Author: Rui Zhou

Reflecting on my journey in the project “The Change I Want to See,” I realized that I struggled in the initial stages of the project. Specifically, I think I have trouble identifying the definition of “comfort zone” in my project, my stakeholders and explaining the importance of stepping out of one’s comfort zone, as well as understanding the connection between comfort zones and “change the career path”（then job insecurity), These issues made it challenging to define the scope of the project and understand its relevance to my target audiences.

However, through my participation in the last tutorial session and the Dragon Den, as well as conversations with people from diverse backgrounds, I gained important insights that helped me move forward. First, I realized that conducting research to understand the problem is crucial before attempting to solve it. This helped me gain a deeper understanding of the issues and identify the specific stakeholders I needed to target in the subsequent work.

Secondly, I learned that narrowing down the topic and stakeholders could make the project more achievable and meaningful. By focusing on a specific issue and a specific group of people, I could make a more significant impact and create a more targeted intervention.

Thirdly, I realized the importance of engaging in conversations with others to gain new perspectives and ideas that may not be found in books and journals. While theoretical knowledge is valuable, it is essential to talk to people and gain insights from them.

Finally, I also learnt that creativity can take many forms and it not only refers to creating or designing some objects. Building up a community can be a powerful way to bring about intervention and change. Creating a community around a specific issue can help raise awareness and generate support for a cause.

In conclusion, the journey in the project “The Change I Want to See” taught me valuable lessons that will undoubtedly help me in my future endeavors. I learned the importance of conducting research, narrowing down the topic, engaging in conversations with others, and thinking creatively. These lessons have enabled me to make significant progress towards achieving my goals, and I hope to continue building on them as I move forward with the project.

As I continue with the project, my focus will be on building a coffee community for 35-45-year-old women experiencing midlife crisis due to job insecurity and self-consciousness. Through this community, I aim to create a supportive space where women can come together, share their experiences, and self-identify with others facing similar challenges.

Job insecurity and self-consciousness can be significant factors contributing to midlife crisis for these women. Therefore, the community will provide a platform for women to explore potential solutions and take action to improve their circumstances. By bringing women together and facilitating dialogue and collaboration, I hope to empower them to take control of their situations and pursue the opportunities that are available to them.

Through this project, I aspire to make a meaningful difference in the lives of these women by providing them with a safe and supportive space to connect with others, share their experiences, and find solutions to their challenges. My hope is that this community will not only raise awareness about the issues of midlife crisis, job insecurity, and self-consciousness but also inspire others to take action towards positive change in their own communities.

How do you define the “comfort zone”？

Stepping out of comfort zone is something that  everyone experiences or will experience at least once in their life.For example, we may go from being a student to a working professional, or from being single to becoming a parent. Different people have different definition about their “comfort zone”. In order to make the project could be more achieveable, my tutor suggested first thing I can do is to figure out the definition of “comfort zone“ in my project and narrow down the target audiences.

“The comfort zone is a behavioral state within which a person operates in an anxiety-neutral condition, using a limited set of behaviors to deliver a steady level of performance, usually without a sense of risk.”

Judith Bardwick, Danger in the Comfort Zone

In general, when people mentioned “comfort zone”, it refers to people in the stable circumstance without any challenge and risk-taking. some individuals may choose to leave their comfort zones voluntarily in pursuit of personal or professional growth, others may be forced out of their comfort zones due to circumstances such as job loss, major life changes, or unexpected challenges. I listed some key words as below to relate to the definition of “comfort zone” in this project.

Some Key words: Female, 35-50 years old, career-oriented, family, midlife crisis, work-life balance, self-improvement, self-awareness, mental well-beings, motivated, coffee, creative, coffee cup/package design

Based on the key words, I redefine the “comfort zone” as the roles (identities? not sure if the meaning of role and identity is same or different) of women playing in their lives. As a girl grows into a woman, from being a student to a working professional, and from being single to becoming a parent, during the every step of change, she must navigate and fulfill various roles and expectations within society.

Middle Aged-Adults & Midlife Crisis

Researchers and the public have generally considered midlife to encompass the ages of 40 to 60, plus or minus 10 years, making it a relative approximation (Infurna, Gerstorf and Lachman, 2020). And Jung referred midlife as the afternoon of life. But More important for defining midlife than chronological age are the unique role constellations that people take on combined with the timing of life events and experiences (Lachman, 2004).

