147: Steal These Relational Goals This Summer

Episode Transcript

Verbs Boyer: Courtney, have you ever set a smarter goal for one of your relationships?

Courtney Baker: That is a great question. I don’t know. Sometimes it feels a little weird, feels like relationships should just be organic and like-

Verbs Boyer: And natural, yeah.

Courtney Baker: Always naturally growing and maturing. And in my experience, the older I get, the less truthful I feel like that is. That a lot of times it takes a lot of intentionality to have strong relationships.

Verbs Boyer: Yep.

Courtney Baker: And I have totally used the smarter framework to help improve relationships. Almost every year, I have some kind of relationship goal with my husband. Sometimes that’s a trip that we want to take together. Which guys, one of my goals this year, we’re about to go on a big trip for our 40th birthdays together.

Verbs Boyer: Nice.

Courtney Baker: And that was a goal this year. I mean, it was really a goal for our relationship. We have small kids and we always try to get away maybe for like a weekend together. But this is an extended amount of time together, just the two of us.
But I’ve also had relationship goals with my kids where I’ve done an intentional amount of time each day that I’m trying to spend with them. Or maybe there’s a set of activities that I’m trying to do with them over a period of time. So there’s definitely been different iterations and different looks at that. Sometimes it’s actually with other people, like setting up some kind of connection point or a date night with other people each month over the course of time.

Verbs Boyer: Sure.

Courtney Baker: I’ve tried all kinds of different things. Verbs, what about you? Have you used a smarter goal for relationships?

Verbs Boyer: Yeah. So, right before we press record, you challenged me on my response when you asked me the first time. And I said, “I don’t think I have one.” Or, “I had one and I was unsuccessful at it, so I forced myself to forget about it.” But that’s not true either. But yeah, in the same way, I think … well, in the same way, I have set goals around date nights with my wife, as well as quality time with our kids, as well. And so even for the fact that it’s summer right now and I have them, I’m on ultra dad duty for a solid week. And so it made me think about how I want to spend the time versus like, “All right, kids go upstairs. Here’s a tablet and a remote. Occupy yourself.”
But really being intentional about how I want to spend that time. So I’ve taken half day PTOs, because there’s some things that I had to do this week, recording wise and podcasts and things like that. And in the back half of the day, using my weekly preview guys, I’ve planned out some activities we’re going to do. Today actually, we’re going to do some sneaker design. So I went and got them some blank slip on shoes, and they’re going to-

Courtney Baker: Oh.

Verbs Boyer: Work on those. And then we have some other things planned through the week. So my goal this week is just, hey, make it a week that we’ll create some memories and it’ll be one of those things that they’ll remember for a while. That’s my goal this week. So there’s a bunch of things like that. You might not have children, there’s other relationships in your life that are important to you. But today we’re going to talk about why summertime is the perfect time for setting relational goals. So let’s get into it.

Courtney Baker: Well, before we do, though.

Verbs Boyer: Oh, not yet.

Courtney Baker: I mean, hold on.

Verbs Boyer: Pump the brakes.

Courtney Baker: Hold on there. I mean, Nick, you and I got to get in on this sneaker design. I mean, I’m like all in. Next time you’re in town, Nick, let’s have Verbs host us for sneaker design. Because I’m thinking like rhinestones and bedazzle guns. I can really envision my focus on this tennis shoes coming to life.

Nick Jaworski: I only want tennis shoes that have the like automatic string-

Verbs Boyer: The lace system. Yes.

Nick Jaworski: Yes. Which was in Back to the Future, and then I know Nike released like a real one.

Verbs Boyer: Yep.

Nick Jaworski: That’s what I want.

Verbs Boyer: Not that I know. But yeah, that’s the adapt system, I think that’s mechanical lacing … the tightening of the laces automatically with the … yeah.

Courtney Baker: Well, all that to say, I’m all in on this. And so if you want to have a relationship goal with Nick and I, and we do sneaker designs, I’m all in. It’s a yes for me.

Verbs Boyer: Welcome to another episode of Focus On This. The most productive podcast on the internet. So you can banish distractions, get the right stuff done and finally start loving Mondays. I’m Verbs here with Courtney Baker. Happy Monday to you all. Courtney, happy Monday to you.

Courtney Baker: Happy Monday. It’s good to be here.

Verbs Boyer: Happy summer Monday.

