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00:01:34.600 | Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hats, a show about upgrading

00:01:44.440 | your life, money, and travel.

00:01:45.960 | I'm Amy Fox, and I'm excited you're here today.

00:01:48.800 | If you're confused and thinking I might've hired a professional voice actor

00:01:52.640 | to spice up this intro, you're wrong.

00:01:55.320 | Amy's actually my wife, and she's joining me to help co-host this episode.

00:01:58.960 | Why?

00:01:59.680 | When I saw that our guests today were another married couple that liked doing

00:02:03.600 | their interviews together, I thought it would be so much more fun with all four

00:02:07.200 | of us.

00:02:07.600 | So who's this married couple?

00:02:09.800 | Amy?

00:02:10.400 | Today, we're joined by Nate and Kaylee Klempp, co-authors of a fantastic book

00:02:15.400 | called The 80/80 Marriage, A New Model for a Happier, Stronger Relationship.

00:02:19.600 | When Chris first brought it home, it made me think he was trying to tell me things

00:02:23.280 | were not going well.

00:02:24.840 | But it ended up adding so much value to our lives.

00:02:27.400 | It must've added a lot to other people's lives too, because it was recently named

00:02:31.440 | as Editor's Choice Pick by The New York Times.

00:02:34.200 | Now, who are Nate and Kaylee?

00:02:36.720 | Nate is an entrepreneur, a philosopher, a best-selling author, and mindfulness

00:02:41.800 | junkie.

00:02:42.240 | And Kaylee is a group facilitator, executive coach, and an expert in small

00:02:47.360 | group dynamics and leadership development.

00:02:49.240 | In our conversation, we'll explore the history that's led couples from

00:02:54.000 | imbalance to too much fairness to what they call radical generosity.

00:02:58.560 | We'll also get into the tools and tactics that make it easy to implement these

00:03:02.840 | changes in our own lives, so we can stop keeping score and have a lot more fun

00:03:07.520 | together.

00:03:07.960 | I am excited for this conversation, and frankly, just as excited that I get to do

00:03:12.440 | it with Amy as my co-host.

00:03:14.440 | So let's jump in.

00:03:15.840 | Nate, Kaylee, Amy, thank you so much for being here.

00:03:21.120 | Great to be here.

00:03:22.200 | So excited to be with you.

00:03:23.840 | I love the way you approached the book at the beginning about the evolution from

00:03:28.480 | 80/20 to 80/80 and the stops in between.

00:03:31.720 | For anyone who hasn't read that, can you walk through that evolution for

00:03:36.120 | everyone?

00:03:36.520 | One of the things that inspired us to write this book is we felt like we were

00:03:42.280 | part of this generational shift that's happening in marriage.

00:03:45.520 | If you look at your grandparents' marriage or maybe even your parents'

00:03:48.640 | marriage, it's likely that there's a very different structure and a very

00:03:52.520 | different mindset.

00:03:53.640 | In the book, we call that 80/20.

00:03:55.720 | It's the idea of one partner, generally the woman, doing about 80%, another

00:04:00.440 | partner, generally the man, doing something more like 20%.

00:04:03.480 | And so we're a part of this new generation, sort of Gen X, millennial,

00:04:09.760 | we're the ones getting married now, having kids, where all of a sudden the

00:04:13.360 | norm is egalitarian marriage.

00:04:15.880 | There was just a recent Pew poll that was conducted that found 97% of Americans

00:04:21.440 | agree with the idea of equality in marriage.

00:04:23.680 | So we are entering marriage with this idea that we want to be equals and in

00:04:29.600 | love, and that turns out to be a very difficult task because we have this kind

00:04:35.320 | of default mindset that we talk a lot about in the book, where we try to

00:04:40.360 | achieve equality.

00:04:41.640 | We certainly did this for about a decade in our marriage, and we interviewed

00:04:44.840 | about 100 couples, found this very common.

00:04:46.840 | We try to achieve equality by making everything perfectly 50/50 fair, keeping

00:04:52.840 | score, and that's a recipe for all sorts of resentment and conflict.

00:04:56.560 | And what goes into these percents?

00:04:59.040 | Is it 80/20 of the household chores, 80/20, like just so everyone has some

00:05:04.080 | context, what goes into those?

00:05:06.000 | So if you start with 50/50, trying to be perfectly equally fair, going back to

00:05:12.600 | 80/20, we're looking at how are you contributing to the relationship?

00:05:17.200 | And so that's where, historically, the woman was 80% responsible for the

00:05:22.200 | well-being of the relationship, and the man was less so.

00:05:26.160 | As we go forward, then we look at 80/80, which we recognize the math doesn't

00:05:32.080 | actually work, but the whole idea is when we stop scorekeeping with 50/50, if

00:05:37.560 | that's our foil, and strive to contribute to the relationship at 80%, it's much

00:05:43.480 | more likely that where we land is going to be radically generous and feel like

00:05:47.520 | we're winning together.

00:05:48.440 | So I'm very curious, why is it so challenging to achieve a balanced

00:05:55.040 | relationship?

00:05:55.800 | This was one of the key insights that led us to want to write this book.

00:06:00.360 | We experienced in our own life that it was failing, but we couldn't really

00:06:05.720 | figure out why.

00:06:06.600 | So then we started looking at the research in psychology, and we found out

00:06:10.960 | that there's a way in which our assessments of what is or isn't fair in

00:06:15.760 | relationship are clouded by all sorts of cognitive biases.

00:06:19.840 | And there are two that really stand out.

00:06:21.720 | One is what psychologists call availability bias, which is just a fancy

00:06:25.880 | way of saying that all of my wonderful contributions to our life together, my

00:06:30.720 | drop-offs at school and taking out the trash, all of that information is

00:06:34.960 | available to me.

00:06:36.760 | But when it comes to what Kaylee does, it's a little fuzzy.

00:06:40.320 | And so I have this tendency to systematically underestimate everything

00:06:45.080 | that Kaylee does.

00:06:45.880 | And then in addition to that, there's this other cognitive bias, we call it

00:06:50.200 | the overestimation bias, where we have this tendency to overestimate the amount

00:06:55.360 | of time spent on things like childcare and housework.

00:06:59.840 | So in other words, if I say it took me like 90 minutes to clean up the house, it

00:07:04.480 | was probably more like 45.

00:07:06.480 | Both men and women do this.

00:07:07.760 | The research finds that men do it more.

00:07:09.720 | But I think that's really important because what that means is that when we

00:07:13.960 | are arguing about fairness, we are essentially having an argument from total

00:07:19.480 | delusion based on really bad data.

00:07:22.080 | And that's why we keep arguing about it.

00:07:24.920 | And there's no way out of that cycle of this sort of 50/50 downward spiral into

00:07:30.360 | fairness.

00:07:30.880 | I think it's interesting that when we were interviewing couples, if we asked

00:07:35.960 | them directly, "Hey, do you guys ever fight about fairness?"

00:07:39.840 | They'd be like, "No, we never fight about that."

00:07:42.600 | But then as they would tell us stories, we started to recognize that fairness was

00:07:47.520 | underneath a lot of the different things that they were actually fighting about.

00:07:52.160 | So as a, for instance, there's the very typical housework argument.

00:07:57.240 | "Hey, how many loads of laundry do you need to do to make it fair for the time

00:08:01.800 | that I got up in the middle of the night because the kid threw up?"

00:08:05.400 | But then there was also fairness around things like, "So we just did Father's

00:08:11.520 | Day for an entire weekend with your parents.

00:08:14.800 | Now we're going to go see my parents.

00:08:16.960 | You want to leave on Saturday instead of on Friday?

00:08:20.720 | That's not fair.

00:08:21.920 | We need to spend equal amounts of time with each of our families."

00:08:25.840 | Or the version of, "We've been out with your friends for three weeks in a row.

00:08:31.760 | That's not fair.

00:08:32.600 | What about, what about my friends?"

00:08:34.560 | And all of a sudden you could start to see these through lines where fairness

00:08:38.520 | was in some ways invisible and therefore insidious and polluting things.

00:08:43.560 | It's so interesting you say this.

00:08:45.880 | I think before we were chatting and before I read the book, in my mind, I thought

00:08:50.840 | Chris and I were actually very balanced.

00:08:53.280 | I was like, "We've got this."

00:08:55.080 | And as I'm hearing about these things like the availability bias, for example, I

00:09:01.160 | realized that I many times will be the person on a more regular basis that says,

00:09:07.440 | "Hey, Chris, I've woken up.

00:09:09.880 | I've made our daughter's breakfast.

00:09:11.680 | I've walked the dog.

00:09:12.640 | I've unloaded the dishwasher.

00:09:13.840 | I got her out of the crib."

00:09:14.920 | And meanwhile, what I don't know is he's actually going through and pulling

00:09:19.320 | together all of our finances.

00:09:20.720 | These things happen behind the scenes.

00:09:22.200 | I actually hate doing them and I have a deep appreciation for it, but because I

00:09:26.800 | don't really know what goes into it and I don't see it happening, I'm like, "Well,

00:09:32.440 | I'm Superwoman here.

00:09:33.640 | What are you doing?"

00:09:34.640 | I think it's really important to see that and to also just be gentle with

00:09:40.760 | ourselves that we fall into this mindset.

00:09:43.440 | We wrote this book, we've been talking about it for the last year, and yet we

00:09:48.800 | fall into this mindset all the time.

00:09:50.440 | Yesterday, we had a snow day here in Colorado and our daughter couldn't go to

00:09:54.440 | school.

00:09:55.640 | I was the one who had the more open calendar, so I ended up managing all the

00:09:58.720 | logistics.

00:09:59.440 | And I found myself several times falling into that same mindset of, "This isn't

00:10:04.480 | fair.

00:10:05.080 | I'm the one who's doing everything.

00:10:06.920 | Kaylee's just sitting there at work.

00:10:08.880 | Why am I the one who has to do this?"

00:10:11.120 | And it's the mindfulness around seeing that, being gentle with yourself, and then

00:10:15.800 | shifting to where I ended up at the end of the day, which was, "Hey, we're trying

00:10:19.840 | to win together here.

00:10:21.160 | This is not a competition and we're definitely not trying to make everything

00:10:24.280 | fair."

00:10:25.360 | So it's like a default center of gravity, this idea of fairness that our mind is

00:10:31.680 | attracted to and falls into habitually.

00:10:34.240 | So I think you can be gentle with that and then just see it and shift.

00:10:38.480 | So I definitely want to go into the tactics that people can use to make these

00:10:42.480 | shifts.

