Reply To: Exercise 3: 5 Close Contacts
Method Initiative Exercise 3
Deliverable 1: List of advice
Field of Interest: Minimalism, decluttering, organization
1. Parents overwhelm
a. Analyze the inventory they have
b. Observe which things are necessities
c. Sell or donate items
d. Create more space for the house – less inventory to manage
e. Create an inventory list as a reference so that they can see if they really need something when shopping. Refer to it when they want to bring in new inventory
f. Lead by example – possibly influence kids
g. Develop a sample model space and give a feel of of what life could look like
h. Get kids involved in the process with fun
i. Make it a collective activity and schedule it in
2. Kids under 12 overwhelm impacting parents
a. Simplify their environment from the time they are infants
b. Reduce unnecessary decision making fatigue.
c. Help kids value experiences and activities over objects
d. Control the inflow of items rather than just control the pre-existing.
e. Rent rather than buy toys to practice good stewardship of keeping items in good condition
3. Teenagers identity in objects
a. Help kids value experiences and activities over objects
4. Working professionals combatting procrastination
a. Build decluttering into their schedule
b. Make it small, short, and accessible
c. Dedicate time and build a habit
d. Help them learn to identify top 5 priorities
e. Use kanban boards – To Do, In Progress, Done
f. Help them break down, prioritize, and create an action plan, schedule execution into bite sized action items
g. Help them uncover intrinsic motivation
5. Women
a. Assuming there are others, approach others in the household to all work together
b. Support swap – exchange help with others
c. Change mentality about priority
d. Acknowledge that stuff will always be a problem
6. Environmentally conscious adults
a. Post resources on buy nothing group for broader audience
b. Create community using forums
c. Be more conscious about what we buy/are bringing into the home
d. Increase frequency of HS recycling waste days that are win-win for community and HS kids gaining volunteer hours, make offerings consistent, improve awareness/advertising, schedule regularly
e. Push the community to offer a community wide clean up day that is free to everyone
f. Provide visuals for easier understanding
Field of Interest: Relationships, self-awareness, loneliness
1. The elderly
a. Create community with local teenagers and elderly neighbors. Provide companionship or services, i.e. reading, grocery shopping, playing cards. Earn volunteer hours
b. Make it win-win
c. Engage folks of different age groups
d. Use proximity for support – introduce neighbors to each other
e. Create events to meet neighbors
f. Know that hobbies and interests can change
g. Teach them to find things that are interesting
h. Find community, put yourself out there, be curious about others
i. Teach and provide them resources to connect with far flung family and friends by providing training in using technology
j. Combine preschool with a retirement home + cross pollinate with activities they can do together
2. Single working professionals
a. Develop your own hobbies
b. Find community around your own hobbies
c. Find community, put yourself out there, be curious about others
d. Help people connect with groups with similar interests as people may be hesitant to invite others in but may want to join a group
e. Increase awareness of local native neighbors who are proactive to get to know others – have them invite newer folks to holiday events
3. Children
a. Teach kids compassion and empathy
b. Kids are learning to name their emotions but are feeling justified in their emotions. Teach them to move forward from their emotions
c. Teach complexities of what to do after identifying their emotions
d. Teach kids judgment – Normalize conflict.
e. Allow the child to have space by not correcting immediately. Allow them to feel their feelings and affirm their emotions. Separate that from how they might resolve the conflict.
4. People who struggle with friendship/connectedness
a. Identify what people are looking for in a friendship
b. Find common interest/common ground
c. Find places where people can meet and find common interest
d. Find community, put yourself out there, be curious about others
e. Help people connect with others with similar interests and thought processes so they feel comfortable making friendships
f. Work to identify why people experience their specific difficulty to uncover other potential underlying issues or behavior problems that cannot be corrected with simple teaching
g. Use smaller groups for introverts – i.e. help them seek 1-1 time
5. Working professionals facing hardship
a. Find online forums for people in the same group encountering some things they are going through
b. Identify team or safe individual that they can reach out to
c. Remind them that they are not alone
d. Normalize hard things
Deliverable 2: Improved version of projects based on that advice
Topic of Minimalism, Decluttering, and Organization
1. Parents feel overwhelmed with homes – Help them simplify their space and engage all members
2. Children under 12 overwhelmed with decision paralysis can cause stress in parents – help parents simplify their environments
3. Teenagers feel attached to their belongings – Teach them to craft identity around values
4. Working professionals feeling helpless to combat procrastination – help them minimize things they need to do or inventory
5. Women feeling alone and overwhelmed with the process – body double
6. Environmentally conscious adults feeling underequipped to take action – increase resources and accessibility by engaging community events and sharing knowledge broadly
Topic of Relationships, Self-Awareness, and Loneliness
1. The elderly feel lonely – find and develop communities of varying age ranges
2. Single working professionals feel lonely – find communities based on common interests
3. Children feel frustrated when in conflict with others – teach them to name emotions, sit with feelings, have compassion/empathy, and then move to resolve conflict
4. People who struggle with friendship feel lonely, misunderstood, and disconnected – help them find community based on common interests
5. Working professionals facing hardship feel lonely – teach them to find community and seek help
Deliverable 3: Reflections
• How did you feel about the exercise before starting? Were you anxious, excited, confused? How did your feelings change as you did the exercise?
