Connection – Day One

I’m starting the ninth month of my year-long Foundations project. This month’s focus is on connection. Whereas outreach (month 6) was about broadening your social network, this month’s focus is on close relationships—people you see all the time—so success here looks more like good communication skills rather than extraversion.

As a reminder, you can see my previous eight months’ notes here:

1. Fitness: Start, End, Books.
2. Productivity: Start, End, Books.
3. Money: Start, End, Books.
4. Food: Start, End, Books.
5. Reading: Start, End and Books.
6. Outreach: Start, End, Books.
7. Sleep: Start, End, Books.
8. Reflection: Start, End, Books.

My Strengths and Weaknesses

Overall, I feel quite happy with this foundation. I have a good relationship with my wife and kids, family and friends. It’s hard to judge these things objectively, and I’m not even sure such a judgement is even possible, but I do feel like this is one of the stronger areas of my life.

My relationships are generally happy. Some of that is probably temperament. My wife and I are both compromising, rather than combative, so we rarely fight. When we do disagree, it tends to be more of a discussion than an argument.

While I do occasionally get frustrated or upset, I’m temperamentally unsuited to grudges as I find anger fades extremely quickly. A telling example of this was when I took a personality inventory that measured how I dealt with anger. The questionnaire began with asking me to think about someone who wronged me recently, and I simply couldn’t think of anyone. I could think of some examples from my past, but even then, I found it hard to hold a strongly negative feeling about them.

Some of this is probably good fortune, but I suspect it’s part of my hardwiring as well. I’ve known many people who get into long-standing feuds over issues that seem silly to me. And I’ve had my share of abuse and wrongs inflicted upon me, if I reflect on it. They just don’t make me upset when I think about them today.

But, of course, I’m far from perfect. I have a number of long-standing communication weaknesses that I’m very aware of but have struggled to fix. Some examples:

1. I’m a poor listener. I both talk and interrupt too much, and I rush to project my own opinion on what other people are saying rather than genuinely hearing them out.
2. I like to debate too much. I have strong opinions about things, and I like to debate about them with other people. While I love intellectually debating with people over ideas, I have come to appreciate that most people do not.
3. I am not always patient. I don’t see myself as an angry person, in general, but I do occasionally get upset momentarily. If I act on those feelings in the moment, it can lead me to raise my voice or act in ways I wouldn’t if I were calmer. I see these feelings as very transient, so the key seems to be letting them pass without engaging. As with many parts of emotional self-regulation, it’s easier said than done.

In short, I think my temperament has naturally led me to having decent long-running relationships, but there are still lots of obvious places for improvement.

My Plans for the Month

Trying to figure out the keystone habit for this month was difficult.

For starters, it’s not at all clear that a single, universal behavior underlies success in this area. In contrast to, say, fitness (where exercising is key) or money (where saving is central), having good relationships seems to be a more idiosyncratic effort that depends on your personality and specific issues. The right way to have healthier relationships for someone who is apathetic and aloof may be totally different from someone who is passionate and argumentative.

Second, a lot of what seems to be success here looks more like skill than habit. Having good relationships is less what you’re doing and more how well you’re doing it. The same conversation can strengthen a bond—or tear it apart, depending on if the people having it are respectful and open or angry and shouting.

Still, after some brainstorming, I’ve come up with three new habits I’m going to try to implement this month to improve my relationships:

1. No phone use during family time.

I’ve largely eliminated distractions on my phone. But news and Kindle remain, so I still find myself with my device in hand while nominally spending time with my family. For this month, I’m going to keep my phone away when I’m actively spending time with my wife and kids.

This one seems to me to be the closest candidate for a universal “better connection” keystone habit, although I’m less sure how applicable it is to people who live alone.

2. Count-to-three rule.

I interrupt too much, in general. It’s a bad habit that I’ve long been aware of, but have had little success in eliminating. One suggestion I heard was to wait for a three-second count after a person finishes talking before saying your piece.

I don’t think it’s necessary to actually count it out, but it’s a reminder to make sure the other person is truly finished before I weigh in. Sticking to this one will be harder because so much conversation happens on autopilot—but I’ll make a note of any conspicuous failures in my journal. Hopefully sustaining awareness of this policy for a month will make a difference.

3. No losing my cool.

I’ve always admired parents and teachers who stay calm and composed even when dealing with seriously misbehaving children. Fortunately, my kids are generally pretty sweet and well-behaved. But, as is the case with all kids, I still have to break up fights and step in occasionally. I’d like to think I typically do a good job, but I’ve definitely had moments when I’ve been short, especially when tired, stressed or when my calmer pleading is ignored three times in a row.

Still, I believe losing my cool is unproductive here. While it can sometimes get me their attention, it often makes the situation worse. 

I know I’m capable of maintaining composure, because it’s the kind of thing I do when I watch other people’s kids. In those cases, I limit myself, and it usually works out better.

Therefore, for this month, I’m going to try to avoid losing my cool, getting visibly angry or showing frustration. This applies especially with my kids, but I would also like to extend this to my other relationships.

Reading and Research

The topic this month is a lot less familiar to me in terms of the underlying research. I’ve bought a few textbooks ahead of time, but I’m not sure the academic, theoretical approach will be all that valuable here.

Additionally, a casual skim seems to put attachment theory front and center, which raises red flags for me given the theory’s insistence on the importance of early parental influences even though such influences are basically non-existent in the wider ambit of behavioral genetics research. Perhaps I’ll be pleasantly surprised when I encounter the research, but such a lapse makes me concerned the field’s findings may be a lot squishier than I’d like.

Still, I’m going to try to do a decent survey of some theoretical work as well as try to tackle some of the more popular therapeutic and self-help advice out there—mostly to see what already exists. However, I’m going to put a bit more emphasis on my own habits and skill development than on reading this month.

_ _ _

That’s all for now. Toward the end of the month, I’ll share the books I read and my major takeaways as well as how my own attempts at improving my close relationships have gone!