
- There's still a lot of uncertainty, trying to prepare for quickly shifting things to keep going in the upcoming weeks.
- Doing a small, short term consultancy project which should be fun.
- Also, we have a mortgage offer.
- I liked the OLS-9 cohort reflections, felt like it was a good conversation.
- Sent NASA invoices
- NASA budget updates
- Governance meeting
- Team meeting
- Bethan 1-1
- Some accountant follow ups - still need to dig into some aspects to update CZI reporting
- Help answer some invoicing queries
- Review some of Bethan's documentation
- Salary projections
- Attend a PDR session on Principles of Negotiation
- Well, international politics hit hard this week and required some last minute shuffling of things. Feels like it's less of an issue though than it would have been a few months ago - I'm getting more used to dealing with s***. It costs overall energy though.
Hopefully unblocking some house stuff this weekend. Still a bit sick. Overall not a fan of January 2025.
- OLS9 graduations!
Surviving I guess? It was not a good week
- Meeting with PEM
- Follow up emails on budgets with PEM
- Bethan 1-1
- Governance committee member check in
- Team meeting
- NASA invoices are now so close to ready!
- Nebula finance meeting
- Trying to understand LinkedIn Ads
- Read the OLS impact paper
- Sorted reassignment of most travel
- Some small follow ups with the SSI
- Energy! Got a pretty bad cold and I'm not good at being sick. Should probably have taken time off but battled through just to then crash and be not great at some tasks. Having to do additional firefighting and ending the week with a red weather warning storm did not help.
Nope - just glad this week is over.
- Thinking about learning objectives and ways out of the finance funk I'm in.
- Reconciliation
- 1-1 with Bethan
- 1-1 with Yo
- Catch up with CS&S
- Catch up with our lawyers about consultancy agreements for our mentors etc.
- Team meeting
- Budget meeting
- Leadership catch-up
- Coaching call
- Prep meeting with accountants next week
- Hosting some co-working
- Deeeep dive into NASA budget: prepping invoices (to some degree), doing some projections, identifying areas that need more work and scheduling that
- Catch-up with accountants on salaries and upcoming NI changes
- Some minor things trying to manage calendars and shuffle meetings around.
- Didn't get to a few things I had on my initial to do list because the NASA budgets take so much more work and time.
- Husband was sick, so general energy levels in the house were not quite there.
- We're in the process of buying a house! It's a mix of extra stress and getting excited about all the possibilities.
- SSI Fellows mentor matching. It's hard and an art rather than a science but we created a really good first draft and it was fun brainstorming.
- Figuring out where we left off and checking a lot of inboxes and assigning/clearing out tasks
- Catching up on budgets and where we left off, more queries to the accountants
- Meeting rescheduling
- Some more prep for outstanding honoraria payments
- Attended a governance committee check-in meeting
- 1-1 with Yo
- OSPARK budget dive in, tracking prep, projections
- Some goal setting for 2025
- Busy schedules mean my day off isn't a day off for a while as it's the only option for some meetings :(
- Felt a bit all over the place and with no clear plan
- Not quite sure about my skills - again
- Kicked off some conversations around consultancy
- Gratitude exercise with Yo and Malvika. And a lovely RSECon24 thanks surprise package.
- Christmassy nails
- CZI reporting (almost done, took a whole day)
- Facilitated team year retro
- Paid all the outstanding things in the inbox and all honoraria and followed up on some microgrants so everyone has at least a status update before the break
- Bethan 1-1
- Catching up on CZI Masterclass plans
- Some SSI4 follow ups
- Well, turns out I still don't understand Xero, so all the money I thought I had found wasn't there. Caught it before any report was sent and I do have ideas how to fix it, but gosh it's frustrating.
- Last day felt stressful with a full to do list.
Nope, just glad I made it to the end of 2024.
- Seeing the new SSI Fellows announced.
