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Shared Lifestyle/Household Duties with Steve Lackey

obstacle Number six. This is near and dear to my heart simply because it was a major obstacle in our relationship, and I actually I'm going to in just a couple minutes. Bring out my husband, Steve Lackey, to talk about this. But the idea of shared lifestyle, our household duties Does it surprise you that this is a major reason why couples relationships can deteriorate? It doesn't surprise you guys. It surprised me. I thought I was kind of the only one that was dealing with it until I started talking with other people about it. And they're like, Oh, yeah, actually, this is a big thing with us. If you're somebody who feels the pinch of this in your relationship, you understand why it's so significant. If you're running a household and a shared lifestyle together, in many ways, you're running a business, whether it's a tiny flat in London or Downton Abbey, I mean, you're running this property. Downton Abbey. That's the whole job I used to run the household. They get it in virtually every ...

relationship. One partner is considered messier than the other, and it's not always in the same areas. In fact, according to authors Eric Abramson and David Freeman, who wrote A perfect mess about called a Perfect Mess. 80% of couples living together say differences over meth and disorganization organization caused major stress on their relationship 80%. So some of the shared lifestyle duties that you can consider is obviously keeping financial records, which is different than paying bills. Investing home maintenance, grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning the home, taking care of the yard. Carry the Children. Garment is already child goes schedule. This is even before he got to the pets, the constant daily George like dishes and laundry, etcetera. When you write it all down, it's just so much, and if you don't have a way to keep it in one place, it will overwhelm you. Um, the other problem with this it isn't necessary that all the things to Dio there's the big perception shifts on who's doing what. According to a full a poll on MSNBC, 74% of men said shores were absolutely shared. Where 50% of women said they were shared. 26% of men said one person did the housework, whereas 49% of women said the same The fact there is so much to do is one thing. The fact that each individual feels very differently about who's doing what win is quite another and quite the point. That's one of the great obstacles that you confined in relationships seem very sweet. Solutions that were about to step two. Step three together, Um, the spreadsheets I keep talking about. I'm in love with the spreadsheet. Steve's going to come out and talk about it. Um, I mentioned yesterday that when this became a major obstacle for us, when I felt there was a great disconnect in what was getting done outside of our major duties outside of the house, running our businesses, I felt like I put together spreadsheet and I presented to him, and I said, See, that's the wrong way to do that That's the absolutely wrong way to do this. I, of course, went into all that with my perspective. Only when we sat down and really shared it and were able to reach a point where we could really discuss it, it was quite a different thing. So you know you want to stop. Start with talking about how you see these things stepping through the activities, determining timelines, scheduling a review. After you've been in this new space for a while, we'll talk about all of that. But the one thing I want to say before introduced Steve is it's simply not just about the work. It's about things like lack of support for each other, lack of appreciation for each other, um, lack of support physically in terms of you to help me out. I can't do all this and lack of emotional support. I don't expect you toe have to do all this, and then if you are doing a lot at least see it, at least notice it. At least appreciate it. Don't expect to be taken for granted. One of the major complaints that one partner may have with another is, Why is it that I'm asking you for help here? I shouldn't ask you for help, as if this is all me, and this is not based on the assumption that both people work outside of the home. This is if you work in the home or if you don't, you still have to be able to both take accountability for everything that needs to get done. it's that big of a deal on. And some of the studies rank this obstacle as the number two reasons couples have arguments. The number two reason a couple have arguments. It's always money exact. But right there. So without further ado, I want to welcome to present the spreadsheet. That's Fred. She, you know, she even has a little bit of a best Reggie. Mr. Steve Lackey. Sit down. There is nothing sexy. Wait a minute. Might get to come on and talk about dark energy. All right, Stephen, thank you for joining us. So you had a chance to tune in to a lot of this? Yeah. This is actually missed this morning. My part. I wanted to watch, but it was because we have three kids here here. Supposed to watch that stuff? Yeah. Thank you for going away. So what I'm gonna do is if you want to talk a little bit about the shared lifestyle life, life worksheet, I think you call it the shared Life works