552 - Why Your Partner Doesn’t Plan Stuff (And What You Can Do About It)
What is planfulness?
Today we’re talking about planfulness, what it is, why some of us struggle with it, and what we can do to improve it. The term planfulness is used in a study by Rita M. Ludwig, Sanjay Srivastava, and Elliot T. Berkman to “describe an individual’s tendency to engage in three particular patterns of thought with respect to goals.” Planfulness consists of three different components: temporal orientation (TO), mental flexibility (MF), and cognitive strategies (CS). These three components might look like:
Temporal orientation:
I can easily identify why I have not achieved goals in the past.
I spend very little time thinking about what my life will be in the future.
Mental flexibility:
I am able to perform tasks that I find difficult or uninteresting if they help me achieve my goals.
If focusing on a goal makes me feel overwhelmed, I tend to stop working towards that goal.
Cognitive strategies:
Following a routine makes me feel stuck in a rut.
I prefer my days to be spontaneous rather than scheduled.
Planfulness is distinctly different from impulsivity or high/low motivation:
“A person who is low in motivation and/or highly impulsive is not definitionally low in planfulness; one can be unmotivated but still plan, or plan carefully then act on impulse in the spur of the moment. Also, planfulness could compensate for low motivation or high impulsivity. For example, the effects of impulsive behavior might be mitigated by adhering to specific cognitive strategies, and low levels of motivation might be overcome by reflecting on how a current action brings goal achievement closer.”
The zodiac of planfulness - what’s your planimal?
You can check out this Planfulness Scale to figure our your strengths and weaknesses when it comes to planfulness. We’ve created some distinct archetypes in the form of animals (or planimals, if you will) to describe someone who’s strong in one component but weak in the others:
The Owl: strong in temporal orientation but weak in mental flexibility and cognitive strategies. Owls may be future-focused but inflexible and limited in their ability to strategize. They often think about long-term plans and consequences but get paralyzed when plans have to change or an obstacle arises. Consider:
“But we already decided our plan for next year would be X.”
“If I can’t pull off the plan perfectly, then I shouldn’t be planning it at all.”
"I can see exactly how this will go wrong in 5 years, but I have no idea what to do about it, and any change to my plan makes me panic."
The Dolphin: Strong in mental flexibility but weak in temporal orientation and cognitive strategies. They might be adaptable but short-sighted, and are good at pivoting when plans need to change but may go through life being more reactive than proactive. A dolphin could look like a flexible, spontaneous partner who is fun to be around but might struggle to think through long-term consequences. Consider:
“I’ll just wing it and see what happens.”
“If the accommodations are all booked up, we’ll figure out something else.”
“Let’s just go with the flow and have fun as we figure it out.”
The Beaver: Someone who is strong in cognitive strategies but weak in temporal orientation and mental flexibility could look like someone who is strategic, but hyper-present focused and rigid. They can easily break down and plan out current tasks, but might struggle to connect to the bigger picture. Consider:
“I’ve planned out every single step of a possible vacation,” but hasn’t taken into account if their itinerary will work out with your schedules, ability to take time off of work, or financial picture.
“Please don’t make any changes to this plan because I’ve already figured out the optimal sequence, and I can’t think right now about how this may need to change in the future.”
Can we change planfulness?
According to the research, your planning style will feel natural to you and tends to stay the same, but it’s not set in stone. When someone is open to learning different strategies and approaches to planning and receptive to expanding the ways they think about their goals, they can learn new planning techniques pretty quickly.
However, if you’re trying to change a partner’s planfulness, make sure you distinguish a request to change around behavior rather than a request to change fundamental personality or identity (callback to episode 534: When We’re Asked to Change (And When It’s OK to Refuse).
Let’s revisit the important aspects for a request for change:
Flex your PECS! Make a request for change that is…
Positive
Good: I’d love to have a weekend where you take the lead, so I can show up feeling more focused and able to enjoy our connection more.
Bad: You never plan anything and it's exhausting always being the one to figure everything out.
Empathetic
Good: I know that you’re juggling a lot at home and at work and it’s not always easy to remember these things.
Bad: You don’t care about our time together.
Collaborative
Good: Could we try alternating? I’ll plan our date night this month, and you can plan next month.
Bad: You need to start getting your act together and pick up the burden. I refuse to do this any longer.
Specific
Good: Can we try being a little more thorough in planning x or y?
Bad: Can you get a little better at planning stuff?
Becoming more planful
According to the study referenced in the first section, “adopting a future time perspective, developing implementation intentions, and mentally contrasting the feeling of goal actualization with the current reality have been found to be especially beneficial to goal progress.”
Let’s break it down:
Adopting a future time perspective means orienting together with a partner to the future and what will or will not happen as a consequence of present-day actions. For instance:
“If we don’t plan now for when we’re going to see each other next, I’m worried that my schedule will fill up with work obligations and then it will be several weeks before we can connect.”
Developing implementation intentions means co-creating an if-then planning strategy. Ideally, this is a strategy that doesn’t rely on one person to be the trigger or the one who has to remember. For example:
“If we’re about to say goodbye at the end of a date, we’ll get our phones out and plan the next date.”
“If it’s 10pm, I’ll call my partner for our quick daily check in.”
“If I’ve finalized childcare plans for the week with my coparent, then I’ll text my partner to see when we’re both free to meet up during the week.”
Mentally contrasting the feeling of goal actualization with the current reality means imagining your desired outcome, or imagining what it might feel like when you accomplish a particular goal and then comparing it with what obstacles are present in your current situation.
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Transcript
If you find any transcription errors, please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: It's like when it comes to scheduling when to do something, for some reason that brings up a lot of anxiety for me. A lot of it's tied to this, once I've picked a time and date, assuming it affects anybody else. If it's just scheduling something for myself to do, whatever, easy, I'll just find some spot to put it in. But assuming it affects somebody else, like someone that I'm living with, or multiple friends I'm trying to make plans with, I have a lot of fear of needing to then reschedule it, which is something I really try to avoid because I value sticking to plans when you make them as much as possible. And so it brings up all those things and definitely causes me to have some anxiety about the planning of things where it's like, I want everyone to sit around a table and meet and do it together so that I'm not going to screw it up.
Jase: Welcome to the Multiamory Podcast. I'm Jase.
Emily: I'm Emily.
Dedeker: And I'm Dedeker.
Emily: We believe in looking to the future of relationships, not maintaining the status quo of the past.
