Scheduling vs. Spontaneity: How We Actually Make Decisions

Hi, I'm Matthew Greger.

And I'm Nancy Greger.

We have this new podcast called "We Should Probably Edit This." But we won't. What are you doing?

I'm getting myself fluffed up. I'm a girl of the '80s, which means I have to have big hair.

The things we do.

Big hair.

The things we do.

Can't help it. No hair, big hair. No hair, big hair.

Well, I guess that's just the way it is.

That's who we are. Hello. Hi.

Hi.

Okay. How are you?

Good. How are you?

Good, we're back again. Woo!

No, we're back once a week.

Whoops, back again.

Yeah, back again.

Back again.

Alright, so what are we talking about this time around?

I don't know. What do you want to talk about? You start.

How about just the way we make decisions or don't make decisions? Like getting ready for dinner.

Dinner. I— you like, after we've eaten dinner, you like to prep what's going to happen tomorrow.

Well, I'm trying to plan ahead.

Sometimes, sometimes planning ahead is okay, but other times we could plan the menu and then that day comes along and I'm not really feeling what's on the menu.

Um, isn't that most of the time?

Yeah, it could be most of the time. I also like to go out But then that leads to another askabane.

Yeah, so if it's, if it's, if it's not something that we know and you say, oh, let's go try this. Yeah, that can always end up in a, in a bad experience, like this weekend.

Yeah, like this weekend. Yeah, was it Friday? It was Friday. We went out to dinner Friday.

Saturday?

No, today is Sunday. Okay, we went out to dinner Friday, right? Because I said, I don't want to cook, even though— did I take— yeah, I would— I did take something out.

Yeah, we were going to have chicken wings, which I destroyed last night.

Well, that was a different story, but we, we, we did go out to dinner and we—

well, we were trying to figure out a, a Mexican restaurant to go to.

We tried to figure out what we wanted to eat, so we eliminate what we don't want.

Okay, so that's the easier part. Then it's like narrowing down what we want to eat.

Yeah.

And, and Um, yeah, so we finally decided that we were going to go to— for Mexican restaurant, and we had a couple recommendations.

No, no people we knew recommended.

No, there's somebody that I knew recommended two places in Fairfield.

Yeah.

And I found another one that was in Darien, which was a little closer, which is— which is the same restaurant but just in Darien. And so we decided, let's look a little bit further, and saw this other one, said, oh, this one looks good, so let's try that. But the mistake we made is we should have decided that when we walked in, we just said, well, let's go take a look at both of them and then decide which one we want to go to, because they were right next to each other. Yeah, not very far. And we should have known when we first looked in there that there wasn't a big crowd. And then, then it's like you have to order at the register. You don't even get service.

No, you get a number and then they bring you.

Yeah, so you don't get, you don't, you don't get waited on.

And it's really fast.

And, and yeah. Yeah, and I really, if I'm gonna go out to dinner, I want to go to the full service. Unless it's during the middle of the week and we're picking something up because we need to, you know, just make it go through. But on the weekend, if I'm gonna go out, I want to have a little bit more of an experience.

Yeah, that didn't work out.

No, and then the food was, yeah.

It wasn't, it wasn't, what we were hoping for.

Right. And that's the other thing. If we go out, we would like to have a good dinner.

Well, you know that if you're going to be spending money going out, you want to make it worth your while, right? You want to have something that you know that— because let's face it, two people going out to dinner can run you anywhere between, you know, $60 to $200. It all depends, right? Really, it depends on if you have alcohol or you don't have alcohol.

Well, that we don't have to worry about right now.

Well, but we did. You see, we went, we did two things. We showed up and should have made an assessment that this was not going to be the place we wanted, and then we ordered— each one of us ordered a margarita. So dinner ended up being a little bit more than what we had anticipated, and it wasn't great.

No, and we didn't even drink the margarita.

We didn't even finish the margarita. So that kind of just set the tone. So we just said, okay, let's just go home. And—

but is that a— is that from a lack of scheduling and spontaneousness? So who's— who's more— who wants to schedule things and who wants to do things spontaneously?

You're the scheduler. I'm— I can just go with it.

You can just go? Okay.

I mean, it's no different than when I make dinner. Sometimes we could say I'm going to make this, but then I'm looking at it, I'm like, yeah, I don't really want that. So what am I going to make? What's— what could be different? That always doesn't always agree with you because you get fixated on, I thought we were doing this, and then I change it up and you're like, I really wanted the other thing.

