Maren Deepwell

Author: Maren Deepwell

  • Reflect, reframe, regroup. Inspiration for when life is messy.

    Reflect, reframe, regroup. Inspiration for when life is messy.

    I struggled to find a title for this post, because describing what it is about will lead to expectations it is not likely to meet. This post is about how to stick with things, be they new habits or intentions, plans or commitments.

    In my work as a coach I often read and share books about habits and how to stick to them, and there is a huge wealth of information out there about how to be more productive from the ever popular Atomic Habits by James Clear to Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks and so on. I go through phases of finding one of these titles or authors that really chime with me at a particular time in my life, and I love their approach for a while, find the inspiration I am looking for and… move on.

    Alongside the books there is an army of podcasts about the same subject, and I am guilty of adding to the genre with my own weekly episode of Leading Virtual Teams. Through my coach training I have discovered a lot of amazing coaches many of whom share their expertise on habits and productivity on their shows, and my favourite of these is Katie Linder’s podcast for Higher Education professionals, You’ve Got This. Katie led the coach training I completed and I find her particular mix of reading, writing, being creative and productive really appealing. Definitely a recommended listen!

    But…

    And yet, of course, there is a but… . Because life is messy. Life keeps changing, and evolving and however much the data we collect through the devices and platforms we use would like us to believe otherwise, moving forward is not always a straight, upwards curving line. And not every season of life can be productive. I recently read a wonderful book, Ebb & Flow by Easkey Britton, which beautifully explored the concept of periods of ebb in life as necessary and valuable.

    That’s where for me conflicting desires arise: one the one hand I understand and appreciate that not every week, month or year can be super productive. Sometimes life just gets in the way. On the other hand, I am very used to pushing ahead with things or sometimes have a sense of being behind already, feeling frustrated and keen to make a change. At times like that, I use a couple of approaches to help find a path through the messy reality:

    Reflect: Need vs. want

    First, I find some headspace to reflect on what I need versus what I want. I think best when I actually write things down or talk to someone about it. Here are some prompts to think through this:

    • What do you want more of?
    • What do you want less of?
    • What would make things lighter?
    • What do you need to prioritise?
    • What do you need to finish?
    • What do you need to pause/stop?
    • What do you need to start?

    Reframe: Essential vs. desirable

    Next, I try to reframe the situation, to look at things in a different light. My own high expectations or sense of accomplishment is often the biggest barrier to feeling contentment, so my aim here is to be very clear with myself what is absolutely essential to accomplish and what is desirable. I often find that things drop off my plate once I can clearly articulate to myself what I really need to do, rather than all possible things I could be doing. Here are some criteria I use to sort things into the two buckets:

    • Essentials often are: time sensitive, external (i.e. someone else is waiting for this), income generating, high impact
    • Desirables often are: open ended, internal (i.e. only I wait for this to happen), unknown/low impact

    Once I have sorted my long list of things to do into these two categories, I take a look at what I identified in the first step, needs vs. wants and check that everything makes sense. For example, if I have a writing project I absolutely love doing and it helps to get me out of bed in the morning, then it might move from desirable to essential. Likewise, if I find I have overcommitted myself and I need to say no to more things, I go over my list of essentials again to identify things I can finish quickly or stop all together.

    Regroup: Grind vs. joy

    Then, I look at the practicalities and set out to tweak things to prioritise joy. What that looks like may be different for you, but these starting points should give you a sense of what to consider:

    Determine how many weeks stand between you and your next break. How long before you can take time off, go on retreat, travel or something else that offers a break from routine for you. A break, whether a change or a rest is essential to my mind. If you find there’s no let up in sight, take a moment and think hard about whether you can change that. What would it take to get a few days off?

    Once you found out how long you have to go, add a countdown to your calendar or other app.

    Then take a look at each week ahead of you. In my case I found certain days of the week in which I had much fewer commitments, so I moved things around to block out time for what I wanted more of (in my case creativity and time to get outside). I also took a look at what would be the hardest/busiest of times and started to schedule some time and activities around those days that would offer me some balance.

    Time to rest, read, walk the dogs and so on.

    I saw a post recently my a fellow coach, Mrs T, who coaches Headteachers, and in it she described how when days got very busy, her initial tendency was to fit in even more in any moments of calm. Fit in more tasks during breaks and taking work home in the evenings or at weekends. She then shared how nowadays her instinct is to step back and take a breath instead. I could really relate to that. When things get hectic, I used to try to be more productive, more busy still. The steps I have outlined above, to reflect, reframe and then regroup offer an alternative to being ever more busy. In that direction burnout looms.

