The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 409 - Unpacking

Transcript:

Jen: Hello, Pete.

Pete: Hey, Jen.

Jen: Remember a couple of weeks ago, we did an episode called Packing?

Pete: Oh, yes.

Jen: And in that episode, we talked about my difficulty in packing for an upcoming trip.

Pete: That's right. And we were saying, "Why is it so much easier to pack when you're getting on an airplane, versus when you're getting in a car and you just throw everything in?"

Jen: Yeah. Well, um, strike that. Reverse it. Today, we're going to talk about unpacking.

Pete: What do you mean? This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: As in, wait, strike it because...did you end up cancelling your flight?

Jen: I did.

Pete: Oh my god.

Jen: Oh my god, I'm so called out. Okay. So part of me was like, "Okay, we have to scrap the packing episode." And then, I was like, "Wait, wait, wait. Maybe this is a good follow up." So what happened, Pete, is that my daughter and I started putting everything in the suitcase. And then, we took a good look at all of the musical equipment that needed to go with us. Guitars, amps, mic stands, etc.

Pete: Oh my god. Yeah.

Jen: And my daughter was like, "Mom, I think you need to get real. This is not going on a plane." And I was like, "You know what, Cate? I think you're right." I cancelled our flights. I rented a car. I put everything in the car. And we drove up to Massachusetts. And Pete, I think I might have learned some lessons that are worth sharing.

Pete: Oh, okay. Maybe there's even a, like, permission to change your mind lesson here. Jen, the flip-flop. I love that we recorded an episode where we were...I feel like we were so determined to get you on that plane with a Kindle, with all sorts of like ideas we came up with. "So...I jumped in the car." Did you pack a hundred books too?

Jen: No, no. I packed a reasonable number of books. Because now that I was going to have a car, I could bring some extra books.

Pete: Right. But the thing about this (that the listeners didn't see) is when I ask you that question, you looked up towards the roof. So, in my head...

Jen: Oh, I'm looking at the top of my bookshelf.

Pete: I'm like, "There's a pile that goes to the roof." And you're like, "There's not that many. It's just a whole room's worth."

Jen: That's so funny.

Pete: Anyway, what did you learn?

Jen: So, permission to change your mind. 100%. Pete, this is not like I was flying to Australia.

Pete: Right.

Jen: Okay?

Pete: Which would be hard to drive.

Jen: I was taking a flight that, from wheels up to wheels down, is less than thirty minutes. So, the drive is not that long. It was not that big a deal to rent the car. But I became so fixed and rigid, even knowing that the plans are changeable. I was like, "No, we are making this work." And then, my daughter's like, "But why?"

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: "In this case, we don't have to. We're making our lives harder. We can make our lives easier. Why wouldn't we just make our lives easier?" And so, I've got to give props to Cate for reality checking me. And then, we had a lovely drive. It was easy. It was not stressful.

Pete: So, why do you think it felt so hard to change your mind initially? What was it that made it feel like, "No, we're going to make this work?"

Jen: Well, there are a couple of things. One, I paid for the flights already.

Pete: Right. So, the sunk cost.

Jen: Now, because of my status with this particular airline, they're going to refund me. So, it was never actually sunk cost. But there is something about the feeling of making the transaction that feels final.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: So, that was part of it. So, it was...when they say sunk cost fallacy, in this case, it was actually a fallacy because I didn't sink the cost. I got all the money back.

Pete: Right. Right. Right. Yeah. That's so interesting. But it felt like initially you weren't going to or we forgot that we were going to.

Jen: So, I think that's part of it. The other part is pride. I had decided I could make this work. And I'll be damned if you're going to prove me wrong.

Pete: And I recorded a podcast about it. So, you better be damned. I'm going to get this right.

Jen: Right. And I'm someone who likes a plan. It really does ruffle my feathers when I have a plan about something that's not that big a deal and it doesn't go to plan. What is interesting, perhaps, Pete, is that when I have a plan about a bigger thing that doesn't go to plan, I'm much more flexible than I am with something so silly as, "How am I getting from here to there?"

Pete: Well, that's curious. I mean, there's so much to relate to here, especially what you just said, when your plan doesn't go to plan and how that creates anxiety and annoyance in ourselves. I feel like this...I feel like you just described my life with a toddler, when your plan doesn't go to plan.