Dedeker: Whether you're monogamous, polyamorous, swinging, casually dating, or if you just do relationships differently, we see you and we're here for you.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory podcast, we're talking about the concept of planfulness. In life, it's helpful to be able to think ahead and plan for things like scheduling time together, managing childcare and work obligations, or making date plans or travel plans. However, you might be dating someone who struggles with this. Maybe you're dating someone who's more spontaneous, forgetful, distracted, or living with some kind of executive functioning difficulties. Maybe you're frustrated feeling like the mental load for planning your time together is all on you. Today we're going to look at why there are individual differences in planning and planfulness. We will have fun with some animal archetypes and then what you can do to help lessen the load on yourself and make this a more enjoyable part of your relationship. If you're interested in learning more about our fundamental communication tools that we reference on this show all the time, check out our book, Multiamory: Essential Tools for Modern Relationships. It covers our most used relationship tools for all types of relationships, and you can find links to buy it at multiamory.com/book or wherever you like to get books.
Dedeker: Okay, kids. I had never even heard the term planfulness until maybe six months ago. Had y'all heard this word before?
Jase: I heard it when you said you wanted to do an episode about it.
Dedeker: Okay. I think it was the most recent.
Emily: There was an episode that we did fairly recently where we were looking at, it was the self-sabotage episode, and planfulness came up in that episode.
Dedeker: Oh, you're right. I thought it was the emotional intelligence.
Emily: episode because, I remember the emotional intelligence, self-sabotage, both of those things were discussed. And it was, I think that it was something about the self-destructive scale. And they were talking about, does this person plan or not? Do they have the ability to be planners? And then you brought up that you wanted to do an episode on this.
Dedeker: Well, it's so funny, because literally the first time I heard the word planfulness, it was from a client of mine, and I never heard it. And so I thought for sure, is this some sort of idiosyncratic language in your relationships that you've come up with? This is a word you made up, right? I mean, it's great. It's a great word. And then it was like, oh, no, I've just been in the dark, I suppose. I want to hear from the two of you, what do you think this term means? What do you think goes into planful behavior? A planful beingness, as it were.
Jase: What comes to mind for me, because this is your episode, I assume it's the type of what I would call very DD-esque behavior, very Dedeker behavior, which is overplanning everything, of being averse to uncertainty, needing to be sure everything's planned ahead of time, everything's rehearsed and prepared, and all the eventualities are accounted for. That's what comes to mind for me. But this is entirely biased by the funnel through which I've received planfulness is through you talking about this episode.
Dedeker: Okay.
Jase: And so, yeah, I think that's-- okay.
Dedeker: Emily, do you have a better answer?
Emily: A better answer? Goodness.
Jase: Wow. I should have planned my answer better. That's, oh, shoot.
Emily: Yeah, gosh. When I think of the word planfulness, I think of my mom, researching for trips ahead of time. Indeed. And also having quite a extensive itinerary. I think of when I went to Italy with her and my partner at the time, and we had a very specific itinerary for where we were going to go, how long we were going to spend in each place, how long it would take us to get to the next place, things like that. And it was not all the way down to the minute, but I would say it was very specific to each day that we were going to be in Italy. And so I'm assuming it just means somebody who plans vacations well or plans dates well or has the ability to think ahead of time about, okay, we're going to have specific dates and specific times in which we do things and plan accordingly or plan for the future.
Dedeker: Yeah, you're kind of a very planful person.
Dedeker: Yeah, so what you're both sharing, that's some of it. We're gonna get into a more official definition later because it's actually a little bit more complex than that. But before we get there, I wanted to riff briefly about your thoughts on planfulness and being a non-monogamous person.
Jase: Ooh.
Emily: Google Calendar.
Jase: Yeah, that's what came to mind for me too. Yeah, I do think that the joke is always that, sharing enough love for everybody is not a problem, but scheduling your calendars and having enough time for everyone is, right? That's kind of an old polyamory joke. And I think that...
Dedeker: It's a really funny joke.
Jase: It's so funny. That's why we're all laughing so hard.
Dedeker: We've all laughed for years about that one.
Jase: I guess I'm trying to think about how realistic it is, actually. And I think, yes, when you're dating multiple people, there is a little more work to be done, 'cause you kind of have to plan a little bit more ahead. 'Cause I think for a lot of people, dating monogamously or if you're just dating one person, you can kind of go with this assumption that, oh, if they've got some free time and I've got some free time, we can hang out. And that for good or bad maybe is not the best assumption to make, but at least it's easy and you don't have to plan ahead as much versus seeing multiple partners, especially if they have very different schedules. I definitely find that right now with my other partner, I have to schedule Sometimes a couple of weeks in advance just to make sure things line up with our schedules. Whereas I haven't had to do that as much in other relationships just based on how close to each other we live, what our work schedules are like, things like that. But overall, I would say yes, more planning probably required.
Emily: Definitely. A lot of intentionality, I think, as opposed to necessarily being able to be super spontaneous. Like you said, yeah, depending on, oh, hey, I've got a couple hours free. I'm in your area. Are you around? Let's see if we can get together. I think that being non monogamous can't allow for that to a degree. But when you have more people involved, there's more opportunity for schedules to kind of go awry and things to happen. And so I think the necessity of planning ahead of time might be greater in non monogamy than maybe in monogamous relationships. Or if you live together, for instance. Like you come home from work early and you're like, Hey, I have an extra hour that I didn't expect to. Maybe we can sleep together right now. Let's go.
Jase: Instantly go.
Dedeker: Yeah. So I want to set out a particular point of view as we head into this episode. Because as Jase alluded to, yeah, I'm a very type A person for sure. And as much as I would just love to claim that all of us type A folks are naturally superior, and we're just naturally gonna be better at any kind of planning. That's not actually the case. So the viewpoint that I wanna lay out is that planfulness as a whole, probably good for all of us to have at least a little bit of that as a skill in order to be thriving adults. But planfulness isn't black and white. It's not a sense of either you have it or you don't. It does fall along a spectrum and there are going to be individual differences within that spectrum. So I just want listeners to keep that in mind as we have the rest of this discussion today. So let's lay out a particular definition of planfulness. So there's a particular study that I called on a lot for this episode. So this study was published in 2018 in the journal Collabra Psychology by Ludwig, Srivastava, and Berkman called Planfulness, a process focused construct of individual differences in goal achievement. Now, I really like the way that they break down Planfulness into three components, into temporal orientation, mental flexibility, and cognitive strategies. So we'll go through each of those one by one. So temporal orientation is the ability to orient yourself or pay attention to the future implications of your present behavior.
Jase: Oh, okay.
Dedeker: Yeah. Mental flexibility means being able to contextualize your actions in terms of your goals. And cognitive strategies are the strategies that you use to anticipate and deal with potential obstacles. So then you can see even in breaking it down in that way, it's not quite as simple as just, can you plan stuff or not? Or do you like to plan stuff or not?
Jase: Yeah, it's almost like the one about the temporal orientation, thinking about how your present behavior affects the future. Like, what am I doing right now? And how does that affect the future? So this is making it more general than just planning. They're kind of expanding the definition of planfulness to also just include kind of, I would call it thoughtfulness or intentionality with your actions or behaviors, maybe. Yeah.
