[Olivia Ong]

Update:

This week I didn’t talk to anyone. Life has been wild.

Reflection:
We’ve been talking a lot about how initiative helps people to figure out what matters the most to them. This week, I was juggling a series of urgent and important client meetings and also tried to finish a few things with my job. I ended up reaching out to nobody and talking to nobody about my project. What that tells me is that in the larger scope of things, it’s not the priority in my life, even if it is meaningful to me personally. It means that perhaps it is meaningful, when I have extra time and bandwidth. Soon, as I shift my career focus away from tech and into personal finance, I am curious how it will compare then. I thought about several people I could reach out to and still didn’t as I woke up every day at 5:30am and went to bed exhausted between 11pm and 1am. I’m still not quite out of the woods just yet, but we shall see. More on this later as I follow up on this.

[Olivia Ong]

Hi Hayden!

I resonate a lot with your desire for independence. Alongside it is a desire for authenticity and resonance. I also relate to your peak/plateau journey as I myself was super high energy the first 4-5 exercises and struggled greatly with the rest, often completing and posting well beyond the deadline of 24hrs before class, very different from how I approached the first few. All that to say it’s so neat to hear how much you’ve learned about yourself and also how much agency you’ve gained in life. Here’s to seeing where your adventures take you and the camaraderie of going through this process together!

Cheers,
Olivia

[Olivia Ong]

Method Initiative – Exercise 9

I initially started learning Method Initiative to rule out shiny objects and find something I wanted to cultivate and bring to life. As we rely on technology more and more, loneliness and our attachment to things seem to be more and more correlated. I chose my project based on the highest number of votes and promptly went from 11 projects down to one. That was the first time I iterated from clinging onto everything to choosing and running with one. My initial plan was to narrow down to do two projects and do double initiative for double the gains and soon I realized that for the effort, I didn’t find the most value in doing that. Hence, with much pain, I chose a single project.

At the beginning I was committed to the exercises with a mechanical task-oriented and brute-force-completionist type of mentality. I was more focused on finishing the exercise as compared to truly immersing myself in the project and being fully present. Being execution-oriented is fantastic! However, I started running into issues when I failed to iterate earlier on in the exercises. I couldn’t understand what iterate meant or how to iterate. Then I realized after many weeks clinging desperately onto my vague and broad solution, that iterating simply meant to make incremental changes based on the information I had. And, since this is a project cultivated by oneself, there’s no rubric for what is a right or wrong change. There is simply change that is chosen and change that is not. I found that when I was willing to iterate and flesh out my solution framework, that I could get more specific advice. I also found that when I would ask someone specific questions in relation to their fields, I could also get more specific advice.

In regards to the 7 principles, my understanding has grown or strengthened in the first four. I was already a preexisting believer in the first principle, that personality matters less than skills you can learn. I think this is why I was willing to take the workshop, because I knew that I would learn some valuable skills.

For principle number two, I can see how someone working at the peak of their passion and values might be able to complete an iteration of method initiative every single month. I imagine that even if the projects end up to not be what someone desires to work on, that ruling out a project is also valuable because it keeps from distractions as well. A few days ago a former employee asked me to be the president, secretary, or treasurer for their developing nonprofit which served a very specific demographic that held no personal meaning nor relation to me. In addition to expressing that it might be a conflict of interest for me in relation to one line of my work, I internally felt a lack of resonance in such a way that even if I were completely safe from potential conflicts of interest, I still might not be interested in taking on such roles. It’s coming at a very interesting time because it is a great idea, and yet, it doesn’t seem to hold much resonance with me.

On the third principle, collecting market feedback felt straightforward, but I realized that what I was missing was the flexibility to change my solution framework and the iterations of making changes and being willing to seek new feedback on the changes. Once I moved into the headspace of being willing to and being able to make changes vs. less on simply completing the task, I felt like the exercises because more meaningful.

The fourth principle of starting where you are with what you have resonates very strongly because that is also my approach to life. I was motivated to take Method Initiative because I had heard people say that they felt like it was a super power. I was wondering when I would feel the ‘click’ of my skills feeling like a super power, which is why I initially pursued the exercises with such fervor. However, when I paused, this principle I realized that perhaps the super power doesn’t lie in simply gaining the skills to take a project from ideation to fruition, but rather also in discovering one’s own shortfalls, attachments, misconceptions, and fears that we continuously run away from. Ultimately, starting with where you are with what you have sets you up for facing yourself, looking directly in the mirror and acknowledging who you are and where you are.

My field of interest is in helping environmentally conscious people who want to minimize their belongings who feel overwhelmed. My three second solution is to help willing people to gain agency in reducing overwhelm with a structured framework. My extended solution framework: Find willing and motivated people via an intake assessment. Provide an optional familiarized group environment for people to uncover and share the root cause of their unique emotional attachments to physical belongings, as well as their motivation for taking action. Inspire action by engaging people in crafting a personalized SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) goal. Connect people with a body double (someone to get things done alongside) or accountability buddy. Equip folks with resources for sustainably reducing their inventory via donations, the buy-nothing project, recycling, and ultimately by gaining an awareness for and making a commitment to reduce inventory inflow. This problem is particularly meaningful to me as I feel like I struggled with overwhelm for many years. It’s been an onion-peeling process to reduce my own belongings and reduce my overwhelm, and on the other side, it has been liberating.

