Off-duty agendas

Nobody comes running down the stairs to hug you when you get to work

Substack tells me that one of you is personally responsible for 45 subscribers. Thank you, I’ll be in touch personally. Everyone else — please consider forwarding this to someone, perhaps along with an agenda for your next conversation.

---

There’s a lot of talk about work-life balance. Most (but not quite all) people claim that their lives outside of work are more important than their work lives. 

In our work lives, there are many meetings. 25% of our work life is spent in a meeting. We take them very seriously: pre-reads, reminders, agenda, meeting notes, actions, follow-ups. Of course, most of us don’t fully abide by all of these all the time. But most of us abide by a few, at least some of the time. 

But virtually no one prepares for personal dedicated time with friends and family.

Why not? If leisure really is more important work shouldn’t we give as much thought to it?

There are multiple, obvious benefits to this. You get beyond small talk faster. It shows respect for the person you’ll be spending time with, someone (presumably more important to you than your average work meeting attendee). It means you remember all the topics you want to discuss. And it won’t dampen spontaneity because spontaneity (by definition) will just happen anyway. 

Timely forethought should apply just as much socially as it does professionally. 

Let’s try it. Call a person to mind. Keep that single person in mind.

Now look at the list below. You’re brain won’t be able to help but start to formulate an agenda of interesting items to talk about, specific to the person you have in mind.

• Health

• Family

• Relationships

• Work

• Hobbies

• Gossip

• Travel

• Movies & TV shows

• Reminiscences

• Current affairs & news

• Life plans

So, bring some of the practical rituals from work into your personal life. Think of what you’d most likely to discuss ahead of time. Share it with the other person. Encourage them to add to it. Make the most of your time together.

(Thanks to Greg Detre for the idea for this piece.)