Deep Questions with Cal Newport - IN-DEPTH: Greatness vs. Contentment (w/ Kendra Adachi)

Episode Date: December 5, 2024

This IN-DEPTH is brought to you by Defender. In this episode of IN-DEPTH, Cal welcomes the bestselling author Kendra Adachi to talk about her new book, THE PLAN, which introduces the innovative idea of “compassionate time management.” Kendra and Cal discuss how to move beyond the forever pursuit of “greatness” to instead seek satisfaction in your current life; the ways in which time management and productivity writing ignores the specific concerns of women; and why flexibility and pivoting are more important skills than precise planning. Video from today’s episode:  youtube.com/calnewportmediaLinks:https://www.landroverusa.comhttps://www.calnewport.com/slowThanks to Jesse Miller for production, Jay Kerstens for the intro music, Kieron Rees for the theme music, and Mark Miles for mastering. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I'm Cal Newport, and this is In-depth, a semi-regular series where I interview interesting people about the quest to cultivate a deep life. Today's episode is presented by Defender, a vehicle designed for those of us seeking adventure in a distracted world. I'm excited about today's show because I'll be talking with Kendra Adachi. I've known Kendra for a while. She's a leader in the movement that she calls compassionate times. management. You might know her from her lazy genius podcast or from her book, The Lazy Genius, but she has a new title out. That's what we're going to be talking about today. A new book that is called The Plan, Manage Your Time, Like a Lazy Genius. So Kendra and I are exploring similar spaces that I explored in my prior episode with Oliver Berkman, but we come at it

from different angles that I think are fascinating and useful for our quest on this show to understand depth, how to build a life that matters without getting obsessed about the process of the building. I think Kendra's fantastic on it. Here are some of the issues we get into in today's episode. Why being a genius in one thing means you might have to be lazy in many other things and that that's okay. We talk about why the unceasing pursuit of greatness, which is the first thing,

focus of a lot of time manage and productivity advice, this idea that everything you're doing now is about achieving some greatness in the future. We get into why that can be self-defeating and exhausting and how the alternative, which Kendra calls integration, which involves living holy with your current situation, can in the end be so much more fulfilling. We get into my own recovery from greatness pursuit addiction. We get some free therapy here from Kinderra about my own middle-age evolution of what I think is important in my life, and I think this is critical, we get into why time management and productivity writing tends to neglect the reality of women and how Kendra is trying to remedy that with this book and her podcast and writings in general.

Now, I gave a cover blurb for the plan. In fact, I think I'm the only male blurber of this book, something that I'm very proud about. Here's what I wrote on the cover of Kendra's book. strikingly original and compassionate Kendra offers a vision of time management that embraces the unique messiness of your life instead of trying to optimize it away. I very much agree with that sentiment

and I think you might too after you hear our conversation. But first I want to say a word about today's presenting sponsor, Defender. Let's start with the idea of a presenting sponsor altogether. This is new, but it was what I have said from the beginning of this series. My goal is to try to find for each episode a single presenting sponsor,

a high-quality brand I actually like, that would then allow us to present the interview without interruption, so that once we get to the interview, we can really get lost in the conversation without ad breaks. Well, I couldn't be more excited that our very first such presenting sponsor we have found for this series is Defender. The iconic Defender line of vehicles has been reimagined for a new generation of explorers.

The Defender 90, 110, and 130, which can seat up to eight passengers, all maintained a legendary off-road capability for which Defender is known, but now combined with legendary new on-road capabilities as well. This includes, for example, 21st century technology such as 3D surround cameras, the ability to see underneath your car

as well as to see through your rear window, even if it is obstructed, a next generation PV Pro infotainment system and intuitive driver displays. What I really like about the Fender, however, is that psychologically speaking, it keeps you connected to a sense of adventure. So even as you're enjoying all those technologies

on your smooth driving commute to work, you will be reminded because you're in this iconic vehicle brand that adventure awaits and that there's more to life than just the pragmatic through the motions chores that you might be looking at today. It's a mindset that I think at our current age of email and two meetings is important to keep in mind

that sometimes you want to just get out there and get after it, whether that be physically or metaphorically. So I'm glad that Defender is our sponsor you can visit Land Rover USA.com to learn more about the Fender. And with that, let us now get to our interview with Kendra Adachi presented without any interruption. All right, well, Kendra, it's great to see you again. Thanks for coming on the podcast. I've been looking forward to this one.

You've done something very interesting with this book that I'm looking forward to getting into. So we'll start with it. Let's start with the book. It's called The Plan. plan capitalized because it's an acronym. We'll get to that in the second. Manage your time like a lazy genius. A certified New York Times bestseller.

Thank you. I should say. For a lot of people who know you, the phrase lazy genius, like a course, this is like what you're associated with. But for the part of my audience that's new to the world of Kendra, maybe like bring us up the speed on this term lazy genius was not chosen at the last minute as you're writing this particular subtitle. this is a long existing concept in your universe.

So what do we mean by that? Yeah, that's right. So a lazy genius is someone who is a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. And the key here is that you get to decide what matters to you and whatever season of life that you're in. We're just most of the rhetoric I heard for so long years ago, over a decade ago, was either you're just amazing at everything.

Like, she can do it all. or you are like, messy hair don't care. Yeah. Like there was these two extremes of either you're amazing at everything or you just care about nothing and you've given up. And even that giving up is like a badge of honor. Now, that's definitely something that is in, I would say, the female space a lot more.

But it is a really tough spectrum to kind of swing between those two ends. And I think most people, not just women, most people live in a very wide middle where there are things that they want to be excellent at. You want to give your genius energy and your time to these things that matter to you. But if you do that, you do have to be lazy about other things.

You do have to sort of let things slide or be happy with C-level work or delegate them a lot or whatever. So what I try to teach people is not just, it's not necessarily about like hacks and specific tips. It's more this almost lifestyle of paying attention to where you are and the season of life you're in and naming what matters there so that you can actually make wise decisions about your time. I mean, I learned that phrase for the first time, lazy hair, don't care.