00:10:42.840 | But before, I'm really curious, when you did the research, were there types of

00:10:47.040 | people, whether it's culture, ethnicity, personalities, where you saw that this

00:10:52.640 | was already happening or it was harder to do or kind of made it a different

00:10:56.600 | circumstance?

00:10:57.280 | In the interviews that we did, we interviewed as much diversity as we could

00:11:02.680 | find.

00:11:03.000 | So we found a couple that was living out of a van, traveling around the world,

00:11:07.040 | socioeconomic differences, cultural differences, race differences, LGBTQ+

00:11:11.560 | differences.

00:11:12.200 | And what we found was, one, as soon as you added kids to the mix, then fairness

00:11:20.760 | seemed a little bit more prevalent because time felt a little bit more

00:11:25.160 | scarce.

00:11:25.840 | The second thing that we noticed is that, interestingly, gay couples actually had a

00:11:31.640 | little bit of an advantage because they had less of a historical hangover around

00:11:37.760 | expectations for what each of them might do because of traditional gender roles.

00:11:43.240 | And so as they were defining, in some ways, anew, they got to create things in

00:11:48.680 | their relationship that felt to them like it helped them win together.

00:11:52.800 | And it wasn't that they never fell into fairness.

00:11:55.200 | That definitely happened.

00:11:56.480 | But they had fewer things that they were bringing forward from the past that

00:12:01.360 | informed the way that should look so they could design it more skillfully for

00:12:05.520 | themselves.

00:12:06.120 | Interesting.

00:12:07.080 | So I don't think either of those are things that people can just up and switch

00:12:10.360 | in their lives.

00:12:10.960 | No.

00:12:11.800 | If you have kids, you can't make those changes.

00:12:14.040 | So I think that's a great segue to what should people be doing?

00:12:18.320 | What kinds of tactics can they do to achieve this 80/80?

00:12:21.400 | And maybe you could talk a little bit first more about what it means to have an

00:12:24.560 | 80/80 marriage.

00:12:25.400 | Absolutely.

00:12:26.920 | We were actually just talking this morning, knowing that we're on all the

00:12:29.720 | hacks, about some of these shifts.

00:12:32.520 | And we made this distinction for the first time between what we think of as

00:12:36.720 | micro hacks and then meta hacks.

00:12:38.880 | And if you think about the 80/80 marriage, there's all sorts of micro hacks that

00:12:44.120 | we'll get into that are small routines and habits you can build into your day.

00:12:48.560 | But there are two big meta hacks that I think are really important for grounding

00:12:53.040 | this in everyday life.

00:12:54.640 | And the first is a meta hack that's all about mindset.

00:12:58.440 | And that is this whole idea of 80/80, or we call it radical generosity.

00:13:02.600 | So it's this idea of viewing your life together through this mindset of radical

00:13:09.160 | generosity instead of scorekeeping and fairness.

00:13:13.680 | And that macro level mindset has the ability to sort of put everything else in

00:13:19.880 | motion.

00:13:20.480 | So the second of these is what we call structure.

00:13:23.880 | So this is another big idea, which is about shifting from asking the question,

00:13:28.560 | what's best for me, to asking the question, what's best for us?

00:13:32.200 | We call it shared success, or you can think of it as winning together.

00:13:35.600 | And that's the orienting principle for how you build structures around finances

00:13:41.520 | and logistics and priorities and all those different things.

00:13:44.000 | So if we go to just the first of those, because that's, I think, where it all

00:13:47.960 | starts, that meta hack of radical generosity, there's a few key elements of

00:13:54.440 | that.

00:13:54.800 | One is contribution.

00:13:57.440 | If you think about the essence of generosity, it's often about contributing

00:14:01.640 | to your partner, which is something we do, but we often do it from a mindset of

00:14:06.920 | fairness, which makes those acts of contribution land in a different way.

00:14:11.520 | So one of these pieces is contribution.

00:14:13.720 | Another is appreciation, which is basically shifting the way in which we see

00:14:20.120 | our life together.

00:14:21.240 | As everybody probably knows, when you're in a relationship long enough, you start

00:14:26.440 | to revert to this default mindset.

00:14:28.360 | Neuroscientists call it the negativity bias, where you're essentially looking

00:14:32.640 | for everything your partner did wrong.

00:14:34.280 | You're looking for ways in which they fell short, and appreciation is about

00:14:38.040 | flipping those glasses so that you're actually looking for what they did right,

00:14:43.120 | and then appreciating them for that when that happens.

00:14:45.760 | And those two together are sort of where radical generosity starts.

00:14:49.320 | It's almost like a call and response in music.

00:14:52.000 | Contribution is the call, appreciation is the response.

00:14:55.680 | It's easy to say, "Oh, of course I should just not keep score, and I should just

00:15:00.880 | have this generosity, appreciation."

00:15:03.400 | But like, how do you actually do that?

00:15:05.200 | Because sometimes you're sitting there, like Amy mentioned, she's done 10 things

00:15:09.280 | in the morning, and to be generous, she says, and balancing our finances, I might

00:15:15.520 | just be like, sleeping in or taking a long shower.

00:15:18.960 | So...

00:15:19.400 | Playing Wordle in bed.

00:15:21.000 | So how do you actually make that happen?

00:15:23.400 | Like, how do you actually put those changes into place?

00:15:26.400 | Are there triggers or cues that you can apply to make it easier?

00:15:31.000 | Absolutely.

00:15:32.440 | The first around contribution, I think is to remember that we're playing the long

00:15:38.280 | game, that if I look at any slice in time, someone's doing more and someone's doing

00:15:44.760 | less, just because it doesn't actually work that every single hour we're working

00:15:48.760 | on the same things.

00:15:50.200 | And so we want to take a long view.

00:15:52.120 | Does this balance over days, weeks, months, years?

00:15:56.640 | For contribution specifically, I think it's really important to know what is your

00:16:01.840 | partner value?

00:16:03.160 | What do they care about as a contribution?

00:16:05.600 | And we joke sometimes that I could try to contribute to our relationship by doing

00:16:10.320 | cartwheels down the hallway, because doesn't that bring joy and delight to our

00:16:13.960 | family?

00:16:14.520 | And then Nate would say, that actually provides no value in our family.

00:16:18.520 | Please contribute differently.

00:16:19.920 | It's an interestingly vulnerable experience to have the conversation with your

00:16:25.600 | partner.

00:16:26.240 | What could I do that would feel meaningful to you?

00:16:30.720 | How could I contribute to you, to us, to our family in a way that would feel like

00:16:36.240 | you knew I really cared?

00:16:37.840 | And then internalizing that.

00:16:39.720 | Micro habit, really specific.

00:16:42.760 | We say, find one way to contribute every day.

00:16:45.880 | Start small.

00:16:47.480 | You can build if you want to, but these are little things like, I'm a coffee

00:16:51.520 | drinker.

00:16:51.960 | If Nate turns on the Keurig in the morning, I am delighted.

00:16:55.960 | It feels like that he loves me.

00:16:58.560 | This is noticing that socks have been left on the floor at the top of the

00:17:02.600 | stairs.

00:17:03.120 | And because I'm a neat freak, that makes me feel crazy.

00:17:05.720 | And moving them to a laundry basket.

00:17:07.240 | These are teeny tiny things.

00:17:09.240 | But if you're wearing the glasses that say, how can I contribute in our

00:17:13.040 | relationship in a way that you care about?

00:17:14.760 | Doing that one thing builds the habit and that lets you continue doing it.

00:17:19.320 | Well, and then tactically with appreciation, this is where you can do the

00:17:24.080 | kind of BJ Fogg habit stacking approach, which is what we do.

00:17:28.160 | Where obviously appreciation can happen organically and spontaneously, and it's

00:17:32.080 | great when it does, but we're busy.

00:17:34.480 | Life is crazy.

00:17:35.560 | The world is crazy, so it doesn't always happen that way.

00:17:38.240 | So one of the things we've done is at the end of every day, just before we go to

00:17:43.640 | bed, we're lying in bed.

00:17:44.960 | We use that as our cue to do one appreciation for each other.

00:17:49.360 | It takes like 30 seconds, really doesn't take much time at all, but it ends the

00:17:54.040 | day on this high note of appreciation.

00:17:57.240 | And so that's another practice where it sounds abstract, but you can actually

00:18:01.560 | build it into certain things that you're already doing.

00:18:04.280 | Dinner, going to bed, waking up in the morning, whatever that might be for you.

00:18:08.520 | My last favorite tiny tip around appreciation is to get a sticky note pad.

00:18:15.320 | That in our house, we've gotten into leaving each other's sticky notes around.

00:18:20.040 | These do not have to be profound.

00:18:21.560 | These can be things like good luck today on your podcast, or I love you, or hope

00:18:26.640 | you have a great day.

00:18:27.600 | Good luck at the spelling bee, whatever it might be.

00:18:30.000 | And what I love about this is once your kids get to be of the age where they can

00:18:33.760 | write, it gets contagious.

00:18:35.480 | And so the whole family can get on board with the sticky note game.

00:18:39.280 | Our daughter was watching that we were leaving sticky notes for each other on one

00:18:43.480 | another's bedside table.

00:18:44.680 | And she got really excited about it, that she could write sticky notes.

00:18:48.320 | And now we'll find for me as I love you, mama, sticky notes.

00:18:51.840 | My favorite is the one that fell on the toilet, but the sentiment was there.

00:18:55.920 | I just want to know, is it disingenuous if you're like, oh, I'm going to set a

00:18:59.600 | calendar reminder every Thursday at 3 p.m.

00:19:03.080 | to make sure that I show my appreciation?

00:19:06.160 | It feels sometimes like something like that would be like disingenuous because I

00:19:09.720 | needed the calendar reminder.

00:19:11.200 | But is that, from what you found, not the case?

00:19:13.480 | I think that's a really important point.

00:19:15.640 | And this is a debate that we've actually had with various folks on Instagram.

00:19:19.720 | There's a view out there that everything in love needs to be spontaneous and it

00:19:25.200 | just has to happen organically.

00:19:27.120 | And isn't that great?

00:19:28.400 | And that does work when you're first dating and you're 18 or you're in college or

00:19:32.360 | something. But we are advocates of the position that structure creates freedom

00:19:39.960 | within a relationship. Structure creates connection and intimacy.

00:19:43.240 | So we are totally fans of the calendar reminder or scheduling date nights or even

00:19:50.640 | scheduling intimacy.

00:19:52.280 | I know that can be a controversial position, but in our life with kids and all

00:19:58.080 | the craziness that is the logistics that go into our day, sometimes that's the only

00:20:02.800 | way we can make these things happen.

00:20:04.280 | I want to go back to something that you had talked about related to values.