Sometimes when I got advice that would flip-flop back and forth, it seemed like a time I could provide option to others. I also got advice to narrow down my target market, and still others said that ‘environmentally conscious people’ was too narrow and would be exclusive. I don’t feel strongly one way or another about aforementioned advice. Perhaps I would need more tangible market feedback first to see how I would feel about leaning one way or another and iterating further.

In doing the financials I realized that I was having a hard time monetizing the project. It felt like I was pulling numbers out of thin air. I am not feeling particularly compelled to charge for the project, and at the same time, it seems like not everyone can just show up voluntarily forever because obviously I would have to pay for the costs of renting the space and hosting. Aka I have to eat. I find enough value in supporting people in reducing their overwhelm to where I might still pursue this personally in an ad hoc method rather than the framework I created. Perhaps there’s enough value to pursue the topic in a small way, but it’s not so crazily motivating for me to expand and scale the solution as of yet. I would love to get paid and paid well for doing what I do in this space, but perhaps the issue is finding the right clientele that would pay what I believe my value add is worth.

On the topic of taking initiative, I feel like this ability was largely muted in my life, especially with my career in corporate America, feeling like taking initiative was only rewarded when it was obviously visible to the right people at the right time, rather than something inherently rewarded. Most of my life I feel like I would do what I should do or what I thought I should do or even what others thought I should do. What taking initiative has forced me to do thus far is to choose entirely for myself and confront the responsibility of those choices. To commit and stick with a project or to scrap it and restart. To stick with a current iteration or to change and iterate the project. To reschedule things in my calendar in a way that flows better for me. To reduce the frequency of connection with folks that are not in a synchronous path with where I am going. To be able to quickly say no to an opportunity to take a leadership role in a charity that I’d be happy to support but am not inherently motivated by. To take the right opportunity at the right time to walk away from a job and business model that doesn’t resonate with my drive to help people live better lives.

Reflection:
• Did you learn anything about yourself in writing the essay?

I have discovered that I didn’t like making decisions for myself because I had to confront the responsibility that came with choosing. But then in not choosing for myself, I feel resentful, towards myself, others, or both. Surprisingly, choosing for myself is liberating. Namely, in some of my life decisions, people have been telling me that I look excited, happy, energized, and at peace.

• Do you feel you changed more, less, or about the same as you expected before writing?

I don’t know that I feel changed – perhaps it’s that I’ve come into a greater awareness of myself.

• How do you feel about:

• Responsibility? – Responsibility comes with choices, and that which comes from choosing for oneself is comparatively lighter than that which results from being chosen for, at least so far.

• Motivation? – Intrinsic motivation is the most authentic, self-aligning type that creates high frequency emotions.

• Initiative? – Initiative can appear to be work. More often than not, it is or it can be. When it’s aligned with our authentic selves at the highest resonance, it becomes and feels like a joy. To get from work to joy, it’s a process.

• Entrepreneurship? – is more accessible than appears based on what people say. People get more caught up in what people think than what they could actually learn by taking action.

• What do you feel has been most meaningful, valuable, important, or purposeful about your project so far? Or your personal development?

Something meaningful about my project is that I discovered that the topic matters enough to me to pursue individually as I have in the past. Perhaps enough to pursue an iteration or two of my project to gain more feedback. However, it’s not something I feel like I would dedicate to as my life’s work at this current stage. Perhaps it’s something I’ve known, but haven’t prioritized accordingly. In the past, all the shiny objects appeared to be the same, and now they seem to vary in value to me for clearer reasons.

[Olivia Ong]

Method Initiative Exercise 8 – Details, Sustainability, Financials

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16JAmnYVaV4rvUKzmoloRTKnbFr9V9aP7VbWdFZ2z2e4/edit?usp=sharing

Main Assumptions
– Participants: Find two willing participants per month, ask each participant to find a buddy to do the exercise with them
– Fee for participating: $100/round, or $50/month/person
– Each ‘cohort’ or ‘round’ lasts two months
– Meeting frequency – at least once per month, support provided as needed
– First month – sharing and SMART goals + execution of goals
– Second month – sharing of observations and reflections, asking if they want to continue and/or who else could benefit from said program
– Office Rental: I can repurpose/utilize one of the offices that I cowork at
– Refreshments: Overestimate to make participation a little more fun
– Participant Sharing: inviting others to share their experiences – $25 incentive for individual to come share
– Initial investment needed: affordable office space/meeting space. Could potentially use my home and save on the office rent portion of the model. Not sure if I would include a portion of the mortgage as cost for the space though.
– I am not paid as part of the costs, I’d be paid by the profit
– Participant quantity: based on the office space size, I think I could accommodate 16 people max and still have it be relatively efficient. I could divide the group into two of 8 at the max.

Checklist
– I documented all of the assumptions
– If all the assumptions are met, we could be profitable early on. Sustainability would be determined when a volunteer or a member could run it without me being there.
– My rough investment needs are relatively low since I already have an established possible meeting space and a backup space to meet. In case I do this virtually, I can even save on that cost as well.

