The Lazy Genius Podcast - #22: The Lazy Genius Goes on a Date Night

Episode Date: May 15, 2017

1. Read a few things that were mentioned. In Defense of Skipping Date Night The 7 Date Night Mistakes You Didn't Know You Were Making a conversation with my husband if you want a look into our marriage 2. Release the guilt in other areas by becoming a Lazy Genius. Join The Lazy Genius Collective. Your inbox and your sanity will thank you. This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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But Laura shopped on Amazon and saved on cleaning spray, countertop wipes, and fly traps. Hey, fruit flies, your baby boom ends here. Save the Everyday with Amazon. Hi, everybody. It's Kendra, and you're listening to the Lazy Genius podcast. Here, I am going to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Today's episode, episode 22, the Lazy Genius goes on a day. date night the pitch for today date nights get to be as important as you want them to be okay there are

probably three groups of listeners for this episode one those of you who love date night you live for date night it's your favorite favorite thing the second group are people who i mean you know day night's fine like you either are it doesn't really matter too much or you're kind of skeptical of um people who want to spend a whole lot of money to go out when you could just stay home and talk to each other, like, but you just don't really actively do it very much for whatever reason. And then the third group are those of you who don't have a person to go on a date night with. And so that can be kind of a bummer. And you might be like, I'm not listening to this episode.

You don't have to. That's totally fine. But I do believe that there are things in this episode that apply to our lives as a whole, not just for going on a date night, but anything that we are trying to make special. I really do believe that that this is an episode that is an example. of putting on lazy genius glasses and learning to see the world a little bit differently. So if that's you, if you're like, nope, not for me. That's totally fine. You go do your thing, man.

Go watch some TV or wash your dishes or whatever it's going to be. But I would encourage you to stick around because we're going to hit some things that might actually be really helpful to all the camps. Okay, so in the playbook we're going to do, we're going to talk about three things. The best time to get a babysitter. the magic of the progressive dinner, and this is my favorite, the date night filter that everyone needs. And I would wager that it's not even just a date night filter. It is a social filter that everyone needs. Okay, so let's hit the first part. The best time to get a babysitter. Obviously,

this is for people who have kids who need a babysitter. The best time to get a babysitter, you guys, the best time to pay cash dollars to another human to watch your children is when your children are the hardest to watch. Okay, please, don't waste, it just breaks my heart. Don't waste your babysitting dollars when your children are asleep or when they're part of like a really lovely routine and they sort of don't buck the system. Don't, don't leave when it's good. Leave when it's bad. You're paying someone money. It's fine. They can get your kids at their worst. That's totally fine. Give them more money if you feel badly about it. Please, the best time to a babysitter for a date night is the hardest time of the day. Okay. So for a lot of us, I wrote a post

about this a long time ago, actually, about how we do date night wrong. And one of those, one of the main things is that we go out too late. If you're able to go out before dinner, like hire a babysitter from, say, like, four to seven, four to eight. And again, this means that like, you know, you and your person can get home early enough to be able to do that. But if that's a thing, oh my goodness. So you pay the money for the babysitter to watch your kids from 4 o'clock to bed time, which is the hardest time, right? But they're like bouncing off the walls and doing their thing.

And, you know, you have hot dogs or you order a pizza or whatever it is. And everyone's taken care of. You leave the house when it's hard. Maybe you and your person go to like a bookstore or you go wander somewhere. And then you're going to go eat dinner early. you're going to go eat dinner at 5 or 5.30 at a restaurant. A couple perks here, guys. No one else is eating dinner. You don't have to wait. Perk number two, you already eat this early because you have tiny kids and so you eat like old people super, super early. It's normal. Your body is expecting it.

It's fine. So you go to an early dinner. Then if you want to go somewhere else after, like, again, to walk around or maybe you go get to dessert at a different place or something like that, then you come home. You've been on a date for like three hours. Then you come home. You put your kids to bed. you put them to bed, which means they're more likely to actually go to sleep than if the babysitter's there because they're all wound up or the babysitter maybe doesn't know that she needs to start getting them ready for bed way earlier than she thinks, you know, and everything's like behind schedule. You get home. Your babysitter gets her night too. She's probably grateful for that. And you put your kids to bed and then you still get the whole evening by yourself in your house, in your house, in your pajamas. Like, are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? Can I talk any higher? It's my favorite thing. So if you don't do afternoon date nights on my word, but all that comes from hiring a babysitter at the hardest time of the day, your afternoons, that might not be it. Your hardest time of the day might be like a Saturday morning. Maybe Saturday morning stress you out because everybody's like, I want to go to the park and I need to go to this.

