2025 Weeknote 03 : A week in the life

January 13 – 19

My “weeknotes” capture events, thoughts, and other items from the past week, mostly focused on work. Learn more about the weeknotes concept here.

And now for something kinda different…

This week, as a change of pace (but still providing a weeknote), I thought i would share a “week in the life” of my job and what I’m doing. Each week is a little different, of course, but this snapshot might give a sense of where the time goes.

One bit of context first. I’m in hiring mode right now, digging through resumes, talking to candidates, and so forth. So a lot of time right now is going into that endeavor, which is not typical, and it’s crowding out other work (as it should—hiring is the most important work we do).

So let’s get started on the week that was…

Mon, 1/13

• Drove into downtown Columbus for the day. In fact, I drove downtown all 5 days this week.
• I spent 20 minutes in a perfunctory board meeting as an executive observer.
  • Interestingly, this meeting starts with the Pledge of Allegiance, which always feels odd. During the meeting I browsed through job candidates and updated the tracking board.
• After the board meeting, I chatted with colleagues about our hiring, got a drink, and adjusted my desk setup with a new monitor.
• I also suddenly realized I forgot to record and submit the radio reading service show I do weekly. Had to email into the station to warn them and apologize.
• I then attended a 2-hour meeting and took detailed notes on major construction projects coming to the county over the next few years. This is important because we have technical resources and project managers that get involved.
  • I am consistently surprised by how badly the county organizes and runs construction projects. A “5 year plan” I learned about 6 years ago has still only had about 20% of it completed. We’re on another 5-year plan now. How this is tolerated is beyond me.
• I had another lull to catch my breath, chatted with a couple more colleagues, ate a couple small cashew bags, then updated and submitted 2 documents for our annual State audit.
• Now we’re in the afternoon and it was time for a lengthy retrospective on the 2024 general election and our involvement in it. However, wasn’t that involved, so I spent the time listening and intermittently processing candidates.
• I skipped a meeting with vendor Granicus, but engaged with the team about a Single Sign-On (SSO) integration.
• I held a 1:1 meeting with a project manager and advised more aggressive stances toward projects.
• Chatted with a resource manager about a project that seemed to be going off the rails a bit.
• It was then time to head home. Once home, I did more candidate updates (this includes LInkedIn reviews, resume reviews, and updating candidates in 2 different applicant tracking systems).
• After a bit of dinner and watching YouTube with the wife, I moved on to prepping an Engineering Unconference agenda and notes for the morning.
• I also prepped an agenda for my leadership team’s weekly meeting.
• Ended the day playing a bit of Star Wars Outlaws.

Tue, 1/14

• At 9:00 a.m. I hosted the first Engineering Unconference of the 2025 series. This happens on a 3-week cycle now and involves all available engineering types from across the organization. I’ve been organizing it for probably 3 or so years now. I’ve even explored canceling it, but the teams say they really like it.
• Immediately after, at 10:00 a.m., I hosted the GX+DS Leadership Summit, a gathering of all the managers that report to me. There were a lot of personal updates, but we got through a sizable agenda, too.
• Shortly after noon it was time for a brief snack and impromptu catch-ups with office mates. I also had to update the Delivery Services (DS) team meeting agenda for later in the afternoon.
• At the DS team meeting we had an intensive discussion around aspects of our Consult > Analyze > Deliver model.
• Then I jumped into the monthly Tech Roundtable meeting held by our agency, and one of our teams presented on using Quickbase to solve “gray work” problems, with help from the vendor.
• It was time for another project manager check-in after that, confirming projects are moving along.
• I monitored a live meeting via Teams chat to keep tabs on a politcally-sensitive project.
• I had to leave the office a bit early to get home for an HOA board meeting.
• Once I got home, I immediately had to start shoveling about 2 inches of snow that fell during the day, then rolled out the trash and recycling.
• After a Zoom software update, I hosted our HOA board meeting for more than an hour, taking me up to about 8:00 p.m.
• After a short break, I was back on candidate reviews, updates, and documentation to keep our hiring moving ahead.
• I also caught up on high-priority emails.
• Finally, the wife and I decompressed with an absolutely terrible Hart to Hart episode. We’ve been going through Season 2 in the interests of nostalgia. Some of the episodes are campy early-80’s fun, but this one was a dog. Still laughed a lot, though.

