Weeknotes 31

It’s really hot in London which makes it hard to think or sleep. Those are my two main things.

I bought a print for the wall of my newly-habitable home office, like a normal person would, but it’s an unusual size so I can’t put it in a standard frame. I took it to a framing shop and discovered a new world of decisions for which I have no basis: frame material, width and colour; mount or no mount; spacers or no spacers; mount size; glass type. I respect the creative possibilities but just want my picture to have a frame, so I ended up asking “what would you do?” quite a lot, which will make it awkward if I don’t like the final result.

I also assembled one last piece of office furniture to finish the room off. This process offered many unnecessary opportunities for analogue decision terror: screw in this screw at whatever position seems right to you! Affix this part to the exact centre of that part, probably! I don’t enjoy relying on my own spatial or aesthetic judgement when making irreversible choices.

When I get the print back from the framer I’ll have to hammer a nail into the wall at the right place to hang it. Not very slightly too high or too low or off-centre, of course — that would be wrong.

I don’t think I’ve quite worked out how to relax by exactly the right amount yet.

I realised this week that one of my strongly-held professional values is “facts now, plans later”. On balance it’s better to communicate important information as soon as it exists, even if you haven’t had a chance to work through the consequences or come up with answers to all possible questions, rather than sitting on it until you’re ready to present something more comprehensive.

For example, I’m pleased that Shopify announced it was keeping its offices closed immediately after making that decision; there are lots of details still to come, but at least anyone who was about to sign a lease on a tiny flat near the office was able to dodge that bullet.

A value isn’t worth having unless a reasonable person might disagree with it. So something universally acceptable like “make great products” has no real force, whereas I’ve had plenty of perfectly sensible colleagues who’d rather keep big news secret until they’ve come up with The Right Way to Share, which makes me think I should maintain this one.

To cheer ourselves up in the heat we watched The Fifth Element and School of Rock. Both were extremely fun.

We also finished our latest lap of The Thick of It and have immediately started another one. It’s sublime and I will never tire of it. And yet I’ve never seen Veep! What if it’s good? Is it good?

Only three four-day weeks remain.