Week 962

Matt Kirkland

It's week 962 - and week 1 of the new year. I personally always love these little in-between days, where many of our clients are still on a holiday break. We can move forward on projects, feel a bit like we're ahead, and do some longer-term thinking.

One thing on my hey-i-should-reflect-on-that list: I've been writing these weeknotes in public for a year now. I've done this practice of reflecting on the past week since 2018, but only started making them public (and giving them pride-of-place in the brandnewbox.com top navigation) in 2024. So. Is this good? bad? should we keep it up?

Did the public-ness make it more useful as a reflective practice? less? I'm not sure.

I think having these notes be public didn't change any of my urgency or commitment to writing - I'd been in a pretty good rhythym already. While yes, sure, there's a new vague sense of 'It would be embarrassing if the weekly journal was behind schedule', I don't think that changed my frequency.

Definitely writing these in public changed the tone and content of the notes. Looking through my 2019-2023 notes, I would write about specific problems we're facing, or worries, or struggles. I don't want these weeknotes to be fake Pollyanna linkedin bait, but I'm also not going to air any dirty laundry here now that we're publishing them.

I DO think having these in public, and the attendant consideration of a public reader, helped me be more celebratory. I think I looked more intentionally for ways to cheerlead what we are doing at BNB and specific people. That's nice.

I don't think I've ever gotten much feedback from any readers - which is OK. But maybe I'm falling into the same trap of 'do work but don't tell people about it'? Am I? Oh no.

Maybe we need to like, post each of these on LinkedIn! 😭