Ever caught yourself heatedly arguing about the "cinnamonity" of your favorite tea or the invigorating contrast of mint on a chilly morning? Well, you’re not alone. Gather 'round as we embark on a sensory exploration, from the enigmatic blend of flavors in our mugs to the unexpected delights of 'noble rot' in winemaking. Our chat weaves through the spectrum of taste and color, mingling personal tales with a dash of spontaneous philosophy, all while sipping on the comforting warmth of hot cinnamon sunset tea.
Imagine a world where 'off the clock' truly means peace from work pings and emails. We share stories from the trenches about setting boundaries that shield our personal time from the constant demands of our jobs. By discussing strategies like separating work communications from personal devices and declaring sacred personal hours, we unpack the art of crafting a work-life balance that respects our mental space and challenges the norm of being perpetually on standby.
And boundaries don't just stop at the office door. We wrap up this cozy morning chat with a candid discussion on the personal side, examining the tricky terrain of enforcing discipline through negative incentives. Looking at monetary penalties for skipping gym sessions, we lay bare the struggles and triumphs of finding equilibrium between external motivation and cultivating lasting, positive habits. It's all about crafting a life where we honor our needs while still providing value to those around us. Join us for a heartfelt and humorous look into the art of setting boundaries that resonate in every corner of our lives.
Ever caught yourself heatedly arguing about the "cinnamonity" of your favorite tea or the invigorating contrast of mint on a chilly morning? Well, you’re not alone. Gather 'round as we embark on a sensory exploration, from the enigmatic blend of flavors in our mugs to the unexpected delights of 'noble rot' in winemaking. Our chat weaves through the spectrum of taste and color, mingling personal tales with a dash of spontaneous philosophy, all while sipping on the comforting warmth of hot cinnamon sunset tea.
Imagine a world where 'off the clock' truly means peace from work pings and emails. We share stories from the trenches about setting boundaries that shield our personal time from the constant demands of our jobs. By discussing strategies like separating work communications from personal devices and declaring sacred personal hours, we unpack the art of crafting a work-life balance that respects our mental space and challenges the norm of being perpetually on standby.
And boundaries don't just stop at the office door. We wrap up this cozy morning chat with a candid discussion on the personal side, examining the tricky terrain of enforcing discipline through negative incentives. Looking at monetary penalties for skipping gym sessions, we lay bare the struggles and triumphs of finding equilibrium between external motivation and cultivating lasting, positive habits. It's all about crafting a life where we honor our needs while still providing value to those around us. Join us for a heartfelt and humorous look into the art of setting boundaries that resonate in every corner of our lives.
Jake:
Morning guys, this tea is delicious, Mm-hmm it is. There's plenty of the cinnamonity, high cinnamonity, rich tea, yeah cinnamonity.
Noah:
Yeah, I've been buying this tea.
Frank:
Yeah, which is not. It's hot cinnamon sunset.
Noah:
Yeah, it's not. The brand is not cinnamonity. The name of the product is not cinnamonity. Right, it is just a word we came up with one day, mm-hmm.
Jake:
It's hard to describe it, ain't that right? Well, cinnamonity is a scale, it's a metric.
Noah:
Cinnamonness, I really thought that I'd walk in to see some spectrums on the the wall, but I didn't.
Jake:
Yeah, what's the opposite of cinnamon?
Noah:
Peppermint Frank, can you draw that for us?
Frank:
The opposite of cinnamon.
Jake:
The opposite of cinnamon is.
Noah:
I mean, I'm pretty sure there are pizzas with cinnamon on it.
Frank:
Dessert pizza maybe.
Jake:
You know pizza, Don't put it past them. People are crazy these days with their pizza.
Frank:
There has to be an opposite of cinnamon and we're off.
Jake:
Cinnamon is sort of like a the pie spice, you know, it reminds me of nutmeg, cardamom, all spice.
Frank:
The opposite of cinnamon on a flavor profile basis is Mint, as they're often viewed as polar opposites in taste. While cinnamon is associated with sweet, bitter, pungent flavors, mint offers a contrasting, cool and refreshing taste.
Noah:
Mint is the opposite of cinnamon. Yep, I want to try to make something that's meant cinnamon if you.
Frank:
Review certs or something. What do you mean? I think they already made it Cinnamon mince. Yeah, I mean I think that's a different.
Noah:
I Think that meant.
Jake:
I think it's a cinnamon lozange.
Frank:
Yeah, the law they put mint on the package, I know.
Jake:
It's the opposite of orange, the color of the flavor color, but now I want to know the flavor to the fruit.