Dedeker: So to give you some more examples of what this actually means, the researchers created a planfulness scale, and I can give you some examples of some of the statements that are on that scale when they administer it to people who are participating in their studies. So statements that are associated with temporal orientation are things like, I can easily identify why I have not achieved goals in the past, or I spend very little time thinking about what my life will be in the future. And then for mental flexibility, they give statements like, I'm able to perform tasks that I find difficult or uninteresting if they help me achieve my goals. Or things like, if focusing on a goal makes me feel overwhelmed, I tend to stop working towards that goal. So we're sort of measuring again, how flexible is your brain in being able to deal with, for instance, something that feels unpleasant or is boring now, but that you know will pay off later.
Jase: So just to clarify, the second example that you gave for both of those is like a opposite negative.
Dedeker: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, these are rated on a Likert scale and yeah, the negative ones are negatively scored.
Jase: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So like the one before about, I spend very little time thinking about what my life will be in the future. Answering higher on that means less temporal orientation.
Dedeker: Yeah. And then with cognitive strategies, they might give statements like rating how true it is that following a routine makes me feel stuck in a rut or rating how true it is that I prefer my days to be spontaneous rather than scheduled.
Emily: Would that also be a negative score?
Dedeker: Yeah, I believe so.
Emily: Okay.
Dedeker: The interesting thing here, so I think this is already starting to kind of paint a more colorful picture of what goes into planfulness. And the researchers also specifically go out of their way to point out that planfulness is distinct from high motivation or low motivation, and it's also distinct from impulsivity. So I'm going to read this passage from the study text that says, A person who is low in motivation and/or highly impulsive is not definitionally low in planfulness. One can be unmotivated but still plan or plan carefully but then act on impulse in the spur of the moment. Also, planfulness could compensate for low motivation or high impulsivity. For example, the effects of impulsive behavior might be mitigated by adhering to specific cognitive strategies and low levels of motivation might be overcome by reflecting on how a current action brings goal achievement closer. So in brief, planfulness, it's not just related to how motivated are you to plan out what you and your partner are going to do this weekend. It's not related to are you impulsive in the moment or not. It seems like it's not even necessarily related to being type A or to goal setting. It's something a little bit more maybe holistic is the word I could use.
Emily: It's interesting.
Jase: I keep thinking about the one you mentioned that question of I prefer my days to be spontaneous rather than scheduled. And I know that something for me for years now has been trying to figure out how to align my schedule and my workload and how I plan ahead specifically to have times where I can be spontaneous and just work on whatever I feel like at that moment.
Dedeker: Yeah. So I think that I would categorize that under having some good cognitive strategies to understand that you have moments where you're gonna wanna be more impulsive and spontaneous and therefore sort of planning ahead to create space for that. Right.
Jase: Interesting. Interesting. Because yeah, I think my fear would be hearing about planfulness and just reading these descriptions that I would see this as meaning you're locked into always having to follow your routine and your schedule and that you're doing that productivity min maxing thing that all the startup bros like to talk about. And that kind of turned me off at first. So it's interesting that it's not that, that there's more of a, I don't know, different ways this can show up. Would that be accurate?
Dedeker: Yeah, I think so. And I think you've also keyed into what I see as often the central conflict with partnerships here, where often the more planful person sees planfulness as a source of security, right? So as in, if my partner can get onto a routine, if we can get into a habit of having a regular date night or a radar or whatever, that makes me feel more safe and more able to relax. And sometimes the less planful person feels like that's gonna end up being a trap, and it's gonna be rigid, right? There's gonna be these rigid expectations that they can't live up to or that they can't breathe within. That's usually, if I'm gonna really condense it down, that's often the conflict that I see.
Jase: Yeah, no, that makes sense.
Emily: Yeah, how has this showed up in maybe your coaching work, Dedeker? You said in that way specifically, but I feel like often, there is this narrative of, in a heterosexual relationship, at least, the woman being the one who plans all the dates and makes sure that the kids are off to school and that all the play dates are happening and that the guy just kind of goes along for the ride. So I wonder what's going on there. And clearly, that may not be the case. And maybe in some relationships, the other person is better at sort of seeing what the future holds and understanding different parts of planfulness than their partner.
Dedeker: Yes, and I think the different parts is the key here. Yeah, I tried to do some research on has anyone studied the intersection of gender, gender roles and planfulness? I couldn't find anything. Again, I mean, the conversation mostly goes around mental and emotional labor in general, around who's more likely to pick up what type of labor in a heterosexual relationship and that's a part of this. That's potentially a whole other episode. But I do think once we dig into how it's not necessarily just about your executive functioning, it's not necessarily just about who's the decision maker, it's not necessarily just about who is the calendarer in the household, then I think it doesn't fall along a really strict gender binary. I think it doesn't get as flattened, in my opinion.
Jase: Got it. If we're looking at it more broadly.
Dedeker: Yes, yes. As far as my coaching work, actually, I wasn't thinking about that as much, but what comes to mind for me is with the spontaneity thing, thinking about a past relationship I was in with someone who very much just wanted to be spontaneous in scheduling and really struggled with being able to calendar and stuff like that. And I remember at the outside of that relationship being like, I have no idea how this is going to work.
Jase: Huh.
Dedeker: Yeah.
Jase: Yeah.
Dedeker: And somehow it kind of worked for a while. The relationship fell apart for other issues, not the scheduling thing, but I still think I'm kind of like that. Like, if someone was truly just like, I have to only be spontaneous, I'd have a really hard time with that.
Emily: Is it a control thing, too?
Dedeker: What is it? Not a control thing with me, Emily.
Emily: Okay. No, because I do understand that I like being in control of my schedule, and therefore me trying to control my partner's schedule to a degree, or at least how they exist in the plans that the two of us have together, like trying to create some sort of plans for when we are together, that makes a lot of sense to me. They can do whatever they want on their time, but when they're with me, I do feel like some sort of plans maybe need to occur just so that I'm not in a situation where it's like, oh, God, what am I doing? I feel out of control and this is not okay.
Dedeker: Yeah, definitely.
Jase: Right, right.
Dedeker: Yeah.
Jase: Yeah.
Dedeker: So Jase teased the whole, this idea that there could be different strengths within a person and within a partnership. And when I went down that rabbit hole, I created a whole new personality framework that's going to sell like gangbusters. I love it. And just make me so famous, and I hope you're all ready for it.
Jase: We're going to take a quick break to talk about some sponsors before we get to that. So please do take a moment, listen to them. And if any seem interesting, check out our show description. There will be links to use our promo codes, things like that there in the description. And it really does help us if you use those links. That's how advertisers know it's worth giving us money to help us keep doing this show. And then of course, if you would rather more directly support the show, we love doing this. And a big reason why we've been able to do this as long as we have is because of the support from our listeners who join our amazing community by going to multiamory.com/join. And there you can join our community and sign up and get access to our private Discord server, our private Facebook group, get ad-free versions of episodes, early releases, and so much more. We would love to have you as part of that.
