If anyone missed me, I apologise for the silence. We launched not one, not two, but seven different podcasts at TechLedCulture, and invitations have gone out for three more extraordinary hosts to join us. We can not wait to unveil all we’ve been to. If you haven’t subscribed to them, please do so. They should be on all major platforms; here they are:
👩🏼🎤The #DuenaShow – Blomstrom’ s Reads and Rants 🎓🦄
👩🏼🎤🧑🏽💻people AND tech Podcast with Dave Bally 👩🏼❤️💋👨🏽
🧠🌶️ 👔 NeuroSpicy at Work – the first podcast about Neurodiversity and Authentic Leadership
🪢 🎟️Secret Society of HumanWork Advocates and Human Debt Fighters with Allessandria Polizzi
🤖🤦🏼Developer Insights with Dave Bally and Mystery Tech Guests
👩💻❤️🧑💻Married to Tech with Dana and Bryan Finster and Tracy and Bob Bannon
🪡 “Chasing Psychological Safety” with first INCREDIBLE Guest in Episode 1 of our Agile Thought Leaders Series – Psychological Safety and Team Psychology Pioneer TEH Gitte Klitgaard
And coming Soon in 2024
🧵 “TheFutureIsAgile”
“Tales from the… FinTech Crypt”
“Tales from the… Product Crypt”
and…. #WorkTV
For almost as long as I can remember in my career, I’ve always woken up early on a 31st, so I read other years’ resolutions and wrote the first “right, sprint kickoff for the next year” ticket. This year I’ve decided to share what I’m reading with you rather than inundate you all with more posts about how grateful I am – and I certainly am, for an amazing year with clients, employees, and work that changes the world- or 2024 predictions – but here’s a short version: RTO will still be a struggle and execs will still do Agile and Culture from decks, not hearts-.
2020 – the Ghastly Resilience Marathon We Never Signed-up For
The Happiness Lessons 2020 Taught Us
2021’s First Big Ticket
(IRONY!!!) Stop This PMA, Resolutions and Self-Care Nonsense!
Not Only Is Self-Care Important, But There Are 3 Levels of It
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/only-self-care-important-3-levels-duena-blomstrom/?trk=v-feed
10 Tips for Auditing your 2022 People Strategy
Same Epic, New Year
10 Things We Loved About 2021
Vacations, Self-Care and Avoiding Burnout and Disengagement
Self-Care Is Part of the Human Work We Urgently Need
Help Audit and/or Re-do the People Strategy for 2022
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/help-audit-andor-re-do-people-strategy-2022-duena-blomstrom/
An Eventful 2022, a Hopeful 2023
From next year/week – all I write ought to be in Slack only (duena.substack.com), and I would appreciate it if you followed and subscribed in particular since some big announcements around #WorkTV are coming up on there. I’ve given LinkedIn every chance I could but I’m beginning to lament ever leaving Forbes for them, their platform is deteriorating and 674 articles that don’t even get ranked on Google later- and constant demoting in the algo that my team was able to demonstrate, I fail to see its value. I will still be around, of course; it’s just that this place is not for serious intellectual discourse anymore, so I hope we can build a community elsewhere although, with Twitter gone, forums of yesteryear decimated and Reddit and such a non-regulated heaven for teenagers, where else is there an open forum for quality debate? Serious question: I would enjoy some in place of the irritating buzz of some of the insta-influencers on here and the eternally tiring “what is agile?” debate.
How was your year? Has anyone had a stupendous one? Looking back on my 2023 it has been one of the most horrendous years in my history (as my subscribers know) in some ways and one of the most incredible ones in other ways as well.
Launching a book, several podcasts, and a new media company seems like a lot. Still, ironically, I know I could have done even better -perhaps more hands-on work with clients or some killer feature that would make all developers use our tool more than Github!:) since there is ever so much left to fix in the world of work. We are losing so many battles with naked emperors and human debt-generating business-preventing non-generative cultures that there ought to be no rest for the wicked.
Nonetheless, my resolutions for next year all include a major element of this rest because the one thing that has slipped dramatically during these huge efforts has been my willingness to give myself grace and execute on long-awaited self-care and trusted daily routines. I haven’t. I’ve had full-blown autistic burnout this year when I “came out” as a neurodivergent leader, and I’ve neglected it. I’ve been super focused on my boys, in particular, since they had tough years and have been under attack themselves, despicable as that is, and lost sight of me. I’ve even lapsed from sobriety (very briefly but nonetheless) and have had to rebuild it chip by chip. I’ve been lax on routines, I’m weaker, less healthy, too tired. An ambulance had to check me twice of late for a potential stroke because of my history of getting one a few years back when I was building Meniga. I’m thankfully fine. Physically, I haven’t irreparably broken anything. Yet.
But I’m also, thankfully, scared into being resolute with my resolutions (ha!) and start with a firm locus of control: sleeping, gym-ing, eating, therapy, breathing, meditating, reading and emotionally meaningful time with true family. Simples. Done it before; let’s do it again!
Here are some links to the science of why: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00995568
https://medium.com/@nawalalansaari/achieve-your-goals-using-the-woop-method-206a6d9fef30
May your resolutions be exciting and long lasting, and may 2024 be the year we all deserve!
~ Duena, Dave and the teams of People Not Tech, Tech Led Culture, the#DuenaShow and #WorkTV