Frank:
They are sensorily opposite. They are what they're opposite and sensory experience like it hits on the tongue, or yeah, got it.
Noah:
I draw a definite boundary between Swing warm and cool.
Jake:
Yeah, I was gonna say pungent and refreshing you don't draw a boundary between sweet and pungent.
Noah:
No, I do, I draw. I draw a firm boundary between sweet.
Jake:
I just watched him do it for everyone who can't see. He drew it in the air With a slicing motion.
Noah:
Yep his hand.
Jake:
It was like the downbeat of a conductor Motion it was like that it was the downbeat, not the upbeat.
Frank:
I just think if you were eating a cinnamon roll and you bit into it and had like rotting maggots in the middle, you'd be like, oh, this isn't what I was expecting, these are quite different.
Jake:
I I agree with that. I don't know, but I do agree with it.
Frank:
That's sweet and pungent.
Jake:
Pungent. Yeah, I, I think I drew a bound means like intense odor, taste or smell sharply strong. So the maggots make it pungent the rotting, I think it was the rotting.
Noah:
The rotting makes it pungent. The maggots are just there because of the rot Right.
Jake:
What does rot taste like, though? I mean, can you have sweet rot?
Frank:
What does rot taste like? Sour or bitter? Oh wow, yeah, that is opposite.
Jake:
Got it Well, great wait.
Frank:
There is the case of noble rot. Oh for grapes a type of fungus affecting grapes made To make sweet dessert wine. The taste is exceptionally sweet due to the concentrated flavors and high sugar.
Noah:
I thought it was talking about the sports brand.
Jake:
Noble rot, noble rot, oh Noble rot.
Noah:
Do they taste sweet too? I don't know, but I thought you were talking about it.
Jake:
Have you ever eaten their shoes? No, I Mean it. Maybe that's why I don't like mushrooms, because they're bitter and off-putting.
Frank:
Yeah, I don't like mushrooms anyways, I think there's a natural sort of difference between Pungent and sweet.
Jake:
That's interesting. I have never considered it. I don't know that I agree with it really, yeah, I.
Frank:
Mean I would. You could say that sweetness is pungent. I guess that's what you're saying.
Jake:
Yeah, like there can be a sweet thing that is also pungent.
Frank:
All right.
Jake:
Thanks for listening Morning guys it's great to see you here today.
Frank:
Oh yeah, we can get like 10 of them after doing like this.
Jake:
It's cold intros all day long, baby.
Noah:
We drop it off a glyph.
Frank:
Drift dropped. Oh.
Jake:
No. What was your favorite thing in Puerto Rico? Being with Amy.
Frank:
Did you develop any new boundaries while you were there, like with her parents, like with Krispy Kreme?
Noah:
huh no, there was no Krispy Kreme boundary.
Frank:
Do you feel?
Noah:
a need, I swerved for Krispy Kreme.
Frank:
Yeah, I saw. One of my questions for the boundaries episode was how do you know that you need a boundary? Do you feel like you maybe need a boundary for Krispy Kreme?
Noah:
Not here, because there isn't one.
Frank:
But if you lived there and you passed it every day?
Noah:
Yeah, like we only stop every other day or something you know.
Frank:
Yeah, you wouldn't consistently eat 12 donuts a day, but on average 12 donuts each day that you buy them.
Noah:
I'd never ate 12 donuts.
Jake:
I will say that I pretty much never buy a dozen donuts.
Frank:
Yeah, it's generally a single product.
Jake:
I wouldn't say that. No, I just think that when you think of donuts you think of buying a dozen. But I don't do it. He seemed really proud.
Frank:
I thought so too. Aw shucks, is that because you have a boundary? Oh my, God.
Jake:
Well, this is a hard topic for me. I am 100% sure that I set boundaries in my life. I have them. But when I said to Frank I don't know anything about that, he was like I think you're great at setting boundaries. It's like what are you talking about? And you mentioned like two things. You said you don't have work email on your phone. That seems like a boundary.
Noah:
Yeah, I also don't have work email on my phone. The work boundaries are a good call because I used to work all hours because the job sort of required it. Not even required, it, just sort of forced it. In this job I start at nine and I end at five, like I don't log in until nine and when the clock hits five, unless there's something, I just absolutely need to finish up. But I'm done at five and I don't have email on my phone.