    I hope you find more pockets of joy. Even when life gets messy. Let me know how you get on.

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  • Critical Cadence.

    Critical Cadence.

    The picture heading this post is a photograph I took this morning. It’s my favourite river oak that stands tall over the River Taff along my morning run route. I love this tree and the way in changes with the seasons and I especially enjoy taking a moment to pause and watch its reflection in the the river.

    The current attempt to return to running is going quite well, thank you for asking. It’s either my third or fourth since 2020 and so far the plan is holding together. I am ‘training’ for a 5k race, which I arbitrarily set for mid December, in the hope that I would manage that distance by then and also my desire to reach a milestone before the holidays. Currently I am running 3-4 miles three times a week, gaining a bit more fitness as the weeks go by, and I have even signed up for an actual 5k Santa run for December. I am determined. And yet I have been here before and I know that there’re a lot of factors that can easily derail this effort like the others before it. So fingers crossed.

    What my morning runs have done happily, is give me lots more space to think and walking and running, moving through a landscape at my own pace, has been on my mind. You will have already gathered that from the coaching walk project I recently completed (yay!), but this week my interest is taking a new return as I have started to craft my submission for an upcoming conference I hope to take part in:

    Education after the algorithm:
    Co-designing critical and creative futures
    20th and 21st of February, 2025 – Dublin City University
    Dublin, Ireland

    The theme that I am most interested in is ‘Unplugged, low-tech and lo-fi approaches to digital education and research’ which includes outdoor learning and rewilding learning. One of the core questions the course related to the conference aims to address is “How can we be open, creative and even wild in our digital learning design and teaching work?” and I am really curious about how the metaphor and practice of moving, through walking for example, can be helpful here.

    Both in learning and at work the frantic pace of productivity is determined by the speed of digital tools. Notifications, comments, emails and other content arrive ever more quickly and demand a piece of our attention. Digital noise can easily lead to digital overwhelm and our senses suffer. I have started to explore the embodied perspective of hybrid working (and learning) in previous posts, and for my conference submission I am keen to build on that work to consider strategies of how we can change the cadence of our digital lives to be a little more… human. A pace of thinking and working and learning that is more conducive to reflection, to criticality. Hence the title ‘Critical Cadence’.

    I’ll share the finished piece when it’s done, but for now, I shall go and get writing. At my own pace.

  • How to get your blogging mojo back.

    How to get your blogging mojo back.

    In the best tradition of blogging about blogging, today’s post is all about getting started with or getting back into blogging. Recently I have had lots of conversations with folk who would like to blog more, but don’t. Or who feel they *should* be blogging more often, but they haven’t actually managed to do so.

    If that’s you and you are looking for ways to get your blogging mojo back, this post is for you. There’s no judgment here. Just some practical approaches you can try to get (back) to blogging regularly.

    But, first… ask yourself this question: do you want to HAVE A BLOG or do you WANT TO BLOG? These two things, to my mind at least, don’t necessarily mean the same thing. Lots of people, organisations and companies have blogs. Blogs that might function a bit like newsletters, or communicate community updates. A blog can be a really effective tool for communications and marketing, and as such, you might be obliged to blog as part of your job. That’s not the kind of blogging I am talking about in this post.

    This is not about having a blog, but about the practice of blogging itself. The process of getting whatever you want to say in a post and press publish. It’s about the joy of blogging, the sheer exuberance of having a space, a domain, to make your own.

    My husband-to-be and I often talk about blogging, and he has written many posts about blogging as an OER, blogging as an industry, blogging and academic identity and more. I strongly suggest you head over to his blog if that’s the inspiration you are looking for. Over here in this post, let’s focus on blogging as practice.

    Start small

    A blog post can be any format and any length. It doesn’t have to be 500 words with references. It doesn’t have to be any particular format. It can be one sentence, one image, whatever you want it to be. Your next post is not going to be a masterpiece, or the great novel you might dream of writing. Start small and give yourself a chance to succeed.

    Imagine what you would suggest to a student or a colleague who came to you for advice about how to get started with blogging. What would you suggest to them? What would you encourage them to do? What would be good enough?

    Apply those same standards to yourself and start small.

    Blogging is not a to do list

    Lots of colleagues I talk to have a list of things they wish they had blogged about but haven’t, which covers anything from conferences presentations to new pieces of work. They have an endless list of things they feel they ought to cover, and that can make the task of blogging daunting.