The term “Midlife crisis” was first coined by Elliott Jaques (1965), when he observed in his midlife client’s abrupt changes in lifestyle and productivity as well as coming face-to-face with one’s own limitations and ever-increasing salience of mortality. Midlife crisis includes mental and physicial challenges.

Inspiration

The project I would like mainly focus on female in midlife, whether she experienced midlife crisis or not, she must have experienced stepping out of her comfort zone (changed her role she need to play in the society) once at least in her lifetime.

Furthermore, my tutor David suggested me that I could explore the connection between my interest in coffee and my topic of comfort zone. Personally, I find that the process of making and drinking coffee has a comforting effect on me, similar to how some people may turn to smoking when feeling stressed or frustrated.

But how can coffee industry impact the midlife Women. their mental well-beings when they getting out of their comfort zone, even the society?

In this Sat, I visited the London Coffee Festival with my Japanese friend. There’re a lot of coffee brands in UK joined the event. I also visited some coffee festivals and fairs in China before, the main difference between the events in the 2 countries is that in China, most coffee shops and brands brought their latest and special flavored drinks or their peripheral products as gimmicks to attract visitors while in london, most coffee owners only offer their main menus as usual ( Esspreso, Americano, Flat White, Latte, etc. ), but what they really inspired me is most of them bring their brands’ stories to this event to attract visitors to understand what they really want to do.

One of the coffee brands inspired me a lot is “REDEMPTION ROASTERS”. It is the world’s first prison based coffee company. They help inside and outside prison for long-term employment via coffee and hospitality training. At the same time, they partnered with “Working Chance” to support women with convictions into employment. 

https://www.redemptionroasters.com/impact-updates/working-chance/

Another coffee cup packaging company Decent also make me feel impressive. The essential concept at the heart of this company is to “ensure we can unmake everthing we make”. https://decentpackaging.co.uk/pages/about-us

Stakeholders

1. Midlife female coffee drinkers (35-45 years old) who are experiencing a midlife crisis in job security and seeking to grow in their personal or professional lives;
2. Coffee brand owners: The coffee itself could be sourced from female-led coffee farms or roasters and marketed as a product that empowers women in the coffee industry
3. Coffee shop/space
4. Organizer of Coffee Community

Stay or step out of your comfort zone?

Stepping out of our comfort zone means embracing change and making ourselves different. It’s something that everyone experiences or will experience at least once in their life. For example, we may go from being a student to a working professional, or from being single to becoming a parent. However, stepping out of our comfort zone is not an easy thing.

The topic started from my personal experience. In the past 3 years, many people including me suffered from the restricted quarantine policy in my home country and the pandemic made me realise that our life can be changed completely in one night, and we should do something to catch up with the changing world. 3 years ago, I seized an opportunity to get a higher position in other city by in the same organization I worked, then I first decided to step out of my comfort zone after I graduated from MSc in UK, and moved from the city I called “home town” to another city to start my new life and my career. And 3 years later, I made decision to step out of my comfort zone again. I quitted my job from Hong Kong Trade Development Council, which I worked for 10 years and came to London to study the creative industy which is quite a new and challenging course for me. I can still remeber every step I took, I felt very excited and curious. And once made the decision, I would be determined to do that. And as predicted, everytime, when exploring the new comfort zone, I would also feel stressed, anxious because too much uncertainties during the process. Stepping out of comfort zone is not an easy thing.

Can it be easier to step out of our comfort zone, and can I understand more through this project?

Primary Research

In this project, I conducted questionnaire and interviews as primary research to collect the information to understand and prove nervous, anxious are common emotions of individuals when stepping out of comfort zone. But once you got out of the comfort zone successfully, relieved, proud, positive, and motivated emotions are coming.

Then I narrowed down the target audiences who step out of their career comfort zone and conducted 2 interviews with 2 individuals, one who is currently experiencing the challenge of stepping out of her comfort zone (she was forced to find a new job in a new city but still work in the same industry as before), and the other who has already stepped out of the comfort zone and now feels confortable with the new career path (she considered and prepared to step out of her career comfort zone for a long time, finally in last year, she got the offer of new company and now working in the different fileld but similar title as before. she thought government relation is still her strength and she just wants to shift in different industry and learns more new knowledge and gains more experience.)

Secondary Research

It takes courage to step from the comfort zone into the fear zone. Without a clear roadmap, there’s no way to build on previous experiences. This can be anxiety provoking. Yet persevere long enough, and you enter the learning zone, where you gain new skills and deal with challenges resourcefully.