Noah:
I don't want to see it, mostly because I don't want to see it outside of work. Obviously, it doesn't matter if it's during work hours, if it's on my phone, because I'm going to see it anyway, but I don't want to see it outside of work because I'm not going to do anything about it anyway. That's something that changed in my life and I knew I needed it because I experienced the opposite, which was Calls, texts, problems till 10, 11 pm, starting as early as five or six sometimes, and that was just stressing, it was just annoying. I didn't want to deal with it all the time and on top of it, the problems were you know.
Noah:
I think, they were unavoidable, they were avoidable. Unavoidable and I had like it was all because the internal client that I dealt with was awful and run terribly and that could all be fixed, but I had no power to fix it, so it was sort of forced upon me all these problems.
Frank:
Yeah, that's the best. When you get a field, look the same question over and over. You can't do anything about it, Right?
Noah:
Even when you contact the people that can change it, nothing happens yeah.
Jake:
Yeah, it's weird. I think that I have boundaries at work in multiple ways, but I don't think they were a response. I didn't ever experience the opposite. It was just always very important to me. Like my values say hey, I work to live, I don't live to work. And so as I came in, I just was like I'm not going to put email on my phone, I'm going to be available for meetings between these hours and these hours.
Jake:
I do sometimes work outside those hours because it's better for me. Like sometimes I'm just like I want to work between 5 and 7 am. I don't take two hours out of the rest of the day. I'll still be available, like that's a choice I'm making If somebody puts a call in the books or whatever, but that's my choice. And the other boundary I have is that I won't do work that my role should not be doing, and I will not work more hours than I should in a day. The reason for that, to my mind the way that I justify it is, if I do more than I should, then we don't actually have a good reflection of how many employees we need to get this volume of work done. If we start missing timelines, then we will feel the pain and say, oh, what needs to change? Oh well, jake's working 40 hours a week, so we must need more people to do this same volume.
Noah:
I think that I think this is an important distinction of boundaries, because a lot of people, when you think boundaries, you think specifically I won't do something, I won't do this, or I won't do that, or I won't allow this. It's not about saying no, even though it feels that way sometimes. The boundary is to allow yourself space and, like you said, if you choose to work beyond your hours because it's better for you, you're obviously not saying no to I'm not going to work past this time or whatever it is. It's not about saying no, it's about saying this is what keeps me healthy, this is what keeps me sane, this is what keeps us apprised of how many hours we need to hire or whatever. It is set to allow something else. That's what it is. A boundary is not just to say no to something, and that's an important distinction, because I think people think boundaries just know I'm not going to allow something to happen. That's not it.
Jake:
That's a great point. I mean, a yes to something is a no to everything else.
Noah:
Right, yeah, I mean I told you guys a while back I had a client that was just a real hothead and would. He got into this pattern of calling to complain about something that he didn't understand. He was complaining about something that didn't, it wasn't even really a problem and because he didn't understand it, he thought it was a problem. And then he'd get angry about it. And because he's angry, he just needed to vent about it and he would call any. The conversation would start cordially and he would. The more he complained about it, the more he'd get ramped up and then it would just turn into this I can't get words in, he won't let me. He'd ask a question and then I'd start to answer and immediately he cut me off and start ranting again. And he wasn't mad at me and I knew this, but he wouldn't let me speak. He was yelling the whole time.
Noah:
not you know what I mean elevated emotion, elevated volume, not necessarily screaming, but yeah he would start cursing again, not at me, just about the situation and it would bring up really like I would get off the phone shaking Because I didn't. I couldn't speak, I couldn't answer, I couldn't solve the problem, I couldn't do anything except for listen to this guy rant for 20 minutes and I finally had to tell my boss look, I'm not going to deal with this guy anymore. I'll deal with the client like the client business, but I can't have these phone calls with him twice, a week or whatever.
Jake:
I know you, frank, you set boundaries.
Frank:
I set boundaries. If not setting boundaries, suppose I've set boundaries. Yeah, I don't know.
Noah:
I think of you might not think of them as boundaries.
Frank:
Okay.
Noah:
But I think of your, the way that you keep your calendar is boundaries, like you structure your time Definitely and you've said before, like people at work, like hey, if you, if you want to deal with this situation, there's you, put time on my calendar and we'll deal with it, but I'm going to schedule it.
Frank:
Yeah, because because I care to, I'm very empathetic to others problems, but this is a boundary. It is definitely a boundary, yeah, and it solves a lot of problems without me, because if I say, oh yeah, I'm next available on Tuesday at 3pm, they're like I need this sub right now. Then you probably want to find a solution without me because I'm next available Tuesday at 3pm, right, and then they do.
Noah:
That's a boundary that serves a lot of purposes, but yeah, that's the one that comes to mind specifically with you, just because that's so different from me the calendar scheduling stuff, like I don't like calendars running my life.
