Episode 7: How Scheduling the Things That Matter Changed Our Lives

Jordan
Hello, and welcome to episode seven of the Relentless Pursuit Podcast. Today’s title is “How Scheduling the Things That Matter Change our Lives.” And that’s kind of a big title, big promise in that. What we want to talk about is not just about scheduling, I think scheduling sounds kind of trite, kind of perfunctory. Like we all have a calendar. We all schedule things to some extent, but what we’re talking about specifically is making sure that we are very intentional and very conscious about what we are choosing to put on that schedule. And specifically scheduling values into our days and into our weeks and not just commitments, not just kind of run of the mill daily predictable kinds of things that are going to happen one way or another.

Rosanna
Yeah, you might have heard the phrase that the days are long, but the years are short. And so it seems like our days are busy with whether it’s work or kids or you know, even extended family and community commitments,

Jordan
But just like housework, or you know, some day to day responsibilities that fill in the gaps.

Rosanna
But then when you look back at the year, what you find is that it’s passed you by and maybe you didn’t find room for those things that you say mattered. And so today is really all about not just filling your days with the predictable things, the things that you have to do or that you should do to keep your house running smoothly, or your work commitments or even your kids sports schedules, but it’s really looking at the values that you personally find important to you, that you and your spouse, find important, and what your family finds important.

Jordan
I think that’s the challenges how do we how do we get to those things? Because there’s, I think a lot of things that we’d say like if I only had the time. And one question I’ve asked myself is, what would I do if I had two hours more every day? Like, we all want more time, we can’t make more time. So how do we make some space for the things that really do matter to us we want to continue to give attention to?

Rosanna
And that’s actually something that we asked ourselves this past year is, if we had two more hours in the day, what would we fill our time with? And it wasn’t that we added two more hours to our day, but we started orienting our day in such a way that we found those two hours within the scope of the day.

Jordan
So we want to give you some examples of some things that we’re talking about some things that Rosanna and I have tried that have worked. And there’s other things that we’ve tried that haven’t always worked as well, but I think the important is trying and realizing what matters and making some space for that. So one example that we kicked off, I think it was back last October last November was, we didn’t really come up with a name for it – it’s Monday nights. And one of the things we recognized was that we could go through an entire week, and most of our conversations were okay, like you’re gonna take this kid to this practice on this night and I’ve got this commitment on this other night and, and just kind of that management kind of conversation. And we really wanted to spend more quality time together and have like actual conversations and we didn’t want to wait for an opportunity to like go on a date night where you know, we get the babysitter, or whoever that may be, and then we escaped to, you know, a bar and finally sit down with the drinks and we just wanted to make time for something a little bit more quality. So what we decided to do was that on Monday nights, we at nine o’clock after all of our kids went to bed, we would sit down the couch or at the table. And as though it were a date night and we were somewhere more impressive, we would take probably anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour each week and really just use that as a time to connect. And I think I started there’s even like a script that I started. Remember those questions, or those sentence starters at the beginning? We didn’t always stick with that. But that was one thing that we scheduled and I literally wrote it down the calendar, “J and R time,” nine o’clock Monday night on our calendar and that way, we knew that this was something that was scheduled and was never a question of, hey, what are we doing Monday night? Are we going to, you know, flick on the TV until we can’t keep our eyes open? Are we going to work? And we knew the answer to that was no. The answer was already filled in for us that we would be spending that time together.

Rosanna
And it almost seems silly that we would have to do that but..

Jordan
Right it seems obnoxious!