And, you know, everyone's kind of all over the place. Maybe you and your person go on a date night on Saturday morning. It's not a date night, but it's still a date. You know, like there are, You don't have to do it the way it's always been done is my point. Okay? You don't have to do like dinner or a movie starting at 630 or 7. Like you don't have to do that. So think for yourself when, and I don't, I didn't mean that phrase like think for yourself as insulting.

I mean, think about your own life. When is it the hardest to be around your kids and then leave during that time and go on a date? Magic. All right. Number two. the magic of a progressive dinner. Okay.

I hear from so many people that when you go on a date and you go out to dinner and let's say you don't want to go to a movie or you're not going to be out for that long. But you've finished dinner and you're like, what do? What do people do for fun? You know, like, I don't understand. This could be if you have been married for a little while and you just haven't been social, you know, You haven't been super actively social in a long time. Or maybe you live in sort of a small town and you just kind of forgotten like, you know, you don't want to go to a bar, you don't want to go to a club, you don't want to,

but what else are you supposed to do? Here's what you can do. A progressive dinner, you guys. A progressive dinner. So here's how this works. You have like different courses at different places. I think you probably figured that out. You know what a progressive dinner is.

But think about it. You're taking a little bit longer. Right? To enjoy your meal. There's kind of an adventure sort of weaved into that naturally. You know, like maybe you go and get a, like you go get a glass of wine or something at the cool bar at the cool restaurant that you can never afford to eat at. But you've always wanted to go inside. Go get a drink or an appetizer there and sit at the bar and do that and then leave and go to another restaurant. You could go to get tacos for all I care for dinner. Like it doesn't matter. But just think like not so much what restaurant do we want to go to? but you can make it an experience by going to several. So you could go somewhere for drinks and or appetizers.

You could go somewhere for the entree. You could go two places for an entree and share it, depending on how much you want to like fork up for tips, depending on where you're going. Some places you, like, you might go to a food truck. You could go, like, here's the thing. It could be this crazy. You could go to a fancy restaurant and get wine at the bar at first.

And then you could go to like another cool little, restaurant that you like and get that favorite appetizer that you always get you know like the fried calamari or whatever it is that was the most unoriginal appetizer idea i could think of but there you go so you could get an appetizer at a place then you could go to a food truck that you love and get your entree there and get like a couple of different things and share them and sit um sitting on a bitch on the street you know like downtown or something and then maybe you go to a bakery and get dessert like You can make your whole dinner the event. And isn't that what most of us love is the food part?

So stretch it out, man. Stretch it out. You can make your date night magical simply by going to different places and experiencing it all at once or not all at once. Because that's some of the stress too is like, where are we going to go for dinner? And you're like, well, I mean, I don't know. And it feels so like you're committing to something bigger than it actually is. It's like our whole date is going to be at this restaurant.

that feels like a lot. And then when the restaurant's over, you don't know what to do. So spread it out and try a progressive date night dinner. Okay. So you have paid the babysitter for the hardest time. You now are going to think about going on a progressive dinner, possibly. But let's talk about the third part of the playbook, which is the date night filter that everyone needs. And I actually think that this is something that you can apply, not just for date nights, but for other social activities and even going out by yourself, which is a thing, by the way.

that filter is the following. Do whatever makes you come alive. All right. So let's say that you have in your head, you know, date night is dinner and a movie. You know, that's what it says. Now, maybe movies in a theater stress you out and you forget until you get there. You're like, $14 for a ticket. Are you joking and you get weird about the money? Or you're like, I mean, this movie's fun, but I'm uncomfortable in the seat and someone next to me is playing on their cell phone. You know, like it may be that what you usually do makes you stressed instead of makes you come alive or maybe the way that your friends do their date night feels really stressful to you so let me run through a couple of different examples of things that you could do to make you come alive and this is the filter that

you should choose whenever you go out so familiar food versus new and adventurous food okay one or the other might make you come alive more so I for one personally love familiar familiar food. Like it's fun to try new restaurants, but I actually get a little bit stressed thinking like, okay, because we don't have a lot of money to go out on a date night. So we don't do it very often. So when we do, I want it to count, right? I don't want my, like one date night every six months to be kind of, feel like a waste because the food wasn't very good, because it was a restaurant we'd never been to before. And so usually when we go out, we go to just a couple of different, we have a couple different places that we just love because we know we love them.

