Weekly Realignment Process Design

Ethics

The ethics are used to set the vision & goals for this design and also in the reflection phase.

Earth care: This design will enable me to be more effective in my aspirations to do and teach Earth care.

People care: The design will help me to reach my goals and manage my life on a weekly basis without anxiety and feeling overwhelmed.

Fair share: I plan to share the process with the fellow students of the CEED space.

Principles used to guide design

Core principle: Produce no waste (Holmgren). Supporting principles Apply self regulation & accept feedback (Holmgren), Work to completion (Cultural Emergence) and Feed what you want to grow (Cultural Emergence).

Design Framework

I chose Design Web as it is the process taught in the CEED course, so pretty obvious!

Client

Myself

Dates

January-March 2023

Tools Used

Renewal of Creative Path, CEED course framework and the tools I learned/had access to there, such as Feeling the vision, Brainstorming in a group, Find the needs & Revisit the ideas (see Pages 6-8/Integration). I also used a Pinterest board, and for reflection I used Roses, Thorns and Buds.

Let’s get started!

Vision

I did the Renewal of Creative Path process by Jon Young as a prelude to the course as suggested, but I did concentrate on some other things while doing it, other than personal effectiveness. So as I started the course, I was thinking about what to design in this course. In the lesson “Choosing your design” it was much encouraged to choose a teeny tiny design to get yields fast and learn the process easily. I had two ideas: teaching myself not to multitask, or creating a life admin day, both things that would greatly improve my effectiveness, I gathered.

After the lesson I talked with my husband and we threw some thoughts around, analysing the two ideas. I decided on the life admin day, as it seemed smaller and more compact so to say – not so many fringes! I then took a walk and envisioned the life admin day in my mind.

What I had in my mind then was something Muchelle B talks about in her videos. A day to do all kinds of things you have been putting off, things that keep you organized and things that you need to keep your life going in the right direction, combining things and building momentum as you go.

As I was walking I quickly realized I do not necessarily need a life admin day, but a weekly reset instead. My main problem is losing focus and getting overwhelmed with all my tasks and stuff. While I think a monthly life admin day will also benefit me, I choose to design a so-called “bare minimum weekly reset process” instead, because I think that would bring me the most benefit fastest.

The weekly reset is also a term by Michelle, which she bases loosely on David Allens weekly review. Let’s see what my weekly reset could look like!

What I’d like it to be:

• feel easy and lovely, with a cup of tea or some great music
• but not too long so that I won’t dread it and fit it into my week
• really effective, really getting stuff done, not just planning but doing
• tackling the things I have trouble with
• personal thing, me time
• truly be weekly, always in the same time (of course life happens, but generally)
• I’d like to have clarity of mind, tasks and space after it.

I want to say at the end of every week “I’ve put my energy towards the right things this week. I got the things I needed to do done and an I feel good about my week”.

My dream and vision of my effectiveness is 

1. being able to choose important tasks over unimportant ones
2. being able to concentrate on a single task for a long time / as long as it is done
3. to switch from task to task faster, without too much lag time on social media and mind chaos.

If I were effective like this, I would feel like Superwoman. I would get so much done and all my dreams would move on so fast! I would feel really good and proud of myself, and generally happy and in control of my life and I would have more trust that I can fulfil some of my dreams, and not just survive from one day to the next.

Three words: flow, speed, effectiveness.

I’ve named the method which Barbara Scheltus presented in her video on Week 1 of the course and that I used to find my vision, as Feeling the vision in my Tools used -list and throughout this design write-up.

Helps

What resources do I have that could be useful in my design. What skills and qualities do I have to support my design and bringing my vision to life. 

• My desk, bujo notebook and computer. Notebooks, shelves, pens.
• Michelle and her videos, as well as books and yet-new-to-me resources
• the CEED course, its teachers and participants
• my husband as a peer
• all kinds of online time management and organizing tools that exist.
• My enthusiasm, imagination and knowledge of previous years – I used to be very organized
• time I have decided to use for the course, hence using it on this design.

I have lots of helps. I still feel hesitant, though, which is a bit sad.