Reflection:
• Do you feel you understand your project’s operations better now?
Yes, I feel like the financials force us to get out of our head and put things on paper. It makes us confront our assumptions

• How much did you revise your project during the exercise?
I don’t think I revised it as much as I had to walk through fleshing out the project. However, the time spent on the project and the time spent preparing and doing pre-work is not necessarily accounted for.

• Did you find potentially problematic areas? If so, what did you do about them?
The only majorly problematic area that I’m seeing is that there is an unlimited amount of time spent on executing or preparing for the project that is not necessarily accounted for. I guess this is something that needs to be fleshed out that I’m still pondering. I kind of pulled the participation fee out of thin air, but I’m not sure what people might pay for the accountability and assistance that I would be providing.

• How did the exercise change your motivation to talk to others about your project?
This exercise gives me a new framework through which to ask people more specific questions. i.e. what would someone be willing to pay? What frequency would be reasonable to meet? How motivated would someone who participated before be willing to share for free vs. for a small fee?

[Olivia Ong]

Method Initiative Exercise 7

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lhIzG4aRxAs_-YoAVuQNPK70srksI6uk/view?usp=sharing

The Problem: Environmentally conscious adults who want to minimize their belongings are feeling overwhelmed.

The 3s Solution: Help willing people to gain agency in reducing overwhelm with a structured framework.
The Solution Framework: Find willing and motivated people via an intake assessment. Provide a familiarized group environment for people to uncover and share the root cause of their unique emotional attachments to physical belongings, as well as their motivation for taking action. Inspire action by engaging people in crafting a personalized SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) goal. Connect people with a body double (someone to get things done alongside) or accountability buddy. Equip folks with resources for sustainably reducing their inventory via donations, the buy-nothing project, recycling, and ultimately by gaining an awareness for and making a commitment to reduce inventory inflow.

Reflection:
This exercise was simple, but not necessarily easy. I often found that it felt like some parties did not have arrows in two directions and it felt like a stretch to make them go in both directions. I also questioned whether or not people would actually spend money on participation and gaining some agency in taking the first step towards reducing overwhelm. Part of this is because I find enough value in the objective that I’ve helped people without receiving payment before, but if this were to be part of a career or what I’d do for employment, it wouldn’t be sustainable at all.

[Olivia Ong]

Yesssss, celebrating your wins and progress, Bonnie! 🙂

I enjoyed hearing your enthusiasm around ‘FINALLY working on the projects you’ve always wanted to’!!

[Olivia Ong]

Method Initiative Exercise 6 – 10 People Closer to the Problem – Take 2

1. A list of the advice from ten people relevant to your project.
2. An improved version of the project based on that advice.
3. A list of any referrals to people who could help.
4. Your reflections on the experience.

Problem:
Environmentally conscious adults who want to minimize their belongings are feeling overwhelmed.

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.

1. List of Advice
Advice 1 – Do a quick google search on why people keep lots of stuff
Advice 2 – Figure out how you have conversations in a way that people don’t feel attacked or that what they’re doing is wrong
Advice 3 – Explore the idea of doing it in a group
Advice 4 – Have more conversations with people close to me. Do you feel you have too much stuff? Why? Emotional connections? Be cautious pushing people to go deeper than the coffee table conversation without being too pushy or too nosy. Approach conversations with a positive and curious manner and demeanor.
Advice 5 – Consider watching “I Will Teach You to Be Rich” – The host digs into their money psychology. He digs it out in a way that is really non confrontational. He sounds like a therapist the way that he talks to people.
Advice 6 – Get at the roots. Dive into trauma-informed care. Understand the principles. It’s a universal approach – all humans have experienced some form of trauma – even the most minor things can be impactful over a lifetime. Explore: Traumainformedoregon – TIO – Explore the principles of trauma-informed program development or trauma-informed care – human centered/person centered around helping people think about this stuff.
Advice 7 – Consider connecting with people who do things in a similar vein. Behavioral health clinics have social workers called behavioral health consultants who craft specified action plans around the goals of the patients.
Advice 8 – Understand – What is a person-centered goal? What sort of support would someone need to reduce those items? In a practical setting – said individual’s clinics serves folks who primarily live in under-resourced housing and have too many things and need to reduce their items to keep their housing. With the houseless population – it’s also a problem. The problem can stem from scarcity, connection, unaddressed mental health.
Advice 9 – There is power in groups. Consider using the power of shared experience to hold people accountable. Collaborate in a group and/or think together.
Advice 10 – Email relevant people a summary of context and interest to connect so that it can be forwarded along to others
Advice 11 – Make resources known and accessible. Behavioral health consultants refer folks to community resources that exist out there. Make it accessible to have people know their things would go to a good place.
Advice 12 – Start small. Make goals attainable. People are going to do much better at reaching their goals if they are attainable and if they had a say in what those goals are. Give people options of what it could look like. Use a side-by-side approach. I.e. She sees patients making good improvement in their desired health status via care planning/self-management goals. Be mindful of behavioral components of making anything happen.
Advice 13 – Normalize community support. Increase access to sustainable communities. Explore the idea of community resiliency. Provide a framework for how to start.
Advice 14 – Step back to explore why people think they have an issue with overwhelm. Explore individual reasons why.
Advice 15 – See if you can create a group where people responding to the group are people – make the group comfortable and familiar rather than just people like-minded with similar problem.
Advice 16 – How do I identify people who are experiencing this issue? Is there a gender component? Explore the possibility of starting working with particular genders. Demographics, age, income levels, stage of life, family dynamics, kids, people in the household. Older people mid-age, kids are growing up, etc. who are starting to feel the problem more.
Advice 17 – Make different categories for items – sentimental, ‘just in case’, c—i.e. categorize by strength of attachment. Similar to time management – Start with lowest attachment items. Ignore the highest attachment items.
Advice 18 – Pick a place to start. Some people might feel more comfortable starting in a kitchen or living room rather than a bedroom.
Advice 19 – Frame things in questions rather than telling people what to do. Figure out what’s their motivation for wanting to declutter. Ask about things in a future timeframes as a way to think about in the present. Gauge their attachment. If they won’t get rid of it in 10 years, then getting rid of it now.
Advice 20 – Advertise in churches or spiritual centers or daily bulletin. The elderly probably tend to have more stuff accumulated
Advice 21 – How to be non-confrontational – Work on loving people, caring about them, etc. Do you want to clear out your house? Why do you want to do this? How motivated are you to get this cleared out 1-5? Is there a specific incident that is making you think about this now? If you haven’t aceted on this yet, why not? If you’re trying to do this now, why now?

