Reply To: Exercise 4: 10 Friends and Family Members
Method Initiative – Exercise 4
Original Problem:
Environmentally conscious adults who want to minimize their belongings feeling underequipped or helpless to take action for lack of resources/knowledge/time on how to reuse/reduce/recycle or properly dispose of things
Original Solution:
Increase resources and accessibility by engaging community events and sharing knowledge broadly – create podcast and/or YouTube channel of doing so.
Advice 1: Use the Spodek Method with a twist on minimalism to help someone build their own conviction and ability to take initiative – can be more impactful than someone just having the resources to take action. What seems to be the root is having people feel empowered to take the first step.
Advice 2: Lower expectations for people reading a newsletter. If creating an all-inclusive resource – be very intentional with the way it’s presented and ensure to be strategic with HOW they are provided. This will prevent people feeling overwhelmed.
Advice 3: Use a forum to create a search for hard to recycle items – this way people can search for their items and get specific advice. Similar to hackathon. If you can code, this can help increase accessibility. Make it concise.
Advice 4: Create a workshop to challenge people and engage people to get rid of one thing a day. Start a challenge like the minimalists have to inspire action.
Closer 1. Can you specify further than environmentally conscious adults? Are you wanting to do this in my community, locally, or nearby? Question whether or not more information or more resources is really the main issue. Do people do more with more resources? or is it more lack of action? Focus more on engagement.
Closer 2. Look up Beau Miles – creativity inspiration on how/what to do.
Advice 5: Make it easy.
Advice 6: Find a way to make it fun. Make it so that people don’t have to spend too much time or effort to do so.
Advice 7: Raise awareness in people for win-win solutions. I.e. reusable water bottles vs. plastic bottles. Reusable keurig cups vs. single use. Both equate saving money.
Closer 1: include why they should. Why they could.
Closer 2: no.
Advice 8: Questions: do they already know how to identify what they want to dispose? Some yes, some no. Figure out how they can identify what they want to dispose of.
Advice 9: Determine who you are giving support to: Support for people who already have the drive? It’s for those with the desire, but not necessarily the drive.
Advice 10: support people to find solutions for their problem.
Advice 11: Connect people with a resource they can consult for hard to recycle or dispose of items. Provide a live consult for people to get rid of things.
Advice 12: Narrow down to 5 items for example or do you want it to be any sort of item people cannot get rid of?
Advice 13: Figure out items that are most often thrown away because people don’t know how to get rid of them. Or have a web page where people can connect.
Advice 14: Create core information set about things people throw away that could be recycled OR something like a think tank clearing house place where there’s a set of things and there’s contacts to be able to research where things go.
Closing 1: Nothing I didn’t think of.
Closing 2: No.
Advice 15: Narrow in how to address that problem. – people have more stuff than they want but don’t know what to do next. Solution felt like first step. Gain clarity on which project I would launch around the problem. Find a way to tap into people.
Advice 16: Seek out people in the community event to see what their barriers are. Lean on their business models to see.
Advice 17: Start a list serve and people can jump on. How do people find you? Is there something that already exists? How is it being used? If there are resources, why aren’t people doing more?
Advice 18: Consider the following: What medium, format, what people have done?
Closing 1: in the world of environmentally conscious people, there are people who live various lives – I.e. rough necks. Keep grouping and definition of group broad and inclusive.
Closing 2: Eugene did a lot of work on public speaking. If you go the community event route, he might have some parallels to share. He engaged with some people who ran open mic nights. Evelyn used to be part of rotary club. Look at certain organizations that might have networks or systems in place.
Advice 19: Be mindful of verbal presentation and delivery. When presenting, frame dialogue with increasing timeframes. i.e. Start with ‘Environmentally conscious adults who want to act are feeling overwhelmed.’ Break up the delivery. Have a really short version. How we communicate with others is a big part of it.
Short version: Environmentally conscious adults who want to minimize their belongings are feeling overwhelmed. Help them find resources to recycle or dispose of their items.
Advice 20: Propose not wanting stuff. Propose not getting stuff in the first place.
Advice 21: In working with people on sustainability, it feels like there’s a lot of overlap with minimalism. There’s a mindset shift necessary. People are already swimming in information.