Limits

What are the blocks? How do you get past the blocks?

• Space in the room is limited, especially my desk is small and I have little storage
• Fear and beliefs, I have been stuck in a spiral of overwhelmed-ness for a good while
• Time constraints, for the design and also weekly it shouldn’t take too much time
• Knowledge and imagination can also limit me
• Habit of being unorganized and concentrating on the irrelevant things, and letting myself get distracted

Patterns

Guidance from the course, Week 3, Helena von Bothmer

“This anchor point invites you to move from what is to what you want. I invite you to roam around in your surroundings and see what patterns are there? Can the pattern inform anything to you that has to do with your design. I am inviting you to use natures patterns as metaphors. Leave a little space and let your body (and mind) feel what the patterns speaks to you.

You can also start noting the patterns you have in life. Some good some bad. You can journal patterns of a day and start reflecting on them. In order to later try to thoughtfully move towards the patterns of the day that makes you move in the direction you wish. Be kind to yourself and honor small steps.”

Helena talks in her video about a branch of a tree, and notices it is only branching out only six, seven times. Is there a natural limit to for how many directions we can spread ourselves? Are we too stretched? I loved that idea. I want to keep my design as simple as I can (I do like to make things complicated sometimes).

As for the pattern of a spiral, I have been struggling with and even just settling for my spiral of overwhelmed-ness, believing this is my life now, just trying to get through every week, taking a deep breath every Friday “I made it”, just surviving. That is not healthy, and it’s not what human life today should be. I want to find a spiral that can help me thrive and not just survive. I want to climb on it like a bean stalk and see that I CAN take control of my time and that I AM able to group tasks to important and not-so-important ones, and concentrate on the important ones again.

Ideas

In week 1, after looking at some Muchelle B videos, namely

• How to Reset Your Productivity for 2023
• How to Create a Life Changing Weekly Planning Routine
• How I Organise my Life ☀️ Weekly Reset 

I came up with some ideas:

The weekly reset could have two tiers, the Bare Minimum level and an Extra weekly reset, so it would be possible to do some kind of reset every week, even if I felt tired or brainfogged.

The reset should be easy enough to follow, not too hard to maintain and it should bring more than it takes “obtain a yield”.’

In my Weekly Review I could...

• clear my email inbox → perhaps create a new folder Waiting etc and strive for Inbox zero, as I did in my big business days
• clear my physical desktop of papers
• clean my desktop
• clear my digital desktop
• bullet journal my coming week / “brain dump”
• review my calendar
• clean out my handbag
• clean my house for 10 minutes

Top idea: keep weekly planning session and weekly reset separate. Two different events, on two different days? Another design?

Keep my bigger picture, who I want to be and what I want to achieve, in mind every week → not just survival week to week, but harness the everyday mundane things towards my goals.

CEED team helps

Then in the course, there was a team exercise in one of the calls, which I have named as Brainstorming in a group in my Tools list, to shortly describe our design idea to a few peers and hear their ideas for it. I got to receive ideas from three gentlemen (and also listen to their amazing design projects and give them wild ideas), here they are:

• Make it a dance
• Listen to music while doing the reset
• Choose music that touched me that week to listen to
• Start the reset with gratitude
• List everything I need to do in one long list, and cross the ones I have done
• Add a column with deadlines into said list
• Make a small list, but put it in a box once I have finished, and look into the box after 6 months to see what I have achieved, and celebrate!
• Paint a picture weekly
• Or create a tree or meadow background, and add one flower or leaf on it per week
• Create a to-do-box – put in all tasks in separate notes, and pick one up blindly

How amazing, thank you!

Principles

Here are some Cultural Emergence principles that spoke to me:

• Work to completion: See this design through, don’t let it slip! Finish the design, then “execute, execute, execute”. 
• Feed what you want to grow: Stop complaining about your spirals, and create new ones. Feed every small thing that you do effectively, celebrate it and do more of it.