Frank:
Yeah, well, it's fun. I mean it's freedom to me, it's not running my life.
Noah:
Yeah, I understand. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying it's a difference.
Jake:
That's the whole thing, though, isn't it? I mean, anytime you're talking about, like these diametrically opposed ideas, one quite literally cannot exist without the other. The very concept of one cannot exist without the other. You cannot have the concept of freedom without the concept of a boundary, and by creating the boundaries we then say hey, here's the backyard, kids, don't go outside the fence, have fun, you know how. The freedom to do whatever you want to do in that space right there, and I think that's what we do in our personal spaces.
Jake:
It's really difficult for me, though, because we just do this naturally. I mean, everything is bounded. There are probably one million boundaries every single day that we have created for ourselves, but it's hard to put them into terms. But as we're talking I'm thinking we just talked about some professional boundaries, but from like a personal boundary. I remember when I moved in with you, frank, and we hadn't lived together in 10 years or to adult men who have diverged and become other people, and now we have to figure out how to live together in peace, and there was this thing that would happen a lot of days, and I would feel it in my body. I would feel myself shutting down around you in my body, and this goes back to the mind-body connection conversation we were having, and you would, I think, very lightheartedly, just try to be asking me about how my day's going, but you would ask it in this way. That was about a specific emotion.
Jake:
It was like hey are you sad, are you angry? It was like these types of questions, and so I would feel very defensive about that and that's my own problem to work through and everything. But it was this very specific trigger that was triggering this feeling for me and I was like, hey, I need you to start asking me this question more open. I know it sounds stupid, but can you just ask me how I'm doing without ascribing any emotion, because it makes me feel defensive and I want to not feel like I'm shutting down around you. And that was a boundary, and since then it's allowed our relationship to flourish much more.
Noah:
I think that's an important thing to mention too. Boundaries just create definition. How many times do we start a conversation with? Well, first we need to define what this means. This term or whatever, so we can have the same conversation. Everyone's different, everyone has different boundaries, and highlighting those creates definition for whatever the context is.
Jake:
That's a great point yeah, I don't know where we want to take this.
Jake:
But I have this other thought, though, and it's related to the boundaries that we don't know we have, which are belief bundles, if you will.
Jake:
But I just mentioned how hard it is to acknowledge all the boundaries in life, and I think that that dynamic of boundaries plays a bigger role than we realize. For instance, I often feel like I've been kind of behind the eight ball in my life, like I matured really slowly, and it was only like around the age of 30 or something where I feel like I really started to become who I probably should have been earlier in my 20s. And if I look back on the course of my life, I look at a 12 year old Jake who bounded his potential against what he saw his father doing. Oh, my dad was a grocery store manager, and he went up and became a factory operator, and that is the height of my potential. I'm going to become that, and so I didn't really aspire to anything higher than that, and it was only in sort of getting rid of that boundary that I was able to find freedom to figure out what I thought was cool and start to become it.
Jake:
So I think that boundaries are healthy in a lot of ways, and then there are some boundaries that we might want to examine and actually get rid of as well.
Noah:
I do think they're always changing because we're always changing.
Jake:
I think about the boundaries that we might create from the place of a survival mechanism. I am not going to allow you to get close enough. I'm willing to get this close and no further, and it's sort of that avoidant attachment style, which is something that I've experienced a lot in my life. Allowing myself to be loved, allowing myself to be vulnerable and watching myself become accepted was one of the hardest boundaries I ever dissolved.
Jake:
I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago that Simon Sinek said that love is giving someone the power to completely destroy you. Interesting that they won't use it, and I think that it speaks to this dissolving boundary where I say, okay, I'm going to let you into this place, and I'm not saying that we should do that with everyone or that is the healthiest thing. I think that there are very healthy boundaries that keep me separated from the other people who might not have my best interests at heart. I guess what I'm really trying to say is just that examining them where they are maybe somebody needs to make stronger, maybe somebody needs to dissolve and make a little bit weaker is essential, but they're there in a lot of places.
Frank:
Definitely. I mean I have tons of boundaries but it's funny I'm looking at I don't know about 20 fiscally painful boundaries.
Jake:
Okay.
Frank:
That if they don't occur, they take money from me.
Jake:
Okay, so you essentially created negative incentives to modify behavior, right, okay?
Frank:
And they're mostly around body stuff, because I don't have a connection, probably. Oddly, I'm just like looking through the list.
Jake:
So it's a way to raise your awareness.