00:20:08.880 | And I'm curious how you think about the 80/80 marriage working when a couple has

00:20:15.960 | different values or standards.

00:20:18.120 | I'll give two examples on both of our sides.

00:20:20.800 | One is I think it's really valuable to have a good sense of how much we spend.

00:20:25.480 | So I really like going and categorizing our transactions to know how much we spent

00:20:30.000 | in different categories.

00:20:30.960 | Amy, on the other hand, doesn't love that process or probably think it's as worth it

00:20:36.560 | as I do.

00:20:37.240 | That is an understatement of the year.

00:20:39.600 | I'm like, we're clearly spending a lot, a lot less than we're saving.

00:20:44.880 | So I think we're in an OK place.

00:20:46.760 | And Chris is like, no, no, no.

00:20:47.800 | I've got to know every detail.

00:20:50.800 | The flip side is, I don't know if you guys know what Soylent is, but from my

00:20:54.640 | perspective, when I think about food and our kid, I'm like, well, our daughter, she

00:20:58.440 | can have yogurt or oatmeal every day.

00:21:01.000 | Does she really need variety?

00:21:02.360 | I take a slightly different point of view.

00:21:05.840 | I think it's so important and valuable for her.

00:21:08.080 | She just turned 18 months today.

00:21:09.840 | And I think it's incredibly valuable for her to experience different textures and

00:21:15.360 | flavors and colors and have that variety.

00:21:19.200 | So the way that I prepare her food, I think, is vastly different than the way Chris

00:21:25.080 | approaches it. Both very clearly work.

00:21:27.600 | But I'm curious to get your perspective on it.

00:21:30.520 | The first step is you have to start with a mindset of radical generosity because

00:21:36.240 | everything I'm about to say, if you start with a mindset of we're going to litigate

00:21:41.360 | this and one of us is going to be right and one of us is going to be wrong, we all

00:21:45.480 | lose. So assuming that we begin with this premise that we want to win together, the

00:21:52.680 | place to start is actually at the notion of values.

00:21:56.320 | And values are actually deeper than I want our finances budgeted or I want our

00:22:03.360 | daughter to eat different textures of food.

00:22:05.880 | Values, if you really stay with it with each other, are things like I want our child

00:22:12.320 | to have a variety of experiences.

00:22:15.840 | And I imagine just having listened to this podcast that, Chris, a variety of

00:22:20.160 | experiences might be something that you could get on board with and food could be a

00:22:23.280 | subcategory of it.

00:22:24.360 | Or things like I want to make sure that we have the resources so that we can enjoy our

00:22:30.000 | life. And Amy, I imagine you could say, oh, yeah, I could get on board with that as a

00:22:33.680 | value. If you can get to a place at the root where you do agree, it facilitates the

00:22:40.840 | details of the conversation.

00:22:42.320 | Then just completely structurally, we believe in a couple of different things.

00:22:48.000 | One, sometimes the person who cares more gets to take the lead.

00:22:52.680 | So if Chris cares more about knowing each line item, then he might get to take the

00:22:59.040 | lead in going back through the Amazon purchases and deciding which category they

00:23:02.600 | belong in. If you care more about the food that your daughter is eating, you might

00:23:08.120 | take the lead on creating those experiences.

00:23:10.800 | And when it doesn't create conflict for the other person, I'm delighted to have you do

00:23:15.280 | those things, particularly if it doesn't require a lot from me.

00:23:19.080 | Great. Sometimes, though, that's not quite enough.

00:23:22.360 | And that's where we think having agreements and structures help facilitate it so it

00:23:28.120 | doesn't create conflict.

00:23:29.280 | So using money just because it's a great for instance, we think budgets are really

00:23:34.880 | useful. So couples will often get in conflict around how much are we saving versus

00:23:40.880 | how much are we spending and are we saving too much?

00:23:44.160 | Are you actually just being a penny pincher and you're a drag to be around or are we

00:23:47.920 | not saving enough? Are we being frivolous?

00:23:49.680 | Are we being irresponsible or we're not going to be able to have the resources we

00:23:52.600 | want for our life?

00:23:53.480 | And sitting down from that mindset of radical generosity to say, how much do we want

00:24:00.680 | to spend in these buckets because it's aligned with what we value?

00:24:05.840 | And that's where the connection happens.

00:24:07.720 | Based on our values, what do we want to do?

00:24:10.680 | And creating some structure or frameworks around it helps take the conflict out of it.

00:24:15.440 | I want to pause for one second on the relationships and moving to a couple other

00:24:20.800 | questions and just ask, as you talk to couples about money, are there things you

00:24:24.400 | learned aside from the value of a budget that people should think about when they're

00:24:29.480 | talking about money, whether it's combining their finances or reviewing spending or

00:24:33.680 | creating rules?

00:24:34.720 | Are there things that came out of those conversations that are worth sharing?

00:24:38.120 | At the macro level, we found that money is very tightly interlinked with power, which

00:24:45.400 | is kind of obvious.

00:24:46.400 | But when we started asking couples about money, it was really interesting that they

00:24:50.120 | would say things like we interviewed a woman who admitted that because she makes more

00:24:55.680 | money, she decides where they go on vacation, because in her mind, it's this is my

00:25:01.400 | money. I get to decide.

00:25:02.640 | Right. So I wish everyone could see Amy's face right now.

00:25:05.280 | Yeah, she's like, what?

00:25:06.720 | So there are these really interesting dynamics of power where often in a couple, I

00:25:12.680 | mean, it's very rare that couples make the exact same amount of money.

00:25:15.240 | So often there's an imbalance there and there can be some really strange and

00:25:20.280 | interesting power dynamics that are worth being aware of.

00:25:23.880 | And that's where, again, structure can be really valuable to the point about how you

00:25:29.640 | use money together, whether you share it or whether you have separate accounts.

00:25:33.160 | We found that there are a lot of different ways to make it work, so long as there is

00:25:38.880 | some pot of money or resources that's commonly held, that you share together, that

00:25:44.840 | you can win together with.

00:25:46.520 | And so one of the easiest approaches is just the all in approach.

00:25:50.120 | We call it where you share all of your resources, but we also know couples who do

00:25:56.240 | that and have what are called side stashes.

00:25:58.440 | So they have their own little personal allowance that they can use to spend on

00:26:02.080 | whatever they want.

00:26:03.040 | The other partner doesn't get to criticize them or micromanage them.

00:26:06.320 | And then there are couples who have separate accounts.

00:26:08.720 | But the key with those separate accounts is to have some shared pool so that if one of

00:26:14.000 | you gets a promotion or one of you lands a big movie deal or book deal or whatever it

00:26:18.960 | is, you both win together in some way.

00:26:21.640 | And is it OK if one partner takes on a responsibility almost exclusively?

00:26:27.600 | I know in a lot of relationships there's like the I like to manage the money and the

00:26:31.000 | investments and the savings.

00:26:32.200 | And in this model of ideal marriage, is that OK?

00:26:36.360 | Are there things that are exclusively owned?

00:26:38.360 | We think it works better if you can be really clear about your roles.

00:26:44.360 | And so if we look at our macro hacks of mindset and structure underneath that is a

00:26:51.320 | roles piece.

00:26:52.280 | Do we know who's doing what so that we aren't stepping on each other's toes,

00:26:56.960 | criticizing the way that somebody else is doing it?

00:26:58.920 | And are our roles balanced?

00:27:01.320 | I love, Amy, that you use the word balanced earlier.

00:27:03.960 | It's not about fair.

00:27:05.240 | If you write down everything that each of you are up to on a sheet of paper, which we

00:27:10.600 | actually did and it created a huge unlock for us.

00:27:14.480 | It was really valuable that when we did the initial exercise on the ledgers, if you

00:27:19.200 | will, mine was three X as long as Nate's.

00:27:22.360 | And we looked at it and said, huh, it makes sense that this feels completely

00:27:26.760 | unsustainable.

00:27:27.680 | And then we looked at it not through the lens of how do we make it fair, but what do

00:27:32.000 | each of us care more about?

00:27:33.560 | What do each of us want to take on?

00:27:36.040 | What are each of us good at?

00:27:37.560 | And so running it through that sieve leads us back to what you were just describing,

00:27:42.600 | Chris, that one person in the relationship might love looking at investments, thinking

00:27:47.600 | about how they could be more strategic with those things.

00:27:50.000 | They might care about balancing the budget to the penny or the dollar.

00:27:53.760 | And the person on the other side says, I trust you completely.

00:27:56.680 | And there could be one person who really owns it.

00:27:59.320 | I think it is helpful to have awareness of what your partner is doing, not because you

00:28:05.120 | want to manage it for them or step on their toes, but because it helps us

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00:31:25.600 | I love the concept of hour, and I think that's incredibly helpful.

00:31:31.640 | To get more tactical, is there a tool for organizing this concept of moving to the

00:31:39.000 | 80/80 marriage?

00:31:39.960 | Is there a spreadsheet?

00:31:41.120 | Are there other tools or sheets that you use in order to keep things organized and

00:31:47.120 | maintain that clarity around ownership and roles?

00:31:50.800 | There are actually a number of different exercises in the context of the book that

00:31:55.960 | allow you to do that sort of thing.

00:31:57.600 | We don't have a spreadsheet, although we did have somebody email us a spreadsheet,

00:32:01.760 | which was like their detailed breakdown of roles.

00:32:03.920 | But I think that what you can think about when it comes to these kinds of structures

00:32:09.440 | is building structure around any of those areas where you find you go into conflict,

00:32:15.000 | or where you find it's an area that's more or less unconscious.

00:32:19.880 | And I think that's one of the big shifts here, is that for many of us, when we get

00:32:24.680 | into a relationship, we're coming from a place of unconsciousness and a lack of

00:32:29.600 | intentionality.

00:32:30.560 | Things are just happening by accident.

00:32:32.360 | When we would ask couples, "How did you design your structure of roles?"

00:32:36.280 | They would say, "I don't know, we just sort of winged it."

00:32:40.880 | And so that actually became a technical term for us.

00:32:44.160 | We call that the winged approach, which almost every couple we've ever met adopts.

00:32:49.280 | We certainly did.

00:32:50.160 | And what we're doing with many of these different practices is we're going from

00:32:55.320 | that unconscious place of winging it, whether that's with roles or our priorities

00:33:00.640 | where we're just saying yes to everything that comes in, or our boundaries where

00:33:04.480 | we're saying yes to everything and no to nothing.

00:33:07.080 | We're shifting from that unconscious wing it approach to something that's more

00:33:11.400 | intentional, more conscious, more designed.