Courtney Baker: Oh yes. The best kind of Mondays, in my opinion. Well, today we are talking about relationship goals and again, I set out of the get go, sometimes I can feel a little weird like, “Wait, should I have to make a goal about relationships? Shouldn’t that just be natural?” Sometimes that can sound like we’re trying to force it. But actually it is, in my opinion, probably the number one thing that is worth putting intention to. The people that we love most, they deserve intentionality.
And again, here in the US, it’s summer, it’s a little bit slower here than normal. Sometimes there’s more FaceTime, there’s more daylight hours in the day for us to spend with the people around us. Everybody’s outside, lots of fun things to do. It’s a great time to consider a relational goal, especially if you’re thinking about your Q3 goals.

Verbs Boyer: Sometimes people don’t really know where to start when it comes to setting a relational goal. And today we’re going to talk about giving you two goals that you can make your very own when it comes to setting these. So goal number one, celebrate Friday fun day at 6:00 PM each Friday from July 1st to August 26th. Now here’s my question, Courtney and Nick, if you don’t mind chiming in here. Are we setting these goals and like we’re actually going to put this into the community and have people to commit to this? Is that the plan here?

Nick Jaworski: Some version of that. Yeah.

Verbs Boyer: Okay. Okay.

Nick Jaworski: Maybe it’s not 6:00 PM for you. Maybe it’s-

Verbs Boyer: Right.

Nick Jaworski: But some idea of celebrating, arriving at Friday would be something that I don’t know if anybody would argue with. You go, “Ah, I should. So let’s try it.” Think about how much fun we’ll have as a community if we were to do something like this.

Verbs Boyer: Absolutely.

Courtney Baker: That is fun.

Verbs Boyer: I love it.

Courtney Baker: So I think the idea here is … again, this is just a framework. Hopefully to get your wheels spinning on a relationship goal. So the idea is you decide what and who fun Friday includes. You can make it special with company, maybe it’s you have your friends in your neighborhood over every Friday night or you have family, extended family. Maybe you have some coworkers. Maybe you change it up each week. Maybe you’re going to kind of rotate through some groups of people that you want to spend some intentional time with. Then you can also make it special with activities. It could be my favorite, which is a game night, Verbs [crosstalk 00:07:47]-

Verbs Boyer: Oh my goodness. Yes. I almost forgot that you were like the game night queen.

Courtney Baker: Yes.

Verbs Boyer: What is it called when the … the Grand Marshall of game night, that’s who you are, Courtney.

Courtney Baker: Yes. I’m all in on Nerts. If you know, you know. And then also, Verbs, you and I have played like a mystery dinner game-

Verbs Boyer: We did.

Courtney Baker: Together.

Verbs Boyer: Yeah. Mystery dinner.

Courtney Baker: And that was a blast. So there’s two ideas for you on game night. It could be a movie night, it could be hiking, it could be a museum, farmer’s market, dancing. Yes, do dancing, that’s amazing. Or live theater. I mean, really this list is just like endless. Like you can go swimming, like just figure out what kind of activity might be fun.

Verbs Boyer: So I’ll say this, Courtney. One thing, for me, that I loved about growing up and I knew it was Friday. We had Friday pizza night. So back then it was like, I don’t know if you remember, I think it was Little Caesars. They had like these two huge, gigantic square pizzas-

Courtney Baker: Yes, yes.

Verbs Boyer: That you can get for like 10 bucks. So in our home, we knew it was Friday when my mom placed that phone call to Little Caesar. And 30 minutes later, knocking on the door, it was Pizza Pizza.

Courtney Baker: Yes.

Verbs Boyer: So these are the types of things we want to try to do to celebrate and mark the Friday fun day.

Courtney Baker: Pizza is a good one. And for the adults, if you’re like, “I’m over pizza.” You could do … you could get a little boujee here. Can I say boujee on the podcast?

Verbs Boyer: Wait, wait. Hold on. Are you really ever over pizza? Sure, it turns into-

Courtney Baker: True.

Verbs Boyer: Flat bread, but it’s still pizza.

Courtney Baker: I mean-

Verbs Boyer: Just kidding.

Courtney Baker: I feel like there’s a certain age where you’re like, “I can’t do pizza every week.” Or, “I’m going to have to ride the Peloton four times a day.”

Verbs Boyer: Take the slices and get that extra ride in.

Courtney Baker: That’s right.

Verbs Boyer: It’s Friday. Let’s do it.

Courtney Baker: You could do margaritas, you could do charcuterie, you could do popsicles. I mean, the spectrum again, to make it special, you get to decide, you can throw in some surprises. But the idea I think to really be successful here is to be planning for this each week. What you don’t want to do is on Friday morning, be like, “Oh my gosh, today’s Friday fun day. I’m exhausted. We don’t have a plan.”

