Maren Deepwell

Author: Maren Deepwell

  • My home on the open web.

    My home on the open web.

    Blogging about blogging. Again.

    Hello again. As you might have noticed, the blog has had a revamp. It’s a new theme (WordPress 2025) and a streamlined presence. It’s part of my summer project on digital sustainability (I’ve blogged about this in two separate posts, linked below) and part mid-year revamp.

    It’s also been a good time for some blog maintenance as it’s felt a little quiet on the blogs I follow and read regularly as even bloggers need a summer holiday once in a while (not all of them, I hasten to add). Even as I write this, I can hear the (mostly) cheery chatter and laughs of the kids of my neighbourhood playing outside, running from one house to the other, making the most of their summer break.

    Anyway, the other day I was talking about things that are characteristic of who I am, and “I blog” was the first thing I said.

    Blogging has been part of my life since art school, through my postgrad and PhD years, into the early years of my career, into my tenure as a CEO and now my business owner era (already 3 years going on 4! How time flies 🙂 ).

    And I still love it. Quite often I wake up in the morning and think about what I’d like to blog about today. Or I compose blog posts in my head when I am out running. Or first thing in the morning when I sit down at my desk to start work.

    If that sounds a little odd or too idyllic, then rest assured that I have plenty of mornings when my focus is drawn by something far more pragmatic than blogging… and yet, blogging is an extremely pragmatic activity for me.

    Yes, yes, I know, I have already written about my love for blogging, for reflective writing, journalling and so forth at length, but as time (and technology) move on, I think it’s a point worth making afresh. Not only because our attention is now more valuable than ever before, but also because there are now countless ways to automate any kind of reflective activity. Just follow a prompt, or enter one, and it’s done.

    I am fully aware that publishing anything on the open web nowadays is not without risks or pitfalls, and not without environmental impact either. I certainly am very intentional about what I publish nowadays. And I have always tried to be.

    That said, having a blog, and more specifically, the process of blogging, remain important enough to me so that I intend to keep at it. I continue to blog, as often as I feel like it, and I have no intention of stopping.

    Because for me blogging is…

    • making my home on the open web.
    • getting my thoughts in order.
    • building an archive of my work that I own.
    • weaving a narrative of my work and career.
    • a way of expressing myself.
    • leading by example.
    • sharing what I love.
    • advocating for what I stand for.
    • making a small corner of the web how I like it.
    • celebrating what inspires me.
    • charting my experiences, both good and bad.
    • a strategy to help me articulate my thoughts.
    • engaging in dialogue.
    • sharing my practice.
    • giving back to the communities I am part of.
    • paying tribute and thanks.
    • documenting my professional practice and development.
    • reflecting on just about everything.
    • building a network.
    • connecting with like minded people.

    Thank you for reading. I would keep blogging even if no one read my blog, and indeed there are many posts that only me and maybe a family member have read (“Hallo, Mami! Danke, daß Du hier immer mit dabei bist!”).

    I hope whatever prompts you to read blogs and (hopefully) motivates you to keep blogging yourself is still going strong. Long may we keep blogging. #4life.

    Previous posts in Digital Sustainability

    • From wildfires to websites

    • Digital Sustainability Part 2

  • Digital Sustainability Part 2

    Digital Sustainability Part 2

    In my last post I described how I have started to think about how to make my work more environmentally sustainable, and described the practical steps I am taking to achieve this, starting with decreasing my digital footprint. Thanks to everyone who got in touch with comments and tips digital sustainability (I’ve updated the original post now to include these).

    This is part 2, in which I want to talk about the material, physical stuff and how I am tackling that. As before, I found this post really inspiring and I have taken some of the tips to foster digital sustainability and applied them to my own context.

    Reducing digital waste

    This is probably the aspect of digital sustainability that I find the easiest to implement. Having worked for most of my career in the for sector has accustomed me to purchasing technology with longevity in mind, and my current laptop is a Chromebook that is nearly ten years old and still going strong. Likewise, my last phone was 9 years old when I replaced it. I like living with my devices and I have translated that ethos straight into my own business. Like many families we share older devices amongst older and younger users, extending the lifespan of each before it gets recycled.