I just want more vegetables.

I made you vegetables. I made vegetables. I'll make you vegetables. I'm just not a really big vegetable person. And okay, whip it up in a smoothie. I'll do it that way. Eating it straight off the plate is not my thing. Okay, but that was like one of the things. I mean, you like, you like to schedule things, everything, vacation, all of it. I'm more like, this is the destination we're going, this is when we're going, let's just see how things—

well, who's the one that buys the plane tickets?

You. Okay, I left that all up to you, and as long as you follow certain criteria— I do list the criteria of what you have to do, of when I like to go, how I like to go. If it's a more than a 2-hour flight, there are certain rules that go with that. So I give you the ability to buy things, but not without knowing—

no, you're not giving me the ability to buy things. You're, you're asking me to do the work.

You could do the work, but you have the interior to do the work. Besides, if I jump in and I say to you, I did this, this, you'll say to me, I'm gonna look.

Yeah, you'll usually— you will forget something, or you'll— it'll be something off. And then that's the question. The question is, is it's what I consider being off.

There you go.

You know, or not, or not quite right.

Look, there are things that you do much better than I do, and one of them is really the internet. You're really good at researching things, finding things. Pinning things down, you know, that's not me. That's you. That's not me. So that's okay. It's okay. You can't clean to save your life, but that's okay. I, I pick up the stuff.

I can clean, but I just stuck in— I'm just stuck in one area for a long time because when I do, it's like I want it to be more thorough.

So when I do it, it's not thorough?

No, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that I probably—

you fixed it.

Well, no, it's that perfectionism in me that wants to just have it be a perfect job versus just a good job. So, so, wrong terminology to use.

If, if it's a matter of dusting, it's dusting. It's not making it so that the wood looks brand new. It's dusting. It's a matter of vacuuming.

I know, but I guess I'll go, I'll go, I'll— when I'm dusting, I may go a little bit.

When was the last time you dusted?

Just last week with the pollen on the porch. I'm just saying, when I do something, I'll probably go in areas that you wouldn't normally do, like the top of the picture frames or something like that. I would do those things when they don't necessarily need to be done. I get it. But if I'm doing it, then I'm going to do it.

This is from somebody who obviously hasn't seen me go ahead and do a cleaning. Because I do dust and I go on the top of the picture frames and I go below and I dust the, the edges of the radiators so that you could pick up the dust there. Yeah, about you doing that part of it, but okay.

No, I would do that too.

Sure.

Okay, well, like if I mop the bathroom floor, I'm actually gonna get on my hands and knees and go all around the toilet and, um, around the, around the, um, same jump.

I don't have to get on my hands and knees and I could still still do it effectively. It's all a matter of—

I guess I get in there like the one downstairs. I get in there and actually scrub. I scrub the grout.

That's the one thing I allow you to do.

I know, I'm just saying that's where I may overdo it.

You may overdo it. This is true. You may overdo it. Things take a little bit longer, just like cooking for you takes a little bit longer. Dicing.

Mm-hmm.

That's why when I—

probably because I don't have enough experience.

When I dice, I dice. Finely chopped.

Yeah, I'd rather have bigger pieces.

You have big chunks.

Not big chunks.

You have big chunks. I don't like big chunks.

Well, it depends on— nope— on what you consider big chunks.

Big chunks, big chunks, big chunks.

It's not good.

It's not worthwhile. It doesn't cook all the way through. It makes— yeah, I don't like it. That's why I'll, I'll cook dinner, and majority of the times I can do it in 30 minutes or less. Oh, I'm proud of you.

But you have more experience.

That's right. In, in your defense, when we had small children and we had to cook for the masses, we had to be— we had to get things moving because we needed to get from point A to point B. We needed to get the kids fed, the everything wound down to get ready for the next stay.

Yeah, yeah.

So that required, uh, Mom's precision of trying to do certain things because it was Mom's timing more than precision. Let me just put it that way.

Back then, it would— the, the finely diced things weren't necessarily as critical as they are now.

No, they still are.

They— no, they— there was a big thing, slid a little bit more with that.

We just, we just ate more processed foods, I think, right, back then than we do now.

Now we were, we're not into the processed foods, we cultivate everything as fresh as we possibly can, which takes more work, which does take more work, more work and preparation.