I overestimated how long the exercise would take and the ease of getting it done. It was stressful trying to complete all five by Friday so I could organize my thoughts, reflect, and then post by 24 hours before class so others could read my responses. I happened to complete this Friday and then completely fell off the boat after the ‘sleep on it before posting’ part. As I completed the exercise, I felt closer and closer to the finish line. Since I had two topics, I felt the burden of entertaining more than one shiny object. Organizing my notes into the key deliverables was also quite an extensive task for me. Overwhelming at times, but better and better as I completed the tasks and sorted my thoughts. This write up in particular felt burdensome and stressful. Not only were my notes that I took haphazard, but during this reflection and compilation of notes, I had to reorganize the notes and parse through them.
• How did you feel during the conversations? How did the other people seem to feel?
During the conversations I felt overwhelmed to communicate succinctly. I quickly realized that the way I’d phrased my original problems/solutions were way too wordy and I constantly felt like I was having to give the short version but then circle back to explain further.
• Did you get advice beyond your expectations? Did you learn from the conversations?
I felt like people gave way more advice than they thought they could. Via the telephone, people preferred to give advice after each project rather than hear all of them before commenting. Most people voted for roots of problems, things they struggled with themselves, or what they felt like would have the biggest impact on community. I learned that people often would pass judgment as the book suggested and I would need to paraphrase in order to extract advice from people.
• Do you feel your understanding of the problem and the quality of the solution improved?
Yes, some problems are interrelated or rooted in one. In terms of quality of solution, perhaps the short versions didn’t quite seem to be improved, but there seemed to be broken down steps that I could follow or work within to gain further feedback.
• Do you think the people you talked to are interested in learning how the project evolves?
To a certain degree there is curiosity on their side.
• How would you characterize the conversations—boring, fun, exciting?
People giving advice seemed neutral or interested in giving advice. Some folks simply wanted to help me out as I sought out many groups and got little traction. At times they were interested by decision paralysis or sheer number of projects. It was neutral with a hint of fun and curiosity. I was most intrigued when folks got to the voting portion. I’d tried to be as neutral as possible during the voting and told people to pick their favorite one, pick the one they wanted me to work with, and/or pick the one they felt was most viable. In minimalism, a lot of people felt like parents were the root for kids, teens, women, households, etc. so they picked the one that seemed to tie more things together. However, there also seemed to be interest in the one about environmentally conscious adults as it seemed that some folks struggled personally from that specific problem. It also seemed like a problem that the community could benefit from, and thus some people voted for it. In relationships, votes for the elderly came as people recognized it as a persisting problem, and votes for those who struggle with friendship came because once again, it seemed like it was a fundamental problem that the other projects stemmed from.
Deliverable 4: Votes from each person
Topic of Minimalism, Decluttering, and Organization
1. Parents feeling overwhelm – II
6. Environmentally Conscious Adults – III
Topic of Relationships, Self-Awareness, and Loneliness
1. The Elderly – II
2. Single Working Professionals – I
4. People who struggle with friendship – II
Deliverable 5: Choice of project
I am struggling with choice of project. Nothing quite seems to pop out over the others. Project 6 was a last minute add in the original phase of crafting projects for the topic of minimalism and a surprise to me. Once again, it is because I don’t see the environment as a core motivating value of mine. Relationships and minimalism seem intertwined. Also, despite forcing myself to complete all of these for both topics, both shiny objects are just as shiny as they were from the get go. Send help!