00:33:14.880 | And so I would say that's the key move.

00:33:17.400 | And then the exercises are helpful.

00:33:19.720 | For some couples, it is helpful to have a detailed budget and spreadsheets and

00:33:23.920 | things like that.

00:33:24.680 | For other couples, it's not.

00:33:25.920 | But I think the key move is just bringing in that structure and greater

00:33:29.480 | intentionality.

00:33:30.440 | I think there's also, in some ways, a silly tool that really complements this,

00:33:35.800 | which is to name your team.

00:33:38.040 | And this might have flashbacks to when you were at summer camp and you had to name

00:33:42.600 | your group of people.

00:33:43.640 | We've actually found it tremendously helpful as a way to differentiate between

00:33:48.640 | which entity we're talking about.

00:33:50.400 | So our team name is Kajona.

00:33:53.520 | It's just the first two letters of all of our names.

00:33:55.520 | We've got K-A for Kaylee, we've got Jo for our daughter, and we've got N-A for

00:33:59.320 | Nate.

00:33:59.680 | And we'll ask the question, what would be best for Kajona?

00:34:04.040 | And a simple example that actually was really profoundly life-changing for us

00:34:09.120 | was when she went to school and she was going to get off the bus at 3 p.m., Nate

00:34:14.280 | and I had a whole conversation about what we wanted to have happen.

00:34:16.880 | And what was best for me was for Nate to be available every day at 3 p.m.

00:34:21.800 | to meet the bus.

00:34:22.520 | And what was best for Nate was for me to be available every day at 3 p.m.

00:34:27.480 | to meet the bus.

00:34:28.320 | And we had really elaborate conversations about why it was individually best for

00:34:33.600 | each of us to have the other person do this task that neither of us wanted.

00:34:38.240 | And we were going to get nowhere if we stayed in that winning-for-me mentality.

00:34:42.680 | Then we were able to take a step back and ask the question, what's best for

00:34:47.160 | Kajona?

00:34:47.880 | And it included our daughter, it included the whole family unit, it included some

00:34:52.840 | of the commitments that we've made.

00:34:54.160 | And I'll let you talk about what happened.

00:34:56.800 | I think with that alternative framing, we realized that I was in a place

00:35:02.760 | professionally at the time where I could go down to 80%.

00:35:05.640 | It made sense for me.

00:35:07.400 | Kaylee really needed to be working those hours.

00:35:10.800 | And so all of a sudden, when we shifted the frame, the solution was obvious.

00:35:15.800 | And I was actually excited about it, you know, even though it was a loss for me,

00:35:20.400 | I guess, on my side of the ledger.

00:35:21.960 | But that is a just really powerful and simple example of how you can shift from

00:35:28.080 | asking what's best for me to what's best for us through a name that kind of

00:35:32.760 | orients you toward that.

00:35:34.280 | The name itself pushes you toward that.

00:35:37.520 | First of all, Chris, you and I need to come up with a pretty good family name

00:35:41.640 | here.

00:35:42.040 | So that'll be task one.

00:35:43.680 | I love it.

00:35:44.200 | Our daughter's name is Quinn.

00:35:46.600 | So if we take your approach, it's gonna be a little tricky with the Q.U. in

00:35:50.560 | there.

00:35:50.880 | It'll be a little tricky, but we're gonna get back to you on our family name.

00:35:54.960 | But I think the question that stems from this whole bus conversation and conflict

00:36:01.640 | resolution that you all work through together is how does that change when life

00:36:07.920 | changes?

00:36:08.680 | So, for example, one of your roles may become more demanding at work for a

00:36:13.160 | shorter period of time.

00:36:14.520 | Or let's say I have a baby and clearly changes the time and availability I have

00:36:22.240 | to give towards the things that I previously was giving to.

00:36:25.400 | How does that work when shifts in life change and therefore your availability

00:36:31.600 | and schedule changes to the things that you previously committed to?

00:36:34.480 | How do you approach that?

00:36:35.680 | We like to think of life as happening in chapters.

00:36:39.920 | And so having your values, having your priorities, having your boundaries, all

00:36:46.040 | of the things we say, what's our North Star?

00:36:48.000 | What are we saying yes to?

00:36:50.040 | What are we saying no to?

00:36:51.920 | And how are each of us going to show up in the relationship?

00:36:55.720 | You revisit it at each chapter and a chapter could be we had a kid, a chapter

00:37:02.160 | could be one of us had a big shift in a job, a chapter could be our kids left.

00:37:08.040 | Now we're empty nesters, a chapter could be now we live in a new city.

00:37:12.600 | We moved.

00:37:13.320 | I think ideally, if it were only up to me, you would get to set your values,

00:37:18.320 | priorities, and it'd be a one and done.

00:37:20.720 | You could just coast from there on out.

00:37:22.360 | I like systems that you press play and they just happen.

00:37:25.640 | That is not how this works in real life.

00:37:27.840 | And so giving permission to revisit things at a different point in time at a

00:37:33.640 | different chapter, or if you notice it's not working, that there's an

00:37:38.200 | invitation to come back to things.

00:37:40.040 | Hey, we thought this was going to be awesome.

00:37:41.840 | Shoot.

00:37:42.920 | It didn't turn out the way that we had hoped.

00:37:44.720 | Let's revisit it.

00:37:45.960 | Let's reconsider.

00:37:46.880 | Amy, I think that there's a reality check that happens each point along the way.

00:37:53.680 | We also, I'll let you add to this if you want, we believe in outsourcing when it

00:37:59.640 | makes sense and there are really skillful ways to do it, especially around things

00:38:04.400 | that create tension in the relationship.

00:38:06.680 | So as a, for instance, the person who comes and helps us clean our house

00:38:10.960 | goes in marital wellbeing, that's the line item in the budget because we're so

00:38:15.840 | much happier as a couple when we're not fighting about whose turn it is to sweep

00:38:20.440 | the floor or to clean up whatever it might be, and so giving yourselves

00:38:24.080 | permission to that in a different chapter, there might be things that you

00:38:27.880 | stop doing that you have someone else do for you, or that just fall off the list

00:38:32.240 | because they're not as crucial anymore.

00:38:34.040 | So outsourcing is something that I think we've embraced, especially

00:38:37.960 | as we've had children.

00:38:38.840 | And earlier you said that you feel like you don't have time.

00:38:41.720 | I genuinely think we have less time.

00:38:43.760 | Like the day must've shrunk.

00:38:45.840 | I'm not sure, but I'm curious if there are things that you've seen people

00:38:50.160 | outsource or you've outsourced yourself that might not be obvious.

00:38:53.360 | And one I've shared a few times is that we never really considered or knew about

00:38:58.000 | the fact that you could hire someone.

00:38:59.920 | And we literally hired someone off of Craigslist to cook food and

00:39:03.440 | drop it off twice, once or twice a week.

00:39:05.400 | We started it twice.

00:39:06.400 | Now we're back to once.

00:39:07.240 | And, and glass Tupperware in the fridge, you've got meals.

00:39:10.400 | That was crazy that we just never knew that was a thing.

00:39:13.720 | And when we ran out of time, it's, it created a lot less conflict by not

00:39:18.840 | having to decide similar to yours, who's going to get off work early enough to

00:39:22.520 | prep dinner because it turns out kids eat about the same time that the senior

00:39:27.240 | citizens do.

00:39:28.040 | So we got to stop work early.

00:39:30.760 | Are there other things that people outsource that you've seen cleaning and

00:39:34.000 | cooking are too, but I'd love to know the others so we can experiment.

00:39:37.920 | I think there've been a couple of things that I'm not sure it's outsourcing per

00:39:42.480 | se, but that have really changed my experience of time.

00:39:45.520 | And one is I often travel for work.

00:39:48.440 | And so the back and forth to the airport, I'm not sure why, but I had in my head

00:39:52.080 | that I should drive myself to the airport and giving myself permission where now I

00:39:57.240 | am always in a Lyft or an Uber on the way to and from the airport.

00:40:01.400 | I work in the back of the car or when my flights are late, I get to sleep in the

00:40:05.400 | back of the car.

00:40:06.160 | That freedom of time has been a huge unlock for me.

00:40:10.440 | Just that driving home at one o'clock in the morning.

00:40:12.760 | I don't do the adrenaline filled hour to then wonder why I can't fall asleep.

00:40:17.160 | When I walk through the door, I think another one is around food, but a clever

00:40:22.080 | way of doing that when you have young kids.

00:40:24.080 | So I was just talking to a couple, they have a one year old and they were having

00:40:29.840 | that same time crunch around.

00:40:31.320 | We don't have enough time for cooking.

00:40:34.400 | We're not eating good food.

00:40:35.720 | And they had hired a nanny and they realized they had never asked if she

00:40:40.160 | cooked and it turned out she loved to cook.

00:40:42.560 | And it was like she wanted to actually spend the afternoons planning meals and

00:40:48.280 | getting food prepared for the evening.

00:40:50.240 | So that was one where there was an interesting synergy between them and the

00:40:54.480 | care provider that allowed them to now have meals cooked for them every evening.

00:40:59.320 | So I think there are a lot of clever things like that that are probably going

00:41:02.640 | to be different for each family, but there's absolutely so much room for

00:41:06.760 | creativity around outsourcing.

00:41:08.760 | That's amazing.

00:41:09.800 | What this just reminded me of something a friend of mine told that is probably

00:41:12.920 | another good one.

00:41:13.600 | He had a nanny and they had all of these people.

00:41:18.200 | Someone yesterday was telling me, it's like once you move to the suburbs and

00:41:21.640 | sorry to be gender normative, I guess he was like, you just have a guy for

00:41:24.840 | everything.

00:41:25.080 | You got a lawn care guy, you got the sprinkler guy, you got this.

00:41:28.400 | And he was talking to his nanny and it was like, gosh, the nanny knows the most

00:41:32.720 | about the family.

00:41:33.520 | They're in the house every day.

00:41:35.320 | They know everything.

00:41:35.880 | And one day, I don't remember how it clicked, but he found out

00:41:39.720 | that the nanny would be interested in making a little extra money and

00:41:43.120 | managing all of those things.

00:41:45.160 | So that person now is like, I will make sure that the cleaner comes on a day

00:41:48.840 | that works.

00:41:49.440 | I will make sure that the yard people are here.

00:41:51.880 | I'll tell them to text me.

00:41:53.600 | I'll make sure that we send them the PayPal when it's done.

00:41:56.640 | And it was like, they basically, and it was, she wanted to do it.

00:42:01.880 | They basically have this kind of household manager.

00:42:04.160 | But to find someone that wants to do all that for a couple hours a week is

00:42:08.520 | probably pretty difficult.

