Creating “What We Do” Rules to Find More Yoyu in Our Lives

Life can get hectic and overwhelming, especially when we don’t have a clear plan for our daily tasks and responsibilities. In this blog post, I’ll share how creating “what we do” rules can help us find more yoyu (a common Japanese term for oomph & wherewithal) in our lives.

If you’re new here and unfamiliar with the term, check out the post What is yoyu?

The backstory – why we needed “What We Do” rules for yoyu

We started changing what we do as a family because my mother-in-law was living in a nursing home about 30 minutes away from us. She had been in a hospital only a short walk away for several months, and I visited her almost daily. But after she transferred to the nursing home, I couldn’t keep up the pace and felt guilty.

Visiting every day wasn’t necessary, nor was it feasible. Even so, I kept having conversations with Akira about when to see her, how often was best, what time we should go, and what we should do when we got there. Finally, we decided that Sunday was our family day, which included visiting his mother.

Since Sunday was the day, I didn’t need to think about it on the other days. Of course, we sometimes visited her during the week too. However, making the Sunday visit “what we do” freed up so much mind space for me and gave me yoyu. I’m sure it was a relief for Akira too.

Applying “What We Do” rules to daily life

Sometimes when we don’t have yoyu, it affects other family members, especially our spouses. I teach all day at a nursery school on Wednesdays, and because of that, Akira is in charge of dinner. The truth is, he didn’t take over dinner until we made it into a “what we do” on Wednesdays.

I love to cook, and Akira doesn’t mind doing the dishes, so we make a good team. However, I kept picking fights with Akira later in the evening. Only after a few ridiculous arguments did we finally realize that I didn’t have the yoyu to make dinner on Wednesdays, even though I loved cooking. Once Akira took over on Wednesday nights, we stopped having arguments midweek.

From then on, whenever we found something challenging, we talked about what outcome we wanted and how we could make it happen. Then we made up a new “what we do” day for it.

Finding your own “What We Do” rules

Perhaps breakfast is the biggest challenge in your family. Consider spending Sunday afternoon creating pre-made breakfasts and freezing them. (Or you could try intermittent fasting like we do and skip breakfast altogether!)

We also use “what we do” to create more yoyu in our work. For example, I had trouble remembering to bill one of my clients. I also got behind with my bookkeeping. These two issues went away after I picked a day and stopped doing any invoicing or bookkeeping unless it was “Finance Friday.”

Likewise, Akira found that he kept missing appointments with his students even though they were on his calendar. Instead of making himself available for office hours several days a week, he made Thursday his only day for meeting students. He hasn’t missed an appointment since.

Your “what we do” rule might not be about a specific day of the week. My friend Grace is in her 80s and loves to socialize with friends, but she discovered that evening outings left her exhausted the next day. She made up her own “what I do” and happily meets friends for coffee or lunch, but only during the day. She doesn’t even consider evening outings, and eventually, the rest of her friends and family learned not to expect her.

Simplifying Life and Creating Yoyu

Creating “what we do” rules can be a simple yet effective way to simplify our lives and find more yoyu. By taking the time to identify areas where we can benefit from these rules and communicating with our loved ones, we can create yoyu for ourselves and our entire family.