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Is The Routine Falling Apart Already? · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

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  Speaker 1: How I Welcome to the Happy Families Podcast. If you're
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  Speaker 1: like most families around the country, your kids back at
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  Speaker 1: school now. Today should be day three if they're in
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  Speaker 1: the state schooling system and they didn't have student free
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  Speaker 1: days and everything kicked off on Tuesday. And if you're
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  Speaker 1: anything like most families, everything's falling apart, whether it's day
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  Speaker 1: three or school starts next week or the week after,
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  Speaker 1: or regardless of the circumstances of your family situation. Today
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  Speaker 1: we're talking about what to do when you think you've
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  Speaker 1: got it together and then everything goes pair shaped, the
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  Speaker 1: bottom falls out, the routine falls apart, the kids aren't playing,
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  Speaker 1: and everything's a mess. Today we are going to give
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  Speaker 1: you two of the very best evidence based, science led strategies,
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  Speaker 1: big ideas to get the routine back on track. It's
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  Speaker 1: coming up next. Stay with us. Gooday, Welcome to the
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Families podcast, where you get real parenting solutions every single day.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: This is Australia's most downloaded parenting podcasts. We're so grateful
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  Speaker 1: that you're listening. We are justin and Kylie calls some
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  Speaker 1: parents of six kids on the author of ten or
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  Speaker 1: eleven books about making family happier and today it's something
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  Speaker 1: that we've just I mean, we've reinvented this wheel. How
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  Speaker 1: many times, Kylie, over the last twenty six years of
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  Speaker 1: sending kids to school.
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  Speaker 2: Just just when you think you've got it all worked out,
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  Speaker 2: there's a spanner every time.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, because we don't want to overwhelm you,
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  Speaker 1: because you're probably already feeling overwhelmed, we've just refined our
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  Speaker 1: list of all the different things you can do to
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  Speaker 1: get back on track to I actually wanted to just
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  Speaker 1: make a really short podcast and say get back on track,
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  Speaker 1: but that's usually not considered to be really helpful for
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  Speaker 1: people who are saying, but I'm not on track. So
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  Speaker 1: two things, two things that are going to make I
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  Speaker 1: think all the difference. These ideas come from some of
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  Speaker 1: the best researchers in the world. That's a whole lot
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  Speaker 1: of evidence underpinning them, and I think they're going to
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  Speaker 1: change the game. For the first idea, I'm going to
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  Speaker 1: run with it, but I know that Kylie, We've done
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  Speaker 1: some planning and you know where this is going. It's
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  Speaker 1: about identifying your real bottleneck. There's a guy called Eli
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  Speaker 1: Goldratt and he's put together this thing called the theory
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  Speaker 1: of constraints. That's as Geeky's I'm going to get, I promise,
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  Speaker 1: But what he basically says is every system has exactly
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  Speaker 1: one bottleneck and that's going to limit your through port. Now,
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  Speaker 1: once you fix that bottleneck, there'll be a new bottleneck appear,
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  Speaker 1: and you can start to work on that one. But
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  Speaker 1: just focus on the one major bottleneck that you've got
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  Speaker 1: fixed that constraint, everything will start flowing. And unfortunately, what
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  Speaker 1: typically happens is that most families tend to attack not
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  Speaker 1: one bottleneck but ten small problems when they could and
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  Speaker 1: should just fix the one big one. The upshot of
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  Speaker 1: this really is that your routine is not falling apart
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  Speaker 1: everywhere it feels like it. It feels like it, but
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  Speaker 1: it will be falling apart at one critical point. And
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  Speaker 1: if you can find that one critical point, fix that,
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  Speaker 1: everything downstream will start to flow.
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  Speaker 2: A couple of questions that might help you discover where
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  Speaker 2: that bottleneck really is. So what time of day consistently
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  Speaker 2: creates chaos for you?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, so some families it'll be when everyone comes, getting
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  Speaker 1: everybody out of bed. Well, yeah, mornings, it could be
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  Speaker 1: getting everybody to bed, right, It could be getting everybody
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  Speaker 1: out the door, but what times when everyone comes home
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  Speaker 1: and it's just.
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  Speaker 2: Like, ah, what time creates the chaos?
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  Speaker 1: Okay, that's question number two.
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  Speaker 2: What task when it doesn't happen, causes everything else to derail?
