Reply To: Exercise 5: 5 People Who Feel the Problem
Method Initiative Exercise 5 – 5 People Who Are Experiencing the Problem
1. Amelia M., who tries to reduce her consumption of plastic and shops at Mama’s and Papa’s expensive refill store, feels ungrounded and unfocused from the anxiety of seeing all of the piles that she has created and has yet to execute the practicalities of getting rid of them. She prefers an organized home and would be in a more focused, better mental state if only she had a tidier space only full of things she actually used. She copes by exercising to avoid dealing with the emotions her things are causing her.
2. Naomi S., a family woman, wants to get rid of things but feels wasteful about throwing things away, and wants to give things away to other people but feels stuck. She feels bothered when she looks at all of the things around and feels frustrated with herself for being unable to let go and when her husband asks her why cannot simply throw things away.
3. Nanci L., a long-time academic, used to be more conscious about her footprint when she had two little kids, and it progressively got worse as they grew up and eventually as she became an empty nester. She feels guilt over not being as aware as she used to be, and yet, she feels less guilt when thinking that corporate responsibility is more important. While she acknowledges family history to be a big part of it where her grandparents and parents were hoarders and has taken action to consciously live in a smaller space of 900 sq ft to age out, she always feels the need to feel prepared for emergencies. She desires to be a minimalist but doesn’t see it. Momentum to start feels elusive as she feels overwhelmed by the whole prospect. Thinking of the task as broken into smaller chunks may be helpful to her as someone who potentially struggles with ADHD.
4. Joshua A., a working professional, feels a mixture of emotions – grief and reluctance over facing items that resembled a life that he was planning for that will never happen. Once he decides he can finally let go, the logistics of selling his belongings and going back and forth over price is a maddening process. He experiences frustration and overwhelm of not knowing where to start and what he can legitimately let go of. He gets distracted easily and struggles to celebrate progress vs. feeling overwhelmed with the lack of progress that results from rabbit-holing. On the front of sustainability, he feels conflicted about letting things go for fear of needing them in the future, in which case he is unsure of if he should purchase an item new or buy used.
5. Olivia H. is environmentally conscious and wants to consciously reduce plastic. However she still feels like she is part of the problem and still consumes more than she needs. She is aware of it and is on the journey to reduce her belongings. She enjoys sending things to be reused and likes finding an owner without the need to sell things. It’s definitely time consuming to do it in a sustainable way. While it’s easier to get a dumpster, it makes her cringe in all the ways related to fast fashion and over consumerism. She doesn’t even know where to start. In modern society there’s time constraints and things competing for our attention. Minimizing belongings doesn’t give the same dopamine hit that consuming things does. There’s so much feeding into the overwhelm and driving the overwhelm in a cyclic manner.
Reflection:
Before starting I felt excited that we only had to talk to 5 people. It seemed much more achievable. As I did the exercise, I started to wonder if my project would be viable or if people would even be open to considering the solutions I wanted to propose. I even wondered if people were motivated enough to seek out help. Nobody seemed to express interest in how I was going to solve the problem, rather, simply that they were experiencing the problem and were feeling it. I began to wonder if people would even desire to engage in a solution. I empathized a lot with the overwhelm that people were experiencing and had to stop myself from jumping in to offer to help them kick off the process. During the conversation, I felt grateful that people were sharing their feelings with me. Others seemed to feel neutral and open about sharing.
From the beginning I was interested in the idea that Method Initiative would help to rule out shiny objects that I didn’t truly want to pursue. I have curiosities about how it goes about doing that, as well as with what criteria we should be measuring projects that we either want to pursue or drop. I don’t necessarily feel differently about my project, I am simply confused as to how one rules out a shiny object.
My motivation is to help people and potentially to create a career path from it. I’m curious about the lack of curiosity people seemed to not express about how I was planning to solve the problem. I feel like my motivation is still the same.
This week’s exercise shows me that people feel overwhelmed by the size of the task of minimizing and simply do not know where to start. If people have the interest in decluttering, they seem to lack a process or methodology that builds their muscle of decluttering. Instead, people seem to cope with the clutter and avoid dealing with it. People almost seem apathetic about solving the problem.
Several of the folks seem interested in learning how the project evolves.
The conversations were informative to me. I enjoyed meeting new people and sharing with people who were already in my network.