Verbs Boyer: Right.

Courtney Baker: You’re not going to be successful. But that’s why it’s actually a really great goal is because with your goal, you’re looking at it as part of your weekly preview. Ahead of time thinking about, “Okay, what could we do this Friday?” And so I think it could set you up for a lot of success and hopefully special memories that you and the people you’re celebrating with remember. And I think that’s a really special thing.

Nick Jaworski: I did not write this script. So this isn’t an idea that came from me. But I do want to highlight that we have had on our calendar for years, a Friday dance party at six o’clock in this house. So I want people to know, if I’m being honest, we haven’t done it in a while. But for a while, we were really committed to the idea. And I used to do it even before that. It sounds like the kind of thing that people say they do and then don’t actually do. But for real, we used to do it pretty consistently. And you get to pick the music and you dance around. It’s like really, really fun. And I really would recommend-

Courtney Baker: How long would you dance?

Nick Jaworski: Sometimes it was kind of long. Sometimes it might be like an hour. Like we would like-

Courtney Baker: Oh wow.

Verbs Boyer: Wow.

Nick Jaworski: If someone’s like making dinner and other people were dancing around and doing stuff. But usually you’re thinking maybe like a half hour. But it’s just-

Courtney Baker: That’s nice. I wonder if you could just set your Alexa on Fridays at six o’clock to go off like-

Nick Jaworski: Oh.

Courtney Baker: “It is now dance party time.”

Nick Jaworski: Yeah.

Courtney Baker: That’s Amazing.

Verbs Boyer: But wait. So Nick, my only request from you, my friend-

Nick Jaworski: Oh God.

Verbs Boyer: The next one you have, you have to record just a snippet.

Nick Jaworski: All right.

Verbs Boyer: I’m going to look for 10, 12 seconds.

Nick Jaworski: All right. We’ll do it.

Verbs Boyer: And then maybe you can post that also in the community, because I would love to see.

Courtney Baker: And if you could also be doing the robot, that would be awesome.

Nick Jaworski: You want me to do the robot? No.

Courtney Baker: That is my father’s go-to dance move, he’s listening right now. He’s actually very good at it.

Verbs Boyer: These goals are a fun way to even get exercise in on formulating a smart goal.

Courtney Baker: Yeah.

Verbs Boyer: It’s not super technical, it’s fun. You can use this as practice if you need practice on really formulating that structure behind a smarter goal to get it done.

Courtney Baker: Goal number two is go on a three day getaway by August 31. So this is really pretty straightforward, but there’s nothing like getting away with someone that you’re wanting to spend some intentional time with. And so you get to decide, who are you going to go with? Is it maybe a spouse or a partner, a best friend, a parent or sibling? Where are you going to go? It could be a staycation. It could be a road trip. Or maybe you’re going to fly somewhere. Doesn’t have to be expensive. There’s lots of ways to do trips to get away that aren’t expensive.
But here’s the key, no work. And I feel like with our audience, that’s important to say is, hey, this is all play. This is time with someone you love just to get away. I think this is a great goal. This is one I, again, I said this at the beginning of the episode, almost utilized some version of this every year. It usually changes who. One year … actually, do you remember, Verbs, when the pandemic started, I had had a goal to go on a girls trip. I can’t even remember how I structured the goal. But it was kind of a bigger trip with a group of women. And it was going to be kind of a rejuvenation trip, like with hiking and yoga and that kind of thing. And obviously with the pandemic, did not happen.
But those type of goals kind of using that, it’s both fun, you’re excited about it. It checks so many of the boxes of the smarter goal, for me. But also, I don’t know about you too, but it’s like, if I’m not intentional about these kind of getaways, like they just don’t happen. Even though I want to do them, desperately like-

Verbs Boyer: Sure.

Courtney Baker: Love to do it. If I’m not intentional about it, it just doesn’t happen.

Verbs Boyer: Sometimes with those goals, it could be easy to think just the work on actually making it happen is working itself. And so you kind of just opt out. But again, I mean, when you have goals set around these types of getaways and relationship building and rejuvenation, at the end of it’s always that much more healthy for your mind, your heart, your soul, all of those things. So it’s worth the work to put in to just see if you can get it done and make it happen, for sure.

Courtney Baker: Verbs, when y’all went on your big Disney trip last year, was that a goal of yours or was that just a trip for y’all?

