The end of September has rather bizarrely brought the sunshine back again. While this is obviously great for general morale and boosting Vitamin D levels, is not quite so conducive to studying…

However, we've just had our new programme outline through for the final, three day residential, which provides a nice and much needed boost of inspiration, and I'm really looking forward to it. We have the arts and the sciences this time round, with a morning on inspirational leadership lessons from Shakespeare, and an afternoon on neuroscience research and the implications for people and organisational development.

We are also lucky enough to have Mee Yan Cheung-Judge come in and talk on the future of organisational development, and some input from our group's set advisor on making the most of and capturing our learning journey on the MSc.

In the meantime, it's our busiest time of year at work, and as seems to happen every year it seems to be even busier than the last. While the focus of the last set was of necessity on the work most connected to our academic projects, it was also great to be able to use some of the wisdom in the room for the more immediate priority of brainstorming some last minute facilitation ideas for the seemingly endless workshops we are running over the next few weeks.

In my spare time - which is worryingly little at this time of year - I am plodding on with working on my various remaining projects. This includes the seemingly endless reiterations of questions for my research project into career and professional development needs and the ongoing research into behavioural economics and how insights from this area might be able to be used to support individual behaviour change.

I have also been making sure I regularly taking some brief but much needed time out to put into practice my newly learned meditation skills, which I have taken up as part of my skills development piece. I am finding it much easier than I thought I would so far, and it's reasonably possible to fit in around lunch hours and travel (although more than one member of my team so far has opened a coaching room to find to their surprise that I am sitting in it, eyes closed, looking for all the world as though I am asleep).

I'm keeping a diary of my experience and of any impact on my practice and will report back any interesting findings.