2. Revised Project
The Problem: Environmentally conscious adults who want to minimize their belongings are feeling overwhelmed.

The 3s Solution: Help willing people to gain agency in reducing overwhelm with a structured framework.
The Solution Framework: Find willing and motivated people via an intake assessment. Provide a familiarized group environment for people to uncover and share the root cause of their unique emotional attachments to physical belongings, as well as their motivation for taking action. Inspire action by engaging people in crafting a personalized SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) goal. Connect people with a body double (someone to get things done alongside) or accountability buddy. Equip folks with resources for sustainably reducing their inventory via donations, the buy-nothing project, recycling, and ultimately by gaining an awareness for and making a commitment to reduce inventory inflow.

3. List of Referrals – no immediate connections, thoughts for connections
– community organizer that deals with civic engagement
– behavioral health consultant
– professional organizers
– other people who experience the problem

4. Reflection:
Despite a second week of following up – I’m still not quite at 10 – I’m at 6-7, 6 documented, 7th not included in the follow up. Not only would a high volume of reaching out be necessary to do 10 in one go, starting super early would be useful for allowing referrals to be simmered on and followed up on. I almost feel like people should keep in mind all the exercises and start as early as possible with the scheduling so that the timing of the 10 can take place all in one week, if that was the intention.

This week I finally iterated on the solution, and actually got to change, refine, and expound on it.

An interesting thought on changing topics vs. completing this project. What’s interesting is that in thinking of switching topics, there are a few resonating ideas. One is to lean into the passion work I’m about to pursue more. The other is to teach initiative. On the idea of whether to complete the project or not, one of my major decision-making factors was the question of – if you didn’t get paid for this, would you still pursue it? I also have already participated in supporting people in some fashion without getting paid, and hence find value in pursuing it. Note, I’m not conflicted about whether or not to switch topics, but rather, have found clarity in other areas in which I’d like to pursue additional iterations of method initiative.

• Is your understanding of the seven principles changing? If so, how?

1. Personality matters less than skills you can learn. – This principle is made clear in asking questions, observing outcomes, and strategizing how to get closer to desired outcomes, whether it’s better or more tailored advice, to referrals, to connection, or something else.
2. The idea of a lifetime comes once a month. – I can see how developing initiative skills could allow someone to take it through its entirety in faster iterations if someone were wholeheartedly pursuing it.
3. Better than a great idea is an okay idea plus market feedback, flexibility, and iterations. – This one was interesting for me. Iterations felt like ‘completing the exercises to the letter’ initially, but then I entirely missed the ‘change’ and ‘flexibility’ components. This exercise, I’ve been doing better with flexibility and iterations.
4. Start where you are with what you have. – Every lesson will take as long as it will take for someone to learn. What someone might learn another might already have mastered, and vice versa. The process of taking actions uncovers valuable information on knowing oneself and continuing to understand oneself.
5. Pitch and they’ll judge. Ask advice and they’ll help. – People were mostly willing. Some felt lost and unable to give advice. It allowed for space to have a dialogue and to ask questions to receive tailored pieces of feedback. This seemed like unraveling a ball of yarn depending on who I connected with.
6. The problem leads to the solution. – People shared what helped them get through a similar problem or what they believed would need to be successful at solving the problem.
7. Almost nothing inspires like helping others so much that they reward you for it. – Recently I helped a lady I randomly met helping someone move/unpack to start clearing out her kitchen for 2 hours. By the end, she gained agency for where things should go, gave herself permission to let go, and started to be okay with the idea of trying new configurations out. She recently circled back with me to say thank you and bought me a coffee. I got the chance to hang out with her and get to know her a bit better. 😊

• How did you feel about the exercise before starting? Were you anxious, excited, confused?

