Free Fun for Fridays: Take a Bath

Posted: August 12, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Free Fun for Fridays | Tags: , , , , | 1 Comment »

Although many of you may feel like you’re taking an involuntary bath this week because of the wild gyrations in the public markets, we’re going to encourage you to take a real bath in your bathtub as a special treat.

It can be difficult to change gears from the stimulating environment of the office to be fully present with your beloved in the evening, especially if your commute home is just a continuation of your day, with email and texting (not while driving, please!) and crossing items off your To Do list until the very moment of arrival.

A bath when you first get home, ideally with candles, soothing music, and bath salts like lavender or geranium, provides a wonderfully intimate and physically relaxing time to either talk or not talk and let the cares of your day fall away.  Your evening will be more calm, and you might even be inspired to enjoy some adult activity before being exhausted at bedtime.

Try This: Quarterly Vacation Off The Grid

Posted: August 8, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Try This | Tags: , , | Leave a comment »

About a decade ago Amy and I started taking a week of vacation off the grid every quarter. No email, no cell phone, no meetings. I give Amy my phone on Saturday and she gives it back to me a week later.

A few years ago I did a TEDxBoulder talk on this. In an effort to personalize this blog a little for those of you that don’t know us, here’s the story of how the Qx vacation came to be, how it works, and what you can expect to get out of it.

For those of you who don’t think you can do a week, try a weekend. It will change your life.

Free Fun for Fridays: Look Up

Posted: July 29, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Free Fun for Fridays | Tags: , , | 6 Comments »

This weekends’s idea for free fun is:

Go outside and look up into the night sky.

Step AWAY from the computer.  Put your phone down.  Stop typing.  Take off the headphones.  Stop watching television.  And even though Apple makes that awesome star mapping app, the point of this exercise is to be enveloped in silence and wonderment, ideally while holding hands with your beloved.

Then you can come back inside and watch the Hubble Ultra Deep Field movie while still filled with wonderment.

Try This: Listen

Posted: July 25, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Try This | Tags: , , , , , | 3 Comments »

This week’s Try This is deceptively simple:  Listen.

Along with Four Minutes in the Morning, developing a habit of really listening to your beloved on a daily basis has many longterm benefits, especially building trust and intimacy.  You’ll need to figure out for yourself what “really” listening means in your relationship, but at a minimum it involves direct eye contact and not multi-tasking.  We’ve haven’t always been great at this simple thing in our relationship, which has resulted in some annoyance (mostly on my part) and some humorous entertainment.

While I generally think that humans are more alike than we are different from each other, and that men and women are spread across a spectrum of gendered behaviors, I do think there are some communication styles that tend to be clustered in men or women.  In general, women want connection and to feel heard, while men want to solve problems and have agency in the world.  This may not be the case in your particular relationship, but it’s worth articulating for yourselves.

Brad has two references about eye contact and empathy - on his blog in his golden retriever eyes post, and here, cited by our friend, Ben Casnocha, a scene from the movie White Men Can’t Jump.

The entrepreneurial partner will benefit just as much, if not more, when his or her turn comes to be listened to.  Your beloved can be (ideally should be) the most trusted person in your life.  When it’s time to talk through pivotal business decisions, or vent about an annoying employee / partner / investor / customer, or just tell someone what you’re really thinking or feeling (scared, tired, elated), you’ll have a strong habit of communicating and knowing that there’s a person in your life who will always listen to you.

Free Fun for Fridays: List Making

Posted: July 22, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Free Fun for Fridays | Tags: , , , | 3 Comments »

I know the expression “talk is cheap” is meant to be derogatory, but the truly nice thing about talk is that it’s not just cheap – it’s free (it’s even called free speech sometimes) and it’s an excellent way of creating connection and intimacy with your beloved.  We will discuss other, more adult rated ways of creating connection and intimacy in future posts, once we get to know each other a little better.

Each Friday we’re going to suggest some free fun things to do for your weekend together.  This week’s free idea is List Making.

I love lists. If I were a character in The Matrix, I would be the List Maker (although the Keymaker would be a close second choice).  While making lists may not sound like a fun idea for your weekend, it’s actually an excellent catalyst for exploratory conversations in which you get to think about the future, think about things to do together, and have fun talking to each other.  And even if you don’t love lists, you can engage your beloved in a conversation about whether he or she loves lists!

One of the wonders of a lifelong relationship is realizing that it takes an entire lifetime to really know someone while at the same time you know your beloved better than you know anyone – sometimes even better than you know yourself.  It’s one of the paradoxes of love.

So the lists I’m thinking of aren’t the grocery list or your task list or lists that make you feel even more burdened by responsibility – these are lists of things you might agree or disagree about, or already have some history of checking off, or you can make your own lists.

Here is a list of books of lists (a meta-list!) to give you ideas for your own lists:

14,000 Things to be Happy About

1001 Ways to Be Romantic

1,000 Places to See Before You Die

1,001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die

1001 Natural Wonders You Must See Before You Die

and for the less outdoorsy to see before you die:

1001 Movies

1001 Books

Books often cost money, but they still have these relic artifact things called Libraries where you can borrow books for free.

And executing on your lists will likely cost money, but looking forward to being able to execute is actually part of the fun.

I’m a huge fan of Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project, where she writes about how anticipation is a big part of happiness.

So enjoy your list making conversations, and share some of your lists here!

Rules And Structure

Posted: July 20, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Rules | Tags: , | 10 Comments »

When Amy reached a point of exhaustion with me in 2000, we decided to create some rules and structure. At the time I was having a huge problem defining any work related boundaries – work spilled over into everything I did, consumed all available time, and then crept into any of the cracks that were left over, like a perfect gas.