Of Holmgren’s principles I felt close to

• Apply self regulation & accept feedback: Keep this thing small and doable! Set myself limits, that will help me keep the momentum and not make this a huge elaborate thing that I never have the energy to execute. 
• Produce no waste: this is the essence of this design, I feel. By doing tasks that do not need doing or are stealing time from my most important tasks, I am in essence creating waste. I am wasting my time, and creating wasteful results that no one needs. By creating a system of effectiveness, with momentum and limits, I can help myself concentrate on value-building things that support my life’s vision of leaving the planet better off than how it was when I arrived.

Integration

Needs derived from the Limits:

• Space in the room is limited, especially my desk is small and I have little storage → I need to be more organized physically also, be mindful of what I let into my near space (and what can be stored farther away, and to declutter)
• Fear and beliefs, I have been stuck in a spiral of overwhelmed-ness for a good while → I need to have trust and courage emerge, I need to change my beliefs, I need to get on a better spiral
• Time constraints, for the design and also weekly it shouldn’t take too much time → I need to be effective with my time and concentrate on the essentials
• Knowledge and imagination can also limit me → I need to learn new skills and be courageous in dreaming
• Habit of being unorganized and concentrating on the irrelevant things, and letting myself get distracted → I need to change these habits

Needs derived from my Vision:

The reset needs to

• be short and sweet: simple, effective but lovely
• include rating tasks to important/unimportant
• feel like something from me, for me
• happen weekly
• include gratitude and sense of being proud of myself.

Therefore, the needs of the reset are

• Set limits
• Increase focus
• Improve self-esteem

Ideas into To-do’s

• Start the reset with gratitude
• Do a full brain dump and then the Eisenhower matrix – be ruthless
• Choose the main theme for the week
• Choose the Most Important Thing for the week and reserve time for it in the calendar
• Don’t do the planning at home, but in a nice setting in a café or nature
• Do the cleanup with a timer, to avoid dallying
• Treat the reset as uninterrupted time
• End the reset with gratitude for what I have done, to feed my spiral of effectiveness and self-esteem

It also was suggested to create some visual representation of my design, so not to forget about it and also to connect both parts of my brain / activating the creative part. I chose to create a Pinterest board, see it here: https://fi.pinterest.com/beyondbuckthorns/weekly-reset/

The course reminded us that this is the time and place where we are seeing the design come together and really making decisions about it. So here are the decisions I am making now based on the work I’ve done so far in this Design Web.

The Weekly Realignment

The Reset part

• Clean my desk
• Clean my email inboxes
• Clean my computer desktop
• (if I feel really energized, clean around the house for 20 minutes)
• Take a moment to appreciate my work & all the richness in my life (like things, emails etc)

If I am really not feeling it, I will “Work to completion” and make sure I finish ONE reset activity. Then I can quit if it’s needed, and pick up next week.

The Review & Regroup part

• Review of BuJo list of last week
• Encourage feeling gratefulness for what I have already achieved
• Brain dump BuJo for next week
• Brain dump stuff into “in the future” list if needed
• Update Projects list if needed
• Simply “Eisenhower” the next week list → Mark tasks Do, Plan, Delegate, Eliminate in BuJo as needed
• Update calendar with timed tasks, meetings and errands
• End with another thought of gratitude for myself for showing up and the interesting life I get to live!

If I am really not feeling it, I can divide the sitting into two – Reset and Review & Regroup can be separate event.

The Realignment shouldn’t take longer than 30 minutes if done effectively. If I feel like it, I can of course linger on it longer.

Time and place

I will try the Realignment in two time slots to see which is better:

• Reset Friday morning, and Review and Regroup in the afternoon, after my swimming in a nice café
• Both parts on Saturday morning, when I am the only one awake and often invigorated and in a good mood, too.

I will try both twice, to see which I like better or if something else would be better.

Kick-off event

There will need to be a Reset Day to get me started, where I clean my working space, clear my inboxes and organize my computer, as well as update my Projects list in my BuJo, to create a place where it is possible to start maintaining my system weekly.

Action

My action plan

Update 5.3.: Moving the Saturday to Friday right away.

When my course & swimming ends in April, I will do the reset at home on Fridays.