In your interview with Sharon McManus, who also has a cool new book out. And I was like, that is a cool phrase. Well, and there's also an interesting sort of niche in the market out there of, I guess, people who are in that camp, but aren't really because they're spending a lot of very focused time trying to market that message and writing books about that message or whatever. It's the performative laziness is an interesting thing. It is. It really is. And that's why I found such resonance with this message because a lot of people,

we sort of already know intuitively that trying to do it all doesn't really work. Sometimes we keep going, but there are actually more resources out there for people who are trying to do more. So it's easier to find a path sort of to feel like you're, you're making some headway in this direction, even though I'm not sure a lot of us do, at least with not some expense that we pay on the back end with our health and our time,

and our family and whatever. But this other side, yeah, the performative laziness, it's like this, it's just as unfulfilling and is just as unsustainable as trying to do it all because it's not authentic to most people. We actually do want to care about things. Like life is fulfilling because we feel a purpose. in certain directions. You just can't feel a purpose in every single one.

This is an odd connection to make, but stick with me here. I want to connect that to college admissions. Let's do it. Okay. When I was younger and I was writing books for students, I got very into giving talks and even wrote a book about this about college admissions and the stress surrounding it. And this was this very interesting dynamic that arose in the early 2000s when there was a huge stress as the echo boom sort of squeeze into a smaller number of spots. colleges got more competitive. What I found was there was a whole industry whose response to the stress of college admissions was just to preach the message, there's more to life than Harvard, right? Just chill out. Like you shouldn't be so stressed about college. Life is long. It doesn't matter

that much. And most of these people were Ivy League educated. There was a sort of like pull the ladder up behind you. And so this wasn't resonating with the people who are suffering the most stress, they were the most locked in on like it really matters where I go to college. So they were just completely tuning out that message. So then I came in, I was giving these talks around the country where my whole approach was valid, okay, this is a valid, you know, ambition. You care about the college you go into. But the stress of the way that people are doing this is not worth it.

So maybe we can find a way. This is like lazy genius ahead of time. Maybe we can find a way to keep interesting options open for colleges, but you're not going to burn yourself out at the age of 17. And it was a really hard path to go because there was the crew of like, no, no, no, just there's more to life than college and parents are bad because their kids want to get into it. And then on the other end, it was, you know, type till your, study till your eyes bleed. That's all it matters. Yeah. And that in between resonated because people say, yeah, I have this ambition, but also I don't want to sleep three hours a day when I'm 16.

So there's, I love that sweet spot. So, okay, here's a terminology from your book that I thought was profound. Talk about integration versus greatness as this spoke to me in a lot of ways. I love hearing that. So I have read so many time management productivity books over the years. Like I, for the purpose of trying to do it all, like that was my original reason. And as I was researching this book and trying to think about what this was going to be, I had. I just had this light bulb moment where I realized, wait a minute, almost every single book I've ever read and every episode, podcast episode that I listen to, like everything in the space in general is trying to make me better. It's trying to make me amazing. It's trying to level up and 10x.

Everything is just this upward movement. And I went, I don't want that, though. Like, that's not what I want the goal of my day-to-day life to be. It's not greatness. Because if that is the goal, I will always be behind. I will always feel like a day is a failure because what does great even mean? Like what's the measurement for that? There's no universal gauge for what that's going to be.

And when you talk about a female experience in particular where you're kind of holding, like you're holding the domestic tasks of the home, it's like the invisible scaffolding of your household management, all those things. it's just, it feels so debilitating to feel like you have to be great all the time. But our, even our country in many ways is built on that. It's built on potential and chasing your dreams and you hustle your way to the top and anybody can get what they want. And I think that in many ways that's really beautiful.

Like that's a hopeful, beautiful thing that we can have as part of our DNA. but this expectation that everyone wants to be great and has the capacity and interest to be great in every element of their lives is just like false. I just think we've been sold a lie. So instead, what if we have a different goal? What if instead of greatness being our goal at every turn? What if it's integration?

What if it is being a grounded, whole person right where we are, where we do not, it's like you just said about those college kids, where we are not sacrificing our humanity on the altar of productivity, on the altar of optimization, on getting more done in less time. What if integration is where we began?

So what that, it honestly changes everything. If that is your lens, if you're looking through a lens of integration, you stop asking questions like, well, how can I make the most of this? stay off that I have. How can I make the most of the everything no longer becomes about making the most of? How can I be here right now and honor who I am and who's in front of me and my season of life? It's just a very like, it's a very present perspective. Yeah. And I will say it's a bit

of a hard sell, though, because it's not, it's not very like, you can't make a list out of it. It's not a very sexy cell. And yet it's the most sustained. fulfilling sale, I think that there is for most people. What's the role, because I can't help by connecting to this? I'm thinking about the role of technology in this, right? Because I went back, it's just like a hobby horse of mine. I'm very interested in like the state of book publishing on these topics versus other discussions on these topics.

And I actually think book publishing has gotten to like an interesting place. I have it here somewhere. I went through and actually got the top 10. top 10 bestsellers on Amazon right now in time management. And I went through them. And like right now in this moment, very few of the books that are big right now

are about 10xing or doing more. Almost like we're in like a backflash. Somebody's out know as well. Number one right now is buy back your time. I think that's like one of these entrepreneur books where it's basically saying you outsource stuff.

If you're an entrepreneur, like you see that as a business investment like any other, that book seems really popular, slow productivity is up there, which is, you know, the opposite of that. Four-hour work week was like the original complete dismissal. I mean, it's interesting. Ferris is seen as the optimization man, but that book was like the original work is so unimportant that you should just figure out a way to take advantage of the internet to automate something that makes you just enough money that you can learn tango.

It's just like nihilistic, almost like anarchist book. The organized mind is up there right now, which is just, that's actually a neuroscience book. Deep Ork is on there, which is about like. like, hey, busyness is not as valuable as we think. Right. 12-week-year is, I think, a traditional corporate get more done, right? Because it's like compress your time frames, you'll be more urgent. Yeah.

Yeah, it's kind of like if you rename what a year is, you have more years available to you. So you can hustle harder because you have the pressure. Yeah. And then we have essentialism, your book, Art of Laziness, Getting Things Done. So it's like the P, and Getting Things Done also I have this long argument about is that's like a cry to cure. This is like David Allen, like, how do you? you like maintain your sanity when we have so much damn stuff we have to do all day. It was like this weird sort of nihilistic.

