#afterhyper

What happened which affected me: 

Some days left to IRP submission deadline and I am at the 5,400 word mark.

One more workshop to run this evening - it’s the final one, and I hope there would be a good mix of immigrants and locals today. Will there be many no-shows today? Will I be able to seed at least one idea for real and watch it develop into something meaningful?

IRP aside, I am also applying for service design positions in dream companies. How would my next career look like? I feel some tingling excitement at the prospects of tackling new challenges - after IRP is over, I wanna rest my mind for a couple of days, and then look at my list of side projects and start initiating some independent work while looking for a paid opportunity to arise. I hope to be able to apply some of my IRP insights too and deliver a solution in some form in the real world.

So much to do!

What did I learn about myself?

The above captured my fascination with the wonders of the world, and amazement at the possibilities all there to explore, I just gotta to start somewhere, and keep the curiosity going instead of just being busy. Often times, like now, I would be so narrow-minded on IRP or whichever seemingly huge task, and either lose sight of other things, or go into “drift” mode when overwhelmed - either extreme was not productive. 

At times, I also now realised more that there were more than simply forces of good and evil at play. “Good” and “evil” were subjective terms. People had different interpretations of what was just - and I have mine certainly. Pushing my brand onto others simply won’t work, and I should not “kill” myself if things did not work out my way. I need to be an effective altruist, through a strength-based approach, and be kind while trying to make social impacts.

What would I do differently next time?

Continue resisting the lures of procrastination and set clear goals to achieve for the week or day. I started adopting the Pomodoro methodology (thanks for Nat) and it has been helpful. Using the Business Calendar on Android helped give me a clearer sense of time nowadays. 

On a longer term basis, I need to start defining what areas I would want to focus on, and work towards that in a semi-structured way. The Grounded Theory and Action Research approaches seemed to reflect my style of living / discovery, and I would like to apply those research approaches into my life too.

Gearing up for the journey ahead.

It is great and reassuring to have someone prolific like Dr. Emma Jefferies to be my supervisor for my Industry Research Project.

For my project topic, in general I am trying to promote altruism in communities by using digital tech as an enabler. I tried to narrow it down, and came across the refugee crisis, so I wondered whether I could possibly benefit anyone working in that space through my experience design research.

Currently I am in New York. I have contacted International Rescue Committee New York, and expecting a reply from them by this week on possible collaboration. The only significant good news so far was enlisting the help of Dana Klisanin, a New York-based psychologist/designer who worked on the topic of digital altruism to be my mentor for this project.

I am feeling anxious, as I am taking longer than expected to find a partner organisation, and my time in US is running out in another 66 days. So on the side, I have also started exploring other spaces than the refugee issue.

Lots of non-profit representatives turned up for this event. The interactivity part of the event was self-organising ourselves into groups of 3-4, and getting to know one another. There were questions to guide our small group discussion, such as why would non-profits be vital to solving big problems, what drove people to work in non-profit.

There’s hope again. 

I was stunned to learn that IRC was open for operations today. Was previously informed that today was Columbus Day and IRC office would be closed. I quickly fired an email to connect with Avigail and Milagros. I also belatedly decided to try my luck popping by IRC office again to see if I could meet either of them. Which turned out to be a futile attempt again.

But on the train to IRC, I recalled David’s advice to have a prototype on hand to show and tell. I quickly worked on the train to create a simple Powerpoint for presenting and discussing with IRC. So even though I didn’t get to meet them, now I had a proposal on hand.