Bad Day, Good Data

When I  started this blog, I wanted to make sure I stayed real. I don't want to come across as an expert by any means. I wish I could say that I consistently practice each of the concepts I've blogged about so far, but I can't say that.

What I can say though is that this blog is helping me be a better dad, as I seek understanding and practice tips to blog about. When I have a rough night, the best thing for me to do is replay what happened and analyze. For you programmers out there, it's like opening up the debugger and stepping through each method, line by line until you identify the bug.

As I've mentioned before, I did an internship at VitalSmarts a while back. There is a chapter in their "Change Anything" book called "Be the Scientist and the Subject" which talks about turning bad days into good data. Well, I decided to give that a shot this past week after I had a night where I wasn't the parent I wanted to be.

Honestly, self-analyzing gets a little exhausting, but being a dad isn't for sissies, so I tried to stick it out and really figure this out. I realized I've already identified strategies that work (like the Temper Triangle and the Teaching Flowchart); it's just that I forget about them or do a poor job executing them.

I decided to start a spreadsheet to identify some key data points. My spreadsheet just has a few columns to make it quick and easy for me. As an end-user of my own spreadsheet, I knew it had to be quick and easy to do if I was going to be doing it each night. Here's what I came up with

• Date
• Crucial Moment (a term borrowed from the VitalSmarts authors as well)
• Notes
• Next Time

For both good nights and bad night, I identified the moment that seemed to make or break the evening. On nights where there was a tantrum and I handled it well, I asked myself, "What was it I did that helped the situation turn into a learning experience?" On the night I yelled, I took a step back and thought, "What one decision could I have changed so that I could have been in a better position to handle myself better?"

For better or worse, once I started this data collection, I observed the Hawthorne Effect in my own behavior, so my data from this week has only been positive. I find that when I become an objective observer of my own behavior and I know I'm being "watched" my behavior improves. But more than that, I was able to identify patterns in the good nights and recognize the good things I am doing.