But online, the conversation is much different. It is much different. Everything you're talking about feels like it is in lights on the marquee online. The morning routine stuff. The fitness stuff is crazy. Yeah, it's everywhere. Men and women. Every man doing fitness stuff online is like a superheroed muscle body.

And it's like, well, why aren't you like this? at 40. What are you doing with your time? This is only three hours a day and weighing all your food or whatever. Why I catch you this as well? The connection, the optimising, the hustle culture. And so this is all, it's like the heart of productivity discourse had moved online. And it seems like it's for the worst. And I'm wondering if because of algorithms, because of what works, it's the discourse around productivity because it has shifted online has shifted towards extremes. And that is why a book like yours is resonating with so many people because we're tired of that online. That online space is treatment of this is really trying to exhaust us.

Well, it's because contentment does not drive the social media marketplace. You know, the messages of contentment are not going to keep people online. You know, so it's, it is a, there's always a deficit. You know, we have to be told where the bucket is emptying or where we, can do better so that we'll stay on and we're like oh wait is that a problem i guess i okay well let me see how this guy can do his burpees when he's doing it you know like it's it is kind of silly and i think to a point we are i think most people are intuitive and wise enough to sort of see you know you know they take kind of the the is it like the blue pill or the red pill like they see the machinery of it all

yeah and yet we're so easily influenced by it because contentment is not something that is highly valued for a lot of people in Western capitalistic culture. Like it's just not something. It doesn't drive anything forward. It doesn't make money. If you're happy with your life, if you're happy with what you have, if you're like, you know what, this is enough. That's not great for the industry. And so it's, it makes sense to me that the online. messaging doesn't align as much as the publishing world because it's not going to, you know, it's not going to keep the internet moving anyway.

But I also think it just speaks to our, I don't know, it's like there's this, there's this deep need that we have to feel like that our lives means something, you know, that they matter, that we want our lives to have purpose. And if we don't already have an answer to that question for our own lives, we're going to fill in the blank with what the Internet is telling us we should do because we don't have anything there. So that's why really the ultimate work that I want to do is to help people name that. To where are you right now?

What matters to you right now? What makes you feel like yourself? How do you feel like you're contributing? Are you resting? Like you are a tree planted by the water, right? You are not a balloon floating in the air. Like, let's be planted where we are. And I think that that, the more that people are that way individually,

the more that contentment and just things being enough as they are, it feels like you're not being counterintuitive. It feels like you're not being countercultural. It's like, again, back to your college admission thing, that you were trying to convince these people. There is a third way to think about this. But they didn't know because the only things that we're filling in the blanks were these two extremes. So it's like we're trying to widen that gap and help people see it through a completely new paradigm.

Well, so maybe you can help me because I'm a recovering greatness addict. This is like a recurrent theme in my own life is moving beyond that narrative, which has been a driving narrative for my life for a while. And now I'm kind of at the limits of the various things I've been doing for 20 years. Yeah. You've done a good job. You have a lot of things that you've been great at. Yeah, but I'll tell you, it's a, it's Sisyphean, right? Because no matter where, this is what, this is what I found. It's, um, my book is number two on the New York Times bestseller list. So what's the thought? What does it take to get the number one? Exactly. You know, that's the, it's a finish line is always moving.

It's always moving. But there is a satisfaction, right, in the hatching of the plan. I think this is a lot of what sort of that hustle oriented productivity is, leveraging. There's a satisfaction in I have a plan. Imagining the reward of the plan allows you to get a down payment on feeling good about it. And so there's that kind of fulfillment you have. I don't know if it's distracting from life or orienting life or whatever when you have some sort of plans in place. So I'm trying to figure out with your help. How does an integration mindset sort of replace that need to have too much, have your focus on a future state. Like, oh, I have this plan and this exciting, I can daydream about the plan. How do we get more satisfaction out of being more present with our life as it is now and

what's good about and what we're doing with it? Like, help me walk through as recovering greatness addict, how to move more towards like an integration mindset. I think that you are, and I'm the same way, people who are really good planners and the normative way. People who are really good at organization and the way that the narrow way that we've all been taught, it should look. It's harder for us to actually disengage it because we've been we are rewarded by it because we're good at it. We can get that dopamine hit when we make the plan and when it might come true. And so it's actually, I think, harder work for people who are

naturally gifted at preparation and organization and even optimization. And if you're, you're actual work if your career trajectory is one that, you know, people would envy. People see you. I know people see you as somebody that they want to follow. Like, I like Cal has done it. What did Cal do? How can I do it like Cal did? So it's actually a lot harder for people who are good at the thing to disengage from

the thing. And I will say, you had mentioned it before, the plan is capitalized because it's an acronym. So the three of the letters of that acronym, the P, A, and the N, prepare, adjust, and notice. Those three words work in harmony with one another. They work equally with one another. And what has happened is that we have been given this very narrow view of what it means to be a planner. and I think a way that we can disengage from this idea of greatness and looking at our lives through a lens of integration and almost in this state of recovery almost

is to look to the people in our lives who are actually really, really good, maybe not at preparation, but at making adjustments in the moment, who are really good at noticing what's happening in the room, that they know what's happening with the people that we walk in and we're like, okay, here's our checklist, let's go.

And they walk in and they go, the vibe in here. somebody's worried about their job or somebody is what you know like there are people who are really gifted at these other just as important elements in my opinion of planning and so if we can expand our definition of what it means to be a good planner into someone who is also really good at pivoting really good at immediate problem solving that they don't have to have the color coded list that they don't have to have the, you know, the Google calendar that's set up in such a way that every single minute is accounted for. That there are people who can, again, they're intuitive and they

walk in a room and they're relational or they're quiet or they just, they just know what's going on under the surface for people. People like that have been left out of the conversation of what it means to be a good planner. And therefore, they don't have a problem with what I'm saying. They're like, oh, I'm, I'm on board. Because you're giving. you're leaving space for me. For people like you and I, it's like, oh, wait a minute, but I'm really good at this, though.

Like, why do I have to stop? And I would say that for people like both of us who are, yeah, kind of have this addiction, have had this addiction to greatness and optimization and leveling up all the time, is for us to look back and go, like, what is it done? like what is it good for? It has gotten me things, of course.