Closing 1: Consider the mental shift part. Make it easy for them to finish. Are you someone getting out of it yourself?
Closing 2: Nobody he could introduce me to. Conrad comes to mind. – speak to him. His mother comes to mind as she just moved, but she might get upset.
Advice 22: There is a psychology behind what we purchase and why we purchase. There has got to be publicly accessible info on why people buy or why they buy so much. Understanding that and enrolling that into the solution would be opportunistic. Find some groups on LinkedIn – could open a door on linked in.
Advice 23: Control what comes in because then you don’t have to deal with more inventory. If you restrict the flow coming in you have less to deal with.
Advice 24: Make a simple 3-6 step process that’s generic. Take stock of belongings. Think about a simple small number of steps process to illustrate the idea. Come up with framework that would take some of the scariness out of it. Follow a methodology for incremental changes to get rid of overwhelm.
Advice 25: describe more the feelings they may feel when they are stuck. Feelings list. Sad, overwhelmed, embarrassed, etc. broadens scope of feelings. Expand the funnel of emotions or people who I can interface with. Balance it with what they will feel when they deal with it. As is – to be. Justify investment. How are you feeling then? Define the benefits.
Closing 1: Where would you start? What grouping would you start with? Might be different for different groups. How it’s handled. Take stock of how the messaging could be different based on audience. Narrow down target audience to start. Environmentally conscious people who somehow have too much stuff.
Closing 2: People he could connect me with would have a problem-solving perspective. No experts in decluttering or minimalistic perspective. Problem solvers. No names come to mind immediately.
Advice 26: Start with inventory. What do I have? What do I need? What do I not need? How would I rank these items? Where would I start reducing things?
Advice 27: Figure out the next best possible way to repurpose so impact on environment is minimal.
Advice 28: Have a plan so that in the absence of a specific thing one knows how life changes.
Closing 1: Environmental impact is very vague. It feels like I’m doing something but have no feedback or information on or basis for whether or not impact is measurable or quantified.
Closing 2: No.
Advice 29: Diminish consumption overall – decrease number of things, cost with having things, etc. Identify existing systems and tools that can aid in that – i.e. repair workshops and organizations; Goodwill-style places that are more intentional that will help find things that are usable or reparable. Prevent duplication of effort. Give more space to connecting people with resources rather than creating resources from scratch.
Advice 30: Look into the psychological nature of accumulation and item gathering/hoarding behaviors. It comes from place of inconsistency in someone’s life. I.e. Childhood lack. Read up on ‘Starvation Economies’ – provide some paths and methods or psychological techniques to let go of things.
Advice 31: Be open to connecting with his friend. His friend is working on app for managing capacity. It also focuses on connecting people with and creating community resources. For example: everybody doesn’t need to own a lawnmower. Split it up amongst available time. In one iteration of 2 or 3 hour blocks, one could have a group of 23 individuals or homes that could own one top of the line lawnmower and get all of it done by sharing maintenance costs. It would cost them less than 10% on their own, and it would facilitate more community.
Closing 1: While working through this and creating a system, tool, or process, if you can make it as systematic as possible it normally aids in measurable outcomes overall with time. It’s something most people are disinclined to do. Utilize systematic checks and tests at different parts in the process. Check for decision nodes or inflection points. These could prove to be helpful. Focus on repeatability, measurability and consistent process. Book rec: Checklist Manifesto.
Closing 2: Absolutely yes. There’s someone he wants to connect me with who is working on a similar problem. Friend is at limited capacity so my information will be shared. Will be up to his friend to reach out.
Advice 32: Cut emotional ties with items by expressing gratitude for an item for teaching a lesson. I.e. a shirt that doesn’t look good on someone. Appreciating the learning that it is not a suitable style for said person before letting it go. Detach emotional weight from the lesson by expressing gratitude.
Advice 33: Educate self more on how to work with people more on a mindset shift. Psychology of hoarding vs. minimalism.
Advice 34: Investigate the feeling of need or attachment. Develop a filter for helping people understand the misalignment with their values. Figure out the deeper underlying things that cause overwhelm. – understand that based on what people tell me, I’ll know what commitment they need. I can learn to understand what they collect or why and the level of collection. Be discerning about who I can help.