    I also find my analogue tech, like a watch or a record player for instance, contribute to the longevity of using technologies, and wherever possible I tend to buy things like digital games, books or music outright or borrow them from the public library so that I am not reliant on subscription services as much. That applies to work-related digital content, too.

    In general, I try to follow the “reduce, re-use, recycle” approach familiar from general recycling and apply the same logic to digital waste and consumption.

    A note on purchasing

    As I have written about previously, I try to make good decisions about where I spend money, for example by doing less shopping online and switching how and where I get (audio)books from. When it comes to work-related purchasing, I try to choose independent hosting companies or purchase open source software that supports community development such as Fission and AudioHijack. Small choices, that ultimately add up to much of my purchasing over the course of the year. It’s not always possible to find alternatives to mainstream or big tech products, but more and more often it is.

    Energy Efficiency

    Energy efficiency was next on my radar. As I have explained in part 1, I have worked hard to reduce my digital footprint and space in the cloud already, and that helps to minimise needless energy required for hosting and storage. I also found other tips such as using energy saving modes or switching off devices when appropriate, helpful. I use less energy and since last year we have solar panels on the roof, which helps enormously. We are lucky that this is an option for us, and I am grateful that it is especially in times when energy provision and pricing is so volatile.

    I also continue to stick to my audio-first preference over video, in most of my work and for my podcast. Although many podcasts have moved over to video and there is a huge push in that direction, I am not planning to do so. I prefer audio as a format in any case, but it is also much more digitally sustainable from the production process to promotion and distribution. I don’t want folk listening to my podcast to have to download or stream 30-60 min of video each time. It’s to my detriment in terms of listener numbers as many podcast platforms push video podcasts more than audio only, but I feel it’s a trade-off I am willing to make. My podcast is a passion project without a commercial angle, and I want its digital footprint to be as light as possible whilst making the most of the medium.

    In a similar way as I prefer audio to video, I have turned off AI-powered search by default, enabling me to search on the web without utilising an unnecessary amount of energy. It’s a tiny gesture in the larger lifecycle of AI tools or agents but it is a relatively easy step to take (and nearly all of my search queries work perfectly well with traditional search).

    Just add -AI to any search query removes AI-generated overviews and reverts to a more traditional set of results. It works across Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo and removes the need to install a specific plug-in or browser extension (thanks to this AI report  for the tip!).

    I also found this https://huggingface.co/spaces/AIEnergyScore/Leaderboard a very helpful starting point for comparing different models in terms of energy consumption.

    Overall, how are things going when it comes to reducing digital waste and increasing energy efficiency? Progress score: 6/10 (by which I mean I feel I have done about 60% of the things I am aware of and able to do).

    Next up on my journey to greater sustainability is not what I do, but how I work, and adopting more digitally sustainable working habits. More on those in the next post.

  • From wildfires to websites

    From wildfires to websites

    Yesterday evening after work we drove to the coast, where I took the photo that features on this post. It’s a view of Southerndown Beach, on the south western coast near Cardiff. One of my favourite spots near us and absolutely stunning all year round. The sea breeze and fresh, salty air were a world away from the reality we had woken up to at 3am that morning, smoke and smell of acrid burning filling the house, making me worry for a few minutes that something was on fire. It wasn’t, everyone was safe. Or rather, we were safe. The smoke and smells came from wildfires which are still burning, consuming hundreds of hectares. Not on the scale of the fires in Southern Europe or elsewhere in the world, but enough. It’s only added to the summer of prolonged hot and dry weather, still unusual in Wales, where rain used to be the order of the day, and water shortages.

    All of this goes to say that my focus on sustainability and the environment has only deepened, and extended from what we can do at home and locally, to how I work online. I am also teaching and coaching on digital sustainability in education in the next academic year, and this has inspired my to test a few of the approaches for myself. In this post I share a few of the things I tried and how I got on.

    Tech and the environment

    The environmental impact of tech, for example the natural resources used by large scale data centres, have gained a lot of visibility in the news across the world. Similarly, there is a lot of information available here in the UK about digital sustainability, specifically for Higher Ed, for AI and for the tech sector in general, most of which is focused on what sectors and/or large organisations can and should do.

