I like to imagine on Friday mornings, my writing morning, that I’ll sit down at my desk, calm, reflective and full of inspiration to write something meaningful and profound. The kids will leave me alone, even though I’m sitting in the middle of our open plan kitchen and lounge, and I’ll start my writing session feeling powerful and focused… In reality I’ve just spent the last 30 minutes getting Frank to brush his teeth and Alice to sit down, with her uniform on, so I can brush her hair. These two simple tasks take less than 4 minutes in total but it takes 30 minutes for the kids to stop mucking around and actually do it.
I sat down to write as the three of them left the house to ride to school. I was finally ready for this zen like writing wave to wash over me when I realised that my family had left all the doors wide open. All of them. It feels like 4 degrees in Ballarat this morning - which is actually not that bad - however it's certainly not warm enough to be leaving all the doors open. It baffles me how absent minded my family can be. I love them dearly but I often find myself pointing out the most obvious things that have been overlooked. For example, it’s become a running joke with Frank putting his tee shirts on back to front or/and around the wrong way almost every time. He simply doesn’t care or notice. I still give him a round of applause if he gets it right because it happens so infrequently. He’s nearly 10.
Understanding that people don’t care about the same things you do is a constant theme that affects all areas of one’s life. I care that Frank has his tee shirt on back to front, he doesn’t. The act itself doesn’t affect me at all other than having a 9 year old that looks like he can’t dress himself. Frank’s not bothered at the moment, I imagine that will change as he gets older but he doesn’t care about it today. From my perspective, I’m bringing in 42 years of lived experience, bias and expectations. The set of values and ideals I hold (lightly of course) have been shaped by everything that has ever happened to me. Frank is working from a similar spot, he is just drawing from the life experiences of a 9 year old boy. In his mind, he’s wearing the tee shirt so what’s the problem?
The problem is that you’re not doing it how I would do it! It's annoying. I know better than him in this instance and he’s doing it wrong. This is a relatively minor issue in our house but the situation is repeated, in varying degrees, everywhere. For example this year Matt has been working from home and getting the kids sorted for school in the morning. This was my job for the previous 8 years as he would go to work at 5am everyday. Over those 8 years I developed a pretty shit hot system of getting kids fed and ready for daycare, then lunches made when they started school and even managed to bring exercise into the schedule. It was a tried and true system that I had developed, iterated upon and improved for the best outcome. Matt blew my system up on day one. He did things completely differently and it drove me nuts! All of my fine tuning over the years vanished overnight.
It took me longer than expected to come to terms with the fact that he is going to do things differently to me and my energy is best spent going with it rather than fighting it. At the end of the day the kids were getting to school on time and with a full lunch box. Both of our systems reached the same outcome, his just looked very different from mine. I had to let it go.
You really have to assume that everyone is doing the task at hand the best they can. With Matt, his unique life experiences had all fed into the way he approached the kids morning routine. The other thing to remember is that he just cares about things differently to me. My system was set up so most of the tasks were done before the kids got up so I could sit down and eat brekkie with them. Matt doesn’t eat breakfast so he is happy to make the lunches whilst chatting to the kids as they eat. It doesn’t bother him that he is doing something whilst chatting to the kids, in fact, he quite likes being in the kitchen cooking food and talking to people. When we have parties, he’d prefer this while I’d rather have everything done before people arrive.
In the professional realms understanding these different approaches is even more important because you're working together as a team to achieve a common goal. The ultimate payoff is the diversity of experience creates a richness of ideas and the team blooms together. The down side is feeling that people don’t care about what they’re doing as much as you do. Or maybe you’re the one who doesn’t care about it.
This bothers me only because we spend so much time at work that doing something that you don’t care about seems like a waste of time. I appreciate that I’m a pretty purpose driven person but gone are the days of staying with one company for 40 years then retiring. If you graduated from high school this year you’re likely to have 5 to 7 different careers. Young people are more likely to follow their values than loyalty to one company.
Being able to work with others is an imposition all of us will have for the rest of our lives. Appreciating that people, even people we love dearly, will have different perspectives from us is a given. You're best to assume that everyone is doing the best they can because they probably are.