Dedeker: Okay. So I want to spend this next segment talking about why planfulness can be hard and why it's also not quite so simple, why it's not quite so binary. And yes, I teased that I've created the zodiac of planfulness. I've not created the full zodiac. Okay. I've not created the full zodiac. This is just a prototype. This is a minimal viable product version of the zodiac.
Jase: We can expand on that.
Dedeker: We can expand on this. Yes.
Emily: This is what you got so far.
Dedeker: Yes.
Jase: Okay. Okay. The zodiac of planfulness. Okay.
Dedeker: Well, and this started because I started thinking like, huh, you could be someone who is very strong in temporal orientation, but maybe not so strong in mental flexibility and cognitive strategies. And then the combinations are, they're not endless, but... Quite literally not endless, yeah. They're quite literally not endless, but there could be many, right? There could be many archetypes, right, of someone who is strong in cognitive strategies for obstacles and temporal orientation, but maybe not very mentally flexible, right?
Jase: Yeah, okay.
Dedeker: So I just created three to get us started down this pathway. So for instance, we're going to talk about what I'm calling the Owl. So this is, so this is the person who is strong in temporal orientation, but they're weak in mental flexibility and cognitive strategies. So for instance, they might be very future focused. They may be very aware of how their present actions are going to affect the way the future plays out, but they could be more inflexible and more limited in their ability to strategize and deal with obstacles. Right? So they might think about long-term plans and consequences, but then could get paralyzed when plans have to change or when an obstacle arises.
Jase: So they might say, They would have a hard time doing things that they don't want to, to try to get to those goals, even though they're thinking about the future.
Dedeker: Yes.
Emily: Right?
Dedeker: So they may say something like, But we already decided that our plan for next year is going to be X. Like, we can't change it now, right?
Emily: Or, Interesting.
Dedeker: Right, right. If I can't pull off this future plan perfectly, then I shouldn't be planning it at all. I should just give up if I can't have the future perfect version of this plan.
Jase: I do come across that one, yeah.
Dedeker: Yes, I think I'm an Owl, spoiler alert.
Emily: Okay. I wondered if we were gonna do that and talk about who each of us are.
Dedeker: That, I'm not sure. I actually hadn't thought about that ahead of time. I feel like I am an Owl, but I'm not sure about the two of you. Or the Owl might be the person who says, okay, I can see exactly how this is gonna go wrong in five years, but I'm not entirely sure what to do about it right now. And I don't feel like I can change the plan now. I'm gonna panic if we have to change the plan now.
Jase: I'm going to go, yeah.
Dedeker: I decided the Owl because, you know, they're good at seeing ahead. They got their night vision.
Jase: Sure, sure.
Dedeker: Right. But the night vision is not always perfect.
Jase: Okay. Okay, yeah, sure.
Dedeker: I just, I just, I'm, this is a digression, but I just think about, you know, there was a David Attenborough nature documentary that I was watching once that was about sound in the natural world.
Jase: Oh, yeah.
Dedeker: Okay. Yeah, they feature this great gray owl who has really amazing hearing, particularly for being able to hear movement under the snow to catch its prey. Its ears are even set at slightly different heights so that it can really pinpoint where a sound is coming from. And it was so amazing, and this really beautiful, amazing owl was tracking this little vole running around under the snow, and then it zoomed in and dove down and just face-planted into the snow and totally missed the vole. So that's why I was thinking about that. So hooray for the vole.
Emily: The vole got away.
Dedeker: Yes, it did.
Emily: Yes, it did.
Dedeker: Okay. So now in contrast, we have the dolphin. The dolphin is a person who might be very strong in mental flexibility, but they could be weak in temporal orientation and cognitive strategies. So adaptable, but shortsighted. So this is the person who could be good at pivoting when plans need to change, But they may be someone who goes through life in a more reactive way than a proactive way. So this could look like, you know, the flexible, spontaneous partner who's really fun to be around, but may struggle to think about long-term plans or long-term consequences. So the person who might be likely to say, it's okay, we're just gonna wing it and then we're gonna see what happens. Or it's all right, like we don't need to stress about getting our hotel accommodations booked now. Like if we wait and it's all booked up, we'll just figure out something else, right? Or like, let's just go with the flow and have fun as we figure it out. So the dolphin feels like a partner. Oh, really?
Jase: Oh, really?
Emily: A little bit more. I think that I am the person who tends to try to plan way ahead of time for like trips that we're taking or whatever. I'm like, no, we need to get our flights now so that they're not $400 more expensive in a couple weeks or whatever. And we need to lock down the Airbnb now as opposed to waiting, you know, a couple days beforehand. So, yeah, I do think that spontaneity is fun and it's great and it's awesome, but you need a little bit of both.
Dedeker: Yeah. Jase, you seem like you're really chewing on this dolphin.
Jase: I'm chewing on this dolphin. I'm really swimming with this dolphin, trying to understand how I feel about it. I feel like I do relate to this dolphin a little bit, but I wonder if that might be like the phenomenon where people think that opposites attract in terms of, like, extroverts and introverts.
Emily: Huh?
Jase: When in reality, people actually tend to partner up and be friends with people that are closer to themselves, like extroverts with extroverts, introverts with introverts. But in comparison to that person, someone's gonna be more that than the other.
Emily: Sure.
Jase: And so in comparison to Dedeker, I'm finding myself feeling like more of that dolphin of being the one like, We don't need to stress about this so much.
Dedeker: But I don't think you are a dolphin.
Jase: But I don't think I actually am, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's why I'm struggling with this one.
Emily: That's a good point.
Dedeker: Yeah.
Emily: Because Dedeker, you do tend to be on the extreme of some of these things.
Dedeker: Yeah, you think.
Emily: So it is all relative, yes.
Dedeker: Okay. And then the last one is the beaver. So this is the person who has great cognitive strategies, but they might be weak in temporal orientation and mental flexibility. So they are strategic, they're the master engineer, but they could be hyper present and rigid. So they can easily break down and plan out maybe current tasks they're focusing on, but may struggle to connect it to the bigger picture. So the person who's like, yes, I've planned out every single step of our vacation, but they haven't taken into account if the itinerary is actually gonna work with your work schedules or your ability to take time off work or your ability to afford said vacation, right? Or they might have the sense of like, okay, I've already figured out the optimal sequence for how we gotta tackle this task and we can't make any changes and I can't think about how this is gonna have to change in the future. We ought to just focus on it right now.
Jase: I don't think any of us are that one.
Dedeker: Yeah. No beaver energy here?