and we're going to enjoy them. Because the familiarity of that food and knowing that you're going to eat something that makes you so happy, chorizo tacos is mine, by the way, that's worth it to us, to me and my husband. That's worth it. That makes us come alive to enjoy food that we love, that we know we're going to love together in a familiar place. Now, for some of you, that's the worst, right? What makes you come alive is trying new places and ordering a different thing from a place

that you always go to, being adventurous in your food. maybe your date night instead of going to like a like a typical kind of American chain sort of of restaurant for dinner is that you want to go to the Vietnamese place you want you there's this new like African cuisine place that just opened up a few blocks from my house it scares me to go there because I don't know what to expect and for some of you that might not that might make you come alive so think about even how you feel about the food what makes you come alive when it comes to choosing the food and choose that thing choose that thing make your date night count make your social activity count. Another example, staying out late versus coming home early. Okay. The thought of

staying out late makes me want to die. I'm not, I'm not into being outside of my house much past like 930 unless I'm already in my pajamas at a friend's house. That's different because it's like a house. But otherwise, it's not super fun for me. I don't like it. I have a homebody. Some of you again, might feel that way and others if you're like, get me out of this house. It's exciting to you to think about being out late and exploring your city or whatever it is. So don't force yourself into a situation that makes you feel stressed. Opt into the situation that makes you come alive and think about what that is for you about how late you stay out. Another one. Doing something that's like a social situation, like going to, maybe going to that rooftop bar that's like a cool place to go and you can

watch all the people and maybe meet somebody or, you know, going to going to, going to, going dancing, you know, doing something that's more social versus like walking through Home Depot together. That might make you come alive. Like for some of you walking through you hear a friend that says like, yeah, we went to dinner and then we walked through Target or we walked through Home Depot and you're like, for real. That sounds so boring. And you're right for you. It is. But there's a chance that for them, that makes them come alive. It could be that they walk through Home Depot and they dream about what they want to do in their dream house, you know, and start to think that. think about home projects in a in a broader sense you know sharing emotionally about what do we want

our life to look like in 10 years what do we want our house to feel like in 10 years you know that could be walking through home depot could be a really like romantic emotional journey of thinking about how you want your life to look that's a real thing but if you walk through home depot at the end of your date night because you just can't think of anything else to do and it makes you sort of sad then you're not choosing the thing that makes you come alive you're choosing the thing that you just know you've always done, think about what makes you come alive. Aw isn't something we need to travel for. It's something waiting for us in everyday life, whether in a city street or a moment with a work of art. I'm Dr. Keltner, host of the Science of Happiness podcast. Join me for Cities of Aw, a special series on

how our public spaces can spark awe, wonder, and enhance the quality of public life. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. regular date nights versus sporadic date nights. Having the anchor of going out could be so important to you that it just like gets you through that really hard day. You know, you have got date night tonight, man. I'm so excited. Like having that routine and that regularity makes you come alive.

Some of you, it might be the spontaneity of like, I don't know when we're going to go out again. So when we do, it's so fun because it's not something that we were expecting, you know? Even think about that. If you are like, this is fine. I mean, because everyone says, I remember, oh my gosh, you guys, I remember reading something. I don't remember where. But basically it was if you and your spouse are not having regular date nights, then your marriage is in trouble.

Right. Totally made me mad. Like I was super mad when I read that because that's not true. It's so not true. I wrote a post about it actually that you can access through the show notes for this episode. the lazy genius collective.com slash lazy slash date night. I wrote a post called, in defense of skipping date night, because you can skip. Like, it's fine.

You don't have to do things the way that it's always been done. And just because you skip your date night doesn't mean that you're on the road for a broken marriage. That is not real life. Now, it could be, but I think you know the difference. I think you know the difference between like, I just like being home with my husband. This is really nice. Versus you don't want to be in the same room with each other.

Like, that's a very different game. I think you know the difference. So just think about, like, just because things have always been done a certain way or because you see other people doing date night a certain way, you don't have to do it that way. If you're doing a regular date night, like a weekly or every other week date night, and like, it's nice. Of course, you love being with your person. And, you know, that's not a problem.