Yeah, when your kids are little, you don't have any issues with processed foods because you, you're on the time zone. You have—

yeah, that was probably something we should have done better at now, knowing now.

But yeah, you know, if we go back and we start reflecting what we know now and how we should have been then, it doesn't It doesn't go back. I don't go back.

No, we don't go back, but we have lessons to share. The people that are in it now, that you're in it now.

Yeah, yeah, but it's a different time. Just like when the kids were little, there wasn't phones, uh, iPhones and all that other stuff. We still had— we still had a landline. Of course, of course. I'm sure people looking—

we had—

what was the landline?

We had one computer that the kids could use. Not everybody had their own thing, and they didn't have a phone or a device or no laptops, no iPads. It was either video games or the iMac.

Yes.

And the iMac had timers on it. Yes. I know they had found ways around that, and they found ways around my restrictions. Yeah, that I put on it.

You know, they were inventive, those little humans. Yeah, they figured things out. But then you figured it out too, so there you go. But yeah, I mean, everybody does things differently. Just like sometimes our date nights are— people would look up and say, what, you're going where? Like the time we went to Home Depot on our anniversary. Why did we end up at Home Depot?

I can't remember. Home Depot or Lowe's, one of those two.

One of the two. But we ended up— I thought we were dressed too. Dressed to go somewhere? We were dressed to go out somewhere.

We might have needed something for the next day for a project or something.

Yeah, and I think we went, we had dinner, and then, and then we said, oh, we still have time.

Still early?

Let's go, let's go and get, and get what we need.

Are you talking about last year or recently?

No, this is a while back.

I know, I know we've had several home improvement trips as our date.

Yeah, people think—

shop and grocery shopping.

People do think we're very obsessive when it comes to home improvement stuff. We've done a lot of things ourselves, mainly because we didn't have the money to hire somebody to go do it. I think if we had a choice and we could hire somebody to go do it, we probably would have.

Yeah, or it's— or it's time to do stuff in the yard and we—

no, no, yards are different. That's, that's a different thing. I'm talking about, you know, Fixing the floor, painting. That's your favorite, you know, you love painting.

There we go. We can talk about, we can talk about something being perfectionism there. It's like you just go and you come back with paint all over you. Well, we've talked about that before. I know, and I'm just stuck with the one little trim part that I'm doing.

Yeah, okay, this straight line.

But, um, yeah, but date, date, I think date nights are important. At this time in our life though too.

They were important all the time. Yes, every opportunity we could have gotten to go out on a date on our own, we would.

Even with the kids?

When the kids were little, I think that was probably more important then. Yeah, well, when the kids were little, I don't— well, we didn't have family around us, so we couldn't count on moms and dads.

Babysitter. So we'd have to be always worried about what's going on.

No, I wasn't worried about what's going on. I'm more like, okay, let's— how much time do we have?

Yeah, before we have to get back.

Yeah, before we have to get back. I don't think I ever worried that much, uh, about them because I wouldn't leave my kids unless I felt very comfortable with who I was leaving them with. So if there was any sense of anxiety, then I wouldn't have left them. So, so I was good with that. But I do think it's important to try to get as much one-on-one time.

Even if that means going to the grocery store together or going to the home improvement store.

Okay, back then, those are two areas that you know what my feeling is about going to the home improvement store.

Yeah, you're there just to really help me just think through what I'm trying to do. You're my sounding board. So that I can listen to myself as I talk it out loud and say, because I'm not going to offer you anything. No, this is how I plan— this is how I plan to do it. So I really just need to hear myself think through the— are these the right parts?

My favorite is we have to find the woman to go with the man.

You already talked about that.

My plumbing parts, those are— those are always fun. That was always a fun deal. But we go because we have to. We were getting We need to get things done. We need to—

yeah, well, it's just like you, especially if it's a Friday night, we don't want to spend half our day on Saturday going to the stores to get things. We want to work on the project because you don't have a lot of time.

No, we don't. You got 2 days off. Yeah, you got 2 days off of work, which means you have to do things. And we always used to laugh when we used to watch those Home Improvement shows and how quickly they could do things, and they're like, wow, they're really moving Yeah, that's all the illusion of television.

Television time is a lot more crew reality time, right?

There's a giant work crew behind.

You don't see that part behind them.