I felt less compulsive about the completion of the exercise and wanted to be more intentional with the people I was meeting and iterating/fleshing out the solution/problem. I was a little overwhelmed with needing to follow up with so many people to get to 10 (still working on it), but ultimately felt less stressed because I had gained a little more clarity on my ability to iterate.

• How did your feelings change as you did the exercise? –

I initially sought people out in one specific field as a follow up from a previous exercise and didn’t gain much traction. I even got random advice from someone that took my ask to connect with people in the wrong direction. As I met people and got ideas for other fields and put out feelers for more fields, I got more responses and traction with people who were willing to help. It seemed to open up a few more possibilities. The more possibilities and angles I could see, the more I felt abundance.

• How did you feel during the conversations? How did the other people seem to feel?

During the conversations I felt grateful and inquisitive. Others seemed to feel uncertain as to where to start to give me feedback. This allowed for me to ask questions and ask for advice in specific categories for suggestion and get the conversation flowing. Others seemed to feel enthusiastic by the end or at least happy to help. Some people even suggested grabbing coffee and furthering the relationships.

• Did you get advice beyond your expectations? Did you learn from the conversations?

I definitely learned a lot about what might be obvious to some and not others. I also learned that there ought to be a filtering process to figure out who to work with so as to spend time on those who are most likely to take action. This could be done via an intake assessment. A very interesting idea for quality control.

• Do you feel your understanding of the problem and the quality of the solution improved?

Yep

• Do you think the people you talked to are interested in learning how the project evolves?

Some are interested, some are not.

• How would you characterize the conversations—boring, fun, exciting?

The conversations were informative. I enjoyed getting to learn more about how to reach people in an approachable way and in a way that seems transferrable to other areas of life or other fields. It was a mix of exciting and boring, it kind of depended on the enthusiasm of the individual and the quality and thoughtfulness of the feedback.

[Olivia Ong]

Hi Hayden!

Thank you for the response and comment on this aspect. I like the breakdown of the rationale. Thank you for sharing! 🙂

[Olivia Ong]

Method Initiative Exercise 6 – 10 People Closer to the Problem

1. A list of the advice from ten people relevant to your project.
2. An improved version of the project based on that advice.
3. A list of any referrals to people who could help.
4. Your reflections on the experience.

Problem:
Environmentally conscious adults who want to minimize their belongings are feeling overwhelmed.

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.

Advice 1 – Do a quick google search on why people keep lots of stuff
Advice 2 – Figure out how you have conversations in a way that people don’t feel attacked or that what they’re doing is wrong
Advice 3 – Explore the idea of doing it in a group
Advice 4 – Have more conversations with people close to me. Do you feel you have too much stuff? Why? Emotional connections? Be cautious pushing people to go deeper than the coffee table conversation without being too pushy or too nosy. Approach conversations with a positive and curious manner and demeanor.
Advice 5 – Consider watching “I Will Teach You to Be Rich” – The host digs into their money psychology. He digs it out in a way that is really non confrontational. He sounds like a therapist the way that he talks to people.

List of Referrals
– None so far

Reflection:
This week was really hard. I definitely hit a speed bump. I reached out to all of my communities via my online platforms that I’d been proactively active in and came up quite empty. For many weeks prior though, I was simply executing the exercises for the sake of executing them, and I was unsure how to ‘iterate’ as I’d mentioned before. Several conversations with others though reminded me of the ease and difficulty of decision making. It’s been helpful to be reminded that there is no ‘wrong answer’ and that one must simply keep making choices based on their values. Acting in accordance with one’s values lead to a stronger compass that enables better and faster decision making with practice. Hence, the need to act and decide, even when running away or mind-numbingly acting for the sake of acting feels easier.

The slowness of the week allowed me to explore the advice of the one person I talked to. I discovered that accumulation behaviors are often tied to creating certainty for a person. Very similar to addiction. Trauma or something in life creates the uncertainty and then the individual finds certainty in something. In the physical realm it can be belongings. From a psychology perspective, people can even find extensions of their personality or identity in their stuff.

On the exercise itself – I’m coming around to the idea of continuously iterating and changing to heed the adage of ‘Try shit’. I’ve been reminded that
1. people are busy
2. people aren’t always free when they say they are
3. it takes reaching out to more people than 10 in order to achieve the 10
4. continuous follow up is super necessary

More to come once I’ve talked to more people!

[Olivia Ong]

Reflection:

• How has this workshop compared with your expectations or other classes, if any, on similar subjects?

This workshop so far is experience by doing, which I was anticipating coming into it. It resembles other ‘learn by doing’ experiences that I’ve been exposed to. However, this methodology is sparse compared to that of traditional education. I think it’s very valuable to learn by action as it helps to desensitize people to the fear of reaching out to people.

• How has interacting with each other factored in?

Interacting with each other has led to interesting conversations. It definitely helps to have people to work with to complete the exercises, especially when there are 10+ iterations required.

• Any suggestions to improve the experience?

If this is not included already or will not be covered by future exercises, perhaps consider including some commentary, interlude, or guidance on how/when people ought to switch projects would be helpful.