It's gotten me, it's gotten a career success or whatever. But if you stop and go, if that's where I begin, if I open my eyes in the morning and I put on a pair of glasses and that lens is a lens of greatness, like how much am I going to get done today? How impressive am I going to be? How organized am I going to be in this very normative sense that I'm already good at?

have been affirmed in, listen, it is really hard to switch those glasses to glasses of integration. Yeah. Because it's smaller. It makes people smaller in a way at first that's really scary, I think. Yeah. I think moving to a place of integration, it sort of takes, you take yourself off the pedestal in a way that's like, oh, it's like, it's uncomfortable. Because for many of us, I will not speak for you in this. my success, my, I was valedictorian of my high school class.

I was voted most dependable by my high school, my senior class. Like, this has been my, I was, in second grade, teachers were like, starting then, I was always the room monitor when the teacher left the room. You know, like, I do things well. I can be dependent on, and I'm going to be excellent at them. If that has been your trajectory for a long time, it's really hard to separate that from your value as a person. Yeah. It's really scary.

And this doesn't have to become like a, you know, a therapy session or whatever. But I think that's why it's hard. Because when you're rewarded for being great and you're great at being great, why would you want to let that go? But it's also exhausting on the inside. And you think if you don't, like if I didn't make the New York Times for this book, I've written three books. The first two made all four lists.

And this one, I'm like, well, if I don't make this one, everybody in the industry is going to think I'm an idiot. And I don't know what I'm talking about. even though the book came out in a really competitive month. Like greatness becomes this, it's like the core of your identity in a way that takes you out of your own life. And it's kind of like you have to choose, I have to choose. I would rather be a person who is okay with the disappointment of not being great at a thing and being with myself in that than being great and feel like a husk of a person. It's a very soul-level choice.

Well, let's stick with it then. You mentioned, from practical perspective, you mentioned the pyramid. So it's prepare, notice, adjust. And they're supposed to be in balance, right? So it's sort of like an equilateral triangle if we're going to be nerdy about it. Yeah, tetrahedron, I think, is what the real word is.

Planned tetrahedron doesn't sound as good as a planned pyramid, so we had to go with plan pyramid. Now you're speaking my language. Let's get into the right polygon references. Yeah, let's talk about. If there's no trigonometry in your time management book, what are we doing? What are we doing? What are we doing here?

All right, so walk us through that, though. Okay, so prepare, just notice, trying to keep these three things in balance. And then you have Live, I've heard it both described as the foundation and also as the point. It's the point. Yeah. I would say the foundation of the pyramid itself is what matters to you in the season that you're in. Okay. All right, walk us through this.

Yeah, we're going to make. So let's throw a triangle on the ground. Okay, that's the foundation of our pyramid here. The triangle on the ground is what matters to you in the season that you're in? What matters to you right now? If you think back, Cal, to when you were 23, what mattered to you at the age of 23 probably does not matter now. And it shouldn't.

I think a lot of times what matters to us is going to change as we grow and we evolve as people and our families change and all of that. So it's wise. It is so wise to not lock in on something that matters to you. 15 years ago, you're allowed to change your mind. You're allowed to change your mind. So name what matters to you right now in the season you're in. And then you have those three...

And you're saying, by the way, that scale of season can also be very variable, right? Like, this could change throughout the year, as well as change throughout your life. It could change over the decades. But it also could change within the month. Like, you have these different scales, which I think is an important concept. Yeah. Like my... We are recording this the week after Thanksgiving.

My daughter has had pneumonia for the last 10 days. we have been in, that's been the season that we're in. What matters right now with the kids sick at home and we're moving into like family coming in and I have to cook a big meal and all the things, your priorities have to change based on what matters right now. It is a deeply, deeply wise thing to do. And the reason that it feels strange to do that,

just to, you know, go down a rabbit trail really quickly, is because most of the traditional productivity books historically have been like, make a plan, you know, figure out your idea life, 30 years down the road, reverse engineer it, and stick with a plan. And if you don't, you're an undisciplined person. Like, that's sort of the vibe. Yeah. That's not sustainable or realistic for anyone, really. So, yeah, name what matters in your season. Your season can be whatever boundary you need it to be. And then the three sides of the pyramid are prepare, adjust, and notice.

And just for like the sake of under, I won't go through all of them, but just to kind of get a vibe, there are principles for each one of these letters to help you sort of know, like, how am I, where am I in this? Just reminders for us. So like prepare. Some of the mindsets for prepare are not everything can matter. As you're preparing, you have to believe that not every single thing in your life can matter in an equal way.

A plan that you make, a plan is an intention. It is not a pass fail. If you prepare something and it doesn't go to plan, it doesn't mean it failed or that you failed. It just means the intention didn't happen. It's life. It's the way it goes. For adjust, match your expectations to the energy

that you're willing and able to give. If you have, so often, if we decide that we're going to do something, we have expectations for something, and it doesn't happen. We try to hack our energy rather than adjust our expectations. Right? So that's a way that we adjust. for notice.

Staying grounded is better than staying on task. That's a weird one for people to get behind. They're like, wait a minute. The task is all the things. I think you need to start by being with yourself and in that moment going, what matters most right now? Like if, for me, the times that take me out of that,

the quickest are my children. And so if a kid is like still lying on the couch and his ride is picking him up for school in five minutes and he is not brushed his teeth and he doesn't have his shoes on it. He's 15 years old and I start to go, he can legally drive a car in a year and he still forgets to brush his teeth. What are we doing? And I will come, I will turn into a rage mother, a Hulk monster.

But if I go, okay, hold on, notice. What matters right now actually is that I stay connected with my kid, not that I force him to be this compliant person that I want him to be. For me, that's my goal. So I'm going to go, what matters right now? I'm going to stay grounded rather than getting him on task. I'm going to be kind so that I can go to him and stay kind and preserve this relationship and then also be like, get off the couch and go brush your teeth.

You know, it's like we're not, it's really important, when I talk about this, it's really important to make sure that people understand, I'm not saying don't do your stuff, don't be good at your stuff, don't try to even be great. But if you begin with this far out future view with this lens of I've got to do all of it perfectly well, and I cannot deviate off course. Rather than this fluid, very human, wise responsiveness to your life, you will burn out so fast. But you can, I believe you still, you get your things done better and in a way that brings you more fulfillment when you are a tree by the water.

