Services

Item Description

You don't have to be Don Quixote, the Lord of La Mancha, waiting for your destiny to call for that quest. Now you've got a workshop!

Create a Quest: Reframe Your Time, Attention, Money and Relationships to Design for Serendipity

Discover ways to imbue your limited time on this planet with more joy, more meaning, and more connection. We will use TIME, ATTENTION, CONNECTION, and CURRENCY as constraints to help you create your own quest. In literature and films, quests often involve extensive travel and adventure, but your quest can also happen in your backyard, in your neighborhood, in your city, or on the web. 

Want to revive and pursue a dream that has faded? Whether you want to be more creative, more political, more spontaneous, more deliberate, or simply create a meaningful and lasting change, this class may be for you. This is a great class to revisit and explore what is possible. 

Week 1: Exploring Quests: Playing With Intentionality and Serendipity
Quests are an opportunity to engage the world with your own fascination. In week one, we’ll talk about structure and play to consider the elements of quests that create more meaning, connection, and more serendipity.

Week 2: Thinking Bigger: Assessing What Is & Exploring the Possible  
As a culture, it seems we’re obsessed with life hacks, habits, and getting more done while spending less time on the doing. As adults, we tend to organize our lives around ATTENTION (what we pay attention to), CONNECTION (who we pay attention to), TIME (how we organize our days, weeks, month, years), and CURRENCY (how we pay for our lives, usually in some equation that factors in time and money). In this first class we will assess what is important to us and explore the possible. 

Week 3: Motion, Preparation, & Divergence
Luck favors the prepared. In the second week, we will look at famous and not-so-famous quests — we will break down how ordinary people have used constraints of time, space, place, money, and more to create more luck, or what I like to call, serendipity engines. It is difficult to stumble on an idea while seated, so we will look at ways to create more movement in your everyday life and prepare for the outcomes you’re interested in. 

Week 4: Commitment, Activation, & Optimizing Connections
How do you commit to an idea? How do you choose? In week three, through guided homework, readings, class discussion, and small group work, we will work on optimizing your connections with people and ideas. 

Week 5: Quest Design: Creating Signifiers & Social Objects
How do you make your intentions known without words? How can you create objects that remind you (and others) of the quest you’re on (together)? 

Week 6: Surprise & Delight     
Week six is the culmination of weeks 1 - 5. 

Melea Seward is a communications and strategy consultant, speaker, improvisational storyteller and writer. She creates time-bound, rule-based projects and games that explore performance in everyday life. Most recently, she created Board of Us, a playful facilitation tool that she uses in her consulting work with clients ranging from soloprenuers and small business owners to established nonprofit organizations and multinational companies, including NBC, HBO, Shore Fire Media, Elixir Design and Girls for Gender Equity.