• What have been your biggest surprises so far?

My biggest surprises are that friends and family who I don’t expect jump in to help, and strangers enjoy giving advice too. The emotional journey has been interesting as well. Much of this workshop I’ve felt neutral. I’m committed to completing the exercises because I know that the learning happens during and after the actions. I have struggled with some of the exercises and anticipated that. At the same time, I’m not experiencing as much clarity as I thought I would by this point, and that is definitely both surprising and frustrating.

• What do you think the rest of the class will be like? Or the leadership part?

I think the rest of the class will be about fleshing out the project and bringing it to life. I think the leadership part will be about continuing to take inspired action and inspiring others to do the same in regards to our specific project.

[Olivia Ong]

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.

[Olivia Ong]

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.

[Olivia Ong]

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!

[Olivia Ong]

Method Initiative Exercise 2

A list of five problems, clearly written in at most a few sentences each, plus a rudimentary solution for each, also in a sentence or two.

Field of Interest: Minimalism, decluttering, organization
1. Problem: Parents feel overwhelmed with managing their homes, which bleeds into their work and overall sense of satisfaction with life. Solution: Reducing inventory and reorganizing the home to support their flow of activity may help to increase efficiency in the home, making it feel like a restful place to be, and improving the flow of activity, freeing up bandwidth to work on higher level tasks.

2. Problem: Children under 12 feel overwhelmed by decision paralysis when it comes to toys, clothes, and memorabilia, often resulting in overattachment to their belongings. Solution: Highly simplifying a child’s most common environments leads to less decision-making fatigue and in turn, higher satisfaction. Leading parents through this process to support their kids, and then circling back with parents on the impact to their kids.

3. Problem: Teenagers feel emotionally and physically attached to belongings or to the action of acquiring trendy things in an effort to feel connected with their sense of self and identity that they are cultivating amongst their peers, but they may not truly feel confident in themselves and ultimately feel disconnected from others. Solution: Introducing a values exercise to teenagers on finding their core motivating values may help them to further understand themselves and re-evaluate the basis on which they connect with others.

4. Problem: Working professionals want to combat procrastination but often feel helpless or powerless to do so in keeping up with the grind of life. Solution: Reducing the number of things they need to do often frees up more time to do things that they have set on the back burner for a long time, eliminates unimportant problems, and unsuspectingly increases the efficiency of getting tasks done.

5. Problem: Women feel overwhelmed with household management and are disproportionately impacted by visual clutter, but often feel helpless, powerless, and alone in combatting the problem. Solution: Helping women to body double or find/obtain a body double in getting the ball rolling can help them gain agency in starting the onion peeling process of turning their environment into one that truly supports their flow of life.

6. Problem: Environmentally conscious adults who want to reduce their inventory may feel helpless at the lack of knowledge, lack of time, and lack of resources/accessibility concerning recycling or reducing/eliminating waste. Solution: Obtaining resources and proactively teaching the community about ways to reduce, reuse, or recycle items that are often clutter but are not commonly recycled or dealt with can improve accessibility of removing certain items for people in a way that is win-win for them and the environment.

Field of Interest: Relationships, self-awareness, loneliness

1. Problem: The retired and elderly often feel lonely in their older age as their time with themselves increase and their time with their family or others decreases. They may feel marginalized by their families or societies. Solution: Help them find or create the community that they want to be a part of and connect them with folks who could use their advice or company.

2. Problem: Single working professionals who move for work often feel lonely in a new place and can find it difficult to connect with folks locally or to create/find a sense of community. Solution: Teach people to invite others into their lives or proactively seek that which they are looking for.

3. Problem: Children feel frustrated when they are in conflict with other children. Solution: Help children practice the skill of identifying and naming their emotions and contextualizing situations with ‘When you, I feel’, as well as practicing the skill of asking affirmatively for what they want.

4. Problem: People who struggle with friendship feel misunderstood by others and disconnected from people in general. Solution: Introduce methods for ‘being a friend first’ – the three question method I cultivated with one of my best friends, exercising genuine curiosity and interest in others, and Brene’s Brown’s practice of empathy.

5. Problem: Working professionals often feel lonely and isolated when handling hard things. Solution: Introduce the best friend voice, Simon Sinek’s rule of ‘never crying alone’

Post-exercise Reflection

How hard was it to identify problems?
Soon after class, it seemed very easy for me to identify problems in the inventory management/minimalism/decluttering space. I was planning to post my homework within a day or two of class. However, I soon got stuck on my second topic. This is opposite of what happened with coming up with fields. My second field came to me before my first did. Yet again contrary to what I think would have happened, I almost feel like the secondary field has more variety and more robust ideas.

What’s fascinating is that during this week as I’ve been pondering these exercises, I caught up with my old 6th grade science teacher who once told me he had several friends leave the university he was working at when we had connected who started their own practical skills school or university. He’d mentioned in our last conversation in 2020 that he’d connect me with them on the premise of my involvement and work in financial literacy, but things got lost in the follow up. Reading the book and starting these exercises has led me to feel like initiative ought to be a life skill as much as financial literacy. I had reached back out to him in hopes to reconnect and follow up with those contacts. Out of nowhere, teaching initiative or creating curriculum seemed to appear as a third field of interest, but I am not restarting the process quite yet with this third field so I don’t amplify the quantity of homework I need to do each week. One could say I’m attempting to combat my tendency of filling my plate with more than I can chew.