00:42:09.600 | Because they have to learn so much about you.

00:42:11.400 | So if there's anyone in your family that's, if you have childcare, that

00:42:16.040 | could be an unlock if they're interested.

00:42:17.480 | I think that the through line that's really powerful is being willing to ask

00:42:22.120 | the question.

00:42:22.800 | Hey, are you interested in, Hey, is this thing important to you?

00:42:27.040 | Hey, would you be deeply offended if we dropped off all of our laundry at the

00:42:30.280 | laundromat and they folded it and cleaned it for us?

00:42:32.280 | Or are you okay with that?

00:42:34.080 | Just, I think there are sometimes internal obstacles around what we think is

00:42:38.200 | possible or what somebody might be interested in.

00:42:40.360 | And then random non sequitur aside, I think a huge time saving that occurred

00:42:45.560 | in my life is I recognize that I have a black thumb.

00:42:48.680 | And so I stopped trying to have plants live in our house and instead just bought

00:42:53.120 | fake ones.

00:42:53.720 | I like how they look.

00:42:54.760 | I'm delighted to have them around and giving myself permission to not have to

00:42:58.720 | keep it alive was, it was really actually psychologically soothing.

00:43:02.960 | Kaylee, we are clearly caught from the same cloth because for the last several

00:43:07.920 | years, I would bring home even something as robust as a bamboo or a succulent.

00:43:14.200 | And somehow months later, it's just shriveled up brown and dead.

00:43:19.280 | And finally, Chris was like, it does not make sense for us to continue spending

00:43:23.440 | money when you end up with this heartache of everything dying.

00:43:27.240 | You throw it out months later and you replace it all over.

00:43:29.840 | So thanks to Ikea, Amazon, and a variety of other websites, we now have a bunch

00:43:35.960 | of very good looking fake plants.

00:43:38.720 | And you're right, it still gives that really nice soothing vibe to the room.

00:43:43.880 | But it's very relaxing for me because it's zero maintenance.

00:43:47.720 | The alternative was to get a plant guy.

00:43:49.760 | And I was like, no, that's way too expensive, we don't need a plant guy.

00:43:52.520 | There are limits, there are limits to how many guys.

00:43:54.880 | And there's a principle here that I think is really important that is itself a hack.

00:43:59.960 | We have this exercise that we call the life report card exercise, which is really

00:44:05.120 | about priorities.

00:44:06.200 | And the idea is, imagine you were going to grade yourself on all of your various

00:44:10.640 | life endeavors, work and community service and parenting and all these different

00:44:15.520 | things.

00:44:16.000 | And the exercise isn't just a grade where you're getting A's and B's, but it's

00:44:22.000 | actually to shift your life report card so that you intentionally get more F's and

00:44:28.280 | D's and C's, which is kind of what you were saying.

00:44:31.320 | You were unintentionally failing in cultivating greenery and plants in your

00:44:36.480 | house, and then you made the shift to intentionally fail to just say, you know

00:44:41.600 | what, I'm going to get an intentional F in that, I'm not going to put much energy

00:44:45.680 | into it anymore.

00:44:46.600 | And now I'm going to free up all this energy for other things in my life that

00:44:50.240 | really matter to me.

00:44:51.200 | And so that itself is this amazing hack, because so many of us are spending so much

00:44:57.840 | time and energy trying to do things that we're maybe not good at, that are not

00:45:01.920 | really adding much value to our lives, that we're doing for reasons of like

00:45:05.960 | historical accident or just obligation.

00:45:08.760 | And so intentionally failing can be another really powerful practice in

00:45:13.760 | marriage and in life.

00:45:14.680 | I love that concept.

00:45:15.840 | For many people listening, they'll go home and they'll implement some of this

00:45:19.120 | and they'll start being much more radically generous.

00:45:21.160 | But then let's say six, nine months from now, life's getting really busy.

00:45:26.080 | It's so easy to fall into those old habits.

00:45:28.640 | How do you stay aware or present in the moment right before you're keeping score

00:45:35.600 | when it's not top of mind?

00:45:37.360 | What tactics do you have for people to keep this going for the long haul?

00:45:40.760 | The idea of making it structurally part of your life is really valuable.

00:45:46.640 | So while you're on the post podcast, post reading the book high, putting that

00:45:52.480 | calendar reminder there, you know, every Thursday at 3 p.m.

00:45:56.960 | or starting the practice where when you sit down for dinner, you start with an

00:46:01.840 | appreciation, building that in so that it becomes something that you just expect is

00:46:07.840 | a really good way to give it legs and give it some longevity.

00:46:10.720 | There's also a piece that you're naming, which is around presence or mindfulness

00:46:16.720 | that this work is easier if you have a practice of being able to take a deep

00:46:23.760 | breath, see yourself in the moment and then choose how you're going to respond

00:46:28.840 | rather than just reacting.

00:46:30.160 | So in that moment where you're doing the dishes after you've already made the meal,

00:46:35.560 | after you're the one who unloaded the dishwasher and got everything ready and

00:46:39.160 | you look around and you think to yourself, wait a second, this is not fair at all.

00:46:43.840 | To be able to take that deep breath and reveal, hey, I'd love some help in the

00:46:48.920 | kitchen right now versus attacking your partner also helps it be sticky.

00:46:55.000 | There's another habit I would add to that, which is carving out space for

00:47:00.600 | connection. And there are a lot of different ways to do this.

00:47:02.880 | You could do the micro space where it's 15 minutes at the end of the day.

00:47:07.320 | There's date night, which we hear about all the time, especially for parents.

00:47:12.920 | But then there's if you have the opportunity, spending a day together or a

00:47:16.320 | weekend together. And what we find is that the momentum of life is such that it's

00:47:21.800 | often very difficult to have these conversations about, hey, how can we win

00:47:26.360 | more as a team?

00:47:27.480 | What do our values look like?

00:47:29.200 | What are our priorities?

00:47:30.160 | Where are we not living up to those?

00:47:31.400 | Where can we make some adjustments in everyday life?

00:47:34.080 | There's so much happening that that conversation really isn't even on the

00:47:37.400 | table. But when you can carve out a little bit of space from the craziness of

00:47:41.760 | modern life, you know, a day or even just an evening, having that become a

00:47:46.840 | regular pattern gets you in that mindset of taking a step back, seeing the bigger

00:47:52.200 | picture. So I think that can also be really valuable.

00:47:54.680 | I would very much agree with that.

00:47:56.680 | I think one of the things that Chris took away, Chris and I took away after reading

00:48:01.560 | your book, and it's been incredibly helpful, is this concept of weekly

00:48:06.680 | scheduled date nights and these short weekend getaways.

00:48:10.840 | So actually in about a weekend or two, we are doing a short just the two of us

00:48:16.880 | trip down to Southern California just to enjoy the sun and the two of us for a

00:48:20.520 | bit. So those things have have definitely helped.

00:48:22.920 | I'm curious, though, because, Kaylee, you had mentioned the concept of presence.

00:48:27.440 | And I think one of the things that for me certainly is very challenging is we've

00:48:32.680 | carved out these special moments for the two of us, whether it's a date night or a

00:48:37.080 | weekend away. But you have these very regular touch points, for example,

00:48:43.440 | dinnertime, where with technology now playing so deeply into our lives, it's

00:48:49.560 | easy to shift that focus towards work emails because now we all work from home.

00:48:55.440 | Work never really ends.

00:48:56.800 | And now you're multitasking, you're on technology.

00:48:59.880 | And I find it incredibly hard to stay present and focused on the 80/80 piece of

00:49:07.640 | it. And some of these pretty critical moments because they happen so frequently.

00:49:11.600 | So I'm curious to get your perspective on how you feel technology has shifted

00:49:17.000 | people's ability to stay present in these moments.

00:49:20.480 | Technology has definitely made it harder.

00:49:23.240 | You are not alone in being tempted by your phone at approximately every hour of

00:49:28.600 | every day. The dopamine that we get from that moment if someone needs me or I'm

00:49:33.040 | important or there's a notification is addictive by design.

00:49:36.920 | And so one of the main things that we recommend for couples is to put your phone

00:49:43.880 | away because it's so hard to multitask.

00:49:47.360 | I would argue it's impossible to be present with your partner and present with

00:49:50.480 | something that's happening on your phone simultaneously.

00:49:52.800 | And it's actually one of the things that was in our interviews really sad to hear

00:49:57.560 | from people. Hey, so every night we crawl in bed at the same time and we both get

00:50:01.280 | on our phones and I'm scrolling Instagram and he's doing scrolling the news and we

00:50:05.240 | don't have a conversation because we're each on our own device doing our own thing.

00:50:09.560 | And so a couple of things that we highly recommend, number one, kick your phone out

00:50:14.600 | of the bedroom. It's much more likely that you'll have a meaningful conversation,

00:50:19.160 | that there will be intimacy if your phone is not there.

00:50:22.040 | The second is if you can kick your phone out of whether it's date night, we actually

00:50:27.600 | do a date hike and we'll drop our daughter off at her grandparents house.

00:50:32.200 | And I, I would say like 95 percent of the time I leave my phone behind and I do that

00:50:38.000 | because I am not good at staying present if my phone is there buzzing in my pocket.

00:50:43.360 | Only once was there a medical emergency when I didn't have my phone and was off on

00:50:47.960 | a date hike and it turned out to be fine.

00:50:49.800 | Somebody else picked up when the person called and my mom ended up being totally fine.

00:50:54.480 | But there was that moment like, see, I should never leave my phone back again.

00:50:58.320 | My mom needed me and I wasn't there.

00:50:59.880 | She was fine.

00:51:00.840 | And for that 90 minutes after date hike, there was a level of connection that isn't

00:51:05.680 | possible when we're trying to be two places at once and are there for nowhere.

00:51:10.160 | We also learned from one of our interviews, there was a couple that told us about asking

00:51:15.640 | for permission, which initially I thought was a crazy idea, but we will now do this

00:51:21.680 | when we can.

00:51:22.520 | We don't always do this, but what it looks like is, hey, is now a good time for me to

00:51:26.720 | send this text as we're driving together or hey, is now a good time for me to order

00:51:30.720 | these plane tickets as we drive together or whatever it might be.

00:51:33.240 | But just having an actual conversation before you just habitually jump onto your

00:51:39.720 | device can be really powerful and lets your partner into the decision.

00:51:43.760 | I think that happens a ton on date night too, where you're in a conversation, perhaps

00:51:48.840 | you're envisioning a vacation that you're going to take together, you know, whatever

00:51:52.560 | your QX couples trip is going to be.

