Bobak Saadat

book summary

Book Summary: "On Self-Hatred" by The School of Life

This post is a book summary of "On Self-Hatred" by The School of Life.

Hello from Vancouver!

Hello! I haven't posted in a long time. Blogging dropped down my priorities as I attended to other things in life, as things do. I'm excited to get blogging again as I've recently moved to Vancouver for a year-long sabbatical and I'm

5 days in Seville

Right now I'm ill and I'm sick of being ill! I'm sitting in the sun behind the window and trying to rest and recover. At least there is some sun to enjoy. I went to Seville a bit earlier this year to break my

3 things I’m excited about

1. Starting the MOE coaching course next week and working on my coaching 2. Watching a movie with my new surround sound set up at home. Something I always wanted to get for myself as a child when I became an adult! I guess I'm an adult now.

Hybrid meetings

By now I have been in too many badly run hybrid meetings. Over prepare for hybrid meetings otherwise people joining remotely have a bad experience. There's no single way to run one but the key thing that I have learnt is that people tend to under prepare for

Breath

A moment to pause. A chance to reset. Tight, a signal to unplug. A chance to become self-aware. All this a bit closer if we remember to take a few breaths.

False fantasies

It's all to easy to think some day I'll do that and to postpone. Whether we are optimistic or pessimistic about our future selves, we get swept up in the narrative that everything will change. Things might change significantly but you'll still have to

30 day challenge to learn Spanish

I've been learning Spanish on and off for the past 10 years but have rarely dedicated enough time to it to become fluent or even to understand anything beyond the slowest conversations. After watching some YouTube videos of polyglots and language enthusiasts, I've decided to dedicate

Energiser idea: 3 things

'3 things' is a simple remote-friendly energiser that I found here. It's quick and simple. To run it you need to all be on video cam so it is perfect for a remote-only meeting. The play Everyone has their camera on. Tell everyone to observe each

Fixing my emails

A few months ago I trimmed my email subscriptions, I used a tool to filter my emails and send me an auto-digest but then the sub list grew again, I stopped reading the digests and I feel like I'm back at square one. I barely check non-essential emails

Mimicry as learning

As babies, we learn intuitively through mimicry. As adults, we have stronger filters on what and who we are emulating. Mimicry seems too simplistic to be valuable. Our inner voice says we should be able to figure it out on our own. But consider this. If we don't

The beauty of being in transit

Commuting is bad, being in transit is great. When we go somewhere without much pressure or stress, the transit becomes a moment to savour. On a train or plane, there's nothing else to do, you can let your mind truly wander or you can focus on a single

Make workplace learning less boring

It constantly surprises me how ineffective approaches to teaching are in workplaces. I'm not talking about formal L&D training but the kind where there's a cool trick you know that would be really great if others knew too as it would save time, money

Equalising the voices in the room

When facilitating, there's always louder and quieter people in the room. Everyone has something useful to say so make sure to do all that you can to make space for the quieter folk. One way of doing this is reversing the speaking order. Whenever someone puts their hand

A plea against eating at your desk

Whenever I see someone eating at their desk at work, my heart sinks. It suggests to me that there's no time to take a break, people don't want to be seen as the person slacking or that yes - someone actually prefers to eat at their

Ditch your New Year's resolutions

Recently, I participated in a meeting where individuals were asked about their New Year's resolutions and whether they had managed to stick to them. It was striking to see how many people had never truly stuck to a resolution. Even those who had been successful in the past

Reduce the cognitive load

When guiding an agile team to better ways of working, we consider how to increase transparency, inspection and iteration. There's two other aspects that I believe are important to consider too: * one is psychological safety - how comfortable team members feel to speak up and challenge each other;

Why can't I find articles on agility outside software development?

Agile ways of working have spread across sectors and are no longer limited to software development practices. As a result, agile has come to mean and feel different things to people and different sectors. However, the most prominent discourse about agile is still in the tech field with it being

work

More stress = less stress

Ever felt you’re having it easy but also felt bored, uncomfortable and stressed? Being unoccupied isn’t the same thing as being relaxed and it is dangerous to equate them. We all have things that make us tick. We often forget that challenges that engage us are a key

business idea

Website idea: connecting hobbyist musicians

With the turn of the new year, I reflected and realised that I am getting further away from getting in touch with my musical sensibilities. I used to play more music and as a result I also used to enjoy music more too. In recent years, I've found

delivery management

The paradox of estimating

'Individuals and interactions over processes and tools' - this is a key component of the agile manifesto. As teams, especially in bigger orgs, we are susceptible to process creeping over everything. Process often emerges as a reaction to a failure or to a sense of a lack of

delivery management

Leave it or get involved?

Delivering products and managing teams is a funny business. Sometimes the best course of action is intentional inaction and sometimes inaction is the worst thing you could do. Giving the team automony and stepping back can be very powerful and requires composure to do and letting go of your impulse

belief

The power of belief

Is branded water any better than tap water? Is that secret technique in your recipe really tenderising your proteins? Probably not. If you care about anything then you will probably have beliefs relating to that thing that sound ridiculous to others. But not to you and that's ok.

Eat your own dog food

Overwhelmed by too many Trello columns, I faced up to the baggage of the intricate processes I was using at work. Finally, I snapped. And it was for the better. I was juggling too many tools, too many prompts on my calendar, too many lists within each tool. I was

Inject fun into your team: Tip #1

Name your sprints It's rare to be part of a team where everyone loves to bring the fun all of the time. So sometimes the delivery manager / scrum master has to bring out a little fun from the team from time to time. However, forced fun can be