Rosanna
Right like oh, we can only spend time together on Monday nights at nine o’clock. But what was good about that was that we intentionally looked at our schedule, and our calendars and thought, you know, Monday nights are pretty open. And so instead of trying to find time where we don’t have it, let’s look at where we do have some time. And let’s build in something that matters. And for us, it was our relationship that like now, four kids in, you know, their from ages 10 to two, life is busy. So like, how do we continue to connect just past handing kids off to one another or you know, running out with friends or whatever the situation may be? It’s how do we dig in, and it’s not just a like a fleeting conversation about what we need from Costco. And so that’s why those I think those sentence starters is what we started with because it’s like, Okay, well, how do you how do you like kind of like, take a step back and slow down, and like, dig in with each other. And so I think, I mean, one of the sentence starters was “I’m really excited about…” or “Right now I’m not so feeling great with…” and you know, just sharing things. We’re excited about sharing things that we were unsure about or scared about. And it just gives another level of vulnerability within our relationship where we get to that that point where, yeah, we’re friends. And we’re, we’re together and we want to be together. And we need that to continue to build into each other.

Jordan
Right? So it’s I mean, and that wasn’t the only time that we spent talking to one another throughout the week, but it was certainly a reliable time that we can do it. Another example was something we started a few summers ago. I didn’t have to work on Fridays, and Rosanna didn’t have to work on Fridays, typically. And so we set Fridays aside during the summer as family fun Fridays is what we eventually called it.

Rosanna
These are pretty famous with our friends, because my friends even asked me Oh, it’s Friday. We’re doing Family Fun Friday, what’s going on? Like, let me steal that idea. So I can do it next week with my family.

Jordan
Yeah, yeah. And so it’s nothing extraordinary. But it was a day like spending some quality time and making memories with our kids while they’re at this age was another value that we wanted to make sure that we pursued and summers are filled with fun and we were doing a lot of fun family things throughout the summer in particular. But on Fridays we especially set aside to go and i would i would say like go make a memory go do something that would really only do probably that one time during the year. And so we can describe these I think maybe a little bit more in a future conversation or blog post but in general, we set aside probably I would say like 10 Fridays throughout the summer, one after another to go and just do something that was a little bit different. But the the catch with that was that we weren’t… I think the perk of that was that there there are no screens involved. We weren’t you know, watching movies or attached to our phones during that time. It was just a chance to really get away from any other distractions and go enjoy something as a as a family unit.

Rosanna
And I think part of that was it was intentional time to get away from that feeling of surviving as a family. Like trying to entertain them all summer long or trying to keep everybody happy, but really was rooted in Us thriving as a family that we were all together having fun, we’d let the kids help us come up with the list of activities. And then we’d kind of schedule them on the calendar based on like, availability, and you know, even weather and all of that, but it was, it was a time that we were all just like thriving. We were happy, we were our best selves, knowing that like we were together and we were in it, and the kids look back on those things even now from last year and love them. And you know, as we continue into this year too obviously, things are a little more limited. But it’s really just like that purpose of our kids are important to us. So is our time with them. So how do we make not everyday the same?

Jordan
We have several more examples here. We did schedule summer date nights last year, which we really liked. With morning routines who could probably do a whole show just on morning routines and what that’s done for us. But with one thing I wanted to talk about too was, this was especially important for me like the way it was facilitated. But Saturday morning work times. I have – and Rosanna can attest to this – that I have always like little things that I’m working on. And they might be directly connected to work and career, they might be just kind of little pet projects or hobbies or kind of side gigs or whatever. And I enjoy just getting an opportunity to work on those. And so again, not too long ago, we decided that Saturday mornings – I’m pretty early riser so as early as I wanted to Saturday mornings – I can leave the house and I would usually end up at Starbucks. Just spend a few hours there like giving whatever was on my mind some attention, a few hours of attention and it probably home by like nine or 10 o’clock and then would enjoy the rest of the day. But that was very helpful for me when you helped facilitate that, because I had a kind of this itch to be working on some of these these things. And I would be able to have the space that I could comfortably focus on that without feeling like it was intruding on anything else that we wanted to focus on.