00:51:55.240 | And there's a temptation because you can make it happen right then, to at date night

00:52:00.360 | right then, book the hotel, book the plane tickets, make sure that everything is set.

00:52:04.920 | And it actually takes you out of the intimacy of the moment that you have with your

00:52:09.000 | partner then.

00:52:09.920 | And if you ask permission, hey, do we want to handle this right now?

00:52:13.400 | I think it's going to take seven minutes.

00:52:15.000 | That might be a choice, but at least then it's conscious versus unconscious.

00:52:19.200 | I love that.

00:52:20.240 | There's one thing in there that I took that I thought about, which was we do that

00:52:23.680 | sometimes where I'm like, okay, we're going to leave my phone or one of us.

00:52:26.720 | And when our daughter's 18 months and sometimes it's hard, but when you come

00:52:30.720 | back and you're like, all of a sudden you have 10 emails instead of taking my phone

00:52:36.040 | out and ending up on the news or ending up on like social media or something, I'm

00:52:39.560 | actually doing the thing.

00:52:40.640 | I get home, I'm like, ooh, now I have 10 emails, not just one.

00:52:43.280 | And so it kind of like took the small blips of, ooh, what's that?

00:52:46.400 | Ooh, what's that?

00:52:47.160 | To a goldmine of things, whether it's, you know, something happened.

00:52:51.200 | And the other thing was I talked to another author named Nir Eyal, who wrote a

00:52:56.840 | book called Indistractable in, I think, episode 25.

00:53:00.240 | And it was all about how to avoid distraction.

00:53:03.040 | But one of the interesting things that I think can apply to a lot of what we

00:53:07.000 | discussed is that when you hit that moment of anything that's uncomfortable

00:53:12.520 | and default, like I'm going to go scroll my phone, when early on, when you're on

00:53:17.560 | the high after listening to this or reading the book, just pause for a moment

00:53:20.840 | and feel it and it makes it easier to understand it in the future.

00:53:24.760 | So if you're unloading the dishwasher after making breakfast, after walking the

00:53:28.720 | dog and you're feeling frustrated, it's like pause and like, it sounds a little

00:53:33.360 | crazy and Nate, you might have better tactics with all your mindfulness

00:53:37.120 | experience, but feel what it feels like to have that frustration, to have that

00:53:42.160 | urge so that you can better identify it in the future.

00:53:45.480 | I love that.

00:53:46.640 | And you're right.

00:53:47.120 | This is mindfulness in a nutshell.

00:53:49.200 | It's instead of following the stream of habit, which is what we normally do when

00:53:54.840 | we feel something uncomfortable, taking that moment to stay.

00:53:59.200 | And what I like to do is to notice where is this happening in my body so that I

00:54:04.960 | get out of the thought stream, because if you're mind wandering about what's

00:54:08.040 | happening, that usually leads you out of the present moment.

00:54:10.400 | So can I locate this in my body and can I notice that it's changing?

00:54:14.880 | Can I notice that the discomfort I'm feeling, the anxiety, if you really look

00:54:19.360 | carefully, there's an impermanence to it and a flow to it and a shifting to it.

00:54:25.040 | And that can be really powerful for learning how to just stay in those

00:54:29.280 | moments.

00:54:29.800 | And then like you, Chris, I love the idea of the sort of like double dopamine hit.

00:54:35.880 | And this is something I've been doing lately.

00:54:37.960 | One of my, it's not a marriage hack, it's just sort of a life hack.

00:54:40.880 | Like you, I'm very interested in crypto and I have my own issues with news

00:54:45.760 | addiction and I could easily spend most of my day just looking at various

00:54:50.680 | financial things and the news.

00:54:52.760 | And so what I've done is given myself permission to do that when the clock

00:54:56.640 | says p.m., but not when the clock says a.m.

00:54:59.480 | And so when the clock says a.m., that's my time to stay with the discomfort.

00:55:05.320 | But when the clock says p.m., I give myself free reign so that I'm not living

00:55:10.200 | in this kind of restrictive zone of no, never, never check the news, never check

00:55:14.360 | the crypto markets.

00:55:15.360 | But still, I'm restricting myself enough that I have that space for

00:55:19.000 | mindfulness.

00:55:19.680 | I like having these rules where it's like, I'm telling my brain I can do this,

00:55:23.560 | just not now, because as much as we like to think that we're logical and

00:55:27.480 | rational, like sometimes our brains just aren't.

00:55:29.560 | It's like, I'm logical, but my brain's not logical in this moment.

00:55:33.040 | So being able to say, OK, for me, it's eating sweets and Amy has all the

00:55:38.480 | self-control and I have none.

00:55:39.680 | And the thing that worked was saying, I can have a cookie.

00:55:43.720 | And this was a, I think this was a hack.

00:55:45.560 | I can't remember who said it, but it's going to be in five minutes.

00:55:48.800 | So you don't you don't say no, you just give yourself permission to do it

00:55:51.840 | later.

00:55:52.360 | And that urge subsides by the time five minutes comes around.

00:55:55.800 | I'm on I'm writing an email.

00:55:57.320 | I'm doing something.

00:55:58.000 | I'm on a walk and I don't need the cookie.

00:55:59.880 | But, you know, my brain allows me to say no.

00:56:02.640 | If I say yes in the future, it's I don't understand it.

00:56:06.240 | There's probably a neuroscientist who could explain it better, but it works

00:56:09.360 | for me.

00:56:09.720 | There's a really crazy reciprocal hack, which is if you give yourself

00:56:13.720 | permission to quit exercising at the 10 minute mark that most of the time, if

00:56:20.400 | you set aside whatever it is, you're half an hour that you're going to

00:56:22.960 | exercise, but you give yourself permission.

00:56:24.480 | If I hate this at five minutes, I could quit.

00:56:26.960 | Or if I hate this at 10 minutes, I could quit.

00:56:29.240 | Most of the time you finish the workout because I'm already there.

00:56:32.680 | I'm already doing it.

00:56:33.520 | The endorphins finally hit and you keep going.

00:56:35.640 | Love it.

00:56:36.280 | You just said reciprocal.

00:56:38.080 | So I there's one, this is a bit of a segue, but it's something we talked

00:56:41.760 | about briefly, but it's easy when we're both like, yeah, let's do this.

00:56:45.840 | We're both on board.

00:56:47.080 | What happens when someone's not on board or was on board and has fallen off board?

00:56:51.800 | We, in some ways are a case study of how this works.

00:56:55.440 | When we got married, we were 26.

00:56:57.480 | Kaylee had a job at Deloitte, a consulting firm.

00:57:01.200 | She managed her finances.

00:57:02.640 | She had a 401k.

00:57:04.440 | I was a grad student at Princeton who lived in a dorm and cleaned it like twice a year.

00:57:10.880 | And so that was our entry point.

00:57:12.440 | And as a result, she became the over contributor.

00:57:16.000 | I became the under contributor.

00:57:17.880 | She was the one interested in working on our marriage.

00:57:20.400 | I was the one who thought that was a total waste of time.

00:57:23.040 | And so it created this dynamic, which we call the reluctant partner dynamic, where

00:57:30.320 | one of the partners is super engaged and enthusiastic, and the other one is very

00:57:34.280 | reluctant. And what we found, and this is like a 10 or 15 year case study, so it has

00:57:42.160 | a happy ending. But what we found is that both of us had to look at our part in the

00:57:47.280 | dynamics. So I'll tell you what my part was, and maybe Kaylee can tell you what her

00:57:50.240 | part was. My part was that I had this kind of unwillingness to lean in and contribute

00:57:57.640 | more or become curious about ways in which I might become more engaged in the

00:58:02.800 | relationship. And I heard her feedback as constant nagging.

00:58:08.600 | And I responded in this very passive aggressive way where I said, you know what?

00:58:13.440 | It turns out anything I do is not enough, so I'm just not going to do anything.

00:58:17.520 | And that became the pattern.

00:58:19.840 | That was certainly the way I contributed to the pattern.

00:58:22.200 | Seeing my part was a really big deal because I set it up where I would ask him to do

00:58:27.920 | something. He wouldn't do it the way that I wanted him to do it.

00:58:30.960 | So I would either redo it or I would nag him to do it the way that I wanted him to do

00:58:34.640 | it. And I can't imagine why he was so frustrated with the way that I was giving

00:58:40.520 | space for him to do things.

00:58:41.680 | I feel you. I feel you, Nate.

00:58:42.960 | And so it was actually a really profound shift for us to take a look at where we were

00:58:50.680 | doing things and to actually give full ownership of things that I historically had

00:58:54.760 | owned and micromanaged and to say, I trust you to do it differently from me and to

00:59:00.280 | actually empower him to do so.

00:59:02.040 | So finances is an interesting example where I was a bit more of the Chris in our

00:59:06.600 | relationship that I quite like it when things reconcile.

00:59:09.400 | And I like being in the in the spreadsheet and in the details and knowing exactly what

00:59:13.400 | the purchase was.

00:59:14.320 | And then I was mad at Nate all the time early on because he was making these purchases.

00:59:19.960 | I didn't know what they were.

00:59:21.080 | I felt like he was being irresponsible, but I actually gave him no insight and no power

00:59:25.280 | and no ability to do anything differently.

00:59:27.720 | And so for us to make the shift where I actually turned over our personal finances to

00:59:32.600 | Nate and said, let me show you all the systems that I've been using for however many

00:59:37.160 | years that I've been doing it and to let there be ways that he did things really

00:59:41.160 | differently, owning my part and saying, if I control it, I can't be mad about the

00:59:47.240 | resistance. If I'm willing to let go, can I also empower with the tools rather than

00:59:51.200 | just expecting him to read my mind, which is a side note.

00:59:55.160 | I find that expecting partners to read our minds is one of the fastest ways to have

01:00:00.080 | conflict. Our ESP is just terrible.

01:00:03.200 | And yet the reliability of what do you mean you didn't know as an excuse or as an

01:00:08.240 | accusation is really fascinating.

01:00:10.080 | So if one person's really in and the other person's not, we think that owning how

01:00:16.000 | you're creating your own experience can really shift the dynamic super, super

01:00:21.920 | tactically. We think that you can stealth bring in 80/80 to your relationship by

01:00:28.080 | using some of the exercises that in some ways, the 80/80 marriage book, you can use

01:00:34.040 | as ideas for ways that you can, if you want to use hacks, sort of a hack in to how

01:00:40.520 | your marriage system is working.

01:00:41.800 | Your partner might not be psyched.

01:00:44.200 | And Amy, I thought it was so interesting that Chris brought the book home and you

01:00:48.520 | thought, oh, no, something's wrong.

