My first week at Quad Lock

Welcome to the 3rd edition of the Notes by Chris B Co newsletter. Change is happening right now, and as a habitual person, change is hard! Let’s talk about it.

Here's what we've prepared for you today:

• The first update on Chris B Co Life

• Some thoughts on dealing with change

• Productivity Tip: Taking notes

• What to listen to this week

If you’ve missed any of my previous editions, please find them here.

01 / Chris B Co Update

My first week at Quad Lock

From the inside, Quad Lock (QL) is a rapidly growing company with continual improvement front of mind. As someone who enjoys processes and systems, I loved that meetings were scheduled with each company department so I could receive background information on where that department has been and is headed. This fast-tracked my understanding of how the company functions and brought into focus exactly where I will fit in. Also, the data transparency across all areas of finance, sales and forecasting gave me a sense of pride in the team I joined and the projects I would contribute to. As simple as it is, QL has effectively delivered a stirring pep-talk before running out to play a game of footy where I am hyped and can’t wait to get stuck into the work.

The most challenging obstacle from week 1 was my ability to get much work done!  I was excited and pumped, ready to get stuck into my first projects.  But with the onboarding, numerous introductory meetings, and accommodating to a new environment - this left very little time for any focused work.  I’m determined to make a positive impact at this company, and with the processes and resources in place, there is no reason why that shouldn’t be achievable. 

You can see what I mean from my calendar!  By Friday, I’d accepted that this is just how it is—no need to battle through it.  Instead, I plan for the future by organising tasks and priorities so that when the onboarding and introductions have been completed - I’ll be ready to get into the full swing of things.

02 / Mindfulness

Thoughts on dealing with change

Now, about that scary word, change.

I’d been in my previous product designer role for over 2000 days.  Over that time, I refined many processes tied to my working life for various reasons that effectively came back to being efficient with my time.  For example:

• Knowing the who/how/where/what to do for my projects at work

• What time do I need to leave home to get to work on time

• Where and when to find things to combine tasks

• Meal planning for the week ahead

• How to do my job well

While each of these items helped me to effectively and efficiently manage my work life, their existence also allowed me to maximise my time outside of work. After all, we work to live, not live to work. 

When I was younger, I was much more inclined to feel anxious about potential change without the knowledge and tools I now have at my disposal.  I think it was fear of the unknown.  I take life very seriously, and the thought of making one mistake that could dramatically impact my future negatively was paralysing. 

Now, I wouldn’t say that I’m “cured”; of course, I still have levels of angst in certain situations.  But what I’ve learnt to understand is that the emotions you feel are controllable.  What is the cause behind the fear of making a mistake?  That’s pride and ego.  As I’ve grown in both age and experience, I have learnt that mistakes are OK, that failure leads to success, and that experiments and risks are necessary to improve my situation.

So, if I’m talking to my younger self or someone holding similar emotions on their journey, I would suggest this method: what is the worst that could happen?  What is the likelihood of that happening?  Weighed against the benefits. 

Ali Abdaal explains well in this 40-second clip about the risk of doing nothing. (I recommend watching the whole video if you’ve got the time)

As I’ve grown, I’ve found that the better I control my time - what I input into my work - the more I can achieve outside of it.

03 / Productivity Tip

Taking Notes

As mentioned earlier, I’m super pumped for this new role at Quad Lock. I want to bring my best and take my ability to deliver to the next level.  

I’ve taken this motivation to my note-taking. Given everything going on in my first week, I figured there was a high likelihood that important or helpful information would get lost.  To counter this? Notes! Here’s the process used for notes in my introductory week.

1. Small notebook
   I went for this one that has lines and a pen holder

   

2. Label the page with the topic, date and time

3. Take note of anything related to my role or aspects of the business I’ll want to learn about in the coming years

4. Highlight items that are to be actioned

Then, at various times during the week, I’d take 10 minutes to photograph the notes, paste them into my Notion calendar, then digitise the actions into a to-do list with priorities.

Explaining this process and setup requires a dedicated newsletter edition (coming soon) to describe the details.  However, I’d like to highlight that the key here isn’t the conversion process but the conscious decision to take notes in the first place. From experience, I know my ability to retain information or actionable items was severely limited without note-taking.  I’m confident that this process will serve me well into the future of my time at QL.

04 / What to listen to this week

From Good to Great

Chris Do from The Futur is one of my favourite people to learn from. Not least because he’s a designer but because he is super smooth with his recollections and storytelling to help you understand his theories and methods.

Listen to this podcast and let me know what you think of it in the comments.  My main takeaways were that if you want to be attractive to work with, ask genuine questions and be willing to listen. The most interesting person is the most interested!

Thanks so much for reading.
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