Many years ago, a friend of mine described a rule she and her husband had for dealing with those moments when you returned home from work and you wanted to complain about your day to your spouse. You know what that is like. You’re upset, angry, irritated, whatever, at something or someone. You’re frustrated. You need to blow off steam. So you complain.
Those situations can turn into lengthy rants. You’ve probably gone off on a few tirades yourself. And, most likely, you’ve been subjected to listening to someone else blow off steam when you’d rather be eating dinner, having a drink or outside listening to the birds sing. Because you want to be polite though, you listen to your significant other, doing your best to live up to the marital vows and show support.
It was those types of situations which led my friend and her husband to create “The Garvey Rule.” It’s essentially a five minute rule. When you start to complain about your day, if the person listening is not interested in the subject, the person complaining is limited to five minutes to describe his or her problems. That’s it. End of story after that, and grab your salad to start dinner.
The rule is genius. You get time to whine. But it is limited. That means you must condense your complaints. You almost must identify the most significant items irritating you, so the rule forces you to prioritize. If not, you’re left empty emotionally, wishing you’d complained about additional items.
The listener must be there for the complainer, actively paying attention. The five-minute time limit forces you to think things through before engaging, “Hmmm, maybe that wasn’t such a big deal,” or “Man, Sikorski was a jerk today. How the heck can I get him off my back without getting fired?”
At the end of the five minutes “The Garvey Rule” can be invoked, ending the dialogue. Then you move onto another subject, hopefully something fun and interesting like sports or weather. You can imagine some of these conversations.
“Honey, Freddie Frabnats kept forcing me to re-prioritize the chart I developed. He wanted the yellow outliner change to green outliner, then instead of using Roman numerals, he made me change everyone into a’s, b’c and c’s instead. Can you believe it? That ate up my entire day,” the husband complains.
“Garvey rule,” the wife responds.
“When I got to the office today, Gwen Gabnecker was at the copier. She spent the next 45 minutes monopolizing the machine and I needed to get some reports copied and over to Maurice McGillicutty by 9 a.m. She wouldn’t budge. I was ready to pop a blood vessel in my forehead,” the wife explodes.
“Boy, I can relate honey, but I’m invoking The Garvey Rule. You have 12 seconds left,” the husband responds.
“Mack Bordum set up a meeting for today and he didn’t shut up the entire hour. You should have seen Erik Slepe in the back of the room. He kept nodding off, then you’d see his head jerk back awake. I couldn’t stop laughing,” the husband says.
“Not bad dear, you almost got me to pay attention, but I’m still invoking The Garvey Rule. No one wants to hear about meetings,” the wife replies.
And so on. Try it out on your spouse. It will improve your relationship and help you figure out if your day is really as boring, trivial, demanding or frustrating as you think it is.
Those situations can turn into lengthy rants. You’ve probably gone off on a few tirades yourself. And, most likely, you’ve been subjected to listening to someone else blow off steam when you’d rather be eating dinner, having a drink or outside listening to the birds sing. Because you want to be polite though, you listen to your significant other, doing your best to live up to the marital vows and show support.
It was those types of situations which led my friend and her husband to create “The Garvey Rule.” It’s essentially a five minute rule. When you start to complain about your day, if the person listening is not interested in the subject, the person complaining is limited to five minutes to describe his or her problems. That’s it. End of story after that, and grab your salad to start dinner.
The rule is genius. You get time to whine. But it is limited. That means you must condense your complaints. You almost must identify the most significant items irritating you, so the rule forces you to prioritize. If not, you’re left empty emotionally, wishing you’d complained about additional items.
The listener must be there for the complainer, actively paying attention. The five-minute time limit forces you to think things through before engaging, “Hmmm, maybe that wasn’t such a big deal,” or “Man, Sikorski was a jerk today. How the heck can I get him off my back without getting fired?”
At the end of the five minutes “The Garvey Rule” can be invoked, ending the dialogue. Then you move onto another subject, hopefully something fun and interesting like sports or weather. You can imagine some of these conversations.
“Honey, Freddie Frabnats kept forcing me to re-prioritize the chart I developed. He wanted the yellow outliner change to green outliner, then instead of using Roman numerals, he made me change everyone into a’s, b’c and c’s instead. Can you believe it? That ate up my entire day,” the husband complains.
“Garvey rule,” the wife responds.
“When I got to the office today, Gwen Gabnecker was at the copier. She spent the next 45 minutes monopolizing the machine and I needed to get some reports copied and over to Maurice McGillicutty by 9 a.m. She wouldn’t budge. I was ready to pop a blood vessel in my forehead,” the wife explodes.
“Boy, I can relate honey, but I’m invoking The Garvey Rule. You have 12 seconds left,” the husband responds.
“Mack Bordum set up a meeting for today and he didn’t shut up the entire hour. You should have seen Erik Slepe in the back of the room. He kept nodding off, then you’d see his head jerk back awake. I couldn’t stop laughing,” the husband says.
“Not bad dear, you almost got me to pay attention, but I’m still invoking The Garvey Rule. No one wants to hear about meetings,” the wife replies.
And so on. Try it out on your spouse. It will improve your relationship and help you figure out if your day is really as boring, trivial, demanding or frustrating as you think it is.