Verbs Boyer: It was a goal. It was a goal. One, it was just to be able to go to Disney World. And then once we started having kids, it was like, “Well, with the price tag on that trip, it’s better to wait.” Or we decided to wait till they’re a little bit older. You didn’t have to deal with strollers and all that sort of thing. And they could actually remember the trip. So that was definitely a goal and it was something that we kind of hit like a threshold and we were like, “Hey, I think we can do this. Let’s make it happen.”
So we were able to get out … because this was right when everything kind of started opening back up. And so the time of year that we went was absolutely perfect outside of the fact you still had to wear a mask and all that outside. But I don’t think we waited in line more than the hour for anything that we went on, ride wise. So, it was just a great trip and-

Courtney Baker: That’s awesome.

Verbs Boyer: We loved it. Yeah.

Nick Jaworski: I struggle because I never grew up traveling a lot. And so I don’t think of it. And I like getaways, I like time off and getting to things. But I truly never think of it. And I’m also very comfortable in my house. So, it is a thing that I have to work on and the rest of my family does like to do it. And I think they probably would love to have some intentionality around that idea. So this is a very good reminder for me just to get off my butt and make something happen.

Courtney Baker: Nick, to give you a little additional encouragement. When I think back on my younger years, what I remember are the trips. I remember those … it’s not so much the trips as the experiences. Like there’s something about it that, in my memory bank, just stands out. And so I think that is, for me, I’m like mindful of that. Even with my own life, like not only is this going to be fun and great because of just the nature of what it is. It’s going to stand out in my memories in the future.

Nick Jaworski: Sure. And I don’t think we’ve been helped by a pandemic that kept us home anyway.

Courtney Baker: 100%.

Verbs Boyer: Or gas prices currently.

Nick Jaworski: Right.

Courtney Baker: But, Nick-

Nick Jaworski: I don’t know where we’re going.

Courtney Baker: If you could just figure out somewhere to walk, I mean-

Nick Jaworski: I love walking. Let’s go.

Courtney Baker: Oh man, your family is like, “Courtney, we hate you.”

Verbs Boyer: But that is a very … I’m glad Nick brought that up because that’s a real thing. I mean, depending on how you might have grown up, like there was the idea of vacation, like, hey, the parents get off for a week to be able to go somewhere else. Again, depending on how you grew up, that may or may not happen. So, it’s not necessarily built into you to think along those lines of, “Oh, there’s an option for me to actually take some PTO, take the family, take myself, whatever, and then go somewhere else.” Out of the regular rhythm and space of where you spend your life currently.
So, that may be something that a lot of you listening may have to think through is just, “Hey, what is the value here behind it?” Especially those with families or younger children is there’s that whole memory creation moment that I guarantee. Like Courtney, I remember there was one year my uncle just came and scooped us up in a motor home. I didn’t even know he knew how to drive a motor home. And he took us to Disneyland and SeaWorld, and I had all my cousins and like I remember that forever. So there’s that whole memory creation moment that can happen. But as well, it’s just healthy, again, to get that time of rejuvenation.

Courtney Baker: So again, these are two examples of relational goals that you can leverage. Again, I think sometimes we forget about these type of goals. And so make them your own, think about it. Hey, in Q3, maybe there’s a goal that you need to replace, or you want to consider installing one of these relational goals. These are two examples for you. I’m excited to hear what you all make of these and the experiences that come from these.

Verbs Boyer: All right, so today’s tip to level up your planner usage. Here we go. Refresh your focus and deepen your relationships by writing down a goal that you’ll pursue this quarter. Now we talked about different levels of relationships or how to formulate a relational goal. And you may have some ideas that have worked for you. So please, if you don’t mind, share those inside the full focus planner community. And that’s a great place to go and resource some of these thoughts that could help you just get going of how to think about some of these goals that you can set for this summer. And we’ll see you there in the community on Facebook this summer.

Courtney Baker: This summer relationships on Facebook in the group.

Verbs Boyer: People there.
So thank you for joining us on Focus On This.

Courtney Baker: This is the most productive podcast on the internet. So share it with your friends and seriously, we would love for you to leave a review. It really helps us spread the word about this show and gets the word out to other people. So we would love it if you would take a few minutes to go leave a review, like right now, like right now.

Verbs Boyer: Courtney, in addition to that, before you finish.

Courtney Baker: Yes.

Verbs Boyer: I just had this thought. Charcuterie is actually pizza without the bread.

Courtney Baker: Oh my goodness.

Verbs Boyer: And I’m going to leave that there.

Courtney Baker: Okay. We’re going to think hard about that one and debate it after we’re off the air. We’ll be back here next Monday with another great episode. Until then, stay focused.

Verbs Boyer: Stay focused.