I had a argue with my wife, unfortunately, at the last day of the year.

It is about whether we should keep the coffee waste pod around the coffee machine. I wouldn’t share the detail here but it is a small thing, for sure. It made us unhappy for a whole day, so I definitely need a lesson to prevent it from happening again.

What is the lesson? Well, identify personal preference and refrain making suggestion if it doesn’t matter that much in the first place. 3 components:

  1. Identify personal preference.
  2. Judge the impact of change.
  3. Refrain from speaking.

For personal preference, if it matches with any of the following traits, then we should be alert.

  1. They bought it by using thier own money. (clothes)
  2. They like it a lot. (a beautiful decoration)
  3. They keep doing it. (shoes)
  4. It is within their own zone/region. (desktop setup)

For impact of change, we can measure it by how much money/time we can save by changing it.

For how to not speak, maybe we can just try to do something else to distract ourselves from the moment. Or maybe let the painful experience tell you no to do something, in a hard way…

In the future, I will pay more attention about it, for the sake of our great relationship.