Unbundling assumptions

Good design can solve all kinds of problems.

My husband and I just moved into a new house. Actually, it’s a very old house, built in 1880.

Accordingly, it’s small by modern standards, just under 900 square feet. But it doesn’t feel small. It feels just right.

I’ve lived in places that felt too small. And the logical solution was to move somewhere bigger. But what I now see, after spending some time living miserably in an enormous house, is that bigger isn’t necessarily better. It is more useful to identify and address specific challenges.

For example, one too-small house I lived in (which was 50% larger than my current dwelling) had no place for bicycles. There was barely room for a couch. Another was dark most of the day. Still another had no washer, dryer, or dishwasher. Another had only one bathroom. Another, though it was over 2,000 square feet, had no place to put a kitchen table and no comfortable place to sit outside and read.

The problem was never really the size of the home. We learned that we could live in a smaller place that still felt like an upgrade because it was better suited to us. As challenges arose, we found we could address them strategically instead of relying upon the blanket solution of adding more space.

There are similar conversations happening in other domains. Due to the coronavirus, The Little Middle School has had to pivot to a remote program. Thus, we’re using our resources differently. In particular, most of the team is doing a different job than the one they were hired to do. It was tempting to hire additional people to make the new approach work better, but that would be unsustainable. Plus, adding more hands doesn’t necessarily fix things — it means more training, more complex communication, and more management.

Instead, of bringing on new people, we’ve been evaluating our systems, tasks, and projects to figure out how to find more time without adding staff. We’re streamlining, automating, and reworking whatever we can. Redesigning our processes has allowed us to get more accomplished, more effectively, in less time.

Amidst the devastation and disappointment of the coronavirus pandemic, there has been one bright spot: For many of us, the curtailing of options has encouraged us to develop a fresh clarity about what we need — and in many cases, has forced us to be creative about how we get it.

When we question our beliefs about what is necessary for our happiness, joy, comfort, success, satisfaction, prosperity, connection, and confidence, we open up so many possibilities that may actually make us happier, more prosperous, and so on.

To get there, we have to break open our assumptions. We may find that lots of “bundled” options can actually be broken apart and made a la carte. Instead of becoming locked into a set of choices that are based on the same rigid framework, we can examine each decision on its own terms and discover new ways to achieve the results we’re looking for.

After years of living without a bike, I may get one. We have room for a little bike shed. And a couch, and a dishwasher. What luxury!