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  Speaker 2: And the last one, what's the domino that when it falls,
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  Speaker 2: everything else goes with it?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah? So when you say that, I straight away think
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  Speaker 1: of like we've been talking about this for eighteen years
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  Speaker 1: in our family. I still don't think we need this podcast.
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  Speaker 1: This is for us. It's dinner, right, Like if we
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  Speaker 1: if we don't get dinner on time, that's the domino
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  Speaker 1: it doesn't fall.
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  Speaker 2: Like what's the magic hour in our house for dinner?
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  Speaker 1: About four thirty pm? Five pm? That would be my dream,
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  Speaker 1: but realistically five to five thirty yeah, And when do
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  Speaker 1: we normally have it hunt seven thirty Yeah, if we're lucky.
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  Speaker 1: So Kylie, say more about those most common bottlenecks. I
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  Speaker 1: think it's worth spending just another second on this morning madness.
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  Speaker 2: Kids can't find what they need, whether it's shoes, homeworks,
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  Speaker 2: school bags, lunchboxes. That creates chaos. There's also after school collapse,
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  Speaker 2: no clear transition from school to home. Bags are dump,
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  Speaker 2: homeworks lost, everyone scattered, kids are hungry, they don't know
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  Speaker 2: what to do with their time. What about bedtime battles?
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  Speaker 2: Kids not asleep on time, They're exhausted in the mornings.
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  Speaker 2: There's the cascade of failures as the day wears on,
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  Speaker 2: and then there's the parent bottleneck when you're trying to
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  Speaker 2: do everything for everyone right.
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  Speaker 1: So you actually have the problem, which is so funny
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  Speaker 1: because you blaming everyone else for being the problem. So
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  Speaker 1: the fix is really simple. Identify ruthlessly, ruthlessly identify your
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  Speaker 1: one bottleneck. What's the one area that we need to improve?
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  Speaker 1: Just track the week, have look what's happened over the
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  Speaker 1: last few days. Where does the routine consistently break? Where
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  Speaker 1: are you yelling at the kids? I know some people
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  Speaker 1: are going to say everywhere, but there is going to
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  Speaker 1: be one thing, right, You're going to be like, yeah, morning, I.
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  Speaker 2: Know, I'm laughing, but it's actually because this has been my.
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  Speaker 1: Life, We've gone through this, We've literally done this. But
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  Speaker 1: for some families it's going to between seven and eight
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  Speaker 1: in the morning, and for others is going to be
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  Speaker 1: seven and eight at night, and for others is going
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  Speaker 1: to be between three thirty and four thirty in the
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  Speaker 1: afternoon or when when dad gets home, when Mum gets home, Like,
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  Speaker 1: you'll work it out and then you want to engineer
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  Speaker 1: that constraint out of existence, which is what we did
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  Speaker 1: when we recognize that our biggest bottleneck was mornings, like
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  Speaker 1: six point thirty three to seven thirty eight o'clock in
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  Speaker 1: the morning was bedlam, and we came up with a
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  Speaker 1: way to get that bottleneck gone.
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  Speaker 2: With a concept we call your morning begins the night.
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  Speaker 1: Before, which basically means that everything.
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  Speaker 2: That you need to make sure that your morning runs
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  Speaker 2: smoothly actually needs to be done the night before. Ye,
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  Speaker 2: so you know exactly where your kid's uniform is, you
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  Speaker 2: know where their shoes are, their school bag would be
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  Speaker 2: ideally packed, and lunchboxes. Do as much of the packing
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  Speaker 2: as you.
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  Speaker 1: Can, where the library back before the sports uniform, like,
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  Speaker 1: just just have it all done.
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  Speaker 2: A locals swimming gear, whatever it is you need.
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  Speaker 1: We went overboard, and we even got the kids to
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  Speaker 1: choose their breakfast and lunch for tomorrow. Well, we had six.
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  Speaker 2: Kids and trying to cater for all of their needs
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  Speaker 2: in the morning was chaotic.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's when we realized that mornings became magic when
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  Speaker 1: we realized that your morning begins the night before. Fix
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  Speaker 1: the one thing that's breaking everything else, that will be
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  Speaker 1: the game changer for you. That's our big Idea number one.
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  Speaker 1: If your morning's your days, your routine is off the rails.
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  Speaker 1: We've got one more big idea right after this we're back.
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  Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families Podcast. Big Idea number two for
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  Speaker 1: getting your routine back on track. If everything's falling apart
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  Speaker 1: and we're only just starting the year. There's a guy
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  Speaker 1: called Barry Schwartz, and he wrote a book called The
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  Speaker 1: Paradox of Choice. Another research called chip Heath, they've done
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  Speaker 1: a whole lot of study on something called decision architecture.
