3 Reasons Why Setting Expectations Matters
I was on vacation last week and was working on a blog post when my 5 year old barged into my office asking me to play dominos with him. I figured I needed about 10 minutes to finish up the post so I asked him to go look at his clock and tell me what time it was. He rushed out, came back and said, ‘daddy, its 9.25′ so I said, ‘I will play dominos with you in 10 minutes.’
Expectation set.
At 9.35 he comes back in and grabs my arm and says ‘ok, its 9.35, lets go play dominos!’
Hang on dude, I need a few more minutes…
NOOOOOO he says! I want to play dominos!
Trust broken.
The great thing about kids is how they live in the now. I set the expectation that I would play with him in 10 minutes and I broke that committment.
So what happened?
Bad estimate finishing my post I suppose. Maybe I gave an estimate based on what I thought was a realistic time frame for a 5 year old to wait regardless of the effort left on the task. As a result that time-crunch probably led to lack of focus and it all went downhill from there.
Bottom line is I set an expectation, I broke the commitment and the consequence was the 5-year old melt-down.
I was on vacation last week and was working on a blog post when my 5 year old barged into my office asking me to play dominos with him. I figured I needed about 10 minutes to finish up the post so I asked him to go look at his clock and tell me what time it was. He rushed out, came back and said, “daddy, it’s 9.25” so I said, “I will play dominos with you in 10 minutes.”
Expectation set. Read more