If you want to talk a little bit about this, um e I took Steve built the slides, so these air sea slides for his presentation. I probably and making it seem like That's cute, isn't it? Is cute. Yeah. So for this work shoot. Um and I love that you put the little tag lied. Infuse your relationship with clarity. I didn't even look at these. I slam the men. Gotta go. Um, OK, Do you want to take over from here? Yeah. Do you mind? Uh, I will operate as you and it is that I mean, joking aside, it is a spreadsheet, but really, you know, the point of it is that that Temer just spoke on most of it, but the clarity is really what you're looking for. Your not It's not really a Okay, this is my job. It's more a matter of understanding. I had no idea that you thought that was your job, because I'm doing it. Or I had no idea that you thought that was important. I'll start doing it, or however you want to phrase it. So really, this is about establishing clarity in the relationship. And I also would say that if you you know, if you don't have the other elements that time has been talking about for last two days, you know, around communication and listening and understanding each other. And this is gonna be really hard thing to do with your partner because we did it tomorrow. Joked about how we went through. But we didn't have those skills back then with each other. We were, you know, too quick to be defensive and or offense and point people. Yeah, that's offensive. But but yes, So we didn't have those skills built well. And now, you know, after years of our own development, you know, we're able to have these conversations we just did. A couple nights ago, we went through, We finished it. And we clearly don't agree on all these items, but part of it. But that's the whole point. Well, you know. So what are our options? We can sit here and disagree or say, Well, then let's start doing the way you think it's being done, and then we can just start going from there, and then that's great. And then you had a couple weeks you might get to say, See, I told you, You know what you do with a smile and you make sure you're given a right, So do you wanna touch a little bit on because I think there might be some people watching this. It says Okay, this whole thing's about who does it is you know a little bit about why it's a bigger issue and not, and not only that, but, uh, it's not just about who does. Addition is also not just about relationships in the house. I mean, this whole course. I think you could draw analogy of very clear metaphors to business relationships and not just business partners. It could be within your business. I mean, I have We have 10 people that work in my company, and, you know, if we bring in a new employees, then it really is. You have seven other parents, perhaps, that they had to talk about how to bring that person into the company and how to manage them, and how to how to make sure that they feel comfortable in development. I mean, there's Fortune five Fortune 500 companies. We both worked at Accenture for years, and you know they have, you know, severe amounts of their focus is how to manage bringing people into the organization and and making sure that they're satisfied and happy as they go through it. You know, when you're a small company, you're one or two people or you're eight or 10. People probably don't have that in place. And I know I know we don't and so we sort of, you know, manage it as we go. But a spreadsheet like this, I think, does give a lot of clarity to people and help them sort of set expectations properly and, more importantly, see where expectations are not communicated. And what would you say? Some of the feelings that you would say you experience when we were having issue we honestly do not have. This is an issue anymore. It's completely eradicated in terms of a major obstacle. Certainly, like we said the other day, we were kind of going through it. We said, Well, let's let's make this very authentic. Let's go through one more time for ourselves And we had a couple. They're finally like two things. They were like, Well, really, Yeah, I don't you can see but on the spreadsheet So So it's just agnostic. But, you know, partner one that would be me, probably, and partner to be her. But you know, it's 47 53 at the moment. There's percentages here. You know, when you when you put all the times in and those are fun to look at and certainly you know, at some point you do pay attention. But I went through and guessed at what we would have been like 2007 or and, you know, it wasn't like, severely dramatic. And the percentage like it might have been 40 60 or something like 80 20. But but the hours with the amount of hours that that meant that was like 10 more hours a week that, you know, that that's actually a lot of one person doing something the other person not only doesn't do not think about like, you know, that is a gift of saying, Let me give you 10 hours this week, Yeah, I mean, I take 10 hours any week, and I could do a lot with that s Oh, so it's just I think that the percentages is fun to look at, but really, it's a matter of what is really mean at the end of the day or under the week. And it's not just the moments of doing the tasks, but It's just knowing that you have to get that off your plate. And if it's whether it's