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  Speaker 1: So basically, every decision that you make costs you energy.
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  Speaker 1: And what researchers have discovered I think this is fascinating,
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  Speaker 1: is that successful people are not making one hundred good
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  Speaker 1: decisions every day. What they actually do is they eliminate
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  Speaker 1: as many decisions as possible by creating routines or patterns
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  Speaker 1: or defaults, and that way they only have to make
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  Speaker 1: a handful of decisions, and they've got a whole lot
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  Speaker 1: more cognitive capacity to orient themselves towards the decisions that
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  Speaker 1: really matter.
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  Speaker 2: Just before Christmas, we invested in getting a Skylight calendar.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, so can I tell you this is not sponsorous,
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  Speaker 1: it's not Idly talks about this on almost every podcast. Now,
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  Speaker 1: if I.
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  Speaker 2: Had had that eighteen years ago, my life would have
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  Speaker 2: been revolutionized because.
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  Speaker 1: You make the decision once and then you don't have
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  Speaker 1: to make it again.
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  Speaker 2: It's amazing.
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  Speaker 1: If you're not familiar with that. The skylight is this.
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  Speaker 1: I mean when you put it on standby, it's a
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  Speaker 1: photo frame, a digital photo frame, so you can have
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  Speaker 1: the photos going through it. But once you tap that screen,
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  Speaker 1: it's got your calendar. It's got your schedule, your task liss,
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  Speaker 1: your meals, you have recipes, it's got everything in it and.
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  Speaker 2: You can literally just click the button and you can
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  Speaker 2: see what you're going to eat for that whole week.
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  Speaker 1: And it's changed our life.
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  Speaker 2: Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks.
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  Speaker 1: And it's not sponsored, but we recommend it and we
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  Speaker 1: love it. And I still need to get in touch
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  Speaker 1: with them because we make a lot of noise about
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  Speaker 1: how or you make a lot of noise about how
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  Speaker 1: good this thing is.
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  Speaker 2: Anyway, but this whole concept of eliminating so many choices,
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  Speaker 2: so you're only making a handful. That's a really hard
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  Speaker 2: one for me.
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  Speaker 1: Well, every decision drains will power. Every decision creates friction,
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  Speaker 1: it's tension, it's oh my goodness, like every night, Oh,
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  Speaker 1: what are we going to have for dinner?
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  Speaker 2: Oh? That's the worst question in the hall word world.
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  Speaker 1: So let's do some quick live maths on this. How
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  Speaker 1: many days are there in a typical school term.
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  Speaker 2: Well it's ten weeks, so fifty days.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, if yep, close enough, let's keep it round numbers.
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  Speaker 1: What's for breakfast?
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  Speaker 2: Well, that's a daily decision, so that's another fifty decisions.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, So that's fifty decisions about breakfast. And how many
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  Speaker 1: kids do we have?
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  Speaker 2: Six?
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  Speaker 1: Okay, so that's three hundred breakfast decisions, not including our
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  Speaker 1: own every single term. What's for dinner the same okay,
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  Speaker 1: So there's another three hundred decisions. What times bedtime? Where
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  Speaker 1: do I put my bags? Where do I put my shoes? When?
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  Speaker 1: What do I do about my homework? Like, if there's
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  Speaker 1: no system, it's chaos. I would imagine that that is
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  Speaker 1: literally thousands of unnecessary decisions in every single school term,
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  Speaker 1: probably in every single school week. And so if you're
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  Speaker 1: trying to make these decisions all the time, it's no
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  Speaker 1: wonder that your routines falling apart. Right, That's how this
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  Speaker 1: plays out.
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  Speaker 2: So there's a couple of really easy fixes yep that
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  Speaker 2: I hope will be helpful.
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  Speaker 1: Well, it's really just one easy fix set up at
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  Speaker 1: a fault okay one okay by a skylight. There's your
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  Speaker 1: second one.
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  Speaker 2: Do a breakfast rotation, yep. You just know that every
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  Speaker 2: Monday you have this for breakfast. Every Tuesday going to
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: have this.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, so you sit down with the kids and literally
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  Speaker 1: you say, what are your five favorite breakfasts or what
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  Speaker 1: are your three? Like you can have repeat breakfasts. You
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  Speaker 1: can have the same kid.