Jase: I don't think any of the three of us are beaver energy. I am thinking about friends and coworkers and stuff, trying to think if I know anyone who's a little more in that. And I do think I see that, the people who get really, really into their to-do lists, but it's kind of a very small-scale to-do list. It's like, oh, here's all the stuff I need to do right now. Rather than also matching that with some, and here's why these tie to these bigger picture goals. It's kind of more, I don't want to sound negative about it, right? Because all of these have positives and negatives, but I think there can be a little bit of that shortsightedness, I guess, of just, I'm focusing on what's right in front of me and not really trying to make space and time for these bigger picture things. Or maybe I feel like I can't. Like all I can do is focus on what's here in front of me to just survive. Which can be good sometimes.
Dedeker: I do know some people like that.
Jase: And that can be good compared to the person who's thinking about all their grand visions and yet forgetting to feed their fish or something like that.
Dedeker: Right, yeah. Yeah. So these are the only three that I came up with because of course we can go through many more combinations of the person who's strong in two of these aspects, but weak in one of them. But I thought that if I really fully fleshed out a zodiac, that was gonna take the entire episode.
Jase: I'm into it though. This is... Okay, well, the next episode, I'll plan an episode that's just the zodiac.
Dedeker: Just the zodiac.
Jase: Because I'm super into this. I think it'd be really interesting to explore the different permutations. Like, even if you just went within all of these, if you have one that's your strongest, one that's your middlest, and one that's your weakest, then that gives you six different options, right? So each one being the strongest and then one or the other being the second, right? So like each strongest has two variants of it. And so you could kind of have like the, you know, the gray owl and the white owl, and you could.
Dedeker: Have- I'm a rising owl. And the dolphin is my moon sign.
Jase: Right, right. But yeah, I was thinking about that. Like you could come up with six different archetype animals to sort of describe being strongest at one, but then second strongest in another, weakest in another. Could be really interesting.
Dedeker: This is how I could write my airport book, you know?
Emily: Your airport book?
Dedeker: My airport bookstore book that, like, sells like gangbusters. Has a very hooky hook, but, like--.
Jase: You- can read it during one cross-country flight.
Dedeker: Maybe pad it out with a lot of content. Right. So it's kind of fluffy, right? But sells like gangbusters, and for some reason, it's what makes you a ton of money. Makes you a ton of money.
Jase: So I'm-- Can I co-author it with you? 'Cause I've got some ideas already.
Emily: There you go.
Dedeker: I'll consider it. We'll have to work out some-- I mean, I think this is some eye-popping stuff. On my side.
Jase: I don't know, but if I come up with the rest of the zodiac, then obviously I'm contributing a good amount to it.
Dedeker: So, that's true.
Jase: That's true.
Dedeker: That's such a good cognitive strategy that you got going on there.
Jase: However, I do want to say that one key piece of this intellectual property that I'd like to contribute is if instead of calling it the zodiac of planfulness, if you just called it find your planimal.
Emily: That's cute. That's really good.
Dedeker: Okay, fine. We can co-author it.
Jase: Great. Okay. Planimals. And then we can also spin off into like a young adult fiction series.
Emily: Kind of like animals. Planimal. So you're turning into this Planimal.
Jase: Yeah, yeah.
Emily: I love it.
Jase: Based on your power, you can also turn into that animal.
Dedeker: Yeah.
Jase: Based on your Planimal.
Dedeker: Okay, y'all, TM, TM, TM, TM. You can't steal it.
Emily: Yes.
Dedeker: It was our little secret.
Jase: But if you're interested in making cover art or something, let us know, yeah.
Dedeker: Hit us up. Yeah.
Emily: I am thinking of somebody in my life who is a teacher of mine, and she has talked so much about the anxiety that she feels in planning large trips. And she's really excited to do it. She really wants to go and have these lovely experiences in Europe. She has more time now, a little bit more money, closer to retirement age. But then multiple times that I've known her and I've known her for like almost a decade at this point, she has said to me, you know what? I'm just not going to do it. I just I'm not I decided like I have too much anxiety over it. I'm just I'm not going to go. So that it makes me very sad because I understand some of the anxiety that comes with packing and with making a bunch of decisions on where it is that you're going to stay and what it is that you're going to do. But at the same time, those obstacles have never been so great for me that I've decided, you know what? I'm just not going to do a thing. And so I do wonder perhaps at a at a smaller, day to day level with certain people, if those types of anxieties get in the way of being able to plan more effectively for a variety of things, whether that's dates, whether that is just what you're going to be doing day to day. Any number of things.
Dedeker: Well, I'm glad you brought that up, because only quite recently, Jase, you shared about having scheduling anxiety. Oh, can we talk about that?
Jase: Sure, sure, yeah. Yeah, it's like when it comes to scheduling when to do something, for some reason that brings up a lot of anxiety for me. And a lot of it's tied to this, once I've picked a time and date, Assuming it affects anybody else, right? If it's just scheduling something for myself to do, whatever, easy. I'll just find some spot to put it in. But assuming it affects somebody else, like someone that I'm living with or multiple friends I'm trying to make plans with, and I know there's floating things that need to be scheduled, and the idea that locking one down is like closing doors to other ones or potentially causing issues for someone else, or I have a lot of fear of needing to then reschedule it, which is something I really try to avoid because I value sticking to plans when you make them as much as possible. And so anyway, it brings up all those things and definitely causes me to have some anxiety about the planning of things where it's like, I want everyone to sit around a table and meet and do it together so that I'm not going to screw it up, I guess.
Dedeker: It makes so much sense now. It makes so much sense.
Jase: This has been a conflict we've struggled with for years, and I feel like Me kind of telling this to you has really changed how you think about it now.
Emily: Well, is that also just because you're worried about if you make the wrong decision, that somebody's gonna be angry at you? Like, that sounds like a very Jase Lindgren thing.
Jase: For sure.
Dedeker: Yeah. Yeah.
Jase: Specifically, the Dedeker's gonna be upset with me for...
Emily: Correct.
Dedeker: Well, because he also historically used to have, I think we labeled it grocery anxiety. That echoed something very similar where it was like, Interesting. Feeling really anxious that, if I'm sent to the grocery store by my own to have to shop for someone other than myself, that, yeah, I'm gonna make the wrong choice, gonna pick the wrong thing, someone's gonna be mad at me, and then it's all gonna come crumbling down. And I think you've gotten a lot better at that in recent years.
Jase: I think part of that, though, has been having to really embrace this idea that I'm gonna go, and if I'm going, I'm gonna make choices, and if you don't like them, tough. Like, I've kind of had to really-.
Dedeker: It makes you sound like a jerk, though.
Jase: No, like, I think it makes me sound like a jerk. It makes me realize I've got to kind of go, well, whatever, too bad. If it's not what you wanted, you weren't there. And I know I'm sounding so sassy right now.
Dedeker: But you sound so snarky, and you're never like that in reality.
Jase: But in my head, I feel like I've had to go there a little bit because my normal would be to be stressing and worried about every little choice and be like, oh, if I didn't choose the right thing of this, or if I forgot something like, oh, shoot, oh my gosh, no, all right, I'll rearrange my whole schedule so I can go to the grocery store again, and like that kind of thing.