You don't, you don't see all the people behind them, all the little workers trying to make sure they can wrap it up in a week. Yeah, and you're like, what? They— people on TV could do it in a week, why can't we do it in a weekend? And it doesn't work out that way. It's just like crazy that way, but it's you know, scheduling, being spontaneous, you know, the differences between the two. I think that's what helps the— our marriage kind of continue on and be married as long as we've been married. Um, we are not the same people. We are—

we have some of the same values and directions.

We have the same values and directions of where we want to go.

But I think it's important also not to be the same. Yeah, I mean, that's what— that's what kind of, you know, makes us stable in our own way. On our own, we're very unstable.

By ourselves, we're like—

but together we can really— so together we could—

well, that is true. I will admit that is true. There is a sense of balance.

I wouldn't want to live by myself or be on my own. Or only have to talk to myself, that's for sure. I could see why, how that could be a problem.

That could be a problem. But sometimes, I mean, you were just recently by yourself for a night and a day. A night and a day.

Sometimes I think that's needed too, to have that time, whether it's, you know, a day or you go on a trip or something by yourself for a short period of time, or or I was to go out fishing, you know, I think you need to have your own thing that you like doing too. It can't always be together. We can't always be together. No, I mean, like, I go— I like to go play tennis. You're not going to do that.

I don't go play tennis. You— I usually say go make friends. Go ahead, you go make friends, and then let me know who those people are. But that's it. I think that's important though. It's important to have your own things that you like to do by yourself, and you're okay being by yourself doing it.

Yeah, but truthfully, I actually— I would like to be able to do things with people, whether it's you or someone else, meaning a friend, you know, to go do something with. I do think there's something about having that community and that engagement, that discussion, being able to discuss things. That's why, I mean, I like— generally like being around you, and doing things together. Really? Okay, so you don't feel the same. All right, now I'm hurt.

No, no, no, I didn't say that. I didn't say that. No, I understand. That's— that's— it's important. But I think when you're an adult, it's hard to make friends. When you're—

when you're an adult, hard to make friends.

It's hard to make friends when you're an adult.

Acquaintances or actual real friends that you can go do something?

Actual real friends. Acquaintances, I think we've got that down.

Well, I think you have to find something that you like doing, um, that can also— where you can also meet somebody else. Like playing tennis, you know, I like playing tennis. I'm hopeful that I'm going to meet someone there that I can maybe play with. Beyond the classes that I'm taking, you know, and maybe develop a friendship there with it. Um, I mean, I think it's got to be something around what you like doing. Yeah, or at least someone that has the same kind of values that you do, whether it's like you meet somebody at church or you meet somebody, um, in something that you like doing.

Yeah, that's probably true.

I mean, that's how we met our friends in Ultra. Well, that's, that's like-mindedness, right?

Yeah, those are definitely like-minded people because if you were part of the Ultra community, you're a certain type of person. You're definitely, you're kind of all walks of life. It's not one or the other. Um, and everybody had different stages in their lives. Um, some younger people, some older people. And lots of in-between. So that's a different— that's a little different, but it is in line with what you're saying, putting yourself in a room with like-minded people that are all going through the same situation that you're going through.

I mean, they're all trying to work on themselves. They're on a personal growth journey, right? Which we'll dive into deeper in another episode, but it's important to be around those people. Am I making you tired?

No, I'm probably gonna—

yeah, well, these kind of days where it's cloudy, spotty sun out there and it's barely 60 degrees, I know that, um, I just want to get warmed up. I want to get— I want to feel— I want to get warmed up.

Oh, keep your hands— this is a G-rated show.

Uh, that's okay. We don't— it's not very X-rated very often, so.

Oh, it will never be X-rated. Not even often. It would never happen, right? It never happened. Well, that's, that's good. So as far as scheduling is concerned, dinners are concerned, spontaneity is concerned, well, I mean, traveling is concerned, we've gotten better because we've done a lot of traveling. I would say in the last 3 years we've done a lot of travel.

We've gotten pretty good with our carry-on. We can stretch that. We can stretch the carry-on to almost 2 weeks, I think.

Almost 2 weeks?

At this point, yeah.

Oh, I don't know.

Oh, something froze. Hopefully that didn't freeze freeze.

Uh, it looked to me like it's frozen.

Yep, I'm not sure.

