top of page
This site was designed with the
.com
website builder. Create your website today.Start Now

Interior - Action

 

"Keep the big vision in mind & do the legwork" -Looby MacNamara

 

Bcause this is my real life, day to day that I'm working on designing, the action really began right from the beginning.

 

As my awareness increased, I began to try out new things, as the ideas surfaced, mostly small  things like mediating for 15 minutes a day, or getting an unused punch bag from Danny's shed & hanging it up in my shed, putting up a profile on a help-exchange website & going for short runs daily.

I also took afew bigger steps as the opportunities arose, such as booking a place on an Organic Market Gardeners course which runs throughout the year.

 

In doing these small & not so small actions, I could see the effect they have on me & my Vision. Are they bringing me closer to it or distracting me from it?

 

Maybe this should be in the Reflection anchor point but I observed that most of these things (except the boxing bag which hurt my hands!)  were helping me on the path towards the vision. However, at this point, I still felt lacking in any kind of overall path, pattern or structure.

 

So I have all this information, I'm information rich! Now I just need to pull it all together into some kind of a plan.

 

To help with this I employed several tools: Brainstoming & Mind mapping, Informal PNI analysis, & application of patterns 

 

I began by pulling out anything that had come up in the process so far which could help guide the making of an action pathway which would support effective & lasting change.

 

These main points were:

 

  • Create the soil conditions required for the vision to flourish. Natural succession to order the implementation, Build soil! **

  • Make Small achievable realistic steps -balanced with some larger shocks to the system

  • Expand from edges for sustainable growth -spiral, 'process of change' p67 looby

  • Use a pattern or 2 to provide some structure, say head heart hands, 4 quadrants, or my own one 

  • Short & Long term design within this, short term is more detailed, long term is more of a pattern

  • Intervention points -where to start? -Where I'm at! Could start in multiple places, don't have to have only one start point -Multiple sources.

  • Budget -affects placement

  • Expand spheres of influence through connections, media etc affects placement

  • Seasonal Patterns -informs placement

  • Leave space for other things to emerge

Creating the right soil conditions for the vision to flourish...

 

First: Protect the existing soil/foundations of this vision, stop waste, stop the leaks, mulch/sow groundcovers to stop the erosion, 

Then: Add organic matter, adding courses, intellectual matter, adding in things,

And: plant supportive plants; nitrogen fixing/nutrient accumulators's, Catch & strore energy in the conetxt of this design

Finally: Create communities including companion plants/animals, surround myself with positive things.

 

Action also incorperates evaluating the design as I go along. I identified this as an important part of maintaining the momentum.

 

So for this I'll schedule in an hour per month, to evaluate the design with specific questions.

I've designed 2 'wheels' where I can easily mark how I'm 'scoring' in relation to the needs & the systems, in relation to the centre which is the vision.

This gives me an immediate visual representation of where I'm at, areas that are well supported & those that may need more support. 

I can use the same wheel each month so I can chart the progress.

Along with this I'll do an adapted '4 action learning questions' in my journal.

From this I may or may not tweak the daily, monthly, annual design plans, add things to the parking lot or adapt the design in other ways.

 

The Questions I'll use are:

 

1. What's going well in terms of implementing the design?

Hints:-achieving vision, needs, integrating everything

 

2. What's challenging regards implementing the design?

 

3. What's my long term vision again?

 

4. Any ideas I have for next steps/tweaking/changes to be made?

Hints: Reference to 4 Quadrants

 

5. Action planning for this month

Review action plan -did I do it? Was anything missed & why?

Plans of action for the coming month incorperating reflections on last month & the above questions.

 

 

Action Plans

“Create a plan of Action that is achievable, realistic, engaging, adaptable, motivating & easy to follow” -Looby

Action plans

Together with the design, and the reflections I could do with something a bit more specific to help me build this design.

So, to help me make my design realiseable, I borrowed a tool similar to SMART goal setting that I've seen Danny using as part of a Self Care to Wellness programme.

I'm combining this with a tool I created in my ALP design. Just a couple of extra categories which were very helpfull to me in that action plan.

 

The unique part & the key to this action plan is the "Confidence level" is key to this approach: I suppose it's similar to the A (achieveable) in SMART but it's a bit more specific.

“Ask yourself, -on a scale of 0=not sure at all to 1O=totally sure, how sure am I that I will complete the ENTIRE action? If you rate your confidence below a 7 then you might want to look at reworking your action plan so that it' something you are confident that you can accomplish -It is important that you succed!”

 

This supports the idea of spirals of abundance & small & slow steps, don't bit off more than you can chew, keep things positive, small steps are better than getting disheartened!

 

You can see the template here:

 

 

 

This is a work in progress at the minute, I'm going to print this out & fill it in more & display along with the rest of the design pieces.

bottom of page