paying the bills or cleaning the kitchen or whatever it is, even if nothing changes and now you share with me what you what you feel is waiting on you. And I know that you're gonna feel more connected to me because I understand you, yes, and I think that lack of understanding or feel lack of feeling understood is the biggest problem that you have with these kinds of things. It's not about the dish or the honor. Sometimes it is. I mean, if you leave, if you don't do anything and you know you sit back and let your spouse to do everything but But I think that this is this is great, like you know, So who wrote this is, I don't know, but he's really smart. But the point of it is really to establish a framework provided framer to establish, discuss and confirm the effort required to manage a shared life. And I think that that is definitely where where the point of the spreadsheet sort of lives. It's not correcting somebody. It's not really about that. No even then, that's the first way we went about it. Well, that it's hard, you know, if you feel like you're doing a lot of ready. Yeah, So when your plan but spreadsheet and on this I'm gonna be able to pull this up in a second. But on this, it really is a very comprehensive Steve built a spreadsheet that but everything you probably have to do, you have the ability to fill in blanks and add things that maybe you uniquely do. That most people do are certainly take things out. But you built it as a smart spreadsheet, which means that everything that gets plugged in has a resulting percentage of time that it effects across the board. And one of the things that I really like is that it's the preciseness of it. So if you are somebody, what I have found our dynamic was is that I pretty much was taking care. Not all everything, but certainly I felt like I was doing the bulk of everything in the house. If I wasn't doing it, I was certainly in charge of making sure it was getting done. So So I was doing kind of everything in the house and he was doing everything outside of the house. Eso And that kind of seems like that should fit until you start saying Okay. Recycling is once a week for 10 minutes. Dishes is three times a day, every day for a full week. It's not an equal share on day. That's part of what we're talking about. It's not necessary whether you're doing this with that. It's recognizing what the other person's doing, having appreciation and giving support on deceive what you said to me when we were going for us the other day. You said, I know how busy you are no much on your plate. You do too. But you want to be able to step forward and relieve some of that stress for me. And this is a really great tool and vice versa. Like if I can say OK, you know what I can I can pull the recycling bin out once a year. I could do it once a year. Yeah, probably. So maybe it and really, I think that this some things are more subtle. It's like, you know, I was just talking earlier about this, but baby sitters and if you have kids in any baby sitters. I didn't. I had no way of communicating with the baby sitter. I didn't have a phone number. Email? Nothing. Tamara, Why would I have that? Because guys don't care. That's OK. That is not Steve's. A cave man and a jerk. That is just that is it just didn't cross his mind that maybe he could do some of that task. It just it conditionally. One of the arguments he had before we had some clarity which this provided massive clarity. One of the things the arguments we had is he's like, What are you talking about? Do way more than my dad did. That was his yardstick. And he did. He definitely did. But we didn't have a relationship and a lifestyle that his parents or my parents had. It's a whole different world with a lot more responsibilities on, you know, to be fair, you didn't say What are you talking about? You like baby? What are you talking about? What you did, right? Exactly. That's exactly yeah s. So it was something that it's just an to be fair again. You have to pull up in the extraordinary myself aware and recognize it to you. To what? My, uh What my failure to communicate was that it never occurred to me to say, Wait a minute. You know, I just kind of assumed that I am in charge of household groceries. Kids, base hitters. You know what has to go in school making sure those school appointments are kept. I just assume that I'm woman Mom. I do that. I didn't rethink my role. I thought she really liked doing it, though. Is your favorite thing to do? Yes, you know, a job. I didn't think that much, but I did think that there's some things that you like. Grocery shopping. Right? So? So I know that Tamra, when she sends me because, you know, you'll say, I'm cooking this this fantastic, fantastic show cooking this fantastic meal and I need these five things. Great. Can you list? I'll go and I'll go. And then I'm like, Wow, there's a bloomin There's one. She didn't say which one to get. So you know, I'll call her and then you get one phone call when you at the grocery store. You call second a second time and I have talked to a lot of friends about this, and they all say the same thing. It's you basically just go do it and come back and we joke about why and everything. But, you know, I think sometimes, uh, we didn't even know. But we fall into a role that we kind of assumed goes this