Wed, 1/15

• Today I started at home, reviewing candidate submissions and holding a 9:00 a.m. intro call with a candidate.
• I drove downtown, then immediately met with one of my managers, met with one of the project managers, and then headed straight into an executive leadership meeting.
• I headed off to lunch on my own, looked at candidate submissions again, and then held a candidate intro call.
• Then it was time for another meeting with one of my managers to catch up in the early afternoon.
• After briefly demonstrating a feature in Lucidchart to a colleague, I checked in with staff that had lost power in their offices due to circuits blowing under the load of space heaters in the bitter office cold.
• I then had about 15 minutes to talk through some design concepts for a new organizational logo and branding model.
• A group of us held a meeting about a data management problem in an agency that needed to be thought through for a new approach.
• Completed another intro call with a candidate.
• Had an impromptu-check-in with one of my managers.
• Left the office perhaps 30 minutes early, knowing I’d be working on candidates at home.
• After catching up on national news via YouTube late night talk show clips, the wife and I watched another Hart to Hart episode while I updated candidate data.
• I ended the day later at night providing feedback comments on the the logo presentation from earlier in the day and caught up on emails missed during the day.

Thu, 1/16

• Started off the day chatting with our HR leader about several topics, syncing up on hiring and some employee matters.
• Participated in a major 2025 project meeting with 3 different teams, digging through status and figuring out how to proceed.
• Worked on a new batch of applicants for our open role.
• Attended another challenging meeting where a colleague I trust pushed me eto provide a service that violates the new Consult > Analyze > Deliver service model, and I had to stand my ground a bit. Awkward.
• Started work on a graphical and written communications element for the major 2025 project discussed earlier in the morning.
• Chatted again briefly with our HR leader about feedback from the first meeting earlier in the day.
• Completed an intro call with one of our candidates.
• Hosted a combination meeting of our customer relations team and our projects team. That’s where most of the Consult > Analyze > Deliver development is happening.
• I then attended a meeting that wasn’t on my calendar and went on for a while with the project managers. We’re figuring out how to organize all our project documentation for all our clients in a single Confluence space, without having page naming conflicts and while keeping the structure instantly understandable.
• After wrapping up a few more items in my office, I headed home a little early so I would be ready for…
• …a 6:00 p.m. national webinar hosted by Technologists for the Public Good, focusing on the challenges of government employment at the federal level, especially given the new administration coming in and their commitments to destroy much of the federal government.

Fri, 1/17

• Work started early today, as I was up around 5:00 a.m. answering a LinkedIn message about a recent post about how the Eisenhower administration developed a whole new way to train federal workers to improve government services and outcomes. I have an interest in reprising that model here in the 21st century, but with newer content and training approaches.
• After getting ready for the day and driving downtown (usually Friday is a remote day, but not this week), I started in with the first meeting at 9:00 a.m. — a check-in with one of my managers.
• Another check-in was at 10:00 a.m. with another manager.
• I then had time to catch up on email, process a lot more job candidates, and a few other things.
• Unusually, I headed out to lunch with a colleague from one of our sister agencies, catching up on projects, developments in AI, and some of the politics between our agencies.
• At the tail end of lunch I got an unexpected phone call to join an executive leadership meeting, in which we were asked to “vote” on what to do about a hiring vacancy that was being generated.
• I had an extended conversation with some folks at Tech Elevator about candidates they are sending our way and how we might be able to assist them with their mission in the future.
• Then it was time for a long HR-focused meeting with our HR leader, talking about our shared projects, some cultural matters, training for 2025, and more.
• Finally, I had a check-in meeting with one of my managers, concerned about how to handle one of our employees and their work priorities.
• All that business was wrapped up by 4:30pm and I headed home for the long weekend.

Sat, 1/18

• Despite being a holiday weekend and a Saturday, I hosted two candidate info meetings in the mid-morning hours, taking notes and figuring out who to invite to interviews.
  • I have 2 more candidate calls on Monday (the MLK Day holiday) to wrap up the first push through our 42 applicants.
• Late in the evening I recorded my weekly 30-minute show reading articles from Columbus Business First for voiceCORPS, and I recorded 4 anniversary promo spots for them as well, since it’s the organization’s 50th anniversary in 2025.

Sun, 1/19

• I did my best to do as little work as possible today (aside from this post), opting instead to prep things at home for the week ahead, especially since we’re set to go on a short vacation in just a week.

Summary Stats

• 42 candidates applied for our open position over the past week or so.
• 8 intro calls completed, with 2 more scheduled.
• About 26 hours in formal / scheduled meetings.
• 5 days in the office, no remote days
• About 10 hours of work outside the normal business day.
• I host / organize about 40-50% of the meetings I attend.
• My dominant tools are Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Outlook, Confluence, Jira, and Apple Notes, with a smattering of other document editors like Excel, PowerPoint, and text editors.

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And that’s it for this week. Back to our regularly-formatted weeknotes next week.

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