Momentum

My design needs maintenance in the sense that should definitely review and tweak it as I go, perhaps every month in the beginning and every three months then?

The most attention will need the keeping it up! I need to make the minimum viable reset list as easy and effective as I possible can to ensure I can do it even when I am tired.

Kick-off day

I did the kick-off day as planned in Action. It took so long! I was really slow and dallied half a day on it, and I didn’t even deep dive into my hard drive or cupboards in the office. But I did clear the main things, my desk, my desktop and the “everything-folders” in there and my paper piles close to my desk, and I did a full brain dump and project list into my BuJo. So good enough!

Appreciation

The appreciation anchor point has two layers of questioning:

• What can you appreciate about the design process and the implementation?
• How can you integrate appreciation as one element itself into your project?”

I can appreciate this course. It’s really easy to keep up with designing with these weekly nuggets and videos! And I am appreciating the Design Web, it really is my favourite design process so far.

I will definitely add appreciation and gratefulness as a part of the weekly reset!

Reflection

Guidance from the course, Jon and Looby, Week 3:

"What connections and interactions have you noticed between the different anchor points in your design? And secondly are any of these leading you to any of the other anchor points?"

The anchor points really flow into each other. The vision brings up ideas, which gives momentum. Currently I am resisting any urges to jump into the remaining anchor points, to really appreciate the ones we are working on now on the course.

As of Week 4, I don’t have a “whole design” feeling yet. I have been trying to leave space for emergence and avoid designing so far.

Reflecting in Week 6

As of Week 6, the design is really coming together now and I can feel it is almost “complete”. I just need to keep the momentum and finish the write-up.

I don’t know what I was thinking, setting the reset day on a Saturday. Just because lately I’ve been using Saturdays as a work day to get my Diploma moving, doesn’t mean I usually want to open my computer and “work” on a Saturday. I had so much resistance the first Saturday, that I skipped the whole shabang. I did do a bit of it on the Sunday (today), but certainly this process needs to take place on a “work day”. I will adjust accordingly right away, and move the 18.3. date back to the Friday 17^th.

The first Realignment on 24.2. went really well! The two-part system felt easy, and I was very productive the following week. I dallied at home and took at least an hour, but in the swimming hall cafe I did my plans in 20 minutes. Adding the appreciation part to both parts of the process felt really good.

The 5.3. Saturday Realignment was a total desaster, but the next week was better again. On Friday 18.3. I was so tired I only did the Reset part – I Worked to Completion as my fall-back plan said. I am looking forward to the next weeks to see how my process develops.

Pause

The pause is built in, as the design is “done” once a week. There is a 6 day pause in between, which of course is active, but it is pause from that design activity. After two weeks, the weekly rhythm feels good. Also the pause in the two-step process is helping it be easier.

Reflecting on the effectiveness, process, ethics and principles

I’m finally using Roses, thorns and buds tool as suggested by my tutor Katie!

• Rose = A highlight, success, small win, or something positive that happened.
• Thorn = A challenge you experienced or something you can use more support with.
• Bud = New ideas that have blossomed or something you are looking forward to knowing more about or experiencing.

Quoted on 1.3.2023 from https://www.mindfulschools.org/inspiration/mindful-reflection/

Roses: 

I really enjoyed designing in this course! It gave me unbelievable momentum, and an array of super cool tools that I will use in my upcoming designs.

The finished design is amazing! It is really helping me, and with adding a bright-lamp and Vitamin D into my daily habits, I am starting to feel like an effective person again. I get things done and for the first time perhaps ever, at least as long as I can remember, I am actually prioritizing tasks! It’s amazing. I feel the design is very effective.

I learned a lot on how to share designs, and will definitely try some new things in the next design. I feel I have a much better understanding of the Design Web and how it can be used. The Integration is perhaps the most complex point in the Web and I need to explore it more. I feel proud for keeping an open mind throughout the course and jumping into trying almost everything suggested. That doesn’t come naturally to me.