Dedeker: Wow.
Jase: That to me was like a big catastrophe. And so I had to embrace a little bit of this, like, well, and usually what I'll actually say to you is if I'm going grocery shopping is always this sort of like, well, you know, if I'm going grocery shopping, I'm going to come home with a lot more snacks and candy, and you just got to be okay with that.
Dedeker: And I've learned to be okay with that.
Emily: There you go.
Jase: And then I get to get more snacks and candy, so it's a win-win.
Dedeker: So, yeah, yeah, no, it's so interesting. So, I think that something this is keying into though is that sometimes I think what like obstacles that get in the way of being more planful or less planful can be circumstantial sometimes can be related to past baggage or can just be the product of like what you're dealing with right here in the present moment. Like for myself, like as much as I profess, let's just be honest, profess quite truthfully to be a type A person who does like to schedule and plan. When I am feeling over scheduled, I will have a very strong desire for spontaneity when it comes to like hanging out with people, for instance. It's not my normal MO and I would not categorize that as like, this is so me. This is like baked into my personality. I would not say that at all. But like, I do have moments where I'm just like, can we just figure this out by like play it by ear, right? Or can you just like text me a couple days ahead and we'll like figure it out, you know? That, yeah, sometimes I do flip-flop in that particular way.
Emily: I think that's nice, though, because it shows that you have the ability to do both. You are not simply the owl at all times. Sometimes.
Dedeker: Sometimes I'm a real dark owl, you know?
Emily: Yeah, there you go. There you go. Sometimes you can become a creature of the sea as opposed to just one of the air.
Jase: Okay, yeah.
Dedeker: So right, so right. Yeah, and looking at all this also through the lens of executive functioning, for instance, right? And like maybe you yourself have some executive functioning issues, or someone you love does, or your partner does.
Jase: Or like we mentioned, a certain anxiety that might hinder one of these things more.
Emily: Insecurity, anything.
Dedeker: But I think it's so important to just have your mind open to the possibility that if that's the case for your partner, that doesn't mean They're just a completely lost cause when it comes to planning because for some people, if they have executive functioning issues, it just shows up maybe in just one of these areas, but not in the others. And for some people, sometimes, you know, neurodivergence actually enhances some of these areas and makes them stronger in other areas weaker. So I just wanted to drop that in. You know, sometimes people, I think, can unfairly like write off a partner. Maybe who has ADHD or something like that when it's just like, no, no, no. They're not totally off the hook. They probably also have some strengths they can bring to this, too.
Jase: Yeah. And to look at what are those strengths and where might they help balance you out. I love that way of looking at it. And with that, we're going to move on to talking about how you can really capitalize on your strengths and improve those. But again, we're going to take a quick break to talk about our sponsors for this show. If you would rather listen to ad-free versions of this, go join our community@multiamory.com There you'll get early releases of ad-free episodes, as well as access to our amazing communities, video discussion groups, things like that. We would love to have you as part of it. Just go to multiamory.com/join. But in the meantime, please do take a moment, listen to our sponsors, and if any seem interesting to you, go check them out. Use our links in our show description.
Dedeker: So all of this begs the question, can planfulness as a trait Be changed or is it inherent? If you're an owl, can you transform into a dolphin?
Jase: A planimal morph.
Dedeker: You want to? Can you be a planimal morph?
Emily: Wait, do animorphs only, it's just human to human.
Jase: Human to animal. But these are all planimal morphs.
Emily: These are animal to animal, maybe.
Dedeker: These are different.
Emily: Human to animal animal hybrids.
Dedeker: These are better, Emily.
Emily: Got it. Better than animorphs. I don't know if possible, but okay.
Jase: Totally and totally original. Content, totally original lore.
Dedeker: Okay, so, so to answer this question, can planfulness be changed or is it inherent? I pulled a quote from that 2018 study. One seemingly paradoxical implication of this hybrid perspective of goal achievement is that we argue for the existence of stable individual differences in goal related cognition, and also that the processes can be altered within a person. The present study provides evidence for stability over time in the tendency to use these strategies. And at the same time there is ample evidence that these same patterns of thoughts about goals can be manipulated in a laboratory setting. Together, these observations suggest that people tend to deploy similar patterns of thought about goals, but that those patterns of thought are not so entrenched that they cannot be influenced by brief manipulations. It might be that people are simply unaware of alternative ways of thinking about goals than the ones that they have used previously. So to translate that into layman's terms, Your planning style, your planimal, as it were.
Emily: Uh-huh.
Jase: Your planimal nature, I think.
Dedeker: Your planimal nature probably feels natural to you, and most likely it's going to stay the same, but it is not set in stone. So we are capable of learning new planning strategies pretty quickly when we are open to learning different approaches to planning and different ways to think about our goals that are different from our former habits.
Jase: Okay.
Dedeker: Yeah.
Jase: It seems like what they were saying is that we tend to stick to one modality of planning. We tend to stick to one planimal almost more out of habit and that we're used to it and it's understandable to us rather than that we're unable to change. It's more just that that's what we're used to. It's what we've always done.
Emily: What feels comfortable. Yeah.
Jase: And so they're saying that in their laboratory setting, they're able to introduce things to get people to change the way that they look at that. Implies also you could do that for yourself of just by learning about them and trying out different ways of planning and seeing what works for you, even if you might fall back to your habit most of the time.
Dedeker: Yeah. So the way I want to tackle what we can do about all of this is first, I wanted to address if you're someone where you feel like you're maybe stronger in certain areas than your partner is, if you're feeling frustrated with your partner and you want to ask for some type of change or change in behavior. So first we're going to address that and then we're going to address if you yourself want to be able to shift your ability to plan or want to, strengthen certain areas of planfulness, right? So first in approaching a partner to make a change, we have to give a call back to our episode 534 titled when we're asked to change and when it's okay to refuse. Highly recommend going back and listening to that episode as a primer here. Something that's really important is to distinguish a request for change to make sure that it's around behavior rather than a request to change somebody's fundamental personality or identity. Right?
Emily: Can you give an example of both?
Dedeker: Yeah. So this can be a little tricky, right? So it's sort of, I mean, really fundamentally comes down to the difference between like, Hey, can we When we get to the end of a date, can we pull out our calendars and plan together the next time we're going to see each other? As opposed to, Hey, you are really dropping the ball and you suck at planning. I need you to pull it together.
Emily: Got it. Very good distinction to be made.
Jase: It's a clear distinction there. Yes.
Emily: Awkward.