Rosanna
And I know you you even said this to me at the time, like, Oh, I’m so thankful that I was able to get out this morning for three or four hours and take care of this, almost as if it was like a hardship for me. And it never felt like that. You just had communicated this need that you had to work on some of these projects on a Saturday morning. And that was something that I could easily help facilitate. I’m at home in the morning with the kids. You know, we go through the morning routine of getting ready and breakfast and cleaning up and, you know, whatever it is that we needed to do. When he came back, he was happy he was fulfilled. And he didn’t kind of have that weight on his shoulder of something that you know, he wanted to be doing that he’s thinking about like at Saturday at four o’clock that he’s never gotten to. And now he’s feeling a little resentful, and now he’s not enjoying me or the kids as much as he needed. And to me, that was a good feeling that like, he could feel productive, he could feel supported, he could feel like he had the freedom in his life to be who he wanted to be and accomplish something as long as I could help him. And so, I mean, you know, three out of four weeks, you know, for the most part, probably four out of four, you could go and then if I had something that didn’t allow it, then we worked around it and maybe switched it to Sunday afternoon, or Friday night, or whatever it was, but I think it was all about you looking at what you needed and communicating that and then us finding a spot in the square calendar.

Jordan
So we have a few other examples too. One is, you know how we’ve chosen to make time for friends and make sure that that was something that we were trying to focus on. Family dinners is another one that I think well you have a great blog post about and I think we can put talk through a little bit more, even just in general, like family traditions, I think we’ve developed quite a few of ours, just over the last few years. And, you know, those are some things to look forward to, usually more annually as well. So all of those are just examples just to give you a little bit of a flavor of what we mean when we’re talking about scheduling things that are valuable to us. So if we were to really talk about what our values are, hopefully you can hear some of our hearts in these conversations where we value our relationship with each other. We value our role as parents, we value our other family relationships or relationships with our friends, our careers, ourselves. And, you know, we can’t, I don’t think we can feasibly pay attention to all those things all the time and think we’re doing well. But we recognize that if we don’t pay attention to any of them, then an entire year may pass us by or more, and we realized that we’re not living up to some of those values as much as we would like.

Rosanna
And I think part of that is knowing we have to figure out what works and what fits now, and then reassess along the way. Where we’re at now is very different than where we were three years ago. And so what we’ve chosen to pursue and how to pursue it has changed even in those three years. So it’s not something that you’re locked into forever. It’s just something that you have to, once you get to a point, you’re thinking, something’s not working, or we need to reassess our values and what’s important, then you make that shift. And I think the other thing too, is that we’re all always going to be busy, we just live in a time and in a place where we’re going to be busy. But instead of wearing our badge of busyness, we look at what’s important, and reassess, and kind of reprioritize what we really need to or should be doing.

Jordan
Right. And I think it’s important to distinguish, too, that these are not productivity hacks. This doesn’t make us more efficient, and I don’t want to misrepresent it in that way. This is really about making sure that we’re building in specific space and time for the things that we really do want to continue to invest in.

Rosanna
Okay, so let’s talk about what this has done for us. Not just scheduling things, but scheduling the things that matter and how that’s helped kind of change our lives. Just we feel more positive, right. And we just feel like life is full, and we’re getting what we want out of it. I think the first thing is that we can count on something important taking place. So if we look at our nights together, it’s like I can count on that, like, I get to be with you on Monday nights. And then that’s something that I look forward to. It’s something that I treasure, and it’s something that is important to me. So I think, you know, that’s part of it with our kids with family dinners. They know that that’s going to happen at 5:30 most nights of the week. And it’s a place where they can trust that we’re all going to be together they can share what’s on their mind. And you know, that just that breeds trust. They can complain about their vegetables, it’s something that they can rely on. And I think as a family that helps all of us thrive instead of just survive,

Jordan
Right. And instead of just like passing by one another, and kind of doing our own thing, or just managing where, you know, there’s there’s more intention to the way that we gather. One thing that I think it helps too, is that like, if you if you know that there’s something important that has a time and a place and you kind of like you said, like, you know, what’s going to happen, I think that that gives relief to the other times during your day or during your week that that isn’t happening. So I know like, with my work example, I know that if there’s something that I want to work on, I already know that there’s time set aside for that. So I don’t have to feel like I have to wear that on my shoulders or that I have to like claw for that it just I know that there’s space for it and then leading up to it. And then afterwards, I’m more free to focus on other things, whatever they may be.