Was it easy or hard to see them from the perspective of the people they affect?
I think it was relatively easy to see the problems from the perspective of the people they affect as I leaned on my own experiences and issues, as well as those I’d observed in people around me.

Did it get easier with practice?
Yes and no. I think practice and repetitions definitely help. Chewing on things for a while also helps.

Do you think your problems and solutions have much chance to become viable projects?
I’m unsure of how much a chance there is that these ideas will become viable projects. I’m giving my best effort to do the exercise without judging the ideas and trusting that the process will either help to refine the ideas or completely scrap them.

Miscellaneous reflection:
I feel like emotional awareness helps with minimalism/inventory management and environmental sustainability. I also feel that minimalism helps with cultivating emotional awareness. These fields feel interrelated to me. Throw in the idea of teaching initiative and in some ways I have a hard time feeling like I can separate out these topics because of how interdependent they feel to me.

On RJ’s sharing:
In retrospect of hearing RJ’s talk now almost a week ago as I write this, I think what stood out to me the most were two things. One was that he, like other alumni, also felt way more empowered after finishing the class. Two was that not only did he have a successful project that he saw through to completion, he also decided to terminate the project after a certain point. I believe his experience points to the idea that it’s okay to succeed and end something that was good, just as it’s okay to fail at something and leave it be. I think both can be fears that cripple people from taking action.

[Olivia Ong]

Method Initiative Exercise 1: Personal Essay

What motivated you to learn initiative?
During the pandemic I had worked with a personal coach who taught me to ‘lean into my resistance’. Not only with the sustainability workshop that I first took, as well as with initiative, I felt great resistance to taking the courses. This was my first curiosity, to lean into the resistance. I was curious about potential blind spots that I would uncover while taking the sustainability workshop, anything I may have missed in my initial concern and critique of an unclear value proposition, as well as the comical offenses I took to Josh telling me that engineers seemed to lack resonance. I, for one, asked myself – what if I’m a fake engineer, and what if I look/act like one, but am not really one? How could he simply write me off as an engineer who lacked resonance without providing me a clear value proposition for me to evaluate my interest? Josh’s blind spot with generalizing engineers or engineer-esque types triggered an annoyance in me and a determination to figure out what I may uncover in mine. I received some feedback from Josh at one point that I interrupted someone consistently I was practicing the Spodek Method with them in one of the sessions. That piece of feedback I often came to conclude myself in reflections after conversations with others prior to the workshop. It was the first time someone so directly told me in a context that wasn’t me directly conversing with the person giving me the feedback. It was a mild stun, a reminder of a repetitive reflection, and a call to be more mindful and intentional in future interactions of all types. While I’m still completing the last homework, much to my chagrin of loose ends dangling indefinitely, leaning into my resistance led me to learn about myself, how I took feedback, how I interacted with others, and more may still unravel.

My second curiosity came when Josh told a small group of us that if we felt like we didn’t have enough time, that we really ought to take Initiative. It felt counterintuitive, and I felt more resistance. Time to lean in again. However, there were threads of familiarity. When I first met Josh and Evelyn, who led me through the sustainability workshop, we connected over some ongoing efforts I’d had in minimalism, or rather, essentialism. The saying, ‘less is more’, is indeed cliché, but I soon found that to be true for myself when it came to belongings, priorities, commitments, people, etc. I’m still working on a few of these. Over the course of the last 9 years, since my grad school friend James handed me ‘The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up,’ I’ve been peeling back the layers of the onion, and still am, of decluttering my life – removing things that don’t matter to me, to make room for more things that do. And so, as counterintuitive as ‘letting go to gain’ is, I figured I had nothing to lose to try. Even if I failed, or quit half way, it would tell me that perhaps it wasn’t my thing nor was the timing right, or perhaps the reward wasn’t great enough, or perhaps the pain wasn’t annoying enough. And so, against my resistance, my curiosity prevailed yet again and here I am, writing the first exercise.

My third curiosity arose when I listened to the video Josh put together sharing what folks had gotten out of the class. Namely a ‘lady who always said that when she had enough money, she’d pivot to a project she really cared about, who through initiative, completely cut directly to the project she cared about and was thriving.’ Despite Josh’s multiple follow ups and my hesitance to commit yet more time and energy into something that was yet another distraction to my focus, the living evidence of a former student spoke volumes about helping me to focus, and to further shave items from my pot filled with shiny objects. I’d always justified diversifying my attention, but that was only because I didn’t have a means to focus. Initiative seemed to promise clarity and a means to find focus or cut things that are non-essential. How much more ‘Olivia’ could it get, than to pursue intentionality with cultivating essentialism in life?

As my boyfriend puts it, there comes a time when one ought to ‘shit, or get off the pot’. It seems like that time has matured for me, and there are many things for which I need to make that decision. With great curiosity and much resistance, paired with the skill of leaning into resistance and not running at the first sign of non-resonance, here I am.