Frank:
Yeah, it's like around body or just structure, because I don't like, if I didn't have any like, I might wake up and spend my entire day doing something that's not the most important thing because it was most interesting or something. So there's structure and then there's just like make sure you get this much sunlight, make sure you get like, and they're almost all automated, so we have boundaries like that for sure. Those are that's like the area that I most have a need for structured boundaries. I think it just feels hard Like that all feels really hard to get any control over if I don't have something monitoring it.
Jake:
Yeah, so the catalyst for creating those boundaries was like watching yourself not accomplish the goals you wanted or make progress toward.
Frank:
Yeah, well, I mean, I have one for like the number of hours I sleep at night, okay, and that one came from just feeling tired all the time, that one's hard to hit, but that's what it's from. There's like one for a specific project, just to make sure that I'm constantly doing like a top 80 or top 20 thing, just like every day put a ticket in that improves like the core direction we're headed and it's not. It's because the day gets full of like all these tasks and just helping people with the problems and like there's net you may never have time for do this big thing that will make the problems go away, yep, so I spend time on that every day. A bunch of like learn, learning just because I'll forget to do it. So like some language, some coding, exercise type stuff. And then there's like macros. There's types of workouts. A week I swim once a week I do three strength training like sessions. A week I do two CrossFit sessions a week.
Jake:
Yeah.
Frank:
And I want to be alerted if this is not occurring and I want it to sting a little if I decide to skip it.
Jake:
Yeah.
Frank:
And I think some people have better like internal processes for this than me, but I don't, so I augment them with these sort of boundaries. Some people hate this. I don't know. Why, though, do you hate it?
Noah:
Hate the two. Structure your stuff.
Frank:
No, like hate, negative reinforcement or something.
Noah:
I hate it, I just don't. It doesn't resonate with me, yeah.
Jake:
One of the very first conversations I ever had was you know, oh yeah, sometimes, you know, people have a hard time coming to the gym and hitting their goals three days a week or whatever, and so we set up a thing where they owe me $100 if they don't make it three days a week. Right, and that was fine, that's a you know one great goal or incentive, I guess. But it was that everything was negative incentives. I don't see a problem with negative incentives, I just don't. I think it creates a worldview or disposition toward the world for me that is like authoritarian and a negative and fearful. I'm always having to work hard enough to be good enough.
Noah:
I think the biggest hang up for me is that at what point does it become a habit? Because if your habit is not losing money, not working out, do you know what I mean? Like if you do this, if the thing that motivates you to continue working out a year from now is that you might lose money, sure, your habit has not become working out. Your habit has been avoid losing money. That's my problem with it.
Frank:
Yeah Well, it's all very it's all really very tricky because the amounts of money I have on the line are not significant. I don't even care if I lose them. And some days I'm literally like, yeah, I mean, I'm not going to hit the things today, it's fine, but there is some like I grew up poor and somewhere in my subconscious this idea that money will get taken away even though it's $5 or whatever just hurts a little.
Frank:
It's just like a little extra incentive. But what I will say about the habits is most of them have switched. Like I don't, I haven't paid for missing strength training, I don't know, any year probably. Like I don't ever miss that.
Noah:
The negative thing. Turn that one off.
Frank:
I mean, I don't think any. I think it's. I don't ever get notified by it, it's basically off. It's only there as a background help If I were to lose the habit.
Noah:
Right, but do you, do you feel like you need it in some way to keep it there?
Frank:
I don't think it hurts anything to have a mind, or if I do get off track.
Jake:
So it's like a feedback loop for you.
Frank:
Yeah, Just extra system.
Frank:
that's like if you don't do these things it's going to tell you and then if you don't do that it's going to hurt financially. It doesn't really hurt financially, but those are some boundaries that are available. But then there's, like some, that I cannot encode, like water, I cannot drink water. I don't know how to do it. Very difficult. Some people can do it, but I, that one I get reminded of all the time I, nearly every day I, have to get water in. Yeah, I don't know how people do that one, but what about boundaries in your relationships?
Jake:
Like I know for me, historically in my like romantic relationships I was more of a people pleaser, kind of suppressed myself to be what that other person wanted me to be, instead of making them feel discomfort or whatever, and so like going into new relationships very intentionally said I have a boundary, I won't suppress the truth, I won't suppress myself. I will be 100% of that. Do you have some of those that you've learned over time?
Frank:
Yes, and I think we should talk about them on the next on Becoming Platypus podcast. Okay, cool, yeah. Relationship boundaries next time, relationship boundaries. Does that sound good to you guys? I feel like I shut you down, but I have to leave in one minute.