Learning One Way Not to Overcommit

Do you have a problem with over-scheduling yourself (and/or your kids)? Here's one little trick that I've found useful. 

Do you have a skill you want to learn? Or one you want to help me teach other dads? Get in touch at skillsfordads@gmail.com or on instagram @skillsfordads. 

Transcript

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Are you feeling too busy and overwhelmed? Well, hi, feeling too busy and overwhelmed? I'm Dan. Welcome to Skills for Dance, the show where each week we look at one skill that can be useful in our lives as parents. My name's Will, and I'm not an expert in any of these things. That's the whole point. We all have things we can learn and ways we can help each other grow in little consistent ways that are good for us and for the people around us. Thanks for joining me. So one of the big themes of this kind of season of growth that I've been in lately is this theme of trying to grow in terms of reliability, of trying to be a reliable person. And one of the things that I actually have found myself talking to my daughter about is the idea of underpromising and over-delivering. And I will be honest, it is not a thing that I am very good at at all. So if you're listening to this podcast, you have heard that when I give the intro, I talk about this being a weekly podcast. And when I initially launched this podcast, I did really like the idea of a weekly episode format. And I do still really like that idea. But I also have to acknowledge that I'm not at a point in terms of my life and my career and my parenting and all of that, where I can reliably produce a high-quality podcast episode every week. And of course, this, you know, this is really a hobby for me, you know, and so I can't push aside other priorities in order to do this. And so being able to say that, even though it's a little bit, well, late, kind of a little bit backwards way of trying to practice this idea of reliability, I am going to say that going forward, I am not going to say that each week we will have a new episode. Obviously, it's been a little more than a week. It's been almost two weeks since the last episode. And, you know, in hindsight, I could have very easily just said, you know, we're going to just take one week off for the 4th of July. But again, you know that this is not my full-time job. It's just a hobby. And so I know that, you know, all three of you who are listening are going to be understanding of the fact that I'm going to be a little more flexible and claim a little more flexibility for my time and for this schedule here. And that also does conveniently bring me to the skill that I'm suggesting we take a look at today. And that's a skill that's related to not overcommitting. And there are a lot of ways that people approach that, but there's one idea in particular that I ran across recently, and that was this idea of a 24-hour hold. And I thought that was a really interesting idea. I had a little resistance to it at first when I first encountered it, I'll admit, because I thought to myself, can I really get away with that? Now, maybe I should, before I go too much further on that, I should give some explanation in terms of what I mean by a 24-hour hold. And basically it's this idea in terms of scheduling that when you're presented with an an ask, a request to put something into your schedule, to get something on your calendar, you can say, Hey, I need to double check my calendar on that one. I will get back to you tomorrow. Now that does a few really neat things. Maybe this seems like so obvious, but but it wasn't that obvious when I when I heard it. And I realized that that idea gives you time to actually think about where this scheduling request fits in terms of your priorities. I know sometimes I'll find myself committing to do something kind of in the heat of the moment because I feel pressured to make a decision about whether or not a thing is going to be a priority for me. And so then I'll feel like I have to make that decision more quickly than I'm able to actually think about it. On the flip side, sometimes I'll delay making a decision and almost sort of end up what? Kind of making a decision through indecision. This is neither of those things. This is saying I'm going to take one day, I'm going to take 24 hours to think about that. I will give you this answer tomorrow. Not an indefinite delay and not the pressure of answering right this moment. And I mean, in most situations, that's okay. Obviously, there are some situations where whoever is asking you this might need a quicker response from you. And there could be various reasons for that, and some of them might be really good reasons, but most of the time it's going to be okay to take 24 hours. And in fact, if the person who is asking you about whatever this thing is can't give you that time, can't wait until the next day, until tomorrow to get an answer about whatever this thing is, it might also be worth asking the question, okay, is that actually my problem? Or is this so urgent because the other person waited until the last minute to ask me if I could do this thing? Well, and then if that's the case, then you need to think about okay, what kind of relationship do I have with this person and how many favors do I owe them? Right. But in general, I think this is a really good idea. And I really want to try and practice it more. And, you know, this is one of those general life skills, of course, but I do think that it is legitimately a parenting skill, a good candidate for a skill for dads, because I know as a parent, I mean, I find myself having to balance all of these different competing demands for my time and you know, our our schedules and our kids' schedules are one of those things that are are constantly kind of tugging at us as parents. And and so I really love this idea of this 24-hour hold. And when I first heard about it, I did think, as I said before, you know, is that is that gonna be something I can get away with? Is it gonna be something that's gonna be weird in terms of my interactions with other people? And you know, maybe you don't want to do it all the time. I I don't know if I want to get a reputation, kind of cultivate a reputation for you know never being available, never being able to commit to scheduling request. But if you do it in a moment where it is reasonable, it's and it's gonna feel reasonable if it is reasonable. And and you know, it just so happened actually right after I learned about this idea, I actually had the opportunity to just experience somebody doing this in a context that that I was part of and sort of was able to witness. The point of the story being it was totally normal as I watch this other person communicate, you know, yeah, I'll let them know tomorrow I need to double check this. It's not a big deal, right? And so I want to start practicing this particularly when I get a request to do something that falls into time that is supposed to be family time, that ordinarily would be time that I would have free to spend with my daughter. And the thing is that with my particular work, I'm a pastor, a lot of times that can happen because a lot of the times that church members want to schedule something is you know not during the usual weekday, workday hours, or not during the usual school day hours, but a lot of times it is weekend stuff and evening stuff, because you know, the church is mostly, you know, a volunteer organization. I'm you know one of the few paid staff people in the context that I I work in. And so that's when these things tend to get scheduled. And so I also know that, you know, for one thing, on the one hand, that is simply part of my job, right? That I can't never be available on weekends. That would be pretty tough as a pastor, and I can't never be available on evenings for meetings, but I also know that and have to remind myself that I am allowed to protect that family time as well. And that's that's a skill I really want to build, particularly, like I say, if I get asked to do something on a day that is supposed to be my day off, my Sabbath time, which for me typically is Friday. And when I get a request in those times, I want to make it a habit of saying, I need to take 24 hours to decide that. You know, likewise, if it's happening on one of the evenings that I have Tilly with me, you know, so that I can prioritize my time as a dad, alongside, you know, recognizing my responsibility that I do have a time commitment, that I need to commit the time that's necessary to my you know professional vocation as a pastor. And, you know, even though my job's a little more unusual as far as that goes, I think that that is applicable for any of us. So, yeah, that's you know, just a few thoughts on all of this. I am looking forward to talking to you all in our next episode, which may or may not come out next week. But it is going to come out whenever I am prepared to share another useful parenting and life skill with all of you. Thanks for listening, and as always, if you have a skill that you'd like to share, please reach out to me either on social media at Skillsfor Dads or at skillsfordads at gmail.com.