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Comment by jimbob45 | Hacker News Reader

Gonna donate some HN karma here and offer my opinion that this article is MBA-tier horseshit. Your girlfriend and you do not have "one on one"s. You talk about your lives and listen to each other like a normal fucking couple. Framing a normal relationship like a business practice feels like she's less a girlfriend and more a patient. Saying that you want to solve her problems with normal spousal communication makes you sound like her dad.

The more you try to sell me on your GENIUS business practice, the less I believe that you know what effective management entails.

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My wife and I do have a weekly one on one. It’s on our shared calendar for 8:45PM every Sunday. We call it a ‘check-in’ because 1:1 feels like unnecessary corporate speak in the context of our marriage.

It’s a chance for us to talk through what went well and what went poorly over the last week. Having it on the calendar as a regular activity means that it never feels like we’re calling the other person out on something, and it means that we never just let it slide because we’re busy with something else.

We’ve been doing it for over a year and a half and have only missed it once when she was at a conference.

How have things changed in the year and a half you've been doing it?

Sadly, in some corporate environments, one-on-ones are now called 'check-ins'...

Talking with your SO on the predefined schedule is just a tad less frightening than not talking at all.

I would follow up by saying that one-on-ones are pretty useless even in a business setting. I have had only one boss in my career where I felt like I actually got real personal career advice during my one-on-ones with him. Every other boss I've had has treated one-on-ones as just another status meeting.

I think the problem is the scheduled nature of it. If there were actually something to discuss (like maybe I'm not delivering what I should be, or I'm working on something that's not the highest priority) then by all means, I'm glad to hear that feedback. But all too often managers just have one-on-ones because they're on the schedule, not because there's anything to discuss. In those case, it just devolves into a discussion of the current project and me repeating what I've repeated already in sprint planning, daily standups and weekly status e-mails.

I had 1-2-1 with different employers, I learned with some that I was a very pessimistic person and others that I was a very optimistic person. Variation basically boils down to whatever impression your manager wants to have of you.

The 1-2-1 is usually not very useful if I have to sit through a scripted conversation. Nowadays I use 1-2-1 for my own purpose. I angle the conversation towards what I want to learn or talk about, and that's it. I am keeping it short, precise and am not trying to tell my manager too much, because sometimes they read too much between the lines.

It can be a great place to exchange knowledge but make sure you have some ground rules in place.

I think a more charitable interpretation of the article would be that this is largely an argument for the effectiveness of talking to people rather than trying to treat every interaction as you might as a manager at work.

"You talk about your lives and listen to each other like a normal fucking couple."

I agree that the author's approach seems to ooze a creepy sort of clinical mental dissection, but using "a normal fucking couple" as your relationship aspiration is a recipe for disaster.

You're right. Us normies call them 'marriage meetings' or 'family meetings' or similar:

https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/how-and-why-to-hold-...

https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/creating-a-positive-...

Completely unapplicable to every-day life, and total MBA bullshit. Yup, indeed.

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