# This week at JDHQ – 2026-05-18 > The weekly email update, cross-posted here. > Originally sent to the [mailing list](/support/contact-community/mailing-list-rss-social/). Given our new [focus on small business](/blog/0193), I'm going to send a weekly email telling you what we're up to. This reveals the patterns in our _own_ business, and explains what we're doing to help yours. Don't tune out if you don't run a business! Much of this is relevant to daily life and where that's the case, it'll make its way to [JDU](/jdu/). ## Inspired by Chiara This email is inspired by [Chiara's weekly updates](https://www.chiaracokieng.com/tag/weekly-updates/), which I really enjoy reading. Chiara started her own small business recently. She helps skilled immigrants land tech and business jobs in Germany. She's one of the Decimal family; obviously passionate about what she does and totally dedicated to it. If you know someone trying to move to Germany, [get in touch with her](https://www.chiaracokieng.com/contact/). ## Monday morning staff meeting Spending literally every waking moment with your business partner means that 'the business' becomes this omnipresent thing. As a result we tend not to have many formal meetings. Chats just happen. We've just had our first Monday morning staff meeting and it was incredibly helpful. We each ran through the projects that we have active this week, and agreed on a couple of specific scheduling points. Details below. > Tracked at: [11.21 Business plan](/sbs/11.21/) / 11.21+ Monday-morning meeting minutes, with dated headers within that single text file that we'll fill out over time. ## What we did last week - Held the first open Zoom sessions for small business. - You told us that you wanted more focus on the documentation and process – the _helping you to run a business_ – and less on me building some niche software solution. Heard! (And, honestly: great relief. It's what we love doing.) - There are 2× more sessions this Wednesday. [Subscribe to the events calendar](/support/knowledge-base/sbs-events-calendar/) (SBS only). - See below for the longer-term plan for these sessions. - Video: - [An ideas 'registry' organised with structured tags](https://youtu.be/g2z3fuv8a2A) - Blog: - [Spend time with your own words [0194]](/blog/0194) - [Position statement: AI-generated apps [0195]](/blog/0195) - [A nice surprise in Things [0196]](/blog/0196) - [Think small: achieve something / Think big: probably fail [0197]](/blog/0197) ## What we're working on this week > IDs in the **20-39** range are specific to our business. ### 31.21 Emails to the mailing list Here we are. You'll get one of these every week now. They'll be cross-posted to the blog for longevity. Tell me what you like and what you don't; what's useful and what isn't. (And for those of you who don't want an email a week, the [RSS feed](/support/contact-community/mailing-list-rss-social/#rss-feed) is your friend. All big news will be posted to the blog. I won't be offended if you unsubscribe from this list.) ### 21.47 Obsidian for your JDex We use Obsidian for our SBS JDex, and Lucy expressed her frustration last week that she wasn't very good at it. So we're going to do a loosely-planned series where I show her how to get the most of it in this context. This won't be a comprehensive training course. (There are hundreds of those on YouTube – I guess [Nick Milo](https://www.youtube.com/@linkingyourthinking) is a good place to start?) This will be simple, practical advice: how we actually use this tool day-to-day. Expect one a week until Lucy's comfortable with it. > Coming to [JDU](/jdu/). ### 21.48 Email training course Email?! Who doesn't know how to use email? Well, the world is getting more complex, and email is now the centre of your digital identity. In this short series – part of a broader series we're planning on online security and hygiene – I'll explain, from first principles, why you need to change your email habits in 2026. I'll show Lucy how to set up Fastmail, which I started using just the other month, and how and why to migrate to unique email addresses. I'm _deeply_ in love with this product. Eventually we'll get to buying a domain name and setting yourself free from carolscupcakes@gmail.com, setting up the much more professional hello@carolscupcakes.com. I'll walk Lucy – who hasn't the first clue where to start – through this whole process. > Coming to [JDU](/jdu/). ### 21.30 Learn with Lucy – the command line It's very useful – especially if you manage your own IT situation, as most of us do – to have a basic understanding of the command line. You go to some website, you want to install some software, and it tells you to simply **curl -fsSL https://bun.com/install | bash** and … now what? Last year I put up a short series teaching my friend [Ellane](https://ellanew.com) how to use the command line, from first principles. You'll find that at [commandline.johnnydecimal.com](https://commandline.johnnydecimal.com), where it will remain. Lucy started reading through it last week and she had questions. So we're going to use that series and turn it into video. > Coming to [JDU](/jdu/). ### 21.34 Small Business System This is our overall ID for the system itself. This week we'll be setting up two things. First, a monthly Zoom session calendar, each month focused on a specific problem. We'll look at data storage and backups in June. How to make sure that your data is stored securely and that it's sufficiently backed up. This is close to my heart as I run a business with terabytes of assets (video files) from 2× laptops, neither of which can store all of that data. So I have a server at a friend's house and a series of levers and pulleys that keep everything in sync. There's a miniseries on the blog starting with [My data storage & backup strategy [0101]](/blog/0101) if you want to read more. We'll record these sessions and figure out how to present them as a permanent artefact that you can refer back to. Second, a weekly calendar based around our idea of '[TGIF](/blog/0097)', i.e. Thank God I Filed It. So much of business is just keeping on top of stuff. It is, frankly, boring admin. But it's the sort of thing that causes stress if neglected. Perhaps we can help. If we all commit to tidying up the same thing every week – we'll just start at the start, with your **11.10 ■ Official documents** – we can make this into something routine. The idea is that if you follow our annual cadence, you'll never have to do the dreaded 'big clean-up' because there'll be a constant awareness of your entire system. > Coming to [SBS](/sbs/) ### 21.14 Task & Project Management I have a big update to the project management side of things that I've been thinking about since we finished recording the course last year. I'd like to get a blog post out this week so you can give me feedback. While there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution, I'd like to come up with something as close to consensus as possible. That will then become a handful of videos and some process documentation that we'll add to the end of the [existing course](/jdu/#task-and-project-management). If you're interested, there's a robust discussion [in the Discord channel](https://discord.com/channels/822215537589354566/1440957050916962354). > Coming to [JDU](/jdu/). ### Projects that are unlikely to get any time this week - I'd like to spend a little time each day in my own [Imaginarium](https://youtu.be/g2z3fuv8a2A) but probably won't have time to move the idea forward. - I'm not giving up software development: I'd really like the very-alpha-version [CLI](/jdhq/jd/) to be something I use every day. Hopefully more time on that next week.