way, and then we figure Okay, I'm serving. You Let me make sure serve you completely and right. I don't even know exactly how you want to be served innocents, right? Okay. So the groceries, for example, Why that matters is what I want at a fundamental level. Then we have to know what you want. What I want is a fundamental level is I have this to do. I'm gonna give you this task. Just do it, come back and I want it done. That's how I see it. So when he calls from a grocery store by the third time in the third I'll to say I'm looking at two separate cans of data with this one says hello. Let me read it. Just that's how I feel because I want that test. By the way, Sir Brian apparently have the exact same dynamic. We were talking about this yesterday. It was like exactly, but okay, so from my perspective, if I weren't pulling back and looking at me, too, I just feel like that makes sense. I have a lot of my plate, actually do one thing. Why am I have to basically do it for you? Is that from an efficiency perspective? That's how I feel If I were to step up and be a lot more careful about how he feels and how he sees thinks. The truth is, if it came back with the blue box and I wanted the red box, I would be like, Do you not know what kind of king miles by? Why'd you get this box? The truth is, I would have been disappointed. He called me because he didn't want me to be disappointed. What he's doing is actually coming for a very thoughtful place. He has experience under his belt that tells him if he gets the wrong box, gets the look and then he's meant to felt feel like a child, right? I can put not on purpose, but it can make you feel like I'm up here at this level and you just don't know how to buy a box. And that's not true. It'll that And that's where a lot of boxes I started just by both and they don't tell and I sneak it in and then return it right. But one of the things I had to learn is how unconsciously absolutely, with zero intention, that could be emasculating, that could make someone feel like I can't do anything right with you and to me, my head's not there at all. And so I have to see that. And so what I have to dio is if I say please don't call me three times from a grocery store, just get it, come back when he gives me the wrong box. I have to say awesome, thank you and then away from north of the river. But that has to be the work I do on myself because it's the same thing with outsourcing. One of the things that we talked about with the spreadsheet is it doesn't mean you do all these things. If you have an example where cash we both hate to do this task. Neither one of us want to pick it up. We hate this task. Then we will choose to mutually outsource this task just so we can feel calmer in our lives and better in our lives. I've mentioned that we have. We've hire an external service to come in and clean our home, and and that those tasks that we don't want to do scrubbing grout off the shower. I would rather go out work to pay for that and spend my time working for the money and hand it to somebody else to do that. And since we both agree, we have clarity on that, neither one of us feel like there's anything wrong with that. One of the other things we discovered in the last couple years, as we could actually start outsourcing our Children would task to our Children, um, that we never even thought about like, Wow, they will actually grew up. Did you work around here? And so part of that is, if I want my nine year old to fold the towels, I can't get mad that he's rolling around on the floor in one for six minutes. First, that's that's part of me letting go. This desire for the outcome that I would have created, right? Yeah, and clearly I'll keep point putting through. But that clearly goes through to what? You know, your work relationships. If you're creative person, you have to have outsource something to somebody to design. You have to be ready to accept something that might not be exactly the way you do it. That's that's what I found. And it's a little pain. It saves me weeks of time to be Teoh be, you know, 80% of what I would do. And quite frankly, most people are better at it than I am. I'm doing a lot of other things, So being able to let go of that a little bit and be satisfied is a huge secret toe. Happiness, I think, answered, and you have at work. And you know what? We didn't give you any sort promo credit, Steve, you can find out more, receive that endurance mag dot com and sport often dot com because you're too, and then you run a number of events. But when he says at work, he's got a really complicated job and a significant platform of activities going on at really large levels. So races where There's 11,000 people showing up, and they've got to coordinate the police in Durham. Your race. What is the Durham race? The Bull City race? Fast. The Bull City Racing Rodeo. If you like to eat or run, come on. One of those things you could do in any order at that event that you have the most police that Durham's ever put an event ever. So it's a lot of so when he says he's learned, outsource and let it go, That wasn't easy for you, but it calmed your life considerably. It's the same thing with terrorist this morning in the North Carolina that I wasn't even at right, and I am outsourcing. But as far as the spreadsheet goes, and it's