Rosanna
Okay. The third thing we have is if you miss it, at least it’s on the schedule, and you can continue to get to it. And I’m not even – I mean, I see the point there. But now it’s kind of dawning on me that when it’s on the schedule, I feel more committed to it.

Jordan
It’s much more likely to take place.

Rosanna
Correct, because I look at and it’s like, okay, from today, I know on the calendar tomorrow, I’ve got to work out at 730. And so because it’s there, like, I’m, you know, I tell I’m loyal to a fault. Like, I’m like, I’ve made that commitment. Like, I’m going to do it so I can cross it off my list. And so it used to be that the calendar that I utilized was just like a calendar and it had a box and it was empty, and it just had the date. And now my calendar is set up where it’s got almost like an hour breakdown. And so like I’m able to kind of like more strategically place the things that are important in my life on there. And then I can see the patterns of great I have this block of time empty and so I’m gonna devote that to like the kids and our next project with them or you know, whatever it is, but when it’s there and I see it like I’m committed to it and it gets done. When I just say, yeah, sometime tomorrow I’m gonna work out like, you know, like, yeah, maybe I’ll do it later. I’ll do it later. Like you kind of keep pushing it until you’ve pushed it completely off the calendar and because it’s never really been on the calendar.

Jordan
Or like me, I can be the king of excuses sometimes. So it’s like, like, you know on Dude Perfect. They have those stereotypes with Mr. Excuses. And then when you listen to it, they’re really lame excuses, but they’re also very common excuses that at least I’ve used to get out of, you know, doing something that I’m maybe not particularly in the mood for. But once you are committed to it, then you find the you know, the energy and the attention that you can give to it. But I don’t want anyone to think that this is this this works perfectly either, because like we’ve we’ve scheduled our Monday nights, but I think a strength of it is that we’ve set aside every Monday to do that. And most Mondays that happens, but realistically, there’s some Mondays where it’s nine o’clock and it’s been a long day, and one of us is already passed out and at least we’re like, Well, okay, like, it doesn’t have to happen today, we would like it to, but at least it’s on the schedule for next week. So we can I mean, we could always move it to the next day or whenever it’s convenient. But at least you know that it’s something that’s consistent enough that if you miss it here and there, it’s not going to kill you.

Rosanna
But what it does do is it tells each other that it’s a priority. And then even sometimes it will fall through the cracks. And then you could think I totally

Jordan
And then you could think, I’m totally drained today, but it’s Monday night, so I’m going to…

Rosanna
Yeah, there’s six more days this week. So maybe let’s push it. That’s good.

Jordan
Yeah. Okay. So we’ve kind of described our approach to this and some of the things even within the past year that we’ve tried that have really worked for us. And we know that that’s not going to be identical for everyone else. Everyone else has their own values and priorities and ways that they’re going to make space for it. So just wanted to give you a picture of maybe some things that can start your own conversation. But as you do that, we do have a few recommendations of things that might help you along that path. So the first recommendation is –

Rosanna
Or you could call it a tip. Tips or you know, recommendation seems very like recommendations, evaluating you as your boss, but a tip, a tip that might work for you.