But it's not really exciting. Or it's not, you don't look forward to it the same way. It could be that the regularity of it doesn't make you come a little. live. It could be that doing it sporadically and spontaneously is what counts for you and makes it even better. So again, just think about that filter. Does it make you come alive? And a last example of that would be like fancy versus casual dressing up, putting makeup on, curling your hair, going to a really fancy place. That could be the best thing ever for you. And then for some of you, it's like, Nope, please don't make me do that ever. Can I still wear my yoga pants wherever we go?

That's a real thing, right? So don't feel badly if you don't want to be fancy. Don't feel badly if you do want to be fancy. If your friends are like, oh, I just hate getting dressed up and you love it, don't feel bad. If that makes you come alive, man, you do you. Like, it's so great. Just pay attention to what those things are. So let's say, so let's just, So let's wrap up those things. Let's say that you decide, like, okay, of those pairings, which ones of those make me come alive? And you decide and you go on a date that's those things. Okay.

So like you want new food. You want adventurous food. You do like to come home early, right? You don't like to stay out late. So coming home early and being home is the best thing for you. You definitely like to just be with your person and just sort of walk in ordinary spaces like home. Depot or Target. Like you don't need, you know, really kind of crazy social situations. Like that doesn't, that kind of stresses you out a little bit. But you do, you want to be with your person. You do like to

have a regular date night. The routine of that really matters to you. And, but you do kind of like getting dressed up too. Like that's fun. You don't want to be super social, but you do like to dress up. So what do you do? Now that you know all those things, what do you do? Here's what you're going to do. You're going to get dressed up every other Tuesday night. you're going to feel pretty. Your person is going to put on that favorite shirt but you like, right? You guys are going to, you have a running list of new restaurants that you want to try, maybe ones that are a little bit off the beaten path, you know,

that might be some international cuisines that you want to try. You go and you get that food, but rather than maybe eating it at the restaurant is you get it to go. And then you go sit in like a park on a park bench or have a, picnic if it's nice, you know, and you eat this really fun, new, adventurous food, but in a familiar and not super busy social setting, even though, and you, like, you look cute and you're sitting on a bench and, like, you feel special on your picnic blanket or whatever it is, right? And you have that food, and you talk to your person and you enjoy that experience. And then you go home and you have your whole evening and you get to do it again with another restaurant at another special spot in the town or

the city the next time. You know, like, you can, you can put together any combination of these things that you want to make you come alive. And if those are your things, if those are the things that you listed, that day night is going to be magic to you. It is going to be so valuable to you emotionally, individually as a couple and looking forward to what's going to come next. Like, it's a wonderful thing to just actively choose, to be intentional, to be a genius about what matters to you, and forget the other stuff. Like if that other stuff doesn't matter, and then don't do it.

Craft a date night that ticks all those boxes that makes you both come alive and it's going to like transform the way that you do it. You're not just settling for what you've always done. It's a really, really great way to do it. Okay, so for me and my husband, we're really, really boring. Like really boring.

So what makes us come alive is, like I already said familiar food. I mean, trying to be food is really, it's great. Like, it's not a problem. I'm not going to try new food. But we do enjoy when we go out eating stuff that we really love, right? We do love to come home early. Stay out late is not okay.

My husband is usually asleep on the couch by 8.30 anyway. So that's, you know, I don't want him to fall asleep in public. We don't like loud social situations. We kind of just like to be alone as much as possible. And then we don't do regular, the regularity of a date night isn't that important. to us. It's just really fun when we, when we're able to grab one. It's like, oh, this is fun. We're going out. This is so exciting. Versus knowing that we're always going to go out on a Thursday night. It's not the same thing for us. So sporadic is great and casual all the way. Like, please don't make me wear

fancy clothes. Please, please, please, please. Like, it stresses me out so much. And so our date nights look extremely boring and kind of like we're settling and like a cop out. And yet they bring us so much life when they happen. So like, for example, and we do, we do like to do the kind of progressive dinner idea as well, and we definitely get a babysitter early. So what we'll do is we'll leave the house and we'll leave early and we might go to, we might go to a store to walk around or a bookstore or something, just something kind of like fun that we don't get to do when the kids are there, or at least we don't get to do the same way when the kids are there. Then we go and get, we usually go to this little Mexican restaurant, this little dive and get tacos, get street tacos. And they're so

