Episode 45: How to negotiate in daily life

Sometimes it’s not a major deal or a promotion, but it’s about the small decisions you make daily.

From the moment you wake up, the decisions for the day have already started. For example, when do you intend to wake up and why? Each of these decisions are mini-negotiations sometimes with yourself and sometimes with others.

From college we were always told - fun, grades, sleep. You can only have 2 and never all 3. That compromise still exists in our lives post-graduation as well.

For me, it shows up in 4 areas: wake-up time, exercise, cooking, relationships, and resting/recharging.

Exercise

The build-up: Roughly this time last year, I committed myself to get back into running. In order to do that I needed to go to physical therapy and fix some old injuries. My initial timeline of March was missed because of new issues but it ended up being good by May.

I negotiated with my wife to spend the money on new outfits and running shoes. I upgraded my Apple watch since it would die after one workaround. I got an armband for my phone to make it easy, and I would even spend hours looking at running glasses and headbands.

Now, it came down to doing it consistently. Some days I fought the lack of motivation and ran late in the evening or despite being hungry. Some days, I finished work and immediately ran before doing anything else. Some days I woke up early and started my day with a run.

What changed: I still don’t run every day - far from it. The agreement with myself evolves every day but the headline is movement every day. It doesn’t matter if it’s a long walk, 1 mile run, run + weight life, or just walking around the mall. I need to get movement (measured by my exercise rings on my apple watch) every day without compromise.

The result: My weight has consistently been dropping and it’s been easier to keep the commitment of exercise since I have the flexibility to choose how I get that exercise in. For example, yesterday I wasn’t motivated to go to the gym, so my wife and I walked around the Domain (mall area) for a few hours. We decided to eat at Cava and because we were eating out also committed to walking 15 min there (~1 mile) and then 15 min back (~1 mile).

Cooking

The build-up: To cook or to not cook - this is the question. For some, it’s a no-brainer to eat out consistently. It’s the cost <> convenience calculation. For me, I actually really enjoy cooking. I find it a great way to turn my brain off from work.

The challenge is having the ingredients beforehand (we don’t like to eat the same meals over and over so meal prepping is out) and we grocery shop once a week or two so fresh ingredients rarely last that long.

Depending on the intensity of my workload and my workout schedule, I either have motivation to make something more complex (e.g. schwarma) or something lazy (e.g. buying pre-made schwarma and just making tzatziki).

The agreement with my wife is I cook (which also includes grocery shopping) and she cleans. So with daily fresh meals it can be a challenge to have the right ingredients to make something fresh. Sometimes on the weekend I had cycles to create a meal plan for the week, buy all the ingredients and then stick to the plan and other weeks it’s the last thing on my list.

What changed: Going back to flexibility, that really helps get us through the week now. Before we were in a cost <> convenience battle and convenience almost always won. Now I choose 2-3 complex meals that will require a lot of ingredients and then put in pickup orders for my wife to get.

The result: We have some lazy meals and some fresh meals throughout the week. It’s never set in stone and I try to find healthier, faster alternatives as backups to ease the pressure of deviating from the plan.

Resting/Recharging

The build-up: I used to think rest was solely about how much I was sleeping. I experimented with things like minimizing screen time at night or charging my phone across the room to see how it affected my sleep.

Sometimes it worked well and sometimes my brain would be going for hours after I got in bed where I was thinking about my day or what I wanted to get done the next day. I tried different journaling apps to get some of these thoughts out of my head to see if that helped my brain calm down / get sleep faster and therefore feel more rested the next day. This had mixed results, but was never consistent.

I started investing in my sleep — different pillow, cooling sheets, blanket, humidifier, temperature sensor in the room etc and this definitely helped but then the moment I left home I wasn’t able to sleep anymore (or at least not as quickly). I tried showering before bed, working out to tire myself to sleep or just starting earlier and then getting in bed when I was tired.

I learned about melatonin and started talking a half dose regularly (being sure to cycle on/off to keep my tolerance) and that cut the time it takes me to sleep from 2-3 hours down to < 1 hour. That was one of the most effective ways I changed my sleep pattern.

What changed: Ultimately what changed the game is bucketing the things that gave me energy and the things that took away energy. The times I wasn’t sleeping well always mapped back to a) doing too many things that took away energy and/or b) not doing enough things that gave me energy.

For example, building things from scratch gives me energy. Mentoring/teaching others gives me energy. The reminder I give myself is you can’t fill up someone else’s cup when yours is empty but in my case filling up someone else’s cup is one of the ways I can fill my own (when I choose to do it vs. when someone is asking me)

The result: I say no to things often even when they sound really exciting and re-evaluate how I’m spending my time. Sometimes things that I committed to change from giving me energy to taking energy and I have to find something to counteract. When I can’t, I figure out how to take that the things that are just taking from me out of my life.

It means I go back on things I committed to seeing through, so I try to recommend someone else that can step in but this has really helped me wake up actually feeling refreshed (no matter the hours of sleep I get).

This newsletter is also one of the things that really gives me energy - especially talking to people about the takeaways they found relevant for their own life. It’s one of the many reasons I continue to prioritize writing on this on a weekly basis.

As always, feedback is a gift and I welcome any/all feedback on this episode. See ya next week 👋 !

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✨ Special thank you to Gigi Marquez who suggested I start this newsletter 🙏