Yeah. You know, when those roots keep going deep. And then the, and then back to the pyramid, the L is the point. It's the top. It's pulling up the... It's pulling it all up to the point of it all. Yes, which is to live our lives, to be where we are, to enjoy our people, to go outside and do the fun things we like to do. Like, it's, we just, I don't want to live only when I'm 70 years old, you know, and I've done all of these things to get me to this future ideal place.

I want to live today. I want to live my life right now. Well, I mean, first I'll say to my audience, um, partially why this is important is we don't cover this well. I don't do a ton of time management advice. I'm known for it. But what I do talk about tends to be very narrowly focused. I think this is another issue.

Very narrowly focused on the modern knowledge work digital office. And it's like a survival game. It's this, oh my God, I'm getting 150 emails a day. I'm feeling murderous towards the. inventor of Zoom. And it's this, we got to fix this, but not, but how do I like survive that eight hours in the office without like going and saying and actually like getting things done. But what I've, what I've learned that I have to argue my audience a lot is like the mindset that you would use for like, how do I manage this like weird, terrible busy period at the beginning

of COVID where everything's moving online in a particular job. And I have 10 bosses yelling at me. It doesn't translate to other things. It doesn't translate to all the other parts of your life. It's not a good way to go about almost anything else that's happening in your life. It is very artificial. I had this, actually, we agreed in the end. I had this conversation with Oliver Birkman about it, where I was basically, he was talking about his ideal way to sort of plan. And I think there's a lot of similarities with your book.

And I was like, yeah, that is right. And the stuff I'm talking about is the, like, some unfortunate reality of, like, particular jobs. And you want to get away from it as quickly as you can throughout your day. So I want to first give that disclaimer to my audience, like, this is great because I don't cover well, how do you deal with all of your life and not just how do I deal with my email inbox, which is a much more boring. How do you deal with all of your life? But guess what?

How do you deal with your inbox is essential to how you deal with your life? I mean, it is. Like, it's all connected. It's a lot harder to talk about how to deal with your whole life because it's so big. Yeah. You know, like the email problem is something that feels, okay, well, this is manageable. I can figure this. I can focus my energy on this and solve this problem, that this is a huge problem in my work

for a lot of people it is. So it's deeply valuable. But you're right. Like trying to, most of those approaches, yeah, they don't trans. You're right. They don't translate as well to the rest of life very easily, very seamlessly. And I like something that's interesting about the book is in the prepare leg of that base, the edge of that triangle that builds up into the pyramid.

Yes. You have advice for systems, right? Like when you're preparing, trying to figure out like what makes sense to do, you talk about like what's a good way to think about a to do list. for example. And you have like a nice model there for something that's less strict than specific days. You talk about like a planning rhythm. Like how, you know, you're kind of planning out what you want to get done at different timescales.

But the vibe is these systems aren't a hard part. Like, yes, like you want to, you need to write down what you need to do somewhere so you don't have to keep it track of it in your head. Yeah, you need to think ahead. Someone's coming and you want to know that like I need to start preparing a week in advance or whatever. But it's deconered in your book. It's actually the psychology is what's more important. The systems are kind of the easy part. Like, yeah.

Be organized and make some reasonable decisions, but you have to adjust and you have to notice and you can't fall away. The adjustment is a fantastic point. I mean, I often talk about fairy tale planning. It's like when we're sitting down and trying to plan our day or a week, we write like a fairy tale about in theory, in theory, if you are taking Felix Felicitis or whatever the potion is from Harry Potter and the Halfwood Friends,

I definitely don't have three boys. You read that book recently. In the perfect day, like we often plan, like, wouldn't it be great if I was able to get like three hours of riding in plus this, plus this workout? But during the workout, I'm going to do my conference scheduling for my kids on the Peloton bike. And then like as I move from, and you lay out this day and then you fall in love with the, what a great fairy tale. Like, I'm really comforted by the idea of a world in which all of this works out like this. And you feel great about that fairy tale world you built. And then like 12 minutes into that day, of course, the Peloton bike is on fire.

and you know you've missed your kid has to come home sick or whatever and and you're like oh this wasn't a realistic plan it was a fairy tale plan so that ability that like yeah adjustments to whole game it's like a rough intention and then you start the you roll with it it's like i think of mission control in apollo 13 you're rolling with the oxygen tanks exploded like that's your skill is like rolling with and making reasonable decisions not making a fairy tale come true so that That room was full of problem solvers. Yeah. It wasn't full of planners.

It was full of problem solvers. I say this in my work a lot. Learning to pivot is more important than learning to plan. I think we are better served as people in cultivating the skill. Or maybe just the comfort. Maybe it's not even a skill. Maybe for some of us, it's just like, I am not going to freak out because this.

this fairy tale plan didn't work or even just a basic non-fritale plan. I'm going to be okay that not everything is okay. Yeah. Like, I'm going to be here. That's what it is. That's the psychology of it is because we are required. Our lives require us to pivot far more than they require us to plan. But we don't recognize that really because so much of what we have been taught,

especially in the early 2000s, it was all about preparation. That was the whole thing. So it makes sense that people of, you know, this generation, so to speak, are like, well, what am I if I don't have my list ready to go? Like if I don't know what my day is going to look like, if I don't have, you know, theme work days,

if I don't, if everything doesn't fit into this category or bucket or whatever. And it makes me think of recently I did an interview on another show, that's hosted by two women. And one of them, she's like, I have, she held up her, she held up her planner. And like she had Post-it notes. She had lists everywhere, right? And then the other host, she said, I've never made a list in my life. And they said, what do we do?

Like, how do we meld these? Like, what do we need to do to get to the middle? And I said, y'all, you don't have to make a middle. Like, do what works for you. You don't have to fall into this normative way of planning that we've been taught because it really only works well, for a small sliver of people who are naturally wired to do that. And so there's this, we have to give ourselves permission to be okay

that the things fall apart 12 minutes in, that that's expected, that we really, that us expecting our plan to not work is not fatalistic. It's not even, it doesn't keep us from getting our stuff done. I just think it's realistic. Yeah. And we go, it's probably not going to work. If it does, that's so rad.