funny because I started writing these down and I realized that I was, I wasn't sure Bus describing the spreadsheet or relationship partner. But you know what it is, is it's It's the spreadsheets, really straightforward. It's, you know, very cleared. Understand? It's intelligent meaning it figures out to put in some some you know, a few variables in it automatically calculates, you know you're sharing your partner share and things like that It's flexible so you can add and change tasks, depending on how you run your life. It's revealing. It certainly shows who's doing what. And actually, I didn't know that took that many hours. That's grabbing laundry happens more than once a month. Yeah, exactly right. It's empowering because it gives you the opportunity to have, ah, platform for discussion on and then and I just had it super simple because I built it. So it's really easy to use. And when it's not, though, you know those are all great, you know, relationship characteristics, right? I mean, you want that and anybody you spent time with and what it's not, though it's not misleading. It doesn't. You know it is what it is. Shows you what what, you what you put in there. It's not concealing. Everything is available when you put it out there, and it forces both you and your partner, too, to look at every task and even the ones that they don't think that they need to look at. And it's not insulting, you know, it doesn't come out, and that's kind of you know it's not built to point fingers at anybody. Similarly, it's not judgmental. So you know you're not supposed to look at this and see Okay, I have a higher percentage. That means I'm doing more work, and it's also shouldn't be difficult to understand and probably most importantly, it's not final. So you you start there, you look at it and you can You can look at the street when you're done and say, OK, this is what we're doing. And then after a couple weeks or days that you have shared understanding, you could come back and say, You know what? I'd like toe it. Could you handle more of this task? And maybe I do this one because I just It just seems to flow better with me and you have an open conversation about absolutely, and the way to get started. When you have it, you download it in excel or numbers. You sit down with your partners, say, do this and you do this and you can even you know we did it where I took a first Suada and then shared it with Tamra and what I went through together, and that way it sometimes that's easier. And then she got to see how I thought, How is thinking about? And we change some things because she's like, Well, not really, but in both ways, there's things that he gave me credit for it. Honestly, you've been doing a lot of that lately. Let's suggest that so So when you see the spreadsheet basically and what Oscar determine a minute is go back to the screen that had the full picture. But you go ahead. It's really four steps. It's you select a period for each task, and it was something new. Every day, every week, every month you How long's it to enter the frequency for how much it takes per period? So if it's a daily task than how many times a day? If it's a weekly task coming times a week and then you enter the estimated amount of time for task in minutes, you know how how long does this take? And then on? Then you go to per partner and you just enter the percent of partner one because it will automatically calculate partners important. Now, just put in for partner one. Yeah, and then you're and then you're done, and then you look, then you look it. Then you look and see where we're lays, and you go through every line on them with your partner to figure out. Oh, I don't know your spending that much time on that are, or do we need to do that or should be outsourced that that's killing you? Why are you spending so much time on that? Do you like doing that? No. Let's do a different way. And so you know, I don't know if you can see to this, but these are basically the These are basically the tasks here. They're kind of categorize under cleaning, maintenance food, you know, clothing and it goes on and on it. It's well below this level. And then here's the periods you can see. You know, kitchen dishes are a daily occurrence. You're doing it three times a day, and it takes 10 minutes every time. And then you enter in your partner percentage partner 1% and then it will automatically calculate everything to the right often. And as you said, it goes on and on. It's paid is a few pages, but what you get in the download is not only the spreadsheet but also the simple directions that kind of tell you everything you need to know. It's such a cool tasks together. It sounds like, but it's awesome. Seriously, After I made it took us 10 minutes to go through it together. I mean, that was it. It just took a little while to put together the calculations in a way that might be useful. But there's, Ah numbers version in an Excel version, and both of them fine, Sandelin says. It was a regular here. I want to buy this course just for this very, very adding value, adding value literally. We have a spreadsheet every day. I You can probably make one for any kind of relationship wherever you share task you can make when you probably won with your kids to get his roommates. All right, thank you very much.