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blogs/posts/2026-05-28_brain_plates/index.qmd

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+---
+title: "📆 Day plans and brain plates 🤯"
+subtitle: ""
+authors:
+  - name: Claire Welsh
+    orcid: 0000-0001-9477-0775
+    email: claire.welsh8@nhs.net
+    affiliation:
+      - name: The Strategy Unit
+        url: https://strategyunitwm.nhs.uk/
+date: "2026-05-29"
+categories: [data science, knowledge management, GitHub]
+execute: 
+  enabled: true
+editor: 
+  markdown: 
+    wrap: sentence
+format:
+  html:
+    code-fold: true
+---
+
+![InsideOut](inside_out.gif){fig.alt="Joy from the move Inside Out hugging a 'core memory'" width="100%"}
+
+In our data science team, we recently started having fortnightly ‘side-quests and 
+support’ meetings. RD
+The whole team is invited, and the blurb that goes along with the invite is: 
+"This meeting is a chance for the team to get together informally and discuss 
+their work, get help unsticking tricky elements, show off cool things they've 
+done, air worries and find solutions. We all benefit from having some idea of 
+the work of others, can spot areas of duplication and pick up on the use of 
+skills we want to acquire. 
+If you're picked to present, use your time how you like - tell us about what's 
+bothering you, what you're proud of, issues with how the team are working, the 
+wider Unit, or anything you'd like us to know.” 
+
+We’ve grown to really value this hour, and lots of interesting ideas and 
+positivity fall out of them. We try to avoid talking about BAU work, so that we 
+can have a little and celebrate each other’s’ unique flavours of nerdery.  
+Some recent highlights have been an app that was built to find optimal walking 
+routes between pubs and landmarks, an auto-generated personal blog website with 
+great photos and a notebook to analyse football statistics.
+
+Recently, one of the topics we discussed was how we each maintain a healthy 
+‘brain plate’ – meaning how we ensure we are not relying on memory to ensure we 
+do all the things we need/want to. 
+
+Our team is a mix of coders, managers, designers and consultants, and we all 
+approach similar problems differently. 
+This blog is a set of mini interviews with our lovely team members to capture 
+the different ways we manage our working lives.
+
+#{{< include RD.qmd >}}
+
+#{{< include NS.qmd >}}
+
+#{{< include TJ.qmd >}}
+
+#{{< include EK.qmd >}}
+
+#{{< include MD.qmd >}}
+
+#{{< include CB.qmd >}}
+
+#{{< include ZT.qmd >}}
+
+## ![Picture of CW](CW.jpg){width="10%" fig-align="right"} Claire: Lead Data Scientist 
+
+## How do I store my meeting notes and thoughts/ideas? 🧠
+
+### Quarto book
+
+I use a Quarto book to store all my meeting notes and thoughts. 
+It’s tracked with git locally for version control, but because it includes line 
+management notes, it can’t be safely deployed. 
+I separate topics into different markdown files. 
+Each entry in a file is started with the date (in ‘yyyy-mm-dd’ format) as a 
+heading. 
+The whole thing is searchable at once (using the keyboard shortcut of CTRL>Shift>F). 
+I also record bits of positive feedback for myself to go back to when I need a 
+boost🥰, and a separate page for useful little hints and tips for myself. 
+I write into this book during meetings, but any actions are immediately added to
+my OneNote list.
+
+![Screenshot of my notes in a Quarto book in the Positron IDE](Positron%20quarto%20book.png)
+
+### Helpers
+
+I did write a little basic R package 📦 to allow me to write notes into my Quarto 
+book straight from an R project, the code is available [here](https://github.com/DCEW/projectlog). 
+I used it for a little while but found it less useful than I’d thought, since I 
+can just type directly into Positron which I have open all day.
+
+![Screenshot of the landing page of my GitHub repository for my ‘projectlog’ package](projectlog.png)
+
+## What about my to-do lists?
+
+### OneNote
+
+For to do lists – it allows a quick bullet point view of what I need to spend my 
+time on. 
+I delete the row when the work is done ✅.
+
+![OneNote logo](OneNote_logo.jpg)
+
+### Emails
+
+I use this as a to-do list also in a sense, because once I’ve taken the relevant 
+action from an email, I delete or file it, so that my inbox is always those that 
+still need attention. 
+I aim to get to zero-inbox at the end of each week! 🥅
+
+### GitHub
+
+Daily I check on the PRs that need review, and I frequently look through my list 
+of issues. 
+I make use of the filtering options to narrow down the issues list to those 
+relevant to certain projects.
+
+![Screenshot of the top right of the GitHub website showing the buttons that can take you to a list of your issues, or your pull requests](PR%20and%20issues%20shortcut.png)
+
+### Paper!
+
+When trying to conceptualise something complicated, or design something, you 
+can’t beat scribbling on paper ✍️. 
+I try to minimise the amount of paper I use, and transfer designs etc to 
+something electronic quickly (so I can't destroy it with coffee stains as easily ☕). 
+Its also quicker for me than using any drawing software.
+
+![Photograph of notepaper with messy writing on it showing a process I wanted to visualise as I was talking](scribble.jpg)
+
+#{{< include YH.qmd >}}
+
+#{{< include FB.qmd >}}
+