    Maybe it works for you to have a dozen unfinished posts sitting in your dashboard, ready to pick up again when your thinking has progressed and those thoughts have percolated sufficiently. If that’s part of your process, then stick with it.

    But if unfinished posts or lists of things you ought to blog about are a barrier to simply getting a post out there, I would suggest parking these for a time at least or deleting them all together.

    If you are looking for a topic, just tune in to your interests right here and now. What’s in your mind? What is interesting? What are you curious or excited about?

    Blogging as a habit

    I believe that blogging is a very rewarding habit to cultivate and given that I have blogged for two decades, it must be working for me. And it does. I get a lot out of the process, other than ‘having a blog’. Here is why I blog:

    • I’m excited about something I want to share
    • I need some space to think through or reflect on something
    • I want to document something for future use
    • I want to keep a record of things I have done
    • I want to journal (in a public way)
    • I want to have things to put into my newsletter
    • I want to share an image I love and talk about it
    • I want to celebrate something
    • I want to contribute to a conversation or discourse
    • I want to show my solidarity
    • I want to amplify the voices of others
    • I want to do something helpful

    All of these motivations ultimately mean that blogging makes me feel good. I write plenty of posts that no one reads and no one comments on, and it doesn’t make a difference to my process. Of course I want people to read what I blog about, but I don’t focus on that as I blog and its not my main motivation.

    I would, and often do, blog, where no one can read my thoughts.

    So might blogging do for you? What can you get out of the process? What do you want from it? Figuring that out is the key for blogging to become a regular habit. Just like anything else we try to do regularly, from exercise to reading, blogging has to serve us and reward us for engaging.

    Yes, AI-powered tools could blog for you, but why bother?

    As a blogger, many of the tools I regularly use now offer me, to put it politely, various levels of so called smart approaches to generating content more easily and quickly. From smart compose to full on writing posts for me. Sigh.

    Why bother? The point of blogging is to blog. Why would I outsource that to technology.

    Some (fun) ways to publish a post, quickly (with examples)

    Sometimes I lack inspiration for blogging, and I still want to do it. So I come up with easy ways to blog, quickly. This often helps me get out of my head and into a more creative frame of mind. It works wonders for taking stock in times of stress and often cheers me up as well.

    Here are some examples to help you find your own ways to have some fun, and publish a post, quickly.

    Right, let’s get blogging. Good luck!

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  • Autumn ramble: Pocket edition

    Autumn ramble: Pocket edition

    I love this time of year and I love walking whilst talking. On a personal level that is one reason why having dogs is a good fit for me, as it prompts me outside daily for long, rambling walks through the colourful woods and along the river.

    However until recently I hadn’t found a way to translate my love for a good autumn ramble into my work… . That all changes in recent weeks as I embarked on creating the first of what I call ‘coaching walks’: It’s an autumn ramble, pocket edition.

    What is it?

    The idea for this format comes from my own experience of having wonderful reflective conversations with my then mentor Margaret as we walked our way through parks discussing strategy and solving the knotty problems I encountered as a CEO.

    We didn’t get to meet very often, but when we did and had time and space to head outside instead of limiting our sessions to a phone call or even an in person meeting, it was transformative.

    I think better when I walk, and I love following my train of thought and my feet, with an open mind about where they might take me.

    As a coach I now offer a walking format, both in person and remotely via a phone call, but the logistics of aligning diaries as and when important moments arise can make it challenging to actually make it happen.

    What I wanted to offer instead as a walk on demand, an option to take time away and find some headspace as and when my clients really need it. And so the idea for the coaching walk mini course was born.

    How does it work?

    The format is quite straight forward: it’s a mini online course in six parts, which covers setting out on the walk, the actual walk itself and coming back again. The screenshot of the course overview gives you an idea of the structure: each section has a narrative and activity as well as an audio recording to listen to (which you can download to listen to out and about):

    I have designed the activities so that you can choose to simply listen and walk and come back to the written version of the reflective prompts I share along the way later. Each element of the course includes pictures I have taken myself as I go on the walk.

    As you will be able to hear, I actually recorded a lot of the audio as I was walking myself, and I found that the most enjoyable part of creating the course.

    Where can I try it?

    You can preview and try out the full course for yourself for free. Simply head to the course homepage to get started. I think my coaching clients are very much going to enjoy trying this new format and I look forward to hearing what you think.

    Hopefully I’ll get a chance to create more seasonal resources like this, so let me know what you’d find helpful for the next edition. I’m already thinking about a coastal path coaching adventure… .

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  • Small things. Celebrated.

