Designing Our Ideal Week

OUR ADDICTION TO PLANNING

Efficiency is a word familiar in most people’s lexicons. Though, the concept and definition of such varies widely. For many, efficiency connotes some variation of making the most of one’s time. It’s no different for me and Peter—however, how do we allot time that is meaningful to us as individuals and as a couple?

In my day to day life, I enjoy taking time to take in the process involved with any goal-oriented task. Arguably, the completion of the task itself may not be the quickest, but the streamlining of events onto a schedule with an enjoyable intentionality behind each process is efficient for me. With Peter, many tasks are simply that: tasks, or goals, that need to be accomplished and the process is not so important or enjoyable.

We ran into a few barriers when we first started dating simply due to differences in perspective: Peter with wanting to get things done as quickly as possible, and myself with wanting to enjoy even the most ordinary of life experiences. After the hustle and bustle of years of medical training, I wanted to slow down—perhaps as my own way of defending against the passage of time.

Peter’s philosophy lie at the opposite end of the spectrum, with aggressive sacrifice in the present so that he may save or build resources for the future. Additionally, Peter is someone who absolutely needs structure to function, whereas I may benefit from structure but am generally more flexible and fluid.

We started working toward a middle ground several months into dating: there was so much to accomplish and so little time. We made a list of our daily activities (right down to even the most mundane items), priorities, and preferences. We thought of this exercise as planning our ideal week—if everything went to plan, what would we want to squeeze into a reasonable amount of time? For us, we allotted time for things like walks, work, commute times, meal prep and cooking, lifting, climbing, additional work shifts,, hobbies, parallel play, and social activities.

We started, of course, with a blank canvas on Google sheets with the week broken down into hourly increments. From there, we added in the immutable—work, commutes, personal care, sleep, etc. Then, we slowly added in the priorities starting with those of highest importance. This ideal week would be a guide to better organize our lives.

Having an ideal week allows us to integrate busy schedules under a unifying structure. Essentially, we had a skeleton of our lives would look like together on a standard, weekly basis. It helps be on the same page, facilitates our mutual accomplishments, and supports our individual endeavors. Creating the ideal week also holds us accountable. The first few iterations were very stressful but with some time and trial and error, future versions became easier to map.

The concretization of our schedules serves both of us well. The process itself helped us to understand each other better, and for us to create space for the other’s needs. In the early stages of dating, it gave us valuable insight into what the other prioritized.

While making room for the other we practice the valuable skill of compromise with such scarce resource. For example, Peter is now more understanding and forgiving of Howard’s glacial pace and predilection for tranquility. And us both being fairly logical beings, we enjoyed making sense of our chaotic lives.

Our ideal week has undergone several revisions as we each encountered a major life development or adjustment in work schedules. But, we are also sure to re-evaluate consistently to make edits as needed to further optimize. We’ve learned along this process what we like and do not like when it comes to partitioning time. In particular, we review the days that stray from the prescribed ideal, and gather from that elements we enjoy to refine into our next iteration.

In summary, we found ourselves cramped for time in that we each had a lot to accomplish. We found that we had a lot of overlapping interests that could be easily streamlined, and many individual interests that required intentional carve-outs. We wanted to see each other more, and there were significant inefficiencies in the time being spent apart as well as together.

For example, our Fridays will now consist of early commutes together to Alhambra. My workplace is just a few minutes from Peter’s home in Alhambra. The early commutes allow me to avoid dreaded traffic. During the drive, we listen to an e-book for our mutual edification. Upon arrival to Alhambra, we go on an early morning walk while Peter gets in his weekly phone call with his friend Angela. He then gets to spend the day with his parents while working from home.

We end the day by grabbing dinner with his parents and this buys us time until traffic dies down before heading back to Orange County. With these layered activities working as structured bookends, it was easy to squeeze in all the other obligations while not giving up on things important to us: family, mental stimulation, and time together.

Though the implementation of an ideal week required significant upfront work in thinking, communicating, and planning, we are now far happier, motivated, and aligned in our goals. It serves as a catalyst for growth. Peter has implemented variants of an ideal week before, for himself and for his past relationships. This is my first foray into something so structured, and it’s hard to go back.

XOXO,

Howard and Peter