Best laid plans

In keeping with the spirit of a Thinkweek today was meant to start with a leisurely walking meeting, followed by lunch and an afternoon reading but as so often happens things didn’t quite go to plan.

The day started as planned with an hour at Caffe Nero reading through my Instapaper queue, that I had topped up last night while scanning RSS feeds in front of the TV.  From there I drove to Rivington, listening to the This Week in Tech podcast, for a walking meeting with @GrahamChastney.  These meetings are always a delight, we spent 2 hours talking the hills, bringing each other up to speed on organisational changes, discussing org strategy, reviewing progress on key projects and discussing how we were responding to these changes as individuals.  The weather was great and we managed to get a seat at the Barn Cafe (pictured) for lunch which is becoming an issue.

When I started the walk my Achilles Tendons were still flaring a little, but my the end of lunch they were in fine shape so I decided to head back to the hills, I’d finished the TWIT podcast by this time and moved onto one of my favourite interview shows Triangulation, which this week was an interview with Brad Stone, the author of The Everything Store, a book that I’ve just finished listening to and highly recommend, although this interview is a good introduction.  Inspired by the discussion earlier with Graham I decided to take a route that was new to me and 2 hours later I was back in the cafe, regenerating.

When I checked my messages I’d missed one from @MattMJH asking if I could ring the optimisation team for 10 mins, but as I was only 10 minutes away I decided to pop into the office instead and I’m pleased I did as 10 minutes turned into 2 1/2 hours of good discussion. That discussion also diverted me to our Preston offices tomorrow, which should provide an opportunity for some nice river walks as well as some more stimulating discussion and debate. finally it was back into the car to drive home listening to more podcasts, this time Latest In Palo.  Debbie’s at college on Tuesdays now so I got to have a relaxing evening to myself writing blog posts and preparing for tomorrow while watching TV, probably Helix

Links to all my reading and listening today can be found at @steveisreading, pictures and other tweets can be found at @steverichards