I have an engineer brain so I respond well to structure. While the idea of having some rules and the corresponding structure seemed very “not romantic” at first, it turns out that it’s incredibly romantic, especially if you measure the results – which is what engineer brains really care about.

A lot of these ideas will show up in our  Monday Try This: topics. They’ll include things like Life Dinner, Quarterly Vacations Off The Grid, Always Answer Your Phone When Your Beloved Calls, and No TV In The Bedroom.

As always, we look forward to your suggestions – we’ll even try them out and see how we like them. Join the conversation – give us some of your favorite rules and structure to enhance your relationship.

Married Entrepreneurs With Children

Posted: July 15, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Reader Suggestions | Tags: , | 5 Comments »

A number of you have already sent us emails about how having children ads another layer of complexity into the entrepreneurial challenge. We decided early in our life together not to have kids, so it’s hard for us to talk personally about the impact of them on a Startup Marriage, but many of our friends who are entrepreneurial couples have children.  We are reaching out to some of them to include their thoughts on this blog and in our book.

In the meantime, one of our readers from Chile sent us some of his story.  He is recently married and has a two year old with his wife. Following are some of his thoughts:

My biggest motivation to start a company was my daughter. When I knew that my wife (in that time my girlfriend) was pregnant, I was just 20 years old and thought that had to do something to make money, change my life for the better and actually change my style of life if I wanted to become a successful dad, husband and person. So, that’s why I started my own company.

My biggest challenge on being an entrepreneur and my relationship is to unify two worlds, that sometimes (and in my case, all the time) doesn’t fit that well. This is because my wife doesn’t think that been an entrepreneur is something good, so when I started she always tried to destroy my ideas and projects. Now that I’m earning money and getting more exposure in Chile, she is really happy and proud, but was extremely tough when you are just getting things rolling.

The second biggest challenge is being a dad (with a little kid), and try to support your wife, pay all the bills at home, get people to aprove your project, products or ideas, being a friend….it’s like I felt sometimes like superman or tried to be one. So people start blaming on you, telling you that they need more time, but your dreams and goals also need them, specially when you’re just starting, so it’s kind of challenging in those terms.

We know that kids add significant complexity into the entrepreneurial mix and we’ll be sure to explore this in depth.

Hang On, Just One More Email

Posted: July 13, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Rules | Tags: , | 8 Comments »

How many times have you said “hang on, just one more email” as your beloved was waiting on you for something?

In my world, I never ever run out of email to respond to. Ever. If I have Inbox Zero (which is how I try to manage my email), all I need to do is sit for a few minutes and wait and another email will show up. If I’m waiting, I can go check Twitter, or Facebook, or even Google+. Of course, there are lots of Youtube videos to search, plenty of funny cat pictures all over the Internet, and – hang on, I just got another email – okay I’m back.

Now, put yourself in the shoes of your beloved. You’ve just told him or her “my email is more important than you.” Of course, that’s not what you meant to say, and you probably didn’t even think that, but it’s what they heard.

This sucks. But you have total control over it.

Over time, I’m learned that whenever Amy says “okay- I’m ready to go” that means that I should immediately stand up from my desk, close my laptop, and head to the door. She used to give me a five minute warning because it took me five minutes to mobilize. Now, since it’s immediate, there’s no warning. Every now and then it takes me 30 seconds to get moving and that’s perfectly comfortable because of my newfound urgency to beat her out the door.

She’s happy because she’s not waiting for me. I’m happy because she’s happy. And most importantly, I’m signaling to her that she’s more important than my email.

Try This: Four Minutes in the Morning

Posted: July 11, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Try This | Tags: , , | 9 Comments »

It’s Monday morning, and time for our weekly post on tactics to try for a happy marriage.

This is the also the place where we invite you to share your success stories and tactics for what has worked for you in finding time for connection with your beloved while creating an entrepreneurial venture.  Please leave a comment if you have a tactic or story you’d like us to share.

This week’s Try This is to spend four minutes together each morning before the rest of the day gets crazy.

Everyone can do this.  Set aside four minutes to sit on the couch with your cup of coffee and share a few thoughts about your day with each other.  Make eye contact.  Maybe hug long enough to release some oxytocin.  Tell your beloved that you love him or her.

It’s a simple, manageable, no-cost way to set a tone for the rest of the day.

You have already had together time no matter what other whirlwinds of chaos come your way.

Brad gets up at 5:00 most mornings, and I sleep in another leisurely hour or so until the dogs wake me up, so if we don’t make an effort to have even just a few minutes together our days are already on divergent paths literally before I get out of bed.

When we first started this back in Boston more than fifteen years ago, we would turn over a 3 minute egg timer so we could tell how long it had been.  Now we have a good feel for how long it takes to settle down and focus on each other and forget the clamoring email – just about the length of a pop song or the amount of time you’re supposed to brush your teeth for.

We don’t need to have four minutes every day, but there are still definitely mornings where we stop what we’re doing for a calm moment together.

Try this, and let us know how it goes -

Fortune Article on Business and Marriage

Posted: July 8, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Articles | Tags: , , | Leave a comment »

Our long time friend Verne Harnish recently wrote a short article for Fortune titled Saving Your Business and Your Marriage. In it, he lists five things he’s learned, including one from us (#5: Schedule regular vacations). The list is:

  1. Keep a flexible schedule
  2. Ration e-mail time
  3. Hold family summits
  4. Share your interests
  5. Schedule regular vacations

A fun fact for those who know us – Verne was the only person we knew when we moved to Boulder in November 1995. He and his wife moved east six months later.

We’ll be writing more about these things in future posts.

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