After a learning period, a new comfort zone is created, expanding one’s ability to reach even greater heights. This is what it means to be in the growth zone.

Page, O. (2020) How to Leave your Comfort Zone and Enter your ‘Growth Zone’

Reference list

Biswas, S.K. (2020) Can You Grow In Your Comfort Zone?, Live Your Life On Purpose. Available at: https://medium.com/live-your-life-on-purpose/can-you-grow-in-your-comfort-zone-884a26f7b96c (Accessed: 14 April 2023).

Dartnell, A. (2021) How to Expand Your Comfort Zone to Achieve Your Goals, Alice Dartnell. Available at: https://alicedartnell.com/blog/how-to-expand-your-comfort-zone-to-achieve-your-goals/ (Accessed: 11 April 2023).

Kiknadze, N.C. and Leary, M.R. (2021) ‘Comfort zone orientation: Individual differences in the motivation to move beyond one’s comfort zone’, Personality and Individual Differences, 181(Volume 181, October 2021, 111024), p. 111024. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2021.111024.

Kuster, E. (no date) Don’t Leave Your Comfort Zone, Expand It, WebMD. Available at: https://www.webmd.com/balance/features/expand-your-comfort-zone#:~:text=When%20you%20have%20a%20large (Accessed: 11 April 2023).

Leadership Lessons with Ginni Rometty – Step Out Of Your Comfort Zone (no date) www.youtube.com. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJpOLqw4JRA (Accessed: 16 April 2023).

Page, O. (2020) How to Leave your Comfort Zone and Enter your ‘Growth Zone’, PositivePsychology.com. Available at: https://positivepsychology.com/comfort-zone/ (Accessed: 10 April 2023).

Reyes, M.A. (2021) The Problem of Cultural Comfort Zones, Medium. Available at: https://medium.com/ar-che-type/the-problem-of-cultural-comfort-zones-cd54dc077738 (Accessed: 12 April 2023).

Russo-Netzer, P. and Cohen, G.L. (2022) ‘“If you’re uncomfortable, go outside your comfort zone”: A novel behavioral “stretch” intervention supports the well-being of unhappy people’, The Journal of Positive Psychology, pp. 1–17. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2022.2036794.

This week, our project group focused on the workspace（what’s the difference between “workspace” and “workplace”?) and personal agency. At the same time, we are considering if DAO (Decentralized autonomous organization) and meditation could help improve the workplace in real world?

Personal Agency

This week, I joined the workshop “Personal Agency and Social Rights”. What is “agency”? If I translate this word in Chinese, we usually understand it as  a firm, organization, or business that provides a specific or specialist service. However, in this workshop and under this topic, “agency” means a feeling of purpose. Looking back to the past 3 years during the Pandamic, I had serveral agencies and I did some changes. In 2020, I tried and got the promotion opportunity to be deployed to work in GBA city. In the new environment, I made new friends who are hardworking and professional in their fileds. At the same time, I started to learn coffee and yoga, and built up the coffee and yoga circle. Every coin has 2 sides, I got better salary and had spare time to enjoy my hobbies, I also faced the bottleneck in the workplace. I felt I know nothing, I don’t have some special technology and skills, I felt I dont have self-worth. I felt frustrated in a period and started to think about how to make some changes. I decided to get out of the comfort zone again and considered to apply for UAL to study and learn something new. The process is not easy. I need to work but at the same time, I need to spend time on studying and preparing my study proposal and interview. Very lucky, I got the offer and passed the IELTS in a very short time. When everything seems get ready, and I decided to quit my job and come to London, my mom was diagnosed as Lung cancer. I was very stressful and reluctant to continue my plan or give up this opportunity. I came back my hometown and accompanied with her to do the surgery in the hospital. I almost forget how to confront the difficulties and depression during the period. Thanks god, her surgery was successful and the treatment was in early stage, everything seems to be getting better, then I discussed with my parents, supported by them, I decided to conduct my “agency” and fly to London.

Workspace

My past workspace is incluenced by workplace hierarchies. People with higher position have larger and priviate room/space while staffs with lower position have smaller and more public space. Normal staffs sometimes would feel very stressful because they feel they are monitered by supervisor who sit back of them and can moniter what they do from the screen. Opportunities to participate in and access support and guidance are distributed in ways that reflect workplace political and power relationships (Billett, 2021). This is very true and happen in many workplace. In our case, there might not have the colour different but there are backgroud different. Staffs with backgrounds (related to family, experience, seniority, boss support, appreance previlige etc.) will have more opportunities to be promoted than normal staffs.