Jordan
Here’s a tip. Here’s a tidbit, a nugget, if you will. We first you know, it really helped us to sit down and we actually did this on our own. And we’ll do this somewhat regularly too, just get to sit down on our own and figure out what is important to us. What do I want to make time for that I’m not currently? And there were a number of things when I did this that’s kind of rose to the surface. One was like spending more quality time with you. Another was just my own health, like I always imagined that I can work out and exercise consistently and eat right and I have that New Year’s goal every year. And I’m just like everyone else, like it has its peaks and valleys throughout the course of the year. But I realized that was, you know, something that was important that I hadn’t really made time for. And so just kind of looking through some of the things that mattered that weren’t getting their due attention, I think is the first step and then starting to look at where are the opportunities, maybe that something that is more important to can fit in, so that by the time I get to the end of the month or the end of the year, I can look back and say, Okay, I made time for this. And here’s the progress or the accomplishment or the, you know, just the connections that I was able to make that if I wasn’t as intentional with it, I might not have been able to do.

Rosanna
All right, the second tip, let’s just jump right into that – is that you have to stay on top of what you have to do. So you can make room for what you want to do. And so my role in this family I think I wear many hats, but I’m kind of like the manager, the momager, right? Like I think that’s what the Kardashians called their mom is the momager.

Jordan
I think you’re the you’re the family facilitator like, you yeah, you make family happen.

Rosanna
So in order to do that, right, I have to kind of keep a schedule of like what needs to happen around the house for our family to like survive and thrive and function. Like laundry has to be done or people aren’t getting dressed. Food has to be made, or people aren’t going to eat, like, whatever the case is. So those are the things that I to kind of take a look at. And I do those, I do that like over the weekend for the week to come.

Jordan
So those are some of the things we won’t really call those values. But this is a commitment, like some of the things you just have to do.

Rosanna
Things that I have to do. But in addition to that, it’s you know, what the kids have at school. So anything from hot lunch to library books being due to sports, and events, and all of those things that they participate in, like those are all going on the calendar. So when we look at all of those things, we know where they are, and when they’re going to happen. It kind of helps keep us moving in the right direction, streamlined and everybody knows where everybody is and where they’re supposed to be. And so those aren’t things that I mean that’s something that everybody does, but if we maybe don’t keep those things like organized and prioritized – we don’t know where we are from one day to the next.

Jordan
And it can be very, it can be overwhelming. And you’re just playing catch up, right? You’re being more reactive. And now this is a way for you to be feel like you’re more proactive, like everything’s managed, so then we can focus on some of the bigger things.

Rosanna
But in order for Monday nights to happen, right, I don’t want to be doing laundry from seven to 10 o’clock on Monday nights. So, right, like the value is that I want to spend more time with you. And we’ve committed to a certain time on Monday night. So let me make sure that I’m orienting my day and my schedule to make room for that. And so it’s being smarter with some of those trivial things, and smarter with my work schedule and my work calendar and what I have to accomplish in order to fit that in. And so if those things aren’t streamlined, we can’t do those things. One of the ways we use scheduling as a tool is I mean, we have shared Google calendars, where we share like work things and commitments and where we need to be so that no one scheduled something when someone else has it, we try and work around those. But we have a good old fashioned paper calendar, it’s on a cork board, it’s up there. And what’s great is anybody at any time in our family can like take a look and see like what we have. And it’s teaching our kids to kind of look at the value of like scheduling, and prioritizing and knowing like what comes next. It shows them like what they can look forward to, because it’s already on there. If there was a question, yes, a calendar. You know, we’re leaving on a family road trip in a few days. And so we’ve got kids over there counting the days of how many days until we leave and how many days are gone and, you know, that teaches them something that you’re teaching them how to schedule something, how to use it, how to use a calendar as a tool, and that’s not something that everybody learns. So I think that’s important too.

Jordan
And I think that that’s a perk too, because we just to distinguish from the electronic calendar, like that’s easy. I could take out my phone and plug in any event, but that, to me feels like an extra step. And even though you know we can share a calendar and both contribute to that it, I almost feel like there’s so much that we want to like take that calendar and plus, you know, the kids practice calendar and and make it something physical. And I think that there’s, I don’t always say this with things but I think when it comes to like calendars and scheduling, there’s a perk to having it in a tangible form versus electronic form. At least for us, I mean, and maybe it, it may mean, everyone may not feel that way. But that’s one thing that’s definitely worked for us.