Hmm. We might be ending this. We're having technical difficulties.

We shouldn't— we, um, probably should edit this, but we won't.

But we won't.

Let's see where it's— let's see.

Um, you don't see anything.

It's very blurred out.

Look at your phone. Maybe your phone did something.

I can't change it to something else.

So, oh, we might have to, we might have to redo this.

No, no, stop it and then just, I'll just add the end to it.

Okay, so what's that noise?

There we go. Oh, we're back.

Whoa. All right, so, and then it zoomed in.

Yeah, so we'll have to figure out what, where we left off. It's really like, yeah, I don't know, but we were talking about traveling, right, and about being, about packing, about getting better.

We've done better. We've done pretty good.

Yeah, but we could almost do 2 weeks, almost do 2 weeks. I think we could, as long as we've had a place to wash some clothes.

Yes.

And we figured that out now too, to take those disposable, disposable, um, detergent sheets. Yeah, those sheets with us, because you know how I am about scents.

Yeah, you know, got to be fragrance-free. Yes, it's all fragrance-free. But yet when we go places That's not always—

most of them are.

Hotels are, yeah.

A lot of them, because people have sensitivities to smells.

The only place we don't see that is with our children. They don't believe in that. Our children love scents.

Smellies. They love good smellies.

They love that kind of stuff. It's Then maybe it doesn't smell clean unless it— that's something.

Unless it smells like Febreze or, or, um, what are those other— what are those shaky things you put in the, in the wash?

Bounce?

In the— no, in the, in the washing machines and stuff, the whatever they are, the scent, the scent smelling, um, the scent smelling stuff. Yeah, I don't know. I know Febreze is the stuff you spray on, on furniture, stuff like that, whatever it is. Anyways, the smelly crystal stuff.

Oh, that, that goes in the dryer. That doesn't go in the wash.

I don't know.

Anyways, anyways, we don't use that.

No, everything is scent-free.

Scent-free. I add perfume on.

Yeah, and that was an adventure itself to find a perfume that would go. You had one that you really loved and then you couldn't get it.

They discontinued it. And so then you begin the quest again to find perfume.

Yep. And it has to be agreeable.

It— well, for both of us, yes, definitely, definitely. But yeah, that's always, that's always a fun thing because I like perfume. I don't like perfume that overwhelms me. I like perfume.

Yeah. So, and I like— she smells good. I like— I look— I like perfume too when it's, when it's just right and And when it's on you, when is that overwhelmingly— yeah, or you'll be, you'll be, you'll be walking or you'll be going into a restaurant and you'll be sitting next to someone that, oh my God, it just ruins your whole palate of the food.

You remember when that, when the boys were, were young and they— yes, and they, they would spray—

that was the middle school and high school years where they, they had to When they got to high school though, they started going into colognes. Okay.

When they got into high school— not—

okay, okay.

If we purchased that for, for Christmas, that's what they use.

I think the Axe was more middle school because you're all of a sudden have your, your body becomes more smelly than it used to.

Yeah, that was overwhelming.

That's just the cover-up.

Yeah, those, those were really bad days. Those are really, really tough times. Middle school, I, I'm I don't— I don't— I give all credits to parents going through middle school. It's not a fun period of time. It's not fun.

No, no, no, no.

I have a granddaughter who's going through middle school next year.

She'll start—

she starts middle school.

I know. Can you believe that?

No, I can't believe that we have a granddaughter who's going to be going into middle school.

Well, you're the best looking grandma that I know.

Thank God, I want to be the best looking grandma you can find.

What about me?

You're the best looking grandpa. Okay, there you go.

See, I have to ask for that.

No, but it's, it's a, it's a given. Okay, it's a given. We try to look our best, we try to be our best.

Well, that's all what it's all about, someone our best. It may not always come out that way, or they may not think that way, but we really are trying to do the best we can.

Do the best we can.

That's right.

Each and every moment. Okay, well, um, we should probably edit this.

Wait, are you— are we going to switch it around today?

I'm going to switch it out. We should probably edit this, but we won't. There you go.

All right then, until next time.

Until next time.

See you later.

Bye-bye.

Make sure to follow us.

Yes, please, and like us. Like us. And if you have any suggestions on what you'd like us to talk about, let us know.

We do have a few years of experience that we can share things.

Just a few.

Just a few. We should probably edit this, but we won't. Bye.