Closing 1: That’s it! It might be deeper than I even imagined. There might be some potentially heavy stuff. It’s deep in human and cultural programming that people might not be aware of.
Closing 2: if he knew Marie Kondo it would be her. David Allen – Getting Things Done. Mindset shift around intake filters. Don’t know these folks but could consider looking them up.
Advice 35: Define needs vs. wants.
Advice 36: Identify pre-existing resources for people to use. Donation centers or local Buy Nothing groups.
Advice 37: Use multi-purpose items. Identify multi-purpose items that save space, cost, and inventory.
Closing 1: From the logistics standpoint – consider delivery or implementation. What is the goal of how many people to talk to or to help? What am I measuring? Metric?
Closing 2: Will think about it. Environmental related topics. Reach out to the buy nothing group admins. Get their insights on how helpful it is to the people receiving donations.
Revised Problem:
Environmentally conscious adults who want to minimize their belongings are feeling overwhelmed.
Revised solution:
Help willing and open people to become aware of the root of their issue – inventory inflow. Begin reducing overwhelm by digging deeper into what may cause their emotional attachments to bring awareness to the physical way it is manifesting. After pausing or minimizing inventory inflow, help them to connect with resources for sustainably reducing their inventory.
Reflection:
Regarding the 7 principles, my understanding isn’t really changing, but I have more thoughts and questions. I’m curious about ‘the idea of a lifetime comes once a month’. A month is typically 4 weeks long and I’m curious if exercises 1-4 iterated over and over is what produces the idea of a lifetime. I am on board with the idea that action is greater than ideas. I’m a little confused on the iterate part. Sometimes I feel decision paralysis yet again when I am trying to iterate. Especially with this particular exercise. I don’t think that I necessarily iterated very effectively. I think I could use more guidance and clarity here.
Before the exercise, I was annoyed that I didn’t have a single idea that ‘excited me the most’. Ultimately, since I did exercise 3 with two topics with a total of 11 projects, I picked the project that had the most votes. I was nervous about getting 10 people done in a week as I always seem to struggle to complete the exercise by my desired timeframe, but I was relieved that we could reach out to peers from the workshop. Honestly, similar to the last exercise, I felt better and better the closer I was to completing the 10. One could say that I am task oriented. I definitely struggled with the ‘iterate’ part of the instructions because I wasn’t too sure how or where to iterate.
Yes, I could identify patterns and share with folks some common feedback I was receiving but was that actually influencing their answer? Perhaps yes, perhaps no. With more advice and more options to take the project, I felt decision paralysis yet again and shiny object syndrome yet again. During the conversations, I felt restless. When I got repeated advice, some of it sank in, and others seemed to increase my challenge of narrowing things down by opening up doors of infinite possibility. Other people seemed to feel neutral about the conversations. People seemed to like sharing if they happened to struggle with the same problem I was asking them for advice about – perhaps they experienced a sense of camaraderie.
I definitely got advice beyond my expectations and learned from the conversations. In one respect, I never anticipated getting advice on my verbal presentation/delivery of my request. I think it was too easy to forget about seeing as how I connected with all 10 of my folks via phone. I imagine if it was over zoom or in person, I’d have been much more mindful of delivery.
I do think my understanding of the problem shifted in ways – from treating the symptoms to focusing on the root cause. However, the solution now required seems to involve much more bandwidth to figure out. In my specific case, going from giving someone resources and increasing accessibility seems to be much simpler and straightforward rather than getting someone to openly admit they need a mindset shift and helping them figure out how the mindset got stuck in the first place. It requires digging into someone’s attachments, traumas, and childhood patterns and requires vulnerability on the receiving end as opposed to simply giving someone an option that they could respond with ‘taking it or leaving it’.
I think those I talked to are curious about how the project evolves. Perhaps they are more curious about why I am learning initiative and taking the approach that I am. Overall, the conversations ranged from interesting to boring to informative to tedious. What I’m discovering is that I’m quite execution focused with clear objectives, but that I may struggle more with the ‘iterate and change’ component. For example, completing 10 means completing 10. And writing, sleeping on it, editing, and posting seems to be something I am following quite closely. However, posting by 24hrs before class has proven hard given when the task was completed and when I could have the bandwidth to write, sleep on it, then post.