But at least to have a baseline to work from rather than nothing. Or that it's so rigid that it's not flexible. Right? Because most of our lives are deeply flexible, especially a woman's life. If she's at home taking care of her kids and she's, you know, like I have spoken to so many people over the last couple of years about this book. And the number of women.

especially, who are like, I feel so seen because, like, 93% of the time management books are written by men. And 70 to 90% of them are read by women. Interesting. And so we need a broader definition of what it means to not necessarily just plan or organize, but to really live. And these ideas of contentment and pivoting that these. these things are valued at a very high level above greatness that we value those things more than we value the greatness.

It doesn't mean we dismiss the greatness. But you're right. It's like they're decentered. The greatness and the task fulfillment is decentered. The humanity is in the center where I think it needs to be. Well, I want to talk about the audience point because I think this is also a fascinating point about the genre in general. So, I mean, this book, though, as a broad audience, you're very specific in the book that you have women in mind in particular.

Yes. As an underserved, as you said, 93% of high man's productivity books are written by men. I probably wrote 25% of those themselves. And they're all real good. I've read every single one of them count. But they're not, but the readership is not only split halfway, but even, you said 70%. Yeah. And I've come to realize this later in my career that they're,

the people writing these books, we don't necessarily think how specific our voices. Because there's really only been two major, there's been two dominant voices, as far as I can tell, in time management and productivity, we have the corporate voice,

which was like the dominant voice from like Stephen Covey on through the 90s, which was very much to like, this comes out of helping people in like a large company, like manage and be a manager. This goes all the way back, right? And then we got the kind of the wave that I was a part of which I think of as like,

I don't know, the blogging bro voice. This was like the more entrepreneurial coming out of like new media online spaces, coming out of like the blog revolution in the 2000s. And there's like Tim Ferriss and there's me, et cetera, whatever. Those are two very, I mean, those are perfectly fine voices. Like they're speaking in the particular audiences. But they're very specific. And I learned this one because, you know, some of my books have sold enough copy.

I hear from a lot of people. And man, I learn quick. The way I think and talk about things is not universal. And it took me a while to understand. understand this because I'd be like, I don't understand these complaints. Like, I'm very engineering and logical. Like, is this not? I am delivering information that is like an optimal way of thinking about how the brain functions.

And so now I've really come to to appreciate this idea that there needs to be many different flavors of talking about these issues. So talk about, so with women audiences in particular, this has been very ill-served. It has. So in what way is like, what is it that you're noticing was made? missing that you're able to fill in. Yeah, it's, I think an important word here is that what we have been given is just incomplete. Yeah.

None of it's wrong, you know. I mean, there are definitely things that I don't align with that I don't, I'm like, I don't really want to live my life that way. But it's not that it's like fundamentally wrong. It's just we all get to choose, right? But the advice has been incomplete, especially for women. And this is, this is a pretty broad, this is a pretty broad thing. but we live in a patriarchal society.

It was built for men by men, and women have not had a whole lot of time where their voice has been loud enough for the changes and adjustments that we are wanting on a cultural level, on a systemic level. There's just not been a lot of time where those things are now so part of the culture that we can feel it.

Like, I still feel, I still feel like more is expected of me than is expected of my husband. Like, women are not allowed to be mediocre. We can't be mediocre mothers, mediocre spouses or partners. We can't be mediocre at our jobs. Like, we have to be excellent at everything. Dudes can be mediocre in places, and they don't really get a lot of flack for it. And so when you are in a position where you are holding almost, it's a generality here, but it's a generality for a reason.

It is something that is very true for a lot of women. Women are expected to hold more than their male counterparts are in the home and in work. And we're the ones probably getting the Christmas gifts and figuring out like the logistics of getting the kid, their thing for this, you know, field trip that they're doing. and they're just all of these invisible pieces that are floating around all the time. My husband doesn't know the names of my kids, friends, parents. He doesn't have their numbers.

I do. Yeah. Right? Because I'm the one who's home. I work from home. He doesn't. And so it makes sense that I would have them, but also it's too accepted that women are holding so much more,

but women are also not given as much support to do those things. And one of the ways that that shows up is in the books that are available to women, that they are written not with their own life experience and mind. And we're also not paying attention to, like you can read the plan and be a dude. I don't come after you. Like, it's, I don't come after you hard. Because I think that this is actually a way of viewing our lives

that is attractive to a lot of people, men and women. Because a lot of us are like, man, trying to be great at everything really is exhausting. Let's find a new paradigm. So it's not exclusively for women. But there is a chapter in the book about periods. Because listen, if you're a lady and your energy is changing, if you're in your 40s and you're going through pyramidopause right now and you have a part-time job of having to eat protein now,

it's a whole thing that dudes just don't understand. And it's okay that they don't. But we need wider resources for the lived experience and the cultural pressures and the relational expectations and all of these things that women hold. And so if you say, yeah, you need to prioritize getting eight to ten hours of sleep every night. And I'm like, are you, my kid wakes me up in the middle of the night. What are you talking about?

That's not a thing. Like they're just, it feels unrealistic. But what, this is the last thing I'll say about this. Because I can get a little heated because I care so much about women having their lives honored in this way. But what I think happens is that if all of the resources say, here's how it's done and a woman cannot do it, she thinks she's the problem. It's not the system.

It's not that that book's not for me or this part or this part might work, but not the whole thing. It becomes an identity thing. It's like the problem is me. And so the very beginning of the plan, is to show us all, the problem is not you. The problem is not you. The problem is that this industry of time management and productivity

is built on a lens and a centering of greatness and optimization and leveling up. It has been historically, it is starting to shift, which I am so glad that we're part of that. But if you are, all your hearing is, be great, do great, it's possible. See, everyone else is doing it. And you're just over here struggling day to day. and you're like, I can't even take a nap. Like, what are you talking about?

It feels really devastating on like a soul level. Because we think the problem is us. And the problem is not you. It's not you. Well, I think it's much needed. I think my impression of male-centric, I imagine productivity, is that it's sort of a psychological vacuum.

So, like, there's very little psychological, reality in it because it's more simplistic about it. It's all kind of optional. Like, oh, why don't it be cool? It'd be cool to get in really good shape. But like, I don't, I'm also, if that's not me and I've got the belly and the, that's fine.