Jen: Right.

Pete: And so, on a Monday, I have a day set aside to spend with Ollie. And I'll be like, "Oh, we're going to have the best day. We're going to pack a bag and walk the few hundred meters to the local park, and we'll hop on the playground and play there for a bit. Then, I'll get a coffee." And I've got this grand vision of what's going to happen. This happens every Monday. I'm like, "I've come up with some plan." And of course, the toddler doesn't want to leave the house at the same time that you want to leave or they leave the house and they want to turn left instead, and it's like, "Yeah, but the park's actually the other direction. So, why are we going? This feels dumb to go this way, Ollie. We should go the other way." And I feel like the constant challenge of having to let go of my micro plans, as a parent, is a close and relevant cousin to what you're describing, which is the annoyance of when the thing that you decided you would do doesn't quite go the way you thought it would go. And our ability to adapt to that, to accept that, to get comfortable with that, I think is a skill, an adaptable skill that we could benefit from being better at. I say "we", I mean me.

Jen: Well, you know, the thing that I'm really hoping I'm going to take from this experience (well, one of the many things) is that sometimes when things don't go to plan, the thing you get instead is so much better than the original thing you thought you wanted.

Pete: Oh my god, so true.

Jen: So like, the reason we were going to fly is because we were going to get where we were going faster. Right? So, you know, thirty minutes from airport to airport and we could get to our destination. But for any listeners out there who have ever wanted to bond with a teenager, having five hours in a car with a teenager is a great thing.

Pete: That's a gift.

Jen: They're much more likely to talk to you when they don't have to look at you. They're looking out the window. You're singing along to songs together. You're having deep conversations. Like, it really was a great time with my child. So, I got something I didn't know that I wanted because the thing that I was looking for originally was convenience.

Pete: Oh, that's so good. The reminder that there are other possibilities that might unfold if we do something differently than we thought we would do them.

Jen: Yeah. And what's interesting about that is when...I like your term "micro planning". So when I'm macro planning, I think I'm pretty good at applying this idea that you make a plan and then you leave yourself open to the possibility that something better is going to present itself. And you'll follow that something better. But you can only work with what you know in the moment that you're making the plan.

Pete: Right.

Jen: It's interesting to me or maybe predictable that when it comes to the micro, it's harder for me to see that. I'm such a zoom out kind of person that when I zoom in, sometimes I forget that those grand principles also apply in the micro.

Pete: Yeah. I'm trying to like develop a framework in my head for how we're talking about this. Because I feel like what we're ultimately talking about is, how do we navigate change or how do we navigate obstacles? And there's many, many books and ideas written about this. You and I have talked about versions of this, in different ways. But right now, I'm thinking in the example that we're sharing. It's like step one, accept my given circumstances. So I look around at my reality and I go, "Hmm. The reality of all the things that we actually want to take, this is not superfluous stuff that we don't need. Cate wants her guitar, fair enough. Cate wants an amp, fair enough. Cate wants a mic, fair enough. So okay, my given circumstances right now, there's a lot of musical equipment that we need to get to where we're going." If I could accept that as my given circumstances, like, "So based on accepting this reality right now, what's the decision I need to make? What's the most logical decision, irrespective of what's been decided in the past?" This idea of the thing that was decided in the past was done based on the circumstances you had then or the idea of the circumstances you had then, because maybe you weren't looking at the amp or looking at the guitar. And so, it feels like the...my brain always likes to come up with a question or a framework, as we know. So I'm sort of like, in looking at change, can we go, A., "What are my given circumstances or what are my new circumstances? How do I accept those?" And then, B., "What's the decision that makes the most sense, based on those?"

Jen: Yeah. I really, really like that. For some reason, this line of thinking is leading me back to one-way doors and two-way doors. Sometimes, you make a decision and that decision takes you into a one-way door, meaning you can't reverse the decision. You now have to work with what you've decided on. The decision is the new circumstance. Right?

Pete: Right.

Jen: So in this particular case, I made a decision to go through a two-way door, a decision I could undecide. And sometimes, those doors look deceptively similar.