Meditation

I started to learn Ashtanga yoga since 2020. The first class was learning how to breath via nose, how to concentrate on the breath. As a normal person, I got a lot of annoying issues around me. Most of time, it was hard for me to concentrate on the breath and the posture when practing yoga. 2 years passed, I think I did not understand what is “meditation” and how to meditate untill today, I was inspired by the Tedtalks shared by mindfulness expert Andy Puddicombe and internationally recognized expert in mindfulness Dr. Shauna Shapiro about “meditation” and “the present moment”.

Andy Puddicombe asked us to think “When is the last time you did absolutely nothing for 10 whole minutes? Not texting, talking or even thinking?” and “Not even sitting there reminiscing about the past or planning about the future. Simply doing nothing”. In our daily life, we got stress because we need to consider too much issues, we care about our life, our study, our job, our car and even our hair and we dont know how to deal with them. At the same time, we miss out the most important to us which is the “present moment”. Meditation could help us “not being lost in thought, not being distracted, not being overwhelmed by difficult emotions, but instead learning how to be in here and now, how to be mindful, how to be present.” Andy said the present moment is so underrated and sounds ordinary, and we spend so little time in the present moment. Both Andy and Dr. Shauna mentioned, a research paper came out of the Harvard said on average, our minds are lost in thought almost 47% of the time. And this sort of constant mind-wandering is also a direct cause of unhappiness. As Andy said, meditation is a way to allow us “to step back, to familiarize yourself with the present moment.” I was very stressful and anxious after I got the Covid last few weeks. I always feel tired, and I cannot concentrate on reading and writing. And I’m not able to do exerice and practice yoga like before. And Covid also made me stay home to self-isolate and ruined my plan to go to school and to Cambridge to visit my friend. Above situations make me feel frustrated, but today inspired by Andy’s talks, I tried to do meditate, tried to only focus on the breath, and when I feel relaxing, I fell asleep. I think it’s not bad for me. And I downloaded the “Headspace” which established by Andy and get ready to the “mindfulness journey”.

This week our group came up some questions to conduct the interviews with people in different fileds on the views about the current and future of the work. My interviewee is Jen, one of my friends living in Shenzhen China. She works as the senior management in a MNE, which is a world’s leading airline company. Jen worked in this company for nearly 10 years starting from Trainee after graduating from her master degree. She has similar value with me that’s why we could be friends. I asked her 5 questions about her work and workplace. Here are her answers.

• Q: What motivates you to work? A: The motivation for my work comes from the content of my work, which allows me to continuously learn and grow, broaden my minds, at the same time, I could be recognized by people around me during the work.
• Q: How to keep enthusiasm on your work? A: When it comes to how to keep enthusiasm on my work, I think my passion for my work actually comes from my drive. I feel that being able to do one thing well is a great sense of accomplishment, and I can also share this sense of accomplishment with people surrounding me.
• Q: Can you describe your current environment of workplace? Do you think it will affect your attitude towards your work and your working performance? A: I think our company culture is very good. Our company culture encourages employees to balance work and life, respect equality and collaboration. I really appreciate that most of our colleagues have the same values. As we said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”, the culture and environment of the company will affect staffs’ level of engagement and working performace, epecially for me, it is influential.
• Q: What new technology do you need on your work? A: The new technology such as microsoflt teams, zoom which could allow us work remotely and connect us with colleagues all over the world will be more involved in our work. We use these virtual team meeting softwares during Pandamic.
• Q: How does work realize self-worth? A:1) Salary.Self-worth will definitely have a positive relationship between the effort you put in and the salary you get; 2) Happiness. If your values do not match the working environment and the company culture, you will not feel that what you do has self-worth; 3) The working environment and people or circles around you make you feel that you are constantly improving.

Jen agrees with the quote: “culture eats strategy for breakfast”, me too.