    Whilst really informative, high level reports are hard to apply to one’s professional practice, and so I started with this toolkit https://datadetoxkit.org/en/environment/internet . Some of the resources it links to are a few years old now, but I found it a useful starting point and it’s key recommended actions align closely with those I came across in this blog post which in turn inspired me to come up with my own three broad categories to work on.

    1 Decreasing my digital footprint

    At the start of last year I reviewed my digital tech stack and looking back at these posts makes it clear how much progress I have made in streamlining my online platforms and services and declutter my digital domains.

    Blog

    This blog, my home on the web, continues its happy life on Reclaim Hosting, where it’s been for more than a decade. Over the past few months I have however streamlined it considerably, and retired and deleted many old pages and old content that has become obsolete. Not blog posts, I hasten to add, as I wish to keep them, but still content that is no longer needed and which just takes up space and energy. I have also stopped sending out my newsletter via the blog, for which I had set up several services like Mailgun and Mailpoet. Instead, I have simplified it into a monthly post that is publicly available without a subscription and I also send it out via LinkedIn.

    Business website

    My business website quickly ballooned once I started working for myself on a full-time basis. Within a year it grew to host several online courses, resources, a dedicated coaching blog and plenty of other content. Whilst it was useful at the time, I was keen to move it away from Squarespace (originally chosen for its course building functionality) and simplify GDPR compliance and so forth, so a very paired back version of the site has now moved to an independent UK-solution that runs on renewable energy. The rest has been deleted, and I have just kept the bits I want to re-use at a future point.

    Emails and documents

    One of the last items on my list to tackle was the VERY long tail of emails and documents accumulated. Martin recently blogged about unsubscribing from things, and I have likewise undertaken a great cull of emails and documents. I’ve deleted tens of thousands of emails and cleared out document storage across several accounts. Depending on where you keep your mail, that can be quite tricky, as platforms such as Outlook only archive things instead of actually deleting them unless you make the effort to go in and specifically delete them. By comparison, Gmail is quite good at offering bulk deletion options, but still takes time to actually do it.

    Meanwhile my archive of digital documents also had a clear out. 5 copies of the same invoice from 2014? Deleted. Ten versions of an article I published in 2019? Deleted. Notes from PhD interviews from 2003? Deleted. It takes a lot of time to sift and select what to retain and what to delete, but it’s intensely satisfying, practically helpful and has reduced my storage needs for documents by around 70%.

    Photos and videos are next, although I must admit I haven’t yet tackled them because I struggle to manage competing platforms from various stages of my life. At the moment I try to make physical albums, books and prints periodically just in case the digital versions all get lost at some point, and I try to keep only my favourite versions of photos rather than ALL the attempts taken. But that is definitely work in progress.

    Thanks to Karen Howie, who in response to this post shared a tool tip for managing images with me: digiKam is a free and open-source image organizer and tag editor.

    Productivity

    Some of the other tools I reviewed last year I have stopped using all together: Canva, for example, I stopped using, once its AI integrations became more of a hindrance than was worth it for me. Instead, I bought Procreate which I use to create visuals using my own artwork and photos. Similarly, I’ve stopped using Asana as a planning tool for myself, and instead simplified my internal ways of working back to a spreadsheet and a simple to do list. As I have gotten more and more busy I want to spend less time seeing little animations of unicorns every time I complete a task and for a business of one the AI-enhancements are simply annoying.

    Zoom is on its way out, even though I still haven’t found a really good alternative to it, but I’ve been able to drop down several subscription levels, and I have cleared out historic recordings no longer needed. Good business practice and good for decreasing my digital footprint as well as costs.

    Google Workspace meanwhile, long my favourite digital workspace, is slowly turning from super productive to less than ideal, and that I am sad about. By trying to be smarter for large organisations the things I want to be able to do are becoming not only more convoluted and difficult, but also disrupted by endless marketing presented as system messages. I am not impressed. And yet, I am not quite ready to swap it for an alternative as at the moment its affordances are still greater than what is annoying.

    Overall, how are things going when it comes to decreasing my digital footprint? Progress score: 7/10 (this is an arbitrary score, by which I mean I feel I have done about 70% of the things I am aware of and able to do).