What do you hope or expect to come from learning initiative?
I hope to come to faster iterations of passion, initiative, action. I have met so many peers in life who are ‘just here for the paycheck’, and I have seen the future of myself in others if something in my life doesn’t give. I aim to acquire skills to shake things up, in myself, in others, and in the community at large. I want to live life with more passion, and I want to help others to thrive as well.

What do you think about taking responsibility, taking initiative, solving problems, and creating projects?
I’m still hesitant about how much time and effort these will take. I am incredibly busy, and also incredibly burnt out from doing what I think I ought to be doing, rather than doing what I’m truly inspired to do. If it could be entirely possible to do so without any other constraints, that sounds lovely.

What are your models for how taking initiative and entrepreneurship work?
Models for taking initiative include the corporate ladder, for which one finds what someone else wants and gives at least the appearance of giving it to them. My other model for initiative and entrepreneurship work is sales and recruiting in the field of financial services.

Who are your role models?
My mother is one of my perpetual role models. Despite never having had a glorious career, she is passionate about people. My childhood memories involve going grocery shopping with my mother and half the town knowing her as she goes out and about. With the exception of a few self-centered folks, most people light up when they see, think about, or hear of my mother. Mama Bee and I don’t always see eye to eye, but we recognize each other as individuals and often agree to disagree. Much of our time together in this season of life, is spent eating, chatting, laughing, and debating. Despite my father’s age-old gripe that she never contributed much financially to the home, I consider her to be far more successful than he is, simply based on the fact that she not only contributed greatly to the raising of my two siblings and I, but that she would have more people who would go out of their way for her because she cares for people in a way that she seeks to serve them, sometimes to her detriment.

A few high visibility individuals include Jeff Levitan, who created the All For One charity that I am inspired to work with one day, and Ed Mylett, who is huge in the personal development space. On the contrary, anyone who acts entirely in freedom in alignment with their values is a role model to me. Those with incredible self-discipline are also a role model to me.

What has worked for you so far in creating projects? What hasn’t?
So far, a persistent thought followed by inspired action has helped me create and follow through with projects. Forcing myself to do what I think I should do or must do has been a struggle.

Where do you want to take initiative? To business, your social life, family, yourself?
I would like to take initiative in all areas of my life. In business, to activate those I am leading to also act from initiative and passion. In my social life, to activate people to develop more intentional authentic connections to eradicate loneliness and apathy, to live life with vigor, and to truly feel loved. In my family, to help them find purpose in life and create their own sense of belonging in their respective environments. In myself, to not feel like I need to wait for the feeling of being backed into a corner to decide to ‘shit, or get off the pot’. All this to say that the purpose is to gain street cred with myself, and to trust myself enough to more massively let go of people, places, and things when they don’t align with what I truly am, without regard to any ‘shoulds’ in life.

What is your relevant history of taking initiative, if any? This can be your first memories, other relevant memories, and so on.
When I think of all the times I took major action, they were usually because I felt like I was backed into a corner with nowhere to run. I don’t love being backed into a corner. I prefer freedom and being in flow. And so, when I sense that someone else’s freedom counts on my participation, or that my freedom is quickly dwindling, I’ve taken intense bursts of initiative to push the needle forward.

I am incredibly curious about how to outsmart myself. Other examples of initiative include finding goals large enough to carry the mundane day-to-day. One specific example of this is that when I plan more major outdoors adventures, exercising at least on a weekly basis no longer becomes such a struggle because it enables me to more thoroughly enjoy the outdoors and prevent injury.

What is the value in taking a course like this?
The value in taking a course like this is to strip everything away and stand naked in front of oneself. To stop running away from oneself and to confront everything that one thinks they are, everything that one portrays they are, everything that one fears they are, and everything that one truly is and is not.

Additional Deliverable:
Field of Interest: Minimalism, decluttering, organization
1. People closer to field of interest: Heather Hinton, Joshua Fields Millburn, Ryan Nicodemus
2. People with high status or value in field: Marie Kondo, Dawn the Minimal Mom, Gabe Bult
3. Relevant role models: TK Coleman, Joshua Becker, Cass from Clutterbug

Field of Interest: Relationships, self-awareness, loneliness
1. People closer to field of interest: Shanin Engman, Jenn Asidao-Querubin, Conrad Ruiz!
2. People with high status or value in field: Simon Sinek, Tom/Lisa Bilyeu, Ed Mylett
3. Relevant role models: Steven Bartlett, Joe Dispenza, Gabor Mate

Reflections:
1. Was it easy to think of your relevant experiences, goals, and role models?
It was relatively easy to think of my relevant experiences and goals, but perhaps not so much my role models. That section was written and edited more times than the others.
2. Have you thought of someone to share your reflections with?
There are a few friends I’ve had conversations with about not feeling connected with our traditional corporate careers. These are the folks I’m keen to share with. Others include those who support people development in their teams. I guess in general I’m okay sharing my participation in day to day conversation, though I am relatively reserved in that I tell folks that many things are TBD.
3. What’s the point of naming people, not positions?
This requires us to think a little bit deeper and more concretely. Perhaps gives us a place to start in evaluating the degree to which individuals actually participate in the field of interest.

[Author]

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