Wait, is it March already?
I am pretty sure I am not the only one wondering about this.
Also, it is Women's History Month :)
This also brings in the point of frequent pausing and reflection to help recognize everything going on. It also helps prioritize the next course of action keeping in mind the time frame.
Anyways, I have been MIA here (as my friend pointed out yesterday- ‘I haven’t received any emails from The weekly sync). So, I decided to sit down and crank out some keystrokes. Here are some updates on my mind I’d like to share:
Speaking at the Open Security Summit
I recently delivered a talk on Security Design & Guidance at Scale.
A couple thoughts from doing this-
It takes a bunch of preparation and practice to do this. You can certainly do this by yourself once you have a bit of experience, but if you are getting started, always good to have a few peers, mentors, friends help you out refining things.
You learn a lot from the creative process of doing this (clearly defining the topics you want to cover, simplifying the message, using visuals that convey the idea well). Delivering the talk is merely the outcome and not the only thing that matters.
Weekly Snippets
I like doing weekly reviews to bring clarity to my chaotic feeling weeks. Most of these are private notes I make to take inventory of the week (looking at my notes, calendar, to-dos, etc).
A simple format/ template that’s been working well for me:
Week of <>
What got done in the week?
How did I feel during the week?
Notes going into next week
Recently, I learned about doing an internally public version of this at work by writing weekly snippets (an idea championed by a Sr. Staff engineer). This can be done in the personal Confluence space (visible to all) and sharing them in a dedicated slack channel.
I’ve found it to be a good opportunity to share what’s going on with me (learnings, challenges, ideas) broadly and also learn about what others are up to. Also, I find this is a good way for increasing transparency and staying informed.
The format I follow for my public internal work snippets:
Work highlights of the week
Personal highlights of the week
Top ideas I am pondering over
There’s a huge value in writing things down overall.
If you follow something similar or have a practice of your own, I’d love to know more.
Related: Sending weekly 5-15 updates/ Why You Should Write Weekly 15-5s
Book reading notes
I’ve been debating on using this medium to also share summaries and notes from the books I read. Just not sure if I should. Thoughts? Reply to this email to let me know.