    Next up on my journey to greater sustainability are tackling the ways in which I work and managing the material, the physical side of things. More on those in the next post.

  • The One Percent

    The One Percent

    What will it take to make your day 1% more… of what you need?

    Working life for is busy and keeping a grip on things takes a lot of energy and focus. So what do you do when you grip on so tightly that you can’t see beyond what’s in front of you?

    This post is inspired by some recent coaching sessions which prompted me to reflect on how you can make small, incremental changes when adopting a new healthy habit or tackling a big change may seem out of reach. What would make a real difference to my clients, either in the way they work or how to disconnect from work?

    Listen to the podcast episode

    Starting with very small increments, even just 1%, can lead to quick wins and solve niggling issues along the way. Whether you feel like trying out a playful or pragmatic approach, you can always find ways to make yourself 1% more comfortable, even on a bad day. And along the way, you might gain a little more awareness and distance from being lost in digital productivity curves.

    Getting started

    Here is a little inspiration to get you started. Make a small change, or maybe two, and see how things shift:

    Add a sprinkling of analogue…

    • a plant
    • a nice coaster
    • photos/pictures/art
    • a rock or shell from somewhere you like
    • record player
    • scented candle or a diffuser for aromatherapy oils
    • music
    • new flavour hot (or cold) drinks to try such as new herbal teas or coffees
    • a secret snack stash (healthy or not)
    • something tactile like a soft throw or a fidget toy

    Get 1% more comfortable…

    • a new mouse mat or a mouse you like
    • wrist rest/mouse rest
    • glare protector
    • foot rest (cushion or yoga bolster can work, too)
    • headphones that suit your ears
    • eye mist and glasses that help filter blue light
    • a water bottle
    • cleaning products for your workspace, i.e. eco wipes, disinfectant, screen cleaner
    • find a window sill or high shelf you can use as a place to have meetings with your laptop or a sit stand desk or desk shelf

    Step away from your screens

    • an alarm or similar that reminds you to take regular screen breaks
    • a physical reminder to go to a different room/downstairs/outside
    • cushioned slippers or shoes (particularly handy for standing desks)
    • a paper planner/diary you can use away from the screen to think/plan
    • a lunch date/appointment with someone away from your desk
    • plant care
    • play with your pet
  • The Power of (the right) Prompts (Part 2)

    The Power of (the right) Prompts (Part 2)

    In my last post I explored how a journal of professional practice can easily turn into a superpower at work. Whether you are writing by hand, typing away on your laptop, dictating into your phone or sketching with pen and paper, I am a BIG fan of journalling (and after over 30 years of journalling for both work and in my personal life, I have tried every which way to make it work).

    As a coach, I often work with clients who just need to find the right way to articulate their thoughts, and once they’ve unlocked that, they are good to go. You know it’s working when you are able to sustain a reflective journal when you need it, and over time it becomes a habit that turns into a superpower: for example, I find it helps me enormously with gaining perspective, making a big decision or finding my path forward that I can revisit the pages I wrote on my first day as a CEO or the day I got my PhD. I can also revisit times when things were tough, like during the pandemic.

    But… what if the thoughts don’t come?

    Some of my clients find that regardless of the approach they use, words don’t flow. It can be hard at times to know where to start or what to reflect on. Instead of finding clarity or deep reflection, you end up narrating days, or making lists of things to do. Or maybe you are just staring at a blank page, and your mind goes blank.

    If you find that a particular method doesn’t unlock things for you, I would suggest you leverage the power of prompts, or rather, the right prompt for you. Prompts are powerful and can be transformative to our thinking (which is why so called “powerful questions” are the foundational tool in coaching and coaching leadership).

    A few years ago I struggled to effectively reflect. Finding the right prompts for your context can be difficult, so I looked for inspiration in Warren Berger’s The Book of Beautiful Questions, Hermina Ibarra’s Working Identity and Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic.

    I found three types of prompts that helped me and subsequently many of my clients through this kind of block: first, prompts that related to the physical self, next prompts that help identify tangible examples and last, prompts that helped us understand our reactions to situations.

