Getting Ready

Contacting Care

Find clarity in your bodily sense of care. By engaging with Marie Kondo's Tidying Up approach, you will become sensitive to your pre-conceptual felt sense of care.

Practice: Become sensitive to your pre-conceptual, felt sense of care as you interact with your home environment. Feel the specific way care shows up as you interact with the contents of your material life. Provide the opportunity for this felt sense of care to come into being through the simple action of choosing to keep or discard each item, and finding each item's right placement. Tidying up is here an opportunity to contact care, so the scope of "tidying up" is simplified to clothing alone.
Inquiry: This is an object I have chosen to bring into my home, to keep in my home. What does it feel like to interact with this object in particular? What name(s) can I give to this feeling?

Week One

Readings

Kondo — The Life-Changing Manga of Tidying Up.

Assignments

In multiple sessions over the week — set aside as much time a day as you can — pick a room in your house. Wander through it slowly.
Gaze upon each object in the room. If it is touchable, feel the object with your hands. Let your hands rest on the object.
Notice how you feel emotionally about the object, prior to label and narrative.
If a feeling is unclear, use these scaffolding inquiries to get in touch with your care. Inquire, then feel again without inquiry (an inquiry is to raise a question and feel the implications of that question, without trying to resolve to an answer):
- Is this functional in my life?
- Is this beautiful?
- Am I glad this is in my life or not?
- Is it in the right location?

Week Two

Assignments

Clothing is the sandbox for contacting your care, now that you have contacted it.
Bring every piece of clothing in the house into one place. Every closet, every dresser, every room. The coat by the door, the gym bag in the car, the sweaters in the guest room. Handbags and shoes count as clothing.
One by one, touch each article of clothing. Feel what this is like. Choose items to keep and items to discard based on how this feels.
If your pre-conceptual feeling on a particular piece is unclear, use these inquiries:
- How does this clothing function in my life?
- Is it beautiful to me?
- Am I glad this is in my life or not?

Week Three

Readings

Allen — the video selection.

Assignments

Last week, you contacted your care. Now, act on your care.
Store the clothing you have chosen to keep. Give every piece one place to live. Fold or hang or store the clothing in an organized and attractive way.
Bring the clothing you have chosen to give away to wherever you decide it should go (thrift store, donation bin, garbage, etc.). Say goodbye to it, or enact whatever ritual of release helps you let go with care.
Watch the David Allen video selection.

Care into Action

Stay in contact with the totality of things you care about. By engaging with David Allen's Getting Things Done approach, you will stay in contact with your total field of care and everything it includes.

Practice: Inventory every person, thing, or situation you want to benefit by getting something done (capture). What does it look like to benefit here (clarify)? Play around until things are grouped into appropriate projects, neither too lumped nor too split (organize). In each case, what is the next action you want to take (reflect)? The final step is to take those next actions (engage).
Inquiry: What do I care about? What am I committed to? What do I want to do about that?

Week Four

Assignments

Set up an individual physical inbox.
Do your inventory; fill your inbox. Walk your workspace first. Anything that does not permanently belong exactly where it sits goes in the tray. If it is too big to move, write a note and put the note in.
Then empty your head onto paper. One item per sheet, not one long list.

Week Five

Assignments

Take one item at a time. If it is not actionable, it is trash, someday, or reference. If it is actionable, decide the very next physical action. Under two minutes, do it now. Otherwise delegate it or put it on a list.
Sort what is left into Projects, Next Actions, Waiting For, Someday/Maybe, and a calendar that holds only things with a date and time.

Week Six

Readings

Madson — Improv Wisdom.

Assignments

Do your first Weekly Review. Two hours, early afternoon of your last workday.
Get clear: collect loose papers, empty your inbox including email and voicemail, empty your head.
Get current: review your next actions, review the past two to three weeks of calendar in detail, look ahead, review Waiting For, walk your Projects list and make sure each one has a next action.
Get creative: look at Someday/Maybe and at anything you want to be bolder about.

Being Responsive

Interact freely and boldly from your care. By engaging with Patricia Ryan Madson's Improv Wisdom approach, you will lean into showing up, acting now, and adapting to the world's response.

Practice: Find opportunities for making unplanned contributions to the situations you encounter. Discover how often you have the opportunity to benefit the situation you're in, even subtly.
Inquiry: What does this situation need? What am I contributing here? What else can I add?

Week Seven

Readings

Madson — reread "Say yes," "Just show up," "Act now," and "Take care of each other."

Assignments

Say yes. For one day, say yes to everything. Set your own preferences aside and notice what happens. Or, for a week, pick one person and agree with all of their ideas; find something right in what they say.
Just show up. Name five places where you will have opportunities for interaction (coffee shop, grocery store, farmers' market, bookstore, public walking trail). Go there and try low-stakes interactions: complimenting clothing, asking a simple question, making an observation about what is happening around you, thanking someone with a little more warmth than usual, briefly introducing yourself. Don't plan the interaction in advance. Show up, pay attention, and respond to whatever opportunities actually arise.
Act now. Put the job you have been avoiding in your calendar at a specific time. Hold yourself to the first physical action only. Make the call, open the document. Not the whole job.
Take care of each other. For a week, quietly watch one person for anything you can do to smooth their path; act without being asked. For one day, put other people's convenience ahead of your own. Notice where it gets hard.

Your Integrity

Integrate your care. By engaging with Bruce Di Marsico's Option Method, recognize that you are already acting from your care.

Practice: Notice what you like and what you don't like and how you change your mind.
Inquiry: What is my aesthetic, at this moment? How might that be different from an aesthetic I have borrowed from others, without owning that decision? What would it be like to take responsibility for my aesthetic?

Week Eight

Readings

Di Marsico — the audio selection.

Assignments

Conduct a self-directed Option Method dialogue with any unhappy circumstances that come to mind.