In my past working experience in HKTDC, I worked in different branch offices in different cities, with different bosses and team members. Besides the council’s culture, each branch office has its own culture which sometimes determined by the director of branch office (the leader of the branch office). My first 3 bosses come from Hong Kong, and they were born in 1960s, 1970s and 1980s respetively and all born and grew up in Hong Kong. They respect staffs views, and always encourage us to keep work and life balance. They would not find us during weekend or holiday except some urgent issues. Most of time, they would use email to communicate with us (internal staffs) and other staffs from other departments on working issues except when something urgent, they would choose to use sms, whatsapp or wechat. And my first 3 Hong Kong bosses trusted me including my morality and work ablity, and offered me a lot opportunities to join the high-level meetings / events(internal and external) as well as deploy me as project manager to accomplish the mega events to allow me grow up rapidly and built up good reputation in the Council. Besides the Directors respect our staffs and take each of us equality, my teammates in the first branch office are kind and nice. We collabrated well and worked for the same targets. Thanks to the good vibe of the office I worked, I felt like I can serve the Council for my lifetime~ haha

Situations changed when I was promoted and deployed to work in another branch office which is also one of the most important offices for the council. Even I got a better salary and higher position in the new office, the vibe of workplace and the relationship between colleagues were quite different from the previous one. I felt that there’s no teamwork spirits and no matter you put efforts or not, you will not be trusted and appreciated by your new boss. At the same time, recently years, wechat, microsoflt teams have become main tools for people communication in any issues including work. We got the wechat group, teams group to communicate with internal and external people all day. Most of time, people would find you anytime they want regardless weekend or holiday, working time or not, our Director did this also. He liked to line up wechat groups to deploy us with outsiders to discuss work no matter what time. This is very annoying for me and most of staffs who used to the work & life balance. The virtual meeting technology developed rapidly in recent years, especially in the Pandemic. _{As the article “Stories from the Global Staffroom: Experiences of Caring and Uncaring Architectures at work with Effy Harle and Jos Boys” mentioned, the online staffroom was a fun way of engaging with co-workers and it was quite an accessible way of engaging because you could swich it on and off, and you decided when you wanted to engage and when you didnt.} However, _{aspect of it changed during Lockdown and now it’s morphed into this weird thing where you get all of the essential information about how we’re going to go back to work…. So, things are really important are now all communicated through this platform and so engaging with this platform has become compulsory. It’s become part of my job to read the posts, to press the “I’ve read it button,” and it’s really frustrating that they’ve hijacked their own staffroom.} We started to use Teams, Zoom, wechat and other online communication tools to have meetings or discuss work at anytime and anywhere. They blur the private and working time which is very annoying and stressful for most of people.

Considering the unfavorable workplace environment and the contents of the work which were affected by the Pandamic (the border of Hong Kong and mainland China did not reopen at that time) could not allow me to learn more and develop well anymore, I feel I can try to change myself to get rid of this organisation and try to learn some know knowledge to improve myself. That’s why I decide to quite my job and gap my work life to come to UK to study. For me, life is a journey and Life is Self-cultivation.

“The 3D Additivist Cookbook” was created and edited by the artists Morehshin Allahyari and Daniel Rourke and it was released in 2016 and published in 2017. This book is a free 3D PDF compendium of imaginative, provocative works from over 100 world-leading “artists, designers, curators, students, activists and theorist.

About the Creators and Editors:

Morehshin Allahyari, is an Iranian media artist, activist, and writer based in New York. Her work questions current political, socio-cultural, and gender norms, with a particular emphasis on exploring the relationship between technology, history, and art activism. Allahyari’s artworks include 3D-printed objects, video, experimental animation, web art, and publications. (wikipedia)

She is most noted for her projects Material Speculation: ISIS (2015–2016), which is a series of 3D-printed sculptural reconstructions of ancient artifacts destroyed by ISIS (2015–2016).

https://morehshin.com/

Dr. Daniel Rourke is writer/artist and academic. He creates collaborative frameworks and theoretical toolsets for exploring the intersections of digital materiality, the arts, and (critical) post-humanism in his work.

Daniel Rourke’s Portfolio

The 3D Additivist Manifesto:

^{The manifesto crticizes itself through irony, contrdiction and self-deprecation. The lanaguage of the manifesto crumbles and degenerates, like any system accelerated to its limits. Andrea Yong’s excellent sound desgin for the video was also crucial to achieving the quality.}

#Additivism

Additivism is a coinage of additive and activism, and as such, signals to the potential of small scale, incremental processes to have substantial and long lasting effects.

^{Additivism is a new word consisting of “addivtive manufacturing” 增材制造 (3D打印） and social activism 社会活动主义.}