Rosanna
But one thing we use it for too is at the end of the year, so our calendar goes July to June. So it’s always like the kids school year. But what we love about it is we take it down at the end of the year. And now I can go back and flip back to every family fun friday last year. And the kids look at that too. Like we can go back and look at all of the milestones and things that we’ve put on there the things that we’ve scheduled and made time for, and it’s a good way to kind of reassess each year like Gosh, are we doing the things that we said we wanted to do? Are we making time for them and it’s, you know, a beautiful way to or maybe maybe not beautiful, but it’s a good way to then know where you’re headed next, year to year.

Jordan
Now, one thing that I think I briefly mentioned, but I didn’t want to gloss over was, you know, when I talked about like sitting down and figuring out, like, what are the values that I want to make, make sure that at some point, I think it’s good to do that independently, but at some point, it requires a conversation as well, because you might find that your spouse has written down some of the same things. And that opens up an opportunity to figure out where that space needs to be created. And you might find that just as maybe considering some different things that you wouldn’t have thought of for yourself or for them. And so it but it does require a conversation because when you are married and when, especially when you have children, like that does require teamwork. And so it’s not there’s nothing selfish that can take place in that. Because if you’re thinking about, here’s all of my values, now I’m going to spend my time, I think that puts an onus on the other person to you to carry whatever balance remains. And you, I don’t think it’s fair to just make that assumption, but you have to work together to figure out how you are going to facilitate them.

Rosanna
Well, and I think, and to your point, I agree with your point, but you said like, you can’t be selfish, and, you know, want to do all of these things, and your partner be selfish, like, you can be selfish, but you have to communicate and agree that like, Yes, I am going to do this at this time. And have approved selfishness. Because you should be able to have time to yourself to develop yourself to grow as should I. And so hopefully, you’re in the type of relationship where when you communicate that need to your partner, and say, okay, like that’s gonna, in order for you to do this, I’m going to have to like take a step back. And I’m going to have to allow you to do that. And so as long as there’s like that commit commitment of I will allow you to do this and I will support you as long as you know, there’s a trade off. So you can be selfish but agreed upon.

Jordan
Totally agreed. All right. So our last tip is to think in years and not in days. And what we mean by this is that, like, it’s it’s certainly good to think in days. But there’s a broader scope to our lives and not every day can have everything in it. So we want to kind of like what Rosanna was saying, like be able to have a little bit of a broader perspective and broader context for how we’re building values into what we’re doing.

Rosanna
Yeah, and I think the kids see that too, is like with those Family Fun Fridays, like we don’t get those from September through May. We don’t get those because we have to work –

Jordan
We still do fun things from time to time, we’re committed to it over the summer.

Rosanna
It’s something that they can look forward to, and I know you hate the phrase of “seasons”. But you know, within each season there, there are ways to build in traditions and values and consistency, without, you know, having each of those look exactly the same. And so I think that that’s important. And I think it also has to do with like long term goals, whether it’s independent goals that we both have goals we have as a couple or as a family, you know, whether it’s saving towards something as a family, like, you know, even things like that, where, you know, we’re looking at dollar spent daily and how we can, you know, reallocate that to something bigger later on. So you can use the days to put towards a bigger goal, but you know, you have to have not just a tunnel vision for your life and family.

Jordan
Yeah. So one of the things Rosanna and I are curious about are what are the things that you schedule? What are the values that you’re working towards, and how do you facilitate that in a way that works and we’d love for you to reach out and to respond and you can view this podcast on YouTube. If you haven’t subscribed yet, please click that subscribe button and leave us a five-star rating and wherever you listen to podcasts. Please visit our website at therelentlesspursuitpodcast.com. There, you can contact us directly or leave a comment where we have our show notes for today’s show.

Rosanna
Thanks for joining us today. And remember, don’t just schedule the things, schedule the things that matter.

Jordan
Thanks for listening. Bye bye.