Note — — 225 words

Business — Personal — Society

Work:

It’s 10 years since Woolworths closed down. I worked there at the time. To this day, the whole experience is among the most surreal of my life.

At the time, I wrote a lengthy series of blog posts detailing my own story of the goings-on around the failure of one of Britain’s most iconic businesses.

Being on the shop floor while a British institution collapsed around me taught me a bit about business. But it taught me *a lot* about people. Enjoy this look back.

(These used to be linked to each other using a WordPress plugin, but these were lost during a migration — so here they all are.)

1. [Woolworths: The curiously British US-based company](https://doctorvee.co.uk/2009/01/06/woolworths-the-curiously-british-us-based-company/)
2. [Woolworths as it was known and loved, and neglected](https://doctorvee.co.uk/2009/01/07/woolworths-as-it-was-known-and-loved-and-neglected/)
3. [Woolworths: Childhood memories and adult gripes](https://doctorvee.co.uk/2009/01/08/woolworths-childhood-memories-and-adult-gripes/)
4. [It wasn’t just the credit crunch](https://doctorvee.co.uk/2009/01/10/it-wasnt-just-the-credit-crunch/)
5. [The blunder of Woolworths](https://doctorvee.co.uk/2009/01/11/the-blunder-of-woolworths/)
6. [Identity crisis](https://doctorvee.co.uk/2009/01/12/identity-crisis/)
7. [The beginning of the end](https://doctorvee.co.uk/2009/01/13/the-beginning-of-the-end/)
8. [The nasty side of human nature](https://doctorvee.co.uk/2009/01/14/the-nasty-side-of-human-nature/)
9. [Woolworths: Final thoughts and wrapping up](https://doctorvee.co.uk/2009/01/17/woolworths-final-thoughts-and-wrapping-up/)

For more on Woolworths 10 years on from its collapse, [check out Graham Soult’s excellent report](https://www.cannyinsights.com/2018/12/31/nine-out-of-ten-ex-woolworths-sites-remain-in-active-retail-use-a-decade-after-closure/).

Linknote — — 175 words

Business — Personal — User experience

UX your life: Applying the user-centered process to your life (and stuff) — JD Jordan, Smashing Magazine

I’m always in two minds about whether people should use work-based techniques on personal problems. I have heard of people using Trello boards at home to organise tasks, which sounds as nightmarish as it sounds sensible. I’ve even heard of people running scrum-style weekly planning meetings with their family, which definitely sounds overboard to me.

But I do like the look of some of the ideas here. For instance, I’m keen to map out out my life in weeks.

And I already know that affinity mapping can work great at home and for other stuff.

[When we did the MoRun in November](https://duncanstephen.net/this-time-last-week-i-ran-the-edinburgh-morun-5k/), Lauren and I made an affinity map to decide which of two runs to enter. My gut feeling told me another run would be better. But writing down all the pros and cons of each race, and grouping them, made it clear that my gut feeling was actually wide of the mark.