What To Do When Your Partner Isn't a Planner
Keep reading this post to learn:
⋒ How my husband and I are wired differently when it comes to planning and how that affects our relationship
⋒ 3 things we do to make sure we are on the same page with our family schedule
⋒ How we structure our weekly and monthly prep meetings
Let me give you some background here – my husband, Adam and I are wired very differently when it comes to productivity.
I thrive with routines, habits, and schedules in place and he feels constricted if there’s too much structure. I am a planner (duh, lol) and he is a more wing-it/go-with-the-flow kinda guy.
We’ve been together since 2006 and over the years we’ve learned how to appreciate our differences and figure out systems that work for us. Honestly before having Everly, our planning style differences didn’t affect us too much.
But when we became parents in December 2022, his method of winging it was causing a whole lot of stress on us as a family (mostly me, lol) so I brainstormed what we could do to compromise – to have some supportive routines in place to put me at ease without him feeling stifled with too much structure.
There are 3 things that we do now so that each day can go as smoothly as possible without me feeling like I’m going to fly off the handle.
I’m gonna share those 3 things with y’all, but I want to lay some groundwork first.
These 3 things are 100% mostly for me, however, they do wind up affecting Adam because when we do these things, my anxiety levels go way down which means I’m able to show up better for my roles as a wife and mom.
So I told him that – I communicated very clearly that our lack of family routines was causing my anxiety levels to rise and that it was keeping me from showing up as the healthiest version of myself for him and Everly.
I explained that having routines and systems in place in our home keeps my mind from feeling cluttered and helps me be more present.
I think taking time to explain to your partner how routines support you is a great way to start the conversation. Like don’t go in guns blazing telling them that their planning style (or lack thereof) sucks and is bringing the family down – that’s not helpful for anyone. Put the emphasis on you – explain to them how weaving some routine into your lives as a family would benefit you which in a ripple effect makes life smoother for them, too.
Here are the 3 things we do to plan as a family that supports us as Type A and Type B people:
01. ADD EVENTS TO A SHARED FAMILY GOOGLE CALENDAR
The purpose: So we can all see everyone’s scheduled events ahead of time
How we do it: This one doesn’t take much of an explanation – I created a shared Google calendar and taught my husband how to add events.
Anytime one of us makes an appointment, date with a friend, has a meeting, or anything like that, we add it to the shared Google calendar so that the other person has a heads up in case we forget to verbally mention it.
02. HAVE A FAMILY MONTHLY CHECK-IN MEETING
The purpose: To intentionally plan for the coming month and make sure that everyone is on the same page and feels supported and that everything that we want to get done, gets done
How we do it: I have a monthly family meeting template that I made in Notion that we use with the following prompts (Want the template for yourself?! Click here to download it for free 🤗)
~ What events do we have coming up this month? Which weeks are fuller and which weeks have more margin? Do we need to arrange childcare?
~ What date nights do we have planned this month?
~ What goals or projects are each of us working toward this month that we need support in? What kind of support do we need?
~ What family goal(s) do we want to make progress on this month? What does “complete” look like for that progress?
~ Are there any large financial things coming up this month?
~ Are there any other priorities we want to discuss that are relevant for the coming month?
~ View the family catch-all task list and choose a few things to tick off for the month
(Want the template for yourself?! Click here to download it for free 🤗)
03. HAVE A FAMILY WEEKLY PREP MEETING
The purpose: To intentionally plan for and create a game plan for the upcoming week
How we do it: I have a weekly family meeting template that I made in Notion that we use with the following prompts:
~ What events do we have coming up this week? Do we need to arrange childcare help? (If something has come up since our monthly meeting, we discuss it in the weekly meeting)
~ What date night do we have planned this week?
~ When are we each doing our self-care this week?
~ What goals or projects are each of us working toward this week that we need support in? What kind of support do we need?
(Want the template for yourself?! Click here to download it for free 🤗)
Those are the 3 things that my very Type B husband and my very Type A self have compromised on to help our home life run smoother for everyone.
These things have helped us to structure our home for more peace but without forcing my husband to plan every hour of every day, you know?
Little side note: these 3 things are all things that I do by myself, too – these family meetings don’t replace the ones I have with myself.
Inside the Peacefully Productive Schedule course, I teach in-depth how I structure these meetings for myself – I’ve just added in this family component to support us.
And while you might be stoked to dive right in and start trying to get your partner on board for all of these things immediately, remember that they are wired differently than you are – doing all of this at once might feel like a lot to them. Pick one of the 3 things and ease in.
This is how we went about it…👇🏻
I started by introducing my husband to adding appointments to a shared Google calendar. So things like his hair appointments, golf trips, fantasy football drafts, etc.
I created our shared calendar and showed him how to use it. I’d let him know how thankful I was every time I noticed that he added an event to our family calendar. And then if a scheduling snafu happened because he didn’t put an event in the calendar, I would say kindly something like, “Hey, if this was in the Google calendar, I would’ve known about it and would’ve been able to plan for it – aka get childcare, not have my own plans, etc.).” That helped him see how adding in events was actually more helpful than it was a burden to do it.
After a few months of this, he started noticing how much easier it was to be able to open our family Google cal and see when my work calls, hair appointments, and girls’ nights were so that he could plan things for himself without conflicting with what I had going on – and vice versa for me…I was able to schedule my stuff around things that he had pre-planned for himself.
Once we’d been doing the shared Google calendar for a while, I asked if we could start doing a Monthly Check-In Meeting.
Then after doing that for a few months (in addition to the shared Google cal), I asked if we could start doing a Weekly Prep Meeting.
So now we have a routine that looks like this:
~ Anytime either of us makes plans or an appointment, we put it in the shared Google cal.
~ The last Saturday of every month, we spend like 20 minutes doing our family Monthly Check-In Meeting.
~ On Sunday mornings, we spend like 10 minutes doing our family Weekly Prep Meeting.
So essentially it’s a total of like an hour of planning a month plus the time it takes to add the events into Google cal throughout the month.
The way we do our meetings is very chill – I don’t like roll out a whiteboard into the dining room or anything wild, lol – because I know that would make it feel stale for my husband. We just cozy up on the couch with some wine for our monthly or on the front porch with coffee for our weekly!
Something that I did to help us was creating recurring events in our shared Google cal of these things so that we’d remember to do them and that they wouldn’t annoy anyone because we knew they were coming (aka they wouldn’t annoy Adam, lol).
Now as y’all know, say it with me now, our schedules and routines are tools, not chains – sometimes we miss a meeting because life happens. Sometimes we have to push our prep meeting to Monday moringa because life happens. You get it!
I’m fully aware that this system won’t work for everyone but these 3 things have truly been a game changer for my family so I wanted to share them in this blog post with you!
Introducing… 👀
One of our Hustle Sanely team members tried out the templates before we released them to the public and here is what Kate texted me after:
”Okay but truly — the monthly/weekly meeting was SO helpful for us. Like wow. We have always struggled with good communication, especially around goals and both of us felt so so good afterward knowing like what each other’s goals are, how we can support each other, what our family goals are, and even down to the childcare planning. 👏🏻 We also scheduled and registered for workout classes for this week that we want to go to together, and made dinner reservations for date night.
I know I say it all the time — but what you create and teach is gold, Jess!! ✨ and it really impacts not just people and their productivity, but families and their homes and how they show up for each other. 🫶🏻”
We truly hope that these templates support you and your peaceful productivity well. You can download your copies below!
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