01:00:51.680 | We heard that over and over in a way that was completely fascinating.

01:00:56.200 | Nace written New York Times was selling mindfulness books.

01:00:58.800 | I've written leadership books and people like to show them to us.

01:01:01.600 | Look, I have the 15 commitments on my bookshelf.

01:01:04.600 | But you bring in a marriage book and people start to go, oh, are we OK?

01:01:09.960 | And so sometimes handing them a book can feel a little scary.

01:01:15.040 | Instead, you can just do an exercise.

01:01:17.200 | Hey, I was reading this book.

01:01:19.080 | It had an exercise around priorities.

01:01:21.800 | It feels like we're both really overwhelmed.

01:01:24.480 | What do you think about sitting down and doing this exercise around a life report

01:01:29.320 | card where we try to get Fs?

01:01:30.760 | That could be kind of fun.

01:01:31.960 | And after they've done something where there's a positive outcome, they're more

01:01:36.360 | willing to engage in some of the concepts or some of the other pieces that bring the

01:01:40.240 | whole thing together.

01:01:41.080 | That's a very good takeaway.

01:01:44.640 | There are definitely things that I think out of the gate from a pure communication

01:01:49.840 | perspective, I realized are just minor tweaks that made a significant difference.

01:01:55.240 | But there are clearly some really good, as you call it, hacks or as Chris lives by

01:02:01.720 | hacks or tactics that we can certainly apply.

01:02:04.800 | And hopefully those listening can apply as well.

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01:03:17.760 | Do you all remember episode 122 when I spoke to chef David Chang about leveling up your

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01:04:30.960 | I just want to thank you quick for listening to and supporting the show.

01:04:36.080 | Your support is what keeps this show going.

01:04:39.200 | To get all of the URLs, codes, deals, and discounts from our partners, you can go to

01:04:44.360 | allthehacks.com/deals.

01:04:46.920 | So please consider supporting those who support us.

01:04:50.360 | Is there a thing to do to catch yourself?

01:04:53.680 | I think we're both, I would say, somewhat type A when there's something to do, we

01:04:58.120 | both definitely have an opinion on how to do it.

01:05:00.760 | And so how do you share that feedback without frustrating the other person, I

01:05:07.440 | guess it's, oh, you're, you're not doing it the way I wanted you to do it.

01:05:10.600 | And the default is like to tell someone.

01:05:13.120 | And then that person often says, why am I even doing this?

01:05:15.800 | The experience Nate had.

01:05:17.360 | One option, as you mentioned, is to just completely give away control.

01:05:20.240 | But there are some things where, whether it's, you know, cleanliness, the level of

01:05:24.520 | cleanliness or the variety of food, as we talked earlier, there's a lot of examples.

01:05:29.480 | How do you, without giving control completely, constructively give feedback in

01:05:34.840 | those circumstances?

01:05:36.160 | We have a practice that we call reveal and request, which I think is really

01:05:40.040 | helpful here.

01:05:40.840 | And it's counter to the way we normally offer feedback in a relationship.

01:05:46.040 | So we were just talking this morning on our walk before this about how in

01:05:51.400 | relationships, our default mode is when something goes wrong, we point that our

01:05:57.480 | finger at the other person, and there's some form of blame or criticism that goes

01:06:01.400 | along with it.

01:06:02.080 | Here's just an example.

01:06:04.360 | We were on a radio show that was talking about the 80/80 marriage, and I thought

01:06:08.280 | this was so cool.

01:06:09.240 | And I was waiting all day to play this for Kaylee.

01:06:11.760 | And she came into the kitchen.

01:06:14.240 | I told her about it.

01:06:15.080 | She walked away before I could even play it for her.

01:06:17.720 | And I felt like totally disappointed.

01:06:19.800 | Like I had this great surprise that I was about to reveal and she just left.

01:06:23.200 | And the default for me in that moment was to be like, I can't believe you just

01:06:29.280 | walked away.

01:06:30.280 | You always do this.

01:06:31.720 | You're too busy.

01:06:32.960 | You need to slow down at work.

01:06:34.440 | You need to be more present.

01:06:35.720 | It was all about you, you, you, you, you.

01:06:37.840 | And so the idea of reveal and request is a way of giving feedback where we start

01:06:43.320 | with our own individual experience in that moment.

01:06:46.320 | So I actually believe that I was able to shift in that particular moment where what

01:06:51.040 | that looks like is, hey, I was waiting all day to share this with you.

01:06:56.520 | And I just feel sad that you walked away and I didn't get to play this for you.

01:07:02.840 | Can you come up in five minutes or can, can I play this for you now?

01:07:06.200 | And it's a reversal in the way that we usually give feedback in the sense that

01:07:10.960 | you're leading with vulnerability and what we often call an inarguable truth,

01:07:16.280 | which is just, I feel sad or I feel irritated or I feel anxious, whatever's

01:07:21.280 | happening in your body and your experience.

01:07:24.200 | So we found that that's a really powerful way to give feedback.

01:07:29.880 | That's really different from judgment and criticism in the way that we're, we're

01:07:33.600 | generally giving feedback in life that we're almost wired to give feedback.

01:07:37.240 | It requires a little bit more self-awareness in the moment.

01:07:41.720 | So hence the pause is really useful.

01:07:43.760 | A different example with the same theme.

01:07:46.800 | I was really anxious and I'm walking around the house and I realize.

01:07:51.000 | Clutter is not acceptable in this present state of anxiety, but rather than picking

01:07:57.840 | up everybody's stuff with an air of resentment and throwing it in whatever

01:08:01.160 | room I thought that it should belong in or throwing it in the garbage, which I

01:08:04.800 | have been known to do instead, I revealed and said, I'm feeling really anxious.

01:08:10.760 | Clutter is adding to my anxiety.

01:08:13.760 | You could really help me out today by picking up a couple of the things that

01:08:18.520 | are around, especially those that I might step on in the kitchen and that let me,

01:08:24.040 | that let our daughter show up in a way that was so loving to me and that didn't

01:08:28.320 | turn into the like, mom, you suck.

01:08:30.840 | Or the like, seriously, you need to handle your yourself.

01:08:34.200 | I'm really curious.

01:08:35.080 | We've been talking a lot about some of the tactics and the mentalities and

01:08:40.080 | mindsets that go behind 80 80.

01:08:41.920 | I'm curious.

01:08:42.960 | Why not?

01:08:43.760 | Why is the book not a hundred hundred marriage?

01:08:46.440 | We thought long and hard about that because we had the same idea.

01:08:50.680 | If it's really about radical generosity and we're really trying to uproot our

01:08:54.720 | position in fairness and 50 50, then why not go all the way to a hundred, a hundred.

01:08:59.720 | And the reason we advocate for something more like 80 80 is that we think it's

01:09:06.760 | actually really important to carve out some space for yourself and that there's

01:09:11.800 | a way of underdoing radical generosity, which is what most of us do, but there's

01:09:15.240 | also a way of overdoing it.

01:09:17.440 | So for instance, we talked to one individual who was a man who told us that

01:09:22.280 | he was so giving in his marriage that he felt like he just got on this bus and the

01:09:28.840 | bus was marriage.

01:09:29.840 | And then the bus was kids.

01:09:31.280 | And then the bus was a career that he didn't really enjoy.

01:09:34.480 | And he felt like he gave it all away.

01:09:37.160 | He had no purpose.

01:09:38.280 | And so we think it is really important to have your own sense of purpose, your own

01:09:44.960 | projects that you find really interesting.

01:09:47.040 | Like I really enjoy playing Frisbee golf, which is super weird and random, but I

01:09:52.160 | don't expect that Kaylee is going to be out on the Frisbee golf course with me

01:09:55.320 | every day.

01:09:55.840 | That's part of that, that space that's carved out for me.

01:09:59.840 | So that's really why we call it 80 80 is that there, there is something really

01:10:05.680 | powerful and important about our own individual pursuits that we want to

01:10:09.280 | preserve.

01:10:09.800 | Yeah, we definitely have a few of those, but coming back to the 80 80 part and at

01:10:14.680 | the risk of needing to mark this episode explicit, at least with iTunes, I want to

01:10:20.800 | touch on the topic of sex.

01:10:22.040 | You have a whole chapter on the book about it.

01:10:24.000 | You haven't mentioned it once.

01:10:25.600 | You could have easily written this book without dedicating a chapter to it.

01:10:28.880 | So I'm really curious.

01:10:29.720 | You mentioned a few things about scheduling intimacy.

01:10:32.960 | Not everything has to be spontaneous.

01:10:34.720 | Would you talk about that chapter and what led you to put it in the book?

01:10:38.640 | When we thought about writing this book, we realized sex is an essential part of

01:10:43.880 | this whole equation, and we have used the word intimacy, which is kind of a code

01:10:47.080 | word that we've been using, but now we're going to go full out, call it sex.

01:10:50.840 | And what I would say just to set this up is that we live in a culture where the

01:10:56.520 | predominant viewpoint on sex is that if it's not good or you want to have more

01:11:01.400 | and better sex, you need to resort to all sorts of tactics.

01:11:05.080 | I think Cosmo magazine is a great example of this.

01:11:07.800 | They have all these articles about five ways to have sex in a pool and five ways

01:11:12.760 | to pleasure your spouse, right?

01:11:15.400 | And they are selling a worldview that says basically the only thing holding you back

01:11:20.520 | from amazing intimacy is a bunny shaped vibrator or an orgasm cream or some

01:11:27.720 | Tantra class.

01:11:28.760 | And I think that there is a sliver of truth in that, but we take a very different

01:11:33.880 | perspective, which is that sex is a reflection of the rest of your life.

01:11:38.360 | So we have a line in there from a sex expert we interviewed where he said, "The

01:11:43.240 | way you do sex is the way you do life."

01:11:45.400 | That it's like a mirror image.

01:11:47.320 | And what we think that means is that if you are living a life that's very

01:11:54.120 | unconscious together, where you feel constant resentment, that is going to show

01:11:59.960 | up in your sex.

01:12:01.480 | And likewise, if you're able to make this shift to more intentional structures and a

01:12:06.840 | mindset of radical generosity, all of these things that you're doing on the mindset

01:12:11.720 | and structure side of 80/80 are also going to show up because you're going to be more

01:12:16.520 | connected and that will be mirrored in your intimacy.

01:12:21.160 | And so there are some practices there.

01:12:22.840 | Do you want to jump in?

01:12:23.480 | Well, I was going to say mostly the exact same thing.

