📋 Episode Summary
Emily is visiting her parents, sorting through more than 40 years of books, tools, and garden supplies, including an oar that hasn't touched water in a very long time. She's also baking apple pie from the trees her dad has tended. So she's been thinking about legacy.

For this episode's "do again," Emily brings back the Quarterly Questions conversations from Season 1. They loved the habit of regular check-ins. They just never built a way to return to them, and the six quarters since have included the deaths of Emily's brother and Marc's dad. From there, Emily and Marc wonder why excuses got such a bad name, trade report cards for compass checks, and talk about organizing a planner around values instead of roles. Emily explains why tidy roles never fit her life, and what a co-working space has taught her about crossing a threshold into work.

The conversation is reflective, honest, and playful, with a haircut compliment and an accidental drive through Delaware along the way. They end with the questions each of them is carrying forward: What do I want? What do I need? Is this mine to do? And, for Marc, am I being fully me?

🔑 Key Takeaways
• Creating a check-in practice is the easy part. Without a planned way to come back to it, it quietly disappears.
• An excuse can be a way of not owning what was yours to own. That's different from naming what was out of your control.
• Treating reflection as a compass check instead of a report card turns pass/fail into course correction.
• Simple questions bring clarity: What did you want? Where are you? What's the gap?
• Building your weekly or monthly planning around values, not only roles, keeps what matters in front of you.
• Roles rarely separate cleanly, especially for people whose work and caregiving overlap.
• "What do I want?" and "What do I need?" can feel selfish to ask, but you can't pour from an empty cup.

🗣 Quote Highlights
• "We like to create things, and if there is not a very good process in place to revisit them, then we will not." – Emily
• "I really want to get an A someplace." – Emily
• "If values are that central to me, why not orient my life around them?" – Marc
• "Sometimes together means doing things that support each other, not necessarily being physically present." – Marc
• "That's not even my ball to catch." – Marc
• "What do I want? What do I need? And is this mine to do? If I say it really fast, it'll sound like one question." – Emily
• "Am I being fully me, or am I just being mono-me?" – Marc

🧰 Tools & Mentions
• Still Figuring It Out, Season 1, Episode 9: Quarterly Questions, Part 1 — the first of the two original conversations this episode revisits. https://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/show/35d59fa5-fffe-4892-9f2e-24382bb92ee3/id/35518200
• Still Figuring It Out, Season 1, Episode 10: Quarterly Questions, Part 2 — the second half of that conversation. https://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/show/35d59fa5-fffe-4892-9f2e-24382bb92ee3/id/35518575
• Emily's Concord Leadership Group blog post about her dad and the apple trees — the legacy story that opens the episode. https://concordleadershipgroup.com/20576-2/
• Suzanne Stabile — the Enneagram teacher behind the question "Is this mine to do?" https://www.suzannestabile.com/
• FranklinCovey weekly planning — the weekly compass Marc now organizes around his values. https://www.franklincovey.com/
• The Highlands Ability Battery — the assessment that reminded Emily that high and low scores sit on a continuum, not a pass/fail scale. https://www.highlandsco.com/

👥 Who Should Listen
• Married couples who work together and want a rhythm for checking in
• People who love starting new practices and struggle to keep them going
• Planner and journal people looking for a way to keep their values in view
• Parents and caregivers whose roles never fit into neat boxes
• Leaders and coaches who give generously and forget to ask what they want or need
• Anyone carrying more than is theirs to carry

🎺 That Music!
Special thanks to Lexi Moreno, Caleb Pitman, and Zoe Czarnecki for the original music.
Lexi Moreno – composing / mixing / mastering / guitar
Caleb Pitman – composing / mixing / trumpet
Zoe Czarnecki – bass