Design Your Own Shanty Structure

Choose one repeated task from your work or daily life that involves other people — and build a structure that could make it genuinely better.

Name the task

Write the repeated collective task you chose. What does it demand — physical coordination, shared attention, or emotional synchrony?

Sort what you have

Divide what already exists in this task into two zones: what already gives it rhythm or shape, and what is purely grind. Defend one item you moved.

Already rhythmic

Pure grind

The core decision

State in one sentence exactly what structural change — a signal, a phrase, a shared moment — would most transform this task. Commit to it specifically.

Stress-test it

Look back at step 2. Does your change from step 3 actually address what you put in the 'pure grind' zone? Name the weakest point in your design.

Reveal what you made

Reduce your entire design to one word — the quality it would give the task that is currently absent. Then write one line explaining why that word, and not another.

Why that word?

Discuss Share your one word with a partner. Do they agree it is the missing quality — or do they see the problem differently?

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