- 1-1s with Bethan and Yo
- Meeting preparations for team retro and next year
- Finance check-in to get us started ok in 2025
- PEM follow ups to correct data
- Signed new contracts for myself and Bethan
- Reconciliation
- Minor updates to the finance handbook in line with things that have changed recently
- Unblocked Stripe
- Governance committee meeting
- SSI catch-up
- Hosted informal catch-up for OLS-9
- Felt there are a lot of tasks left/coming up that I'm not keen on and that combined with darkness affects motivation.
Got lovely Christmas mail.
- Visiting family
- Catalyst finance reporting
- Catching up on inboxes
- Finalizing an old payment
- Checking Xero reports
- Prepping meetings with Bethan
- Leadership catch-up
- Small things: advent calendar post review, finalize contracts, pinging team about holiday spreadsheet
- Struggling with motivation and energy after being back from some leave.
Was unsuccessful with an application which is fine. Food for thought for the annual reflection I started with Sarah.
- Non OLS: SSI Fellow selection meeting
- OLS: Helpful coaching session and reflection discussions with Malvika and Yo
- Catching up with accountants around tax questions
- Spending down CZI and getting ready for reporting
- Noting down some ideas for costs around payments as a service
- Preparing the Ally Skills session
- Cancelling the Ally Skills session
- Creating a template to streamline organising future Ally Skills trainings
- Drafting contract (amendments) for Bethan and Malvika
- Sending out mentor certificates
- Updating budget spreadsheets in line with recent discussions
- Starting reconciliation
- Some honoraria payments, invoice issuing etc.
- Catching up with Irene around NASA budgets
- Guess what: time! And that was with some tasks being cancelled and freeing up some time.
Figured a decent balance on days off to make time for good food and reading.
- Mentorship training and progressing the collaboration with SSI - feels like I actually have skills in that area.
- Keep honoraria payments going
- Leadership contingency planning
- Team meeting
- Catching up on budgets
- Ally skills training prep
- Equipment manifest updates and check with PEM
- Chief of Staff check-in
- Stuck to 30% of time this week and managed only a part of I wanted to. Doesn't feel quite as bad though as it did before.
Finally managed to do the RSECon transcript and hopefully am all done now! Managed some good work-life balance and reading I hope.
- Lovely The Hum session reflecting on cultural synergies.
- 1-1 with Bethan
- Budget meeting
- Wellcome close out with PEM
- Plenty of new budget overviews
- Humanitix unlocking with Stripe
- Some liaison on the upcoming Ally Skills workshop
- Honoraria policy updates
- Reimbursements
- Risk register update
- Tried to do normal hours. Failed and still didn't get as much done as I wanted.
Well, the world went to shambles. Tried to focus on the bits I can affect.
- Finding some motivation to get some more handbook sections written and receiving Wellcome money
- Get equipment to Doaa
- Pay honoraria
- 1-1s with Bethan and Yo
- Fiscal sponsorship brainstorm
- Governance committee meeting
- Catching up on NASA invoicing and financing
- Review consultant contract
- Some admin for SSI contract and training organisation
- Poking people to create back ups and make OLS more resilient
- Co-working with good reflections on big issues and mutual support
- Starting closing out Wellcome (finally)
- [to come] OLS9 informal catch-up
- Really was low on motivation at the start of the week and felt stuck.
Took some time off to meet up with a former colleague in person and it was so good. Also did boss bitch transformation. Felt like I'm getting to a good balance hopefully.
- Nothing being on fire for once ;)
- Catching up after a week off
- Team meeting
- Scheduling and logistics for SSI4 training
- Reconciliation
- Quite a few honoraria payments and updating various spreadsheets to capture things
- Feedback on someone's Fellowship plans
- Kicking off some OLS conference planning for 2025
- Support an OLS-9 call
- Accountant catch-up meetings
- Range of small things: buying licences, filling registration forms for fiscal sponsorship etc.
- Plenty of meeting pushing and prep
- Didn't quite manage to progress and unblock the handbook as much as I hoped. Definitely had some low energy days where less was achieved.
Spent some time on other things: RSECon24 is now fully wrapped up. SSI Fellowship selection will take some effort during November.
- 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.