Activate

You may want to take on the activity below to give yourself a new environment that unites your current Life Work with a new set of experimental work tasks. Our job is to help you design the ideal collaborative environment around your own motivations and developmental needs.

Please take some time to consider the following prompt and questions. You should feel free to elaborate your thinking but keep in mind that your responses should not expand beyond 500 words for each question. That is not to say you need to answer in 500 words but that this word count is a suggested constraint to help focus your responses. A useful cap for the amount of time you want to spend, depending on your style, is between 1 to 5 hrs in total. Usually people are able to complete the activity in about 3 hrs. Obviously this is not a wrong or right activity. Everyone's response will vary depending on their unique experience.

Not all those who take on this activity will do so in earnest. Since the activity expects more from them then they have motivationally to give it (for whatever reason (it's all good, for real)), we need to reserve the right to only select participants to Labs who we think will get the most out of them.

The Activity

🙀

You are regular viewer of YouTube videos where you watch people like you in Zoom meetings learning from experts on topics related to personal development. You consider these topic to have existential implications on culture and society and the experts to have a unique vantage point that helps link these existential implications to your own development. You have attended classes or seminars on related topics in the recent past. You have started making new personal connections in these shared online spaces through group chats that branch into and from these Zoom sessions. Something strange has started to happen. You and your peers have begun noticing new opportunities to collaborate based upon your common interests and affiliations. The problem you've noticed in the group is a split between diagnosing the challenges you see in the world today on the one hand, and on the other, spending large amounts of time envisioning potential futures based upon your peers' need for self improvement. In other words, making their own desires for growth and self development synonymous with what 'the world' should do or become. To complicate things further, you've noticed the Zoom group beginning to cause you to reflect on the basic foundations of your life. Your job. Your close relationships. Your family. You've started asking "should they change or should I change? Should my Zoom group organize to better meet my livelihood needs? Are the ways I'm living actually sustainable given the problems I now understand in the world? Should I try to change the world? What will happen if I change further like I've already begun to today? Your head is spinning...

Important Considerations

What are the important things to consider in this situation? In one or two paragraphs, explain what they are and why they are important. (In your responses to all questions, feel free to include considerations that go beyond the immediate situation.)

Relative Importance of Considerations

Are some of the considerations you discussed in your response to question 1 more important than others? If so, what are they and why are they more important? If not, why?

Appropriate Response

What do you think is an appropriate response to this kind of situation? Please explain why this response is appropriate.

Alternative Response

Describe another reasonable response to this kind of situation. Compare the potential risks and benefits of this response with those of your original response.

Decision Making Process

What process would you recommend for deciding how to respond to situations of this kind? Please describe this decision-making process in general terms—in a way that would allow another person to use the process in a similar workplace situation—and explain why you would recommend each step in this process. Be sure to include a description of how you would actually make your decision and explain why you would make it in that way.

11.

🙈Dilemma