Dedeker: So actually, I can break this down further. We did this in episode 534. We laid out four parts of the planfulness scale. Particular aspects to think about when you're making a request for change. And we presented those as, so a quick preview, at least in that episode, we presented them as the request being empathetic, being collaborative, being positive, and being specific. So ECPS, and I realized that it was a total missed opportunity to arrange them into a different acronym that they could be PECS, could be Flex youx Packs, could be Planimal, could be Owl, could be Dolphin, could be Beaver.
Jase: Work your pack.
Emily: I know you gotta work your packs, dude.
Jase: Oh, yeah. Yes. Seriously. Oh, so we're gonna make up for it.
Dedeker: But we're gonna work our packs so hard today. Just real quick, I'm gonna pull together a PDF of PECS and what it stands for and what it means. Maybe in that PDF, maybe I'll pull together the planimals as well or include the information about the planimals. Let me make a note about that. Yeah. Maybe I'll include the planimals if people want that. So that's going to be available to all of our SuperCast subscribers. So if you go to multiamory.com/join, you can get access to the PDF for this episode. You can also click the link that's in our episode description. Okay, so we're going to talk about your pecs in detail. But first, we need to talk about Uberlube, because if you are in a situation where you need to lube up your pecs, I think that Uberlube, is probably the best one to use for that. You might be bodybuilding. I don't know, Emily.
Emily: Yeah, I mean, you never know. Maybe you just want a little bit of extra moisture on your pecular region.
Dedeker: Sometimes if I'm in a really sweaty, humid climate, and if I'm wearing a neckline that's rubbing against my pecs, I will put a little bit of Uberlube on there. It actually works really great to prevent chafing.
Emily: Love that.
Jase: Yeah, absolutely. I do just need to come in with a little caveat that you would probably not use Uberlube in a bodybuilding competition because you want something a little bit shinier and a little oilier, which is actually nice that Uberlube Uberlube is not that most of the time.
Dedeker: Okay, you're right. We stand corrected.
Emily: But we stand corrected.
Jase: An actual real life athletic usage of Uberlube is putting it on the side of your pecs where your arm rubs against it. That's an area that can chafe if you're doing like distance running or something like that.
Dedeker: That's true.
Jase: And that's one of the amazing things about Uberlube is that you can use it for all these different things. You can use it in your hair, you can use it on different parts of your body, as well as of course using it for sex. And it's fantastic for that and doesn't have an odor at all.
Emily: Which makes it- or stains your sheets. It's so great. Or your clothes if you're using it.
Jase: As a sports lubricant. Like, yeah, it really works for all those things. It's fantastic.
Dedeker: Okay, so it's time for us to actually flex our PECS. So PECS stands for positive, empathetic, collaborative, and specific. So make a request for change that is positive. So the good version of that is, Hey, I would love to have a weekend where you take the lead so that I can show up feeling a little bit more focused and able to enjoy our connection more. A not very good version of that is you never plan anything. It's exhausting always being the one to figure everything out, right? So it's good to be able to put a positive spin on your request for change. It's important to be empathetic, right? So to say something like, Hey, I know you're juggling a lot at home and at work right now, and I know it's not always easy to remember to plan these things, right? Versus saying, I think you just don't care about our time together, right? So being able to bring some empathy to the request. Making the request collaborative. So for instance, suggesting to your partner, hey, maybe we could try alternating. I'll plan our date night out this month, and then you can plan the date night out next month. How does that sound? As opposed to, hey, this is all on you. You need to start getting your act together. You got to pick up the burden. I refuse to do this any longer. So again, putting the emphasis on collaboration.
Jase: And then the S is specific. And in this case, going along with the collaborative of could we try alternating, It could be even more specific than that of when it comes to planning our dates, like I love looking into new restaurants to go to, but I find it stressful trying to book reservations and things like that. What if we collaborated on it together and kind of making it more specific or when it's your turn to plan a date, I would really love it if you did book the reservation. Like when you plan something, take advantage of your strengths, which is booking a reservation at a nicer place than I usually think to, or calling because you have less phone anxiety than I do, or something like that, right? Of kind of getting specific on how might they be able to help you and how might they be able to bring their own strength to this. Yeah, I really like this idea of flexing your pecs. So this, like the positive, empathetic, collaborative, and specific.
Dedeker: Okay, folks. So again, you're going to find that PDF version that covers pecs if you go to multiamory.com/join. And also another thank you to our supporter Uberlube, our favorite lube and our favorite sponsor. So you can also head to uberlube.com and use our promo code multi for 10% off and free shipping.
Jase: So our strong, strong Uberlube PECS are helpful for us helping to request change from a partner and do that in a kind way. But what about if we're the one either receiving that request or we've listened to this episode and realized, oh yeah, okay, I want to strengthen or maybe identify what my strengths already are, and then also, how do I strengthen other ones? What's a way that we could go about approaching that?
Dedeker: Yeah, so that study also is very helpful in pointing out these particular behaviors or these particular strategies that can help with, they always bring it back to goals, and just as a sidebar, I hate talking about goals specifically.
Emily: What do you not like about them?
Dedeker: It makes me break out in hives. It just feels so corporate, so academic, you know? And I understand that they're not necessarily referring to something corporate or academic. Like your goal can be, yeah, we want to have a good relationship, or if we want to have a good time visiting your family, or we want to not overspend when we go away for the weekend or whatever, right?
Jase: I didn't realize you had such a strong aversion to goals.
Dedeker: Yeah.
Jase: I don't know how that's never come up before.
Dedeker: I know you wouldn't expect it for such an owl. Right.
Emily: Yeah. I think the owl.
Jase: Sees that little vole and that's the goal.
Emily: Is there a word that you prefer? Is there a word that you prefer other than goal?
Dedeker: Well, there's a reason why I'm constantly asking, what's your vision? And I think that's my alternative to goal.
Emily: Got it.
Dedeker: Anyway, so I'm gonna read another quote from this study. They say, Adopting a future time perspective, developing implementation intentions, and mentally contrasting the feeling of goal actualization with the current reality have been found to be especially beneficial to goal progress. Okay, but what the heck does any of that mean?
Jase: Yeah, that was my question.
Dedeker: Yeah, we'll take them one at a time. So adopting a future time perspective. This essentially is connected to the whole temporal orientation thing, right? So it means that you are able to orient to the future, maybe orient together with your partner to the future, and what will or will not happen as a consequence of your present day actions. So for instance, if you're having a talk with your partner about this, you may need to say something like, Hey, if we don't plan now for when we're going to see each other next, I'm worried that my schedule is going to fill up with work obligations and then it could be several weeks before we're able to connect. So again, it's just sort of like bringing in a reminder of the fact that if we don't plan right now or if we do plan right now, that is going to have an effect on how we feel in the future.