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  Speaker 2: Who just wants to eat weeps every day all to you.
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  Speaker 2: I have amazing.
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  Speaker 1: Right, But literally you can either write out here are
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  Speaker 1: your five choices. That does create choice tension overload in
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  Speaker 1: the morning. Sometimes all you can say, here's the schedule,
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  Speaker 1: which is what we've got on our planner. Now it
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  Speaker 1: just says Monday's this, Tuesdays, this Wednesdays.
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  Speaker 2: Nobody ever asks me anymore what we're eating.
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  Speaker 1: And but nobody fights about it either. They just look
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  Speaker 1: at and they're like, I guess that's what I'm having.
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  Speaker 1: And if they don't feel like it, they're like, oh, well,
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  Speaker 1: I guess there's some other choices here that I can
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  Speaker 1: look at, right, Like it's it just simplifies it.
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  Speaker 2: Pick a school that has a uniform and you don't
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  Speaker 2: have to make a choice about what they.
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  Speaker 1: Wear, which practically every school in Australia. Like, how lucky
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  Speaker 1: are we there? Right?
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  Speaker 2: Simple find some after school defaults.
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  Speaker 1: Yep. Yeah, So you're coming into land and you know
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  Speaker 1: where youre going to land, and what's going to happen, where.
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  Speaker 2: Your school bag goes, what the ritual is and routine
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  Speaker 2: around coming home unpacking.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, like, as soon as you get home, you unpack
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  Speaker 1: your lunch box and put it on the sink, you
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  Speaker 1: put your school bag if you're lucky enough to have
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  Speaker 1: a mud room or in the corner or the laundry
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  Speaker 1: wherever it goes.
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  Speaker 2: And then maybe you have an afternoon snack and then
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  Speaker 2: you finish your homework or whatever.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know if that happens anymore with families,
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  Speaker 1: but I still love it When I come home and
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  Speaker 1: my mom would have afternoon tea ready to go. I
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  Speaker 1: st also love it when our kids came home from
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  Speaker 1: school and you had afternoon tea ready to go, and
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  Speaker 1: I could walk into the kitchen and have my afternoon
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  Speaker 1: tea as well.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, it wasn't about the kids.
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  Speaker 1: It wasn't. But this is great, right, Like you've got
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  Speaker 1: the routine, you've got the default. No one's saying what
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  Speaker 1: should I do now? And you don't have the tension,
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  Speaker 1: you don't have the friction, you don't have the cognitive overload.
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  Speaker 1: You're not having decision fatigue. It's all ready decided. And
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: you talked about the breakfast meal roster Kylie. We've done
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  Speaker 1: We've talked about this on the podcast a number of times.
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  Speaker 1: Monday Night, Monday's Mexican, Tuesday's Tacos, Wednesdays chicken and veg
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: or Thursdays Friday fish, yeah, fish, Friday weekend barbecue. Like
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  Speaker 1: the result is that you do the plan once on
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: whatever planning day you have, maybe Sunday or Saturday, and
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  Speaker 1: then you'd have to think about it. It's the same
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  Speaker 1: with bedtime. You pick it and there's a default. So
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  Speaker 1: decision making is cognitively expensive. Barack Obama famously wore the
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  Speaker 1: same suit and tie every single day. Steve Jobs always
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: wore the same outfit, and it wasn't because they didn't
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  Speaker 1: have the money for clothes. It's because they preserve their
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: mental energy for decisions that actually mattered, because what they
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: were wearing was going to be fine. Family routine falls
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  Speaker 1: apart because you're burning willpower on low value, repetitive decisions
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  Speaker 1: instead of creating a system that allows you just to
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  Speaker 1: make the decision once and then keep it on repeat.
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  Speaker 1: It's really nice.
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  Speaker 2: I know you're trying to be really serious right now,
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  Speaker 2: but I'm thinking about Barack and Steve and the fact
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: that they wore the same outfit every day, And I'm
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: thinking about that box of family photos that you've got,
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: and you're trying to kind of date them by the
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  Speaker 2: things that they wear. Oh my goodness, I'd be so low.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna all right. Hopefully that helps you to
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: get the routine back on track. If things have gone hey,
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: we're hi, like my my word is right now, if
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: things have gone haywire for you already this year. The
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: Happy Families podcast is produced by Justin Ruland from Bridge Media.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: Mim Hammonds provides research, admin and all of our other
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: support and for more info to make your family happy
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: and to get the support you need, check out happy
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: families dot com dot au