    Example prompts and why they work

    Prompts that help you get out of your own head

    In much of the work I do I coach and train highly skilled professionals who spend a lot of time in their head. I can empathise, as it’s one of my favourite places to be as well. That said, being in one’s head isn’t always conduce to reflective journalling or finding clarity. Which is why when I am stuck, I find prompts that relate to my senses or focus on my physical self super helpful.

    Example prompts to try:

    • What physical signals do you perceive when you contemplate this decision?
    • How does it feel to be in this place [i.e. an office, a lecture hall, a stage]?
    • What activities give you energy?

    Prompts that help calm overwhelm

    Another common reason why reflection can feel hard is a sense of overwhelm. I often work with clients facing big decisions or very high workloads, or juggling A LOT. In situations like that, everything feels… too much, too difficult, too complicated. That’s when prompts that focus on specific examples can help.

    Example prompts to try:

    • Describe a recent positive interaction?
    • What has boosted your mood or encouraged you?
    • When did you find yourself enjoying an activity or experience?

    Prompts to think through reactions

    One of the things my clients tell me they value the most about coaching with me is to have a trusted thinking partner to think through difficult situations with. To talk about awkward or emotional encounters, and to reflect on how they reacted in the moment. This is a difficult thing to do on your own, as usually the focus is on how it feels. My role is to offer prompts that shift that perspective from how it feels to why, and to help us understand the reactions.

    Example prompts to try:

    • How did it feel?
    • How did those feelings manifest themselves?
    • How did you react?
    • What would you do differently in future?
    • What can you learn from the situation?

    I’m always curious about how the power of the right prompts unlocks reflection and opens up new perspectives. If you have different prompts you use in situations like this, I’d love to learn about them, so get in touch.

  • More than words (Part 1)

    More than words (Part 1)

    A journal of professional practice can easily turn into a superpower at work.

    One of the things I know to be true is that there’s hardly ever a perfect moment when everything is done, your inbox is empty and the ocean of professional life is lies calm and still in front of you; giving you space and time to reset.

    The closest I ever got to the ideal blank slate day is the start of a new academic year, the season of new pencil cases and school starts. It’s my favourite time of year, and I love making plans for the year ahead… which usually turn out to be busy, ambitious and a lot to accomplish.

    I love the perspective it gives me, looking at the year ahead, and planning for all the things I’d like to do, at work and in my personal life. What I’d ideally like is moments of that “blank slate’ feeling or that start of term vibe throughout the year, prompting me to pause and reflect.

    For over two decades, I have used different forms of professional journalling to create just those moments for myself, and post is an invitation to try out some new approaches to this fundamental practice.

    If you’re not a fan of writing, read on, as I have included some approaches below that use voice recording, conversational reflection and drawing, too and I talk more about this on the podcast episode about this leadership superpower.

    Listen on Apple Podcasts

    Keep a journal your way

    Writing Journals

    There is no shortage of journalling inspiration out there: beautiful paper journals complete with prompts and templates, journalling techniques designed to help you reflect, develop gratitude or promote mindfulness and a plethora of apps designed to help you stick with the habits.

    I don’t think it matters how you journal, and any way that works for you is valid.

    Over the years I have come to value:

    • handwriting because it slows down my thinking and helps me focus;
    • being open and honest with myself, no matter what I end up writing and not giving into the temptation to self-edit;
    • changing formats to suit what’s on my mind, i.e. from completely private to sharing with specific colleagues to publishing openly.

    Voice Journals

    f you’re curious about using your voice for professional journalling, this activity is for you: use your phone or another device to make a voice recording (you don’t even need to transcribe or save the recording for it to be useful. It’s the recording practice that’s important).

    Dictation can help you practice articulating your thoughts to someone else as well as to yourself. It also improves self realisation in my case. For example, the other day I felt angry about something and when I said it out loud I realised how angry I really was. It helped me reflect and understand more fully how I felt. The feelings dissipated quickly, but the realisation stayed with me.

    Check out this blog post in which I have given further examples and ideas.

    Visual Journals

    I love the idea of visual journals, and for a couple of years I used little notebooks to make a simple black and white drawing every day. If doodling, sketching, or visually journalling about your days appeals to you, you might like to take a look at Bryan Mather’s approach using REFLECTO-GLYPHS 🙂 .