Like, a high five, like you do, you, like, you don't feel, it all feels optional. It might be really cool to get super organized and make my, my web business, like, take over whatever. It would be cool to pursue that, but like, I don't care if I don't. And like, you know, no one's going to judge me if I don't. And so there's a lack of a lack of psychological language, I would say. So, I mean, I can imagine there's multiple groups that we need specialization in this topic. Yeah.

Because, I mean, everyone has to deal with the issue of just life, organizing life, figuring out what to do or what not to do, how to, you know, make sure the electric bill gets paid or figure out. And there's so many different relevant ways of receiving. So I really love this idea. And this is the obvious big missing one because it's half the population. So like let's start with women. This is half the population and the majority of actually the readers of these books. Yeah. But you can imagine other age stratified is something I've been thinking about recently.

Absolutely. If you're 24, maybe more of like this, the more like online, you know, I don't know, get after it like whatever. Like actually maybe that's like keeping you out of trouble. And maybe that's good. When you're in your 20 as you have all this time and you're, you're laying a base of whatever that'll be sick. So then you can like,

as you have kids and you have no time, you'll be okay or something, I don't know, maybe that's better. I hear a lot from people who are near in retirement as another group. And like, well, wait, I'm thinking about things completely differently. Like, how do I? So I love this movement and I, and I love what you're doing with it.

So I'm, and you say the response has been strong. I'm not surprised that you're doing. It has been. Yeah. Yeah, it has been. It's definitely been stronger from women than from men. I have, most of the rooms I speak to are, majority women, but I spoke at a conference a few weeks ago, and it was half and half.

And it was really interesting that I had to, I had to kind of get the guys on board a little bit because it was a room full of entrepreneurs. They were very successful people. Again, their greatness is honored. And that's not bad. Like, that's morally neutral, right? It's a great thing. But yeah, the life experience, this psychological language, you're,

You're right. It's not something that we're hearing enough across the board. Women are hearing it and they're resonating with it very quickly because they're like, oh, I know that's my life. I see that. But we, I want, it's why I'm so grateful that you even asked me to be on your show because this is not a message for women. This is a message for all people. Like it makes, I told the men in this room, I said, you might not, you might not align with this. You might not, this might not be how you want to see your own life. But I guarantee that there are people on your team. It's how they want to see. And so it makes you a better leader for you to understand and widen the perspectives of the people that you work with that not everybody wants to be accessible 24 hours a day. They don't want that kind of job. They don't want that kind of the hustle and the greatness that they may, that you think that they aspire to. They actually don't. And so let's honor people's humanity more than you prize their productivity.

Let's start there. and see them in that. And so it's a really important message for all of us to just be exposed to. It's exposure therapy right now. Like I just want more people and men to hear that women, we feel like we're whining. That we're like, it's just so hard to take care of the kids and to do the thing. You know, da, da, da, because it's not your lived experience. It's very easy to say, well, maybe they just,

need to figure out a different system. You know, we are all under the umbrella of thinking, well, maybe you just need a different system. Yeah. Rather than recognizing that the system could be broken in some ways. You're in a different system. We're in a different system. Yeah.

We're swimming in different water. Yeah. Yeah. Well, look, I found, as a man, re-knit, two different ways that I found that really useful, right? So one was, as you were just talking about being able to better understand other people, especially women's experience. And two, just a straight-up advice.

I found really useful because there is not a lot of advice out there in that space that says, okay, when you're not just focusing exclusively on greatness on a particular goal is like everything, how do you structure your life? Like what do you do? That is a huge void. I mean, just speaking more like, you know, across all audiences, that's a big void. That now is starting to be more of these sort of humanistic productivity books that are coming at it. but it is a new thing.

It is. And it is a huge void for when you're stepping away from, I'm just all in on, like, crushing my 10x business. Right. What do you step into? And I think for a lot of people, a lot of men, when they step, when they, there's nothing they even step out of it. They just, it's not going well for them.

It's too easy to fall into various addictions, for example, to just get lost, be it in substances or be it in, you know, digital distraction or just anger. And like, it's difficult to how do you structure and. integrated life. And that space, I think, is a critical space. And so I loved it. Yeah, the period chapter is a little less relevant to me. Sure. But if you are, if you are around or live with a woman who has a menstrual cycle, it's actually, it makes you compassionate. Like my, I call my whole thing compassionate time management. I want us to be more compassionate towards ourselves and towards other people. However they choose to run.

their lives and spend their time, we all get to choose, but we just haven't had tools that align with this very different choice of contentment and integration versus the future and greatness and all of that. We needed a new lens. And that lens is being expanded by a lot of people right now and it really is a beautiful thing. I give our generation credit for that. Can we, can we take credit for this, right? Can we, can we millennials take credit for? I mean, I feel like we are the generation who figures these things out. I had this whole gloss before that like we were the generation that was raised on Follow Your Passion. Yep. And then went through the financial crisis, 9-11, these various things and realized like, wait a second, your job's not going to be the source of all of your

meaning in life. And then we were the ones who got really interested in the 2000s in lifestyle design and life hacking and trying to figure out like, well, how do we, how do we, how do we like rebuild things and we're very self-reflective in that way. So I think it makes sense that our generation is starting to free time management and productivity, I guess, from the Stephen Covey generation. I know, I think so. We're like curious problem solvers. Yeah.

Like on a very soulful human level. Like, okay, let's, I want to, I think it has, there has to be something to that of not growing up with technology at your fingertips either, you know, like being skeptical of it. Like I was taught to like, don't trust Wikipedia. Yeah. Anybody. Like all of those things. Like, but I agree with you.

I think there's a, we can make jokes about it. But it is really fulfilling to see this wave happening where people feel lighter. Yeah. About their own lives in a way they haven't before. I think it's really special. Our generation having kids change things. Like I say this has like been my big revelation was when my three boys. all got to basically elementary school age,

there was this huge shift where it was, oh, we need every minute of that time possible, which felt very different than before, whereas more sort of survival mode, all hands on deck, is this kid like physically and safely being taken from here to year

and has like food or whatever, you know. It's all logistics. For a while, it's just logistics. It's logistics. And then that very much, like three boys, she wants to spend as much time with that as possible. And it completely changes the way you think about,

for example, work. You're like, okay, well, So, like, how does work serve to help set up a lifestyle that has, like, as much time as possible for this? Because there's like an eight-year window or something like that where that's really important. I mean, I think a lot of this, at least for me, as parenthood, has been a big driver of these evolutions. Yeah. These evolutions of productivity thinking. And we hit various limits.