As for ethics, I feel like my Earth care goal of “Enabling me to be more effective in my aspirations to do and teach Earth care” is on a very good path, as is the one for People care: “Helping me to reach my goals and managing my life on a weekly basis without anxiety and feeling overwhelmed.”

Produce no waste was my main principle for this design; the goal of the design in a way. The first times executing the process seem to support this principle. I feel more effective on more days than before. The long-term effectiveness remains to be seen. 

Thorns: 

It was really sad that my husband’s bully’s wife took part in the course. I didn’t feel ready to see her and/or reveal that I am also working on designs, so I hid myself in the course. I used a nickname and didn’t participate in the calls, or share my design, effectively missing out on the community part (except for one sub-group call in which I knew she wasn’t in). 

I understand it was my own choice to act so, but I feel sad and angry. I cannot understand how some people in the so-called permaculture community can think like it’s their right to throw others under the bus just because they themselves want something that the victim has. What they fail to realize is that such actions create ripples far beyond of the actual victim and bully. It creates sad things like my need to hide, but it also creates a wave of momentum. “Rage designing”, if you please.

This also cancelled my ethics goal for Fair share: “Sharing the process with the fellow students of the CEED space.” I did not feel safe to do so, even behind my nickname alias.

I also notice I am pretty hesitant towards expressing my creativity in other ways than words. I did do a drawing in this design, but looking at the other people’s designs, they are so visual and “out there”. Sometimes the feeling overcomes me, that permaculture is not for people like me. But I know of course it is and I need to remember to value the marginal in myself, too. Nonetheless, this thought sometimes lifts its head and makes me sad for a moment. Some other times it gives me motivation to expand my horizons regarding creativity and design sharing – I used to be a real art kid when I was young. Perhaps this is something the world has beaten out of me, that I could reach out to again.

Buds: 

As for this design, I will keep at it. If it needs tweaking at some point, I will do so. I will remember what Michelle said though: do not make it too elaborate, as that can kill the joy of it and make it too difficult to execute. I promise to Keep It Simple, Stupid!

As for tools I learned in the course but didn’t use in this design, the “Quick design” and “12-page blurt” have already been used in my next designs! 

I really feel I am on a right path exploring the direction of cultural change, or Cultural Emergence like Looby calls it. My “Fair living” course is slowly taking form in my dreams. One day – soon – I will put my pen to paper and start manifesting it – perhaps with a blurt :D 

Reflecting on the tools used

As for tools, the method described by Barbara Scheltus, which I named “Feeling the vision “ was very powerful and effective. I will certainly use it again. This was one of the best tools I learned to use in this course.

Pinterest is an old favorite, which I was happy to use once again. For myself these visual tools often seem superfluous, as I can visualize very well in my mind, but I understand the need for them if I am to share my designs. Pinterest is fast and clear. It is a proprietary software by a billion-dollar corporation though, so not very permaculture-suitable if you dig deeper. I will think twice about using it again.

I want to do the Renewal of Creative Path again with some more time and energy – for this design I just used it as a first kick-off. It looks like a very in-depth process and I can see how it would give amazing insights if really dived into.

I didn’t really enjoy the “Brainstorming in a group” exercise at the time (being an introvert and shy about sharing my designs, it was somewhat outside my comfort zone), but looking back, it gave me good ideas and enriched the design, so whenever the opportunity to do something like that again arises, I will take it. 

Find the needs & Revisit the ideas which I’ve listed as a tool seems to be an integral part of the Design Web rather than a separate tool per se. Doing that “flip” in a two-phase, structured manner as guided by Jon Young, was very helful and insightful for the design, though. 

As for Roses, Thorns, Buds, it’s a nice variation to my go-to Best, Worst, Change. The results they yield seem to be much the same, with Buds bringing a bit broader view to the future as Change.

Thanks

Thanks to Looby and Jon and all the co-teachers for the helpful course. Thanks for the participants who shared their designs. Thanks to Muchelle B for her inspiring videos and David Allen for his groundbraking work. Kind thanks to my tutor Katie whose teachings are slowly starting to shine through my designs. I thank myself for showing up and doing the work. And I thank Dominik for his continued support!