Row, Prepare, Deliver, Recover

It’s Thursday, and it’s been quite a week.

I had a presentation on Wednesday. The topic itself wasn’t massive. It was simply to talk about something I’ve been doing at work. But the way I wanted to do it was new. Different. And I wasn’t 100% sure how it would be received.

I’d adapted a PechaKucha-style format: fast-moving slides, short bursts of speaking, and a hard limit on how long you can linger. The whole point is to avoid death by PowerPoint and keep the energy up.

What I really wanted to do, though, was tell a story about a deal I’ve been working on. Not the technology. Not the bits and bytes. The human side of it. And that’s why I was nervous, because that’s not the default setting in a room full of tech people.

So I used the week properly.

Monday I did a row to clear my head. Tuesday was the main prep day, even though I’ve been thinking about it for weeks, and I also got out for a walk to keep myself moving. Wednesday I delivered it.

And it went down a storm.

I absolutely loved it. The audience really liked it too, and I got loads of great feedback afterwards. I spent the rest of Wednesday riding that wave of euphoria and adrenaline.

So here we are on Thursday. Back to normal. I’ve just done 30 minutes on the rowing machine at a reasonable pace. Enough to make me sweat and puff a bit. Just to settle the system again.

This is The Sub-7 Experiment: trying new things at work, and still rowing away in the background to keep my head right.