    Small things. Celebrated.

    Every now and then I take a month and celebrate a small win every day. When I blogged about this a couple of years ago, the motivation came from a time of being overstretched, a period during which it felt like no matter how much I did I never achieved enough.

    This time round my motivation is different, and more aligned to my desire to practice gratitude and to make the most of a busy, but precious time in my life – when many things pull my focus in different directions both personally and professionally.

    Gratitude journalling is a practice that I like and I have tried previously, and yet it doesn’t feel like quite the right fit for what I want to achieve this month. This celebration of small things is more about slowing down and paying attention, to be more present.

    The list of small things I have celebrated so far

    Day 1: Make a fire and be warm all evening
    Day 2: Go for a 2 mile run
    Day 3: Get flu vaccination
    Day 4: Received a letter with the best stamp. Ever.
    Day 5: Went to the beach!
    Day 6: Plant care hour
    Day 7: –
    Day 8: Time out and a nice coffee at my local cafe
    Day 9: got a huge box of pumpkins and squash
    Day 10: Went to the Theatre
    Day 11: Completed the last run in a training phase
    Day 12: Decorated the house with a garland which was a gift
    Day 13: Tea in bed
    Day 14: Went for a run although I didn’t feel like it
    Day 15: Signed up for a charity run

    I’ll be adding more as the month continues. Definitely looking for the bright spots in these times.

    Day 16: Went to the beach
    Day 17: Listened to vinyl
    Day 18: Had a good walk with the dogs
    Day 19: Finished a work project
    Day 20: Got beautiful flowers
    Day 21: Went on an autumn ramble
    Day 22: Had a quiet, restful day

    Listen to the podcast episode

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  • Congrats Cohort! Coaching course completion

    Congrats Cohort! Coaching course completion

    Today is an exciting day as my coaching course Healthy Hybrid Habits for Leaders and Managers wraps up after four weeks. It’s been a wonderful experience to work with a cohort of 20 individuals this month, and if you haven’t yet discovered this project, you can find out all about the course on the dedicated course page.

    Time to celebrate…!

    As this is the final week of the course, it’s time to celebrate. It’s been a joy to work with everyone participating in the course over the past few weeks and initial feedback has been really positive. For my part, I hope that the course has been both inspiring and helpful.

    Healthy habits take time to get right and can be hard to make stick… . All the tools, readings and resources included in the course are there to support participants on their journey. For now, it’s time to celebrate your achievement – and there’s a course certificate and digital badge to collect.

    Some favourite moments 🙂

    There was a lot to enjoy over the past month, and I found the weekly live group coaching sessions especially energising and inspiring. I loved hearing the group reflections and questions… and I was very happy to see folk playing along with the activities, too, from office origami to writing postcards with Positive Feedback by Post.

    I decided early on to include a course letter in the design, and this element was one of my favourite parts of the course delivery.

    Another element that has been great for the course is welcoming participants from different sectors and timezones. Although a group of 20 isn’t that large in itself, the group coaching format I had designed into the course doesn’t work as well with groups larger than 10, so that was the maximum number of participants for each live session.

    As the course was designed to be taken largely asynchronously, and audio based, which received a lot of positive feedback, the live session weren’t essential to attend, but proved very popular.

    Audio first wins!

    Given that the aim of the course is to establish healthy habits for hybrid working, it was my intention from the start to create audio instead of video content. Although video is very prevalent in this kind of course usually, providing audio recordings ready to download accompanied by transcripts and (mostly) openly licenced resources proved to be a very effective approach.

    Participants loved being able to download the recordings (usually around 30 min per topic) and listen whilst walking, or simply away from their desk. I am really delighted that this approach landed well… and I am definitely planning to use a similar format for future developments. Which brings us to…

    What’s next?

    First up, registration for the next run of the Healthy Hybrid Habits for Leaders and Managers is already open, and a few early birds have already signed up. Both free and paid places are available, and as before I’ll be accepting group registration (at a discounted rate), too! The next cohort gets underway on 20 January 2025… so if you are looking for a bit of a ray of light in the dark days of January, this might be the course for you.

    Also, I am VERY excited to have a new offering to unveil… Ta Da! Come and join me for a Coaching Walk: Autumn Ramble. If you are looking for some space to reflect and take a step back, then join me for a walk.

    Try a free, self-paced coaching walk I have designed as a seasonal guide to accompany you on an autumn ramble. This is the first of my seasonal offerings designed to give you some creative and fun ways to find time to reflect and focus. Enjoy!

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