As we, you know, as we get to certain ages, as we get into our 40s, it's like, okay, I kind of am as far as I'm going to be able to go in this pursuit or that pursuit. And it turns out I'm not going to play professional baseball. Okay, I'm finally able to say, like, that ship is sailed. Like, this is how successful of a person I'm going to be in my job. And I'm, it's good. But I don't see there being a big jump after this. There's a big sort of shift like, okay, so how do we organize life? It just seems like the right conversation to be having right now.

I agree. Yeah. And your book does it beautifully. Thank you. Thank you. It means the world that you read it and are, yeah, talking about it. And I'm just, I'm excited. I sometimes call myself Pollyanna with a clipboard.

I'm so idealistic. And I'm like, everything, you guys, we can make this world so beautiful. And here's the list of how to do it. I just feel really excited about this message getting, getting spread out there that people start to feel like themselves in their own lives, rather than machines in something of their own manufacturing. That's not the way any of us want to live. Thanks for giving it a platform.

Of course. Well, speaking of platforms, when I have a minute left here, you have a sort of well-known, extensive platform online. Maybe can you help explain for my listeners how to get all things, Kendra?

Yeah, all things Kendra is at the lazy genius collective.com. I have a podcast. The lazy genius podcast. It comes out every Monday. We're coming up on 400 episodes. So that's been doing this a long time. And yeah, the plan is my third book. The first two, The Lacey Genius Way

and the Lazy Genius Kitchen. are kind of foundational books. I reference a lot in the episodes, but everything is meant to help you name what matters to you and feel permission to live your life in a way that makes you feel like a person. Okay. So go to that website. Go to that podcast.

You have a great newsletter. Thank you. Instagram presence as well. Yeah, yeah. Or so I hear. It's like it's big-ish and I'm not there very often to make it bigger because I just choose to be lazy about Instagram. And that's okay.

I like it. Yeah. Yeah. That I commiserate with. All right, Kendra. Well, always a pleasure to talk with you. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for helping to share the word.

The book is The Plan. Check out the Lazy Genius Collective as well to find out more. And thanks for coming on. Thanks, Cal. All right. So that was my interview with Kendra Adachi. Brought you by Defender, the vehicle designed for those seeking adventure in a distracted world.

So thank you, Defender, for sponsoring today's interview. Well, I really like that discussion. We covered a lot of ground. there's one point in particular that I want to underscore here. I really liked early on in the interview where Kendra set up this dichotomy, which she says is very common in the communities and spaces where she often exist.

And she says there's often this dichotomy, especially among women and productivity discourse, where you have two choices. You can be the super achiever, you're eating year, whatever they ask for you to do now, 400 grams of protein an hour while working out two hours a day at the gym and, you know, crushing it with your Instagram photos and working 50 hours a day and all this sort of craziness. Or you have to be, and I believe her term with something like have the wild hair energy,

the messy hair energy, which is you have to lean into, your only other option is to lean into, oh my God, look how messy my life is. And like, my act isn't together. And, you know, this is just how it is. like everything is completely chaotic. And she's saying it doesn't have to be either of those things. Neither of those are very good options. That there's an option in the middle.

And I think we often forget this option. Because that first option, the sort of super achiever option for all of us, when it becomes unattainable, we know we need to do something different. But if our only other option is just let everything go to chaos, that's just as bad. So I think of compassionate time management

has one way of describing an approach to that space in between. It's a way of saying, yeah, you got to care about things. You need a plan, you a to do list. You need to look ahead of what's coming up. You need to make decisions and pivot when something doesn't work and make priority decisions about what should I do instead and how are we going to pull this off? And if this kid's going to be homesick for school,

there's a complicated logistical chain that makes the rescue of the Apollo 13 capsule seems somewhat simplistic by comparison. I got to get on the ball. I got to make this happen. You need to do those things, but also have compassion for yourself, not try to do too many of those things. Recognize that some seasons of life, it's just this is what's going on, is trying to keep up with details and other seasons of life. You have some freedom to actually push on something or the push harder on an optional project, and that can shift over time and that's okay.

And the things can go slower. I talk about this in my book, slow productivity, work at a natural pace. We don't know looking back historically when we see people who did great things. We don't know how long it took them. If they took twice as long or half as long, we wouldn't know the difference. We would just say that was a cool book you wrote. There's a cool impact you had. So be able to let things take more time.

To be lazy about more things, you can be a genius on other. They'd not have to be the very best at X, Y, and Z, but to be good at something that matters on your own terms and that's good enough. That middle space between the messy hair energy and the super achiever is a space that we don't explore enough. I'm trying to explore that more with my deep life. philosophy, by saying the goal is a lifestyle, not a grand accomplishment, not a specific thing you can point to and impress other people by, not a particular number in your bank account,

but a holistic view of your lifestyle opens up a lot of freedom for how you get there. And in particular, if a particular path you're taking is not working well, it's stressing you out, it's unsustainable, you can switch to something else. You can give yourself that grace. So I really love this type of thinking. I have been using the term humanistic or humane productivity in some of my recent. conversations. Kendra has this idea of compassionate time management. We have Oliver Berkman is in on this space too. He's kind of approaching this space from a related direction.

I guess Oliver is saying something sort of similar to Kendra, at least in the part of like be organized enough to make progress on the thing that matters and not to let too many things fall through the cracks and then be okay with that. Not having to optimize everything else. You got enough time towards something. You have your arms around enough things. I think Oliver I think Kendra, I think me, we're all kind of surrounding similar topics, and it's a great one. So Kendra added a great voice to this conversation,

and so I was glad to have her on the show. So thank you for that, Kendra. We'll have another one of these episodes coming up pretty soon. You know, again, semi-regular. I do these as I have interesting people to talk to, and there's a person I've wanted to talk to who agreed to talk to me recently. No spoilers. I'm going to try to get that up, you know,

maybe in a couple weeks or so, and we'll continue. Do you have any feedback about the show? your best best to send that to producer Jesse at jessie at calmnewport.com. He makes sure I see what I need to see. Be back on Monday, of course, with our normal episode of the show. Until then, stay deep.