they're so good. They have the best guacamole ever. And it just makes it so happy. And it's not expensive. And so that's really nice that it doesn't feel like it's, you know, break in the bank because we don't have a big bank. So that's really helpful. And then we might go and get a slice of cake somewhere or go get a milkshake and then just sort of like walk around downtown or close to wherever we got that dessert or if we didn't go to a bookstore yet maybe we'll do that because we both like to kind of wander around bookstores and then we go home and we put our kids to bed and then we like we'll watch a movie on Netflix that we chose on purpose before like if you're going to do dinner in the movie you could do that where you just choose on purpose like we're going to watch this together this night

and we're going to get dessert on the way and it's going to be so exciting you know like and that's what we do and it's the best date night ever because it's what makes us come alive it's what makes us happy happiest in being together. And it's okay that it doesn't look like everyone else's. That's the key here. If your date night doesn't look like other people's, it's okay. You do what makes you come alive. That is the most important thing. And the payoff of this, you guys, is a date night can meet more needs and check more boxes than you really thought a date night could. Like it can give you life in a way that you didn't expect that it could. And I just love that. I love that. So just think intentionally. Think about what makes you come alive, be a little bit smart.

about when you hire your babysitter. If you need to stretch out the date night over several restaurants to make it a bit of an adventure, that's super fun. But ultimately, do what makes you come alive. And I've got some good things in the show notes. Again, the lazy genius collective.com slash lazy slash date night. I'll link to the date night posts I wrote a long time ago. The post from this week in defense of skipping date night.

And then there's also a conversation that I had with my. husband on this very lazy genius podcast you could go back it's episode nine eight eight but I'll link to it it's how we met it's kind of it just shows sort of the dynamics of our relationship a little bit if you want to know about that that's weird to be like hey you want to know the dynamics of my marriage but it's it's a fun conversation a lot of people say it's their favorite episode when I was doing interviews before in the first season of this podcast so if you want to check that out that's great and it will be linked in the show notes okay before we go lazy genius tip of the week this is from this was a comment on the show notes for

last week's episode the lazy genius does laundry from ashley and this is like the best idea i love it there were lots of questions before about socks like socks are maddening when it comes to laundry one of the ways that i deal with socks where it's just not a huge pile of them at the end of the day and you're like overwhelming socks is I do a separate load of underwear and socks so it's just all together so I just get in like sock mode you know it's just all in one place and put them all together at once but there's also the whole lost sock situation some of us can fix that by buying just the same style of sock so everything kind of goes with everything else or lazy genius tip of the week we can do what Ashley does she has one of those delicate washing bags you know those mesh bags

with the zipper that you like wash your bra and stuff in. And she clips one of those to the side of the laundry basket or the hamper. And the socks, the dirty socks go in there. And that way they all get kind of washed together and they don't get lost. That's just where they all go. Isn't that magic? So you don't have socks like, like stuck and rolled up cuffs of pants and they, you know, there was one time, oh my gosh, it was so disgusting.

I pulled back the rubber liner of my washing machine just because there was like water stuck in it and there were a couple of socks wedged in there and there's no telling how long they'd been there was so nasty it's like little baby socks so this way the socks don't get wedged into your washer somewhere they don't get dropped when you're transferring the clothes and like accidentally kicked under the dryer like lots of ways that this saves you but clip a little mesh bag next to your hamper and stick your socks in there and wash them in there oh my word So lazy genius. Love that so much. So thanks for that tip, Ashley. Okay, y'all, that's going to do it for this episode. Thank you for listening. Always. I'm just so, so, like, I know I say every episode, I'm so grateful that you listen, but I really am. Like, it's amazing that you guys spend 20, 30 minutes with me every week talking about day nights and laundry. Like, what is happening? The internet is so weird and so lovely and beautiful. So thank you for taking the time. I'm so honored to be in your life once a week like this. If you do love the show and you want other people to know about it, tell them, you know, in person, that works. But if you just want strangers and other

people across the internet to know, leave a review on iTunes. That is the most helpful way that people can find this because as iTunes sees, they just, they just pay attention to which podcasts get more reviews and then they like to kind of bump up that podcast a little bit for people to find it easier. So if you want to do it, you want to do it. So if you want to do it, with service to your fellow lazy geniuses all across the country. This is a great way to do that. Y'all are the best. So thanks for listening, as always. And I look forward to seeing you next week. And in the meantime, remember to be a genius about the things that matter and lazy of things that don't. See you guys next week. Have you ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life?

It's so dangerous to live that more dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life because when you're living a B or B plus life, you don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it? I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You wherever you get your podcasts.