Jase: I think with this one, with the future perspective, there's a range of future, right? There's a range of future meaning later today, tomorrow morning, when I'm hung over because of the choices I'm making right now, for example, or I'm tired because I'm staying up too late. There's that kind of shortish time scale. And then there's also the several years in the future type time scale. And I think part of this might be worth playing with how far down that track you're thinking about. And what brings this to mind is talking about money and thinking about, well, my actions about how I'm spending or saving now 20 years from now are going to affect the quality of my life significantly, you know, as my maybe costs for medical care increase or I'm looking at retiring or something like that. But for a lot of people, that is so overwhelming to think about that far in the future and those amounts. That it's like you kind of have that panic and shut down feeling. And so maybe in that case, it's thinking about it more in this shorter term that doesn't feel as panic inducing about, okay, if we budget this, it means that we get to do this special thing each month or, you know, something like that of kind of finding gamifying it almost.
Dedeker: Yeah.
Jase: And like, what's the temporal range that's comfortable enough that you can think about it without it being too overwhelming? And then maybe work on that over time.
Dedeker: Yeah, I know that makes sense. Because I'm also thinking about how sometimes when you're early on in a relationship, it's hard to planfulness.
Jase: Yeah, that's a good point. Totally.
Emily: How long is this even gonna last?
Jase: Yeah.
Dedeker: And we can get really hung up because it is like, oh my God, like they didn't put their dish in the dishwasher. Does that mean I'm gonna be miserable living with them in 10 years time? Right. I know my brain can go there for sure.
Emily: Yeah.
Dedeker: So this next one is developing implementation intentions. And this essentially just means creating an if then plan. Planning strategy either for yourself or together with your partner. In real life, ideally, I think this is a strategy. If you can create a strategy that doesn't rely on one person to be the trigger or on the one person who has to remember, I think that's ideal because sometimes that can still set up that sense of one person is the one kind of holding the mental load of remembering, right, to schedule the radar or remembering, oh, we need to book the hotel or whatever it is. So something that's maybe more collaborative, you know, like, Hey, like when we say goodbye at the end of the date, we're gonna get our phones out and plan the next date. Or, oh, if it's 10 p.m., then I'm gonna call my partner for our quick daily check-in that we do. Or, yes, if I've finalized childcare plans for the week with my co-parent, then I'm gonna text my partner to see when we're both free to meet up during the next week. Right? So it's just creating these like simple little if then strategies. That don't rely on you just having to remember just out of thin air, and they don't necessarily rely on, like, your partner prompting you, but ideally something that's, like, outside of yourself that can act as a cue. Yeah.
Jase: There's a friend of mine who, years ago, I forget she had some name for it, but essentially what it was was this idea that when she had a thing she needed to remember to do or remember to bring or something like that, that she would think ahead about the situation she would be in at the point when she would need to remember it. So, like, she would picture herself at her door, you know, grabbing her bag, and with that in her head would think about the things she needs to remember and would kind of picture herself doing it so that then for her, it's like she never forgot anything anymore once she did this. At least that was her claim. And I've tried this a little bit to kind of think about, well, what will the situation be in the future when I'm needing to remember this? Kind of like that, right? Oh, when I'm about to get into bed, I'll pull out my phone and send a text to my partner saying good night. Or it's that as we're saying goodbye, let's get out our phones and plan the next date of kind of putting yourself in the mental state of what it'll be like at the time you need to remember it, rather than what's so easy to do is just be like, yeah, let's remember that. Let's be sure we do that. But then it's not attached to anything, so it's really easy to forget it.
Dedeker: Yeah. And then the last one, mentally contrasting the feeling of goal actualization with the current reality. This means imagining your desired outcome or imagining how it might feel once you've accomplished a particular goal together and then comparing it with what's happening in the present moment or what obstacles you're facing in your current situation.
Emily: I had a recent time with a partner where the two of us kept being like, okay, for this trip that we're about to take, which is actually going to come and see the two of you, we were like, we've, We've got to get an Airbnb. We have to figure it out. And we kind of were dragging our feet on that for a while. I think just because other things were getting in the way and we didn't have a lot of time, we had to like really carve out like a specific amount of time to look at the Airbnbs, make a decision on where we were going to stay, all of those things. But I do think that finally once we made that happen, that's checking something off the list. It's helping us feel like, okay, we have accomplished something together. And we now, like, don't have to worry about that for the future. It's something that's done, it's finished, it's taken care of. Even that kind of, like, little goal or vision, whatever we want to call it, Dedeker, that little task that is done, it is really nice to be able to get something like that done with your partner and have, like, a sense of accomplishment to a degree, as opposed to feeling like, ugh, I really don't want to do that because it takes up some time, and I can think of all these other things that I want to do instead. Sometimes you do have to accomplish those little tasks with somebody that you care about, even if it feels like a drag in the moment.
Dedeker: Right.
Jase: And then also, once you've done it, you can just focus on looking forward to the trip instead of having this dread of this thing hanging over your head. I feel like often for me, that's where this one comes in, is not so much like, oh, I'm going to feel so amazing in this state, but more, I won't have this anxiety of this thing hanging over my head now that I have currently. If I just say, okay, fine, I'm going to take an hour, an hour and go through the booking and do that. Or I could see this coming up with doing something like having a more serious conversation with a partner, like having a radar or needing to sit down and have a conversation about your dating schedule or something like that, that once you've had it, then okay, cool, now we can look forward to what's gonna come from that and what we've decided at it versus now I'm in the state of maybe dreading it or feeling anxious about it and being past that state will be good. So let's just do it and then we won't have to feel that way. I think that one can be hard if it's like your first time having a radar, like having a real sit down conversation about your relationship with your partner because you haven't yet experienced the kind of relief and sometimes excitement that can come from, oh wow, we really talked through these things and now we have something to try for this next month. So maybe you need to do it once to get a sense of that, but I think that's another example of something that thinking about how it'll feel either feeling good or feeling less bad, which is a terrible way to say it, but, you know, can be a way to help you get through something that you keep dragging your feet about.
Dedeker: So if there's anything I want people to be able to take away from this episode is just to think about your respective strengths in a partnership, right? It's not quite as flat as, you know, just one of you is always going to be the better planner than the other. Like, I really do think taking this more, more of a colorful palette of Animalia approach can open up a lot more options for collaboration rather than just getting into conflict over this. So we want to hear from you folks. Who plans more often in your relationships? Does it tend to be you or does it tend to be the other person. So that's gonna be the question that we are putting on our Instagram stories this week. You can go to multiamorypodcast on Instagram to answer that. The best place to share your thoughts about this episode with other listeners is in the episode discussion channel in our Discord server, or you can post about it in our private Facebook group. You can get access to these groups and join our community by going to multiamory.com/join. In addition, you can share with us publicly on Instagram at multiamorypodcast.
Dedeker: Multiamory is created and produced by Jase Lindgren, Emily Matlack, and me, Dedeker Winston. Our production assistants are Rachel Schenewerk and Carson Collins. Our theme song is Forms I Know I Did by Josh and Anand from the Fractal Cave EP. The full transcript is available on this episode’s page on Multiamory.com.