This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 at 11:24 pm and is filed under Family Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
You pick up a lot of buzzwords and jargon when you’ve trudged through Corporate America for as long as I have. Most of it makes my skin crawl, and I can never bring myself to say it. When someone tells me they’d like to “regroup on that and make sure we have our ducks in a row,” or that they’d like to make sure we “have all of our ‘i’s dotted and our ‘t’s crossed,” I actually throw up a little bit. I used to try to hold it in, but now I just yack all over the conference table, look up at the other meeting attendees embarrassedly and mutter “Don’t worry. We budgeted for that.” I can’t stand corporate jargon.
There is one catch phrase, however, that I have always liked and I believe its due to the fact that it can be applied to real life, family life, and that it actually means something.
“Do what’s in your twenty percent.”
The phrase, originally published by some financial guru who’s book I am supposed to have read but never will, is intended for companies who attempt to grow too quickly or spread themselves too broadly across to many areas with limited resources. According to the author, if companies take a look at 100% of their workload, isolate the 20% that is the most important and focus all resources on that, while forgetting all the rest, they will become successful. I have found the same to be true with myself and my relationship with my wife.
Sometimes, when I take a step back and look at everything that goes on in life on a daily basis, I have to chuckle at the absurdity of it all. Who in god’s name would be able to actually do everything we expect ourselves to do with any success at all? In this day and age, with family businesses, two working parents, day care, soccer, babysitters, piano lessons, doctors appointments, Dora…what am I forgetting…oh yeah, meals, there is simply not enough resource to get everything done. We set ourselves up to fail every single day. I am sure that many reading this will feel the exact same way.
The detriment of this situation is that we end up doing a whole bunch of things poorly rather than a few things perfectly, and this affects my relationship with my wife.
Recently, things between Aline and I have been going really well. We all have our ups and downs, but with she and I the ups are way the hell up there and the downs are really really down there. For quite a while now, there just haven’t been any downs, and that’s because we are focusing on our 20 percent. We have both discussed what is truly important to us and essentially arrived at the same conclusion: we need to be in love with each other and we need to have fun with one another, whatever the cost.
For me, that means communicating. It means concentrating on not keeping secrets or not telling Aline something just because I think it will piss her off. It means being open and forthcoming with her and giving her the benefit of the doubt. Letting her react to what I have to tell her instead of assuming she won’t be able to handle it or keeping it secret to avoid blowups. This may sound like an easy thing for me, but it doesn’t come naturally. I have to work at it. But guess what? It totally works. She hardly ever gets upset with me for anything I tell her after all. As it turns out, she’s actually a pretty cool chick and gives me a lot more freedom when I’m being honest with her than she would if she felt I was hiding things. The result is that I am completely open with her and our relationship is stronger for it.
For her, it means controlling her temper when we do have an argument. She has a tendency to fly off the handle and say and do things that are excessively vengeful. As a person who has always felt that an argument is simply a tool in order to arrive at a positive compromise, I am not ok with saying and doing things to intentionally hurt someone. Especially someone you have two children with who you share every single day of your life with. This may sound like an easy thing for her, but it doesn’t come naturally. She has to work at it, and it totally works too. I have felt much closer to her and more willing to engage her in discussions or disagreements in a healthy manner knowing that she won’t pop at any minute. Again, our relationship is much healthier for it, and I feel much closer to her when I feel that she respects me.
This is our 20%. For us, working on those issues, concentrating all of our energy on the most important 20% of what we have to do in this entire ball of chaos called life has made a mountain of difference. Instead of lingering at the office for a few extra minutes as I might have done a few years ago when she and I were in not quite as great a place, I rush right home to see her and my kids, because a smile on her face puts a smile on mine instantly. Likewise, if I have to run an errand late in the evening, she doesn’t have to deal with the insecurity of wondering if I might actually be out sneaking a cigarette or having a beer somewhere in secret because she knows I would tell her if I felt the need to do that.
So maybe it does still annoy me when takes the hand towel out of the kitchen and walks around with it, just as it annoys her when she has to ask me to clean the damn fish tank for the 45th time, but you know what? Wet hands, a dead fish and two people madly in love with each other after 12 years together is about as close to perfect as it gets.
-Matt
July 2nd, 2009 at 12:52 am
: ) Nuff said.
Kori´s last blog ..The Fireworks Recap
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July 2nd, 2009 at 2:44 am
THIS is an awesome post. I hadn’t heard that expression before, and I thought I’d heard them all. Congrats to you both on your hard work.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 3:44 pm
WOW! This came at the perfect time and summarizes my husband’s and my relationship to a “t”. Communication seems like the easiest thing in the world to do, but it is one of the hardest. Thank you for the way you stated it…I’ve just printed a copy for my husband to read!
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July 2nd, 2009 at 4:42 pm
Well said, Matt. You do better to apply corporate psychology to adult relationships than child development. Ahem.
Still. I’m thankful for not having to climb a mountain to find your sage words.
Barbara´s last blog ..S-t-r-e-t-c-h!
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July 3rd, 2009 at 6:41 am
You know how you’re always, “Mr Lady helps me so much with my kid!”? Well, brother, you taught ME something today. 20%. I can do that, no prob.
Mr Lady´s last blog ..Cold Day In July
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July 9th, 2009 at 9:48 pm
Wow- excellent, excellent post. And so very true. My husband and my lives have been so crazy lately with an unexpected lay-off, birth of a third child, and moving cross-country that I think we have been kind of forced to narrow our focus. And you’re right– at the end of the day, we’re better off for it.
LOVED reading this- thanks!
(And, btw, your son is absolutely precious! He’ll be the perfect age for my new little girl to date down the road…
)
JessieLeigh´s last blog ..Peace and Craziness…
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