Pete: Yes. Yes, yes, yes. We very often assume or think we're walking through a one-way door, when the reality is most doors or decisions in our lives are probably two-way doors.

Jen: Mmm-hmm.

Pete: Yeah. I agree with that, totally. I've heard this talked about from an Amazon work culture perspective, where they basically say, "If it's a two-way door, make the decision rapidly, because you can reverse it. Whereas if it's a one way door, yeah, like have a sit down, get a meeting going, talk to the right people, be really intentional about the decision that you're making, because it's a one-way door." But I think the provocative idea of that framework is you're probably dealing with a two-way door, you're just telling yourself a story that it's a one-way door.

Jen: Yeah. And one other element of this, that I'm recognizing right now, is that I had made some assumptions about what was important to the other person in my party. So, I had assumed that Cate was going to want to get where we were going as quickly as she could. But what was actually important to her was that she was able to bring all of her equipment.

Pete: Oh, that's good.

Jen: So, I miscalculated.

Pete: Yeah. But this is like such a common miscalculation. I mean, I see this with leaders I work with all the time, where they are working on a project or striving to get something done by a deadline because they've assumed that that's what the person leading the project or the person that's responsible for the delivery, that's what they want. And if they stop and ask the question of the actual person, like, "Hey, what does success look like for you?" The person might say, "Oh, the timeline super flexible. I just want to make sure it's hits this certain bar of what we need it to be able to do, in certain metric." It's like, "Oh, so you don't need it done by tomorrow? Okay. Now, I can take a deep breath and do this properly." And this idea, like just the assumption of what the other person wants is such a common trope, I see.

Jen: Yeah. So I guess another question to ask one's self is, "Have I considered what might be most important to the other person? Or have I asked what is important to the other person?" Because if I had originally gone to her and said, "We can take a plane or we can take a car. If we take the plane, it's going to mean we have to really consider our packing, and what we can and can't take. If we take the car, we can take anything we want."

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: We might have been able to avoid this whole shenanigan.

Pete: Oh my god. This is such...I feel like we just turned this into a metaphor for leadership. I feel like, you know, a leader casts a vision and then creates the conditions for their people to get there. Right? For us to get there. And so, it's almost like, if you had said to Cate, "We need to get to Nantucket. That's the vision. We are in Nantucket. How might we do that, based on your circumstances, my circumstances, all of it? Like, let's figure out the best way for us to do that. And then, execute on that." Versus you going, "I've decided that we're getting a plane to execute that vision."

Jen: Right.

Pete: So now, you (the person that I'm leading) are forced to fit within that constraint. And they're like, "This doesn't work for me, actually."

Jen: Right. I mean, she was very jovial about the whole thing. But like, the underlying conversation was like, "Mom, you know the whole point is I spend the summer doing music, right?"

Pete: Yeah. Again, this idea that you've got a relationship where someone can call you out on that decision is not true of a lot of leaders. And so, people end up in these situations where they're Cate, in this example, but they don't feel like they can speak up. And so, they're like, "Okay, leader, I'll just pretend like this is going to work out, and it's not going to."

Jen: "I guess I'll play in my band without my guitar."

Pete: "Or I'll wait until the morning where we're going to the airport, and I'll wait for you to realize the thing that's obvious to me right now, which is this is not going to work. And you're going to figure it out eventually, but I'm going to...". You know? That's an unproductive approach. But I see it a lot, people who don't feel like they can speak up and challenge that.

Jen: Yeah. Wow. You know, I questioned whether or not this was going to be an episode, but I think it is. Because there are some actual significant learnings moving forward, that might help me to avoid making decisions in this way in the future.

Pete: I like that you eventually got to a place where you held the decision lightly. I think that's really important. That we make decisions, we are assertive about those decisions, but we also hold them lightly enough to go, "Hmm, maybe there's a better decision or maybe my circumstances have changed or I'm open enough to feedback where I'm willing to change my mind or decision and do something different." And, yeah, I mean, who would have thought that you packing for your summer has turned into not one, but two episodes of our podcast?

Jen: Well, thank you for unpacking that for us, Pete.

Pete: Ah, there it is. That's really well done.

Jen: And that is The Long and The Short Of It.