We Can't Switch Off From the Business. Is That Normal?

If you and your partner run a business together and you cannot switch off from it, I want to take something off your shoulders. The problem is not your discipline, it is the goal. You have tried to leave it at the door. Lying in bed, one of you still turning over tomorrow. At dinner, the thing that went wrong today sitting behind your eyes. You try harder, it does not work, and you decide something is wrong with you. Nothing is wrong with you. When two people share a business, it lives in both your heads all day. You cannot close the door on it at 6 o'clock because a shared business does not have a door. So stop trying to switch it off completely. That goal is why every attempt has failed. You are competing with the business for hours and it always has more hours than you do. You lose that fight every time. Here is what works instead, and it is smaller than anything you have already tried. 10 to 15 minutes a day. Phones down, no problem solving. You ask how the other one really is. Not the business, them. You listen without jumping in to fix it. You hold back the advice you are dying to give. You say, "Thank you for telling me." That is the whole habit. It sounds too small to matter against a business that fills both your minds all day. That is exactly why it works. You are not switching the business off. You are switching each other on for 10 minutes on purpose, protected. Christine and I tried for years to legislate the business out of our evenings. We failed every time. What worked was 10 minutes most nights asking how the other one actually was and meaning it. You cannot switch the business off. You can switch each other on for 10 minutes a day, and that is enough to build a marriage on top of a shared business instead of underneath it. If the business is quietly taken every hour and you want it back, take the free 2-minute conflict check at grantwattie.com/start.