It’s a fortnight into the year and I’ve only just got around to weeknoting.

I’ve not really been busy. Rather, I’ve deliberately been busy not being busy. I didn’t write my ins and outs for 2025, make any look-ahead predictions, become a marketing ninja, level up my AI skills, write my social media plan, choose a word for the year, or any of that jazz.

Instead, I leaned in hard to the whole being-on-holiday thing. And it was great. I spent three and a half weeks pootling about East Africa, and it was brilliant in every way.

After a couple of years running Lithos Partners I realised that absolutely nothing happens between mid December and mid January. So the best thing I can do is take a proper break (and after a very full-on 2024 I needed one too!)

After my primate-based antics in Weeknote 52, I headed to Tanzania where I hiked (just the bottom bit of) Kilimanjaro and saw in the new year with fireworks and a dance around a swimming pool. Then flew over to dreamy Zanzibar for some chill time, before heading to Kenya, where final few safari drives gave me the opportunity to level up my pointing-at-things skills.

(If my accountant is reading this, does this count as tax-allowable professional development for a PowerPoint jockey? 😉)

A quick look back at 2024

In quant:

10 projects
7 clients
6 conferences spoken at
2 podcasts featured on
22 gigs (but only one of them was the Eras Tour)
26 books (all but one non-fiction)
52 coffees with the 100 people I hoped to catch up with this year
0 umbrellas lost
1.5kg weight gained
49 flights
28 hotels
17 countries visited (11 of them new, taking me to 78 total)
46 weeknotes

In one second every day:

Some stuff I did the last couple of weeks

I’ve been easing myself back into work slowly.

• Delivered a training session for editors on an intranet our client launched just before Christmas
• Had a super positive meeting with another client about the plan we submitted for delivery of their new intranet in 2025. Pleased they’re happy with both the proposed direction and the rigour and clarity of the associated plan. The timeline is ambitious, but we’ve done everything we can to strip out unnecessary complexity
• Started working on a new initiative for our DWXS benchmarking tool

Consuming

👩🏻‍💻 Internetting
Bits of digital lint from my browser’s belly-button

• The World Economic Forum’s 2025 Future Of Jobs report. This bi-annual report is an essential read for anyone interested in the future of work, and more broadly in digital transformation. The predictions about the increasingly short shelf-life of the average skillset are particularly alarming.

📖  Reading
Books I’ve read (or tried to)

• Character Limit, the book about Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. A compelling read that confirms everything I thought I knew about Elon. Tl;dr he is an awful person who fires everyone who disagrees with him, such that now he has no one left in his orbit to have a word while he has a very public breakdown, taking western democracy down with him
• Rwanda Inc. by Patricia Crisafulli and Andrea Redmond. I like to get the background on places I visit, and a quick Google recommended  this examination of Rwanda’s post-genocide economic transformation under Paul Kagame’s leadership, focusing on its business-friendly policies, innovation, and ambitious development goals. While it champions Rwanda as a model of progress and stability, the book’s optimistic tone (written from the perspective of 2012) felt rose-tinted (naïve, even) in 2024, given growing concerns about political repression and inequality
• The Teeth May Smile But The Heart Does Not Forget: Murder and memory in Uganda. A second read for the second stop on my tour, on the legacy of violence in Uganda through the investigation of Eliphaz Laki’s murder during Idi Amin’s rule. This gripping blend of true crime and history offers a deeply human perspective on justice, memory, and resilience, making it a compelling read for those interested in the intersection of personal stories and political turmoil. It certainly helped me make sense of the place as I was travelling around.
• Rather than attempt two further books for Tanzania and Kenya I went for An African History of Africa by BBC correspondent Zeinab Badawi. This delves into the continent’s rich and diverse past, drawing on oral traditions, archaeology, and historical records. An engaging and accessible intro to Africa’s profound cultural, social, and political history. Great background read for someone who – like me – hasn’t paid nearly enough attention to the continent in the past

📺 Watching

• Binge-watching the latest series of Queer Eye. Jeremiah is a wonderful new addition to the Fab 5 and I’ve found myself welling up every time he does. Which is a lot.

🎧 Listening

• The news is all too depressing and angering so I’ve unsubscribed from most of my diet of news and politics podcasts and am just listening to music and, when I need spoken word, history
• It was an eclectic music week, starting with Burna Boy and Afrobeats and moving on to indie Bristollians Getdown Services

🧳 Travelling

This week I’m heading to London (work) then Paris (meeting Ann for art, history and gluttony).