01:12:26.280 | When we're thinking about sex and the reflection that it is on your life, it's

01:12:30.360 | really interesting to just do a quick survey of how you're showing up in the line at

01:12:36.280 | Costco.

01:12:37.320 | Are you laughing?

01:12:38.520 | Is it playful?

01:12:39.560 | Does it feel like each of you knows what you're doing?

01:12:41.560 | Do you care how your partner is feeling?

01:12:43.720 | That that will get reflected.

01:12:45.240 | That there can be, and in the book we talk quite a bit about this, there can be check

01:12:48.920 | the box sex.

01:12:49.800 | It's Thursday.

01:12:50.520 | We should probably get that done.

01:12:52.040 | Versus, hey, you're the person who I want to be with.

01:12:55.640 | And on our date, we're talking about things that matter.

01:12:58.520 | And there's attention and care.

01:13:00.920 | Then it's much more likely you're going to have attentive and caring sex.

01:13:05.960 | I think there's some tactics, too, because that's what you're asking about.

01:13:09.160 | So this is a really interesting tactic that's out there in the Instagram world and marriage

01:13:13.640 | and relationships that a lot of people swear by, which is the sex challenges.

01:13:18.200 | So a lot of couples will commit to having sex seven days in a row for a week or a month,

01:13:25.000 | or some couples have done it for a year.

01:13:26.840 | What's interesting about that is it takes away the question, are we going to do it?

01:13:32.120 | It's just, oh, we're committing for seven days.

01:13:33.800 | We're going to do it.

01:13:34.760 | So that's an interesting tactic.

01:13:37.400 | The other one that I think is really important is just a big issue around intimacy for most

01:13:43.320 | couples is drive discrepancy.

01:13:46.280 | And there's actually there's a technical term in psychology for this sexual drive discrepancy,

01:13:51.320 | SDD.

01:13:52.040 | What that means is that in most couples, there's a high drive and a low drive partner.

01:13:57.160 | And there's some really interesting power dynamics there around who's initiating, who's

01:14:04.200 | saying no.

01:14:04.760 | And so one of the things that this sounds insignificant, but it's really powerful if

01:14:10.200 | you are the higher drive partner and you're trying to initiate and your partner says,

01:14:16.280 | no, there's a sting to that.

01:14:18.600 | But if your partner says not tonight, but tomorrow night, yes.

01:14:24.120 | That shift between a pure no and a no with a plan can be like life changing.

01:14:32.600 | I mean, it just lands very differently for the high drive partner.

01:14:35.720 | So that's another tactic that couples could consider is like, how do we play with this

01:14:41.640 | power dynamic of high and low drive?

01:14:43.640 | There's also just the ways that you signal to each other.

01:14:47.800 | So if you're having this conversation in front of your kids, you can develop a code like,

01:14:51.560 | hey, do you want to have tacos?

01:14:53.960 | And if your kid overhears, they're like, for dinner on Saturday.

01:14:58.040 | Why?

01:14:58.280 | What were you talking about?

01:14:59.640 | But it gives you a way to start to initiate the conversation or use signals with each

01:15:03.160 | other.

01:15:03.640 | Hey, did we light the candles in the room?

01:15:05.560 | That might be a signal to your partner so that they can start to get excited.

01:15:09.560 | We also really like the idea of signaling to your partner as early in the day as you

01:15:14.520 | can send them a text, start the feeling set around sex early.

01:15:20.840 | So it's in some ways like extended foreplay.

01:15:23.880 | So if you can go from relationship advice to sex advice, and you're clearly the types

01:15:29.000 | of people that optimize, right?

01:15:30.120 | You wrote a whole book about it.

01:15:31.080 | You interviewed hundreds of couples.

01:15:32.440 | I got to ask before we wrap, what other aspects of your life?

01:15:36.280 | We've talked a little bit about time management, but maybe there's a few others, whether they're

01:15:39.720 | hacks or routines or tricks that you'd like to share that you guys use to be happier or

01:15:45.000 | make your lives better, whether it's together or individually.

01:15:47.640 | For me, mindfulness is a central practice that I try to weave throughout my day in a

01:15:55.400 | number of different ways.

01:15:56.280 | So I think about it as it's a formal practice, but also an informal practice.

01:16:01.160 | So what that looks like for me on a formal level is every day, I commit to 25 to 30 minutes

01:16:09.480 | of just some sort of mindfulness practice where I'm sitting, I'm either following my

01:16:15.960 | breath or doing more of an open awareness practice.

01:16:18.600 | I find that's like planting a seed at the beginning of my day.

01:16:22.440 | That's very different from the seed of Instagram or the seed of news binging or any of the

01:16:26.680 | other things that I find myself drawn to.

01:16:28.920 | So that's key.

01:16:30.680 | But then there's also the informal moment to moment practice that goes along with that

01:16:35.960 | of just trying throughout the day to build in these moments of mindfulness, especially

01:16:42.200 | around what we were talking about earlier, discomfort, emotions that I don't want to

01:16:46.840 | feel, just trying to use those as opportunities to really open to an experience that would

01:16:54.600 | otherwise feel unpleasant and I'd otherwise want to close to or run away from.

01:16:59.000 | So I think for me, other than the relationship marriage stuff, I spend a lot of my time and

01:17:05.880 | mental energy and attention on that particular set of hacks.

01:17:09.880 | It feels in some ways meta.

01:17:12.280 | Relationships are my hack.

01:17:14.680 | And what I mean by that is I learn things because people I care about send me a podcast

01:17:21.000 | or send me a book to read.

01:17:22.520 | And then I internalize them because we talk about them.

01:17:25.080 | I exercise most often because I'm walking with a friend and I care about that relationship.

01:17:32.520 | And so I use how much I value being with other people as a way to do some of the things that

01:17:38.360 | I should in my life, because in some ways I've bribed myself with a person or a relationship

01:17:43.720 | I care about.

01:17:44.760 | You just mentioned other people.

01:17:45.960 | So I have one follow-up, which is of all the things you learned about relationships in

01:17:51.400 | marriage, right?

01:17:52.440 | Are there things that are lessons that apply to relationships with friends or family that

01:17:57.880 | can improve those relationships or even at work?

01:18:00.520 | A hundred percent.

01:18:01.880 | That 80/80 works most naturally in a committed relationship because the idea of being a team

01:18:09.240 | and shared success is in some ways implicit in the relationship.

01:18:12.840 | But the tools themselves, that notion of what's your mindset with this person and do you approach

01:18:18.760 | them with radical generosity works absolutely in friendship and with family.

01:18:24.120 | One of my best friend's favorite things to text me is 80/80 because in our friendship,

01:18:29.960 | that's a mindset that we've really adopted with each other.

01:18:33.000 | It also works really well in teams and organizations, particularly the structure piece.

01:18:39.400 | That if you can establish enough rapport, enough relational capital, that your mindset

01:18:44.120 | is that of assuming positive intent, which I think of as the corporate version of radical

01:18:50.200 | generosity, then it makes a ton of sense to set up your values, your priorities, your

01:18:56.360 | boundaries, your roles, all of those structural components work really well in professional

01:19:02.280 | settings.

01:19:03.160 | You just have to take the sex piece out.

01:19:04.840 | Yes.

01:19:06.280 | Yeah, yeah.

01:19:07.320 | Very important.

01:19:07.880 | Best hack of the episode is take the sex out of your work and family relationships.

01:19:14.840 | Certainly.

01:19:16.840 | Certainly removes the complication.

01:19:18.440 | Kaylee and Nate, this has been phenomenal.

01:19:21.720 | Aside from your book, where can people keep up with both of you online?

01:19:25.640 | Yeah, we have a website, 8080marriage.com, and we have free epic date night guide there.

01:19:33.160 | We do a newsletter every week where we just come up with random practices and ideas for

01:19:38.120 | couples.

01:19:39.080 | So that's one place.

01:19:40.040 | And then Instagram is the other main place to find us, 8080marriage on Instagram.

01:19:44.680 | And so this is really funny.

01:19:45.800 | I was recently on a podcast where he said that they transcribed the interview.

01:19:49.560 | And every time I said 8080, it translated it to ADHD.

01:19:54.360 | So just to be really explicit, it's 8080.

01:19:58.520 | That's there's no slash.

01:20:00.040 | There's nothing else.

01:20:01.000 | It's not attention deficit.

01:20:02.920 | Find us at 8080, that 8080 version.

01:20:05.720 | I actually read one of those transcripts, so I was very familiar.

01:20:09.160 | OK, last thing is, can you leave everyone with each of you one epic date recommendation

01:20:14.920 | or suggestion?

01:20:16.040 | I would highly recommend Ditch Day.

01:20:18.520 | We wrote our most recent newsletter about it.

01:20:21.640 | I had a crazy experience a couple of weeks ago.

01:20:23.720 | I was supposed to be in New York.

01:20:25.320 | Flights got canceled.

01:20:26.600 | I ended up at home.

01:20:27.880 | I persuaded this one to do a Ditch Day with me.

01:20:30.520 | And it was epic.

01:20:32.280 | And my tip would be, don't just talk about the weather, which is the way we describe

01:20:39.880 | a lot of conversation that couples have, which is, hey, what's the weather like today?

01:20:44.920 | That's really negative seven this morning.

01:20:46.760 | That was crazy.

01:20:47.480 | So instead of talking about the external world, ask questions that invite the other person

01:20:53.000 | to talk about their internal world.

01:20:54.520 | How are you really doing?

01:20:55.640 | What's exciting for you right now?

01:20:57.080 | What are you afraid of?

01:20:58.280 | Just ask different questions would be my main tip.

01:21:01.240 | You guys need your own 8080 card deck of cards with questions.

01:21:04.680 | There's your next product.

01:21:06.120 | There you go.

01:21:07.560 | OK, this is awesome.

01:21:08.840 | Thank you guys so much for being here.

01:21:10.680 | This was so much fun.

01:21:11.640 | Thank you for having us.

01:21:12.440 | Thanks so much for having us.

01:21:13.560 | I really hope you enjoyed this episode.

01:21:17.320 | Thank you so much for listening.

01:21:19.080 | If you haven't already left a rating and a review for the show in Apple Podcasts or Spotify,

01:21:24.040 | I would really appreciate it, especially Spotify, since they just added podcast ratings.

01:21:29.720 | And if you have any feedback on the show, questions for me, or just want to say hi,

01:21:33.640 | I'm chris@allthehacks.com or @hutchins on Twitter.

01:21:37.880 | That's it for this week.

01:21:38.920 | I'll see you next week.

01:21:41.720 | I want to tell you about another podcast I love that goes deep on all things money.

01:21:53.400 | That means everything from money hacks to wealth building to early retirement.

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