The Lazy Genius Podcast - #134 - How To Be Happy With the Gifts You Give

Episode Date: December 2, 2019

We’re all in gift-giving and gift-buying mode and spending a lot of time on it or least are gearing up to. I want to help you be happy with the gifts you give and be more strategic and thoughtful about the time you spend on finding and buying those gifts. We’ll go through a step by step process, and I think that by the end of this episode, you’ll feel so much better about things. Stuff Mentioned Check out my Holiday Gift Guide chock full of gift ideas that are things that I have actually bought and use in my home all the time. Get my free Holiday Gift Tracker! Join the VIP mailing list to get my monthly newsletter affectionally called the Latest Lazy Letter (the next one goes out Wednesday!). Y’all, I take great pride in making that letter something you look forward to. If you’re not on the list, you can put your name on it here. Do you have thoughts or opinions about holiday gift giving? Share them with me over on Instagram. I’m @thelazygenius, and I’ll be LIVE on Thursday around noon EST. Download a transcript of this episode! This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hi everyone. You're listening to the Lazy Genius Podcast. I'm Kendra Adachi and I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Today is episode 134. How to be happy with the gifts you give. It's the first week of December and you might have already bought some Christmas or holiday gifts last weekend during Black Friday at that time. There's a shopping center in my city that I pass pretty much every day and it's the biggest, like most robust one that we have in the traffic around there already is just bonkers and we'll only get worse as the month goes on. We're all very much in gift giving and gift buying mode and spending a lot of time on it or at least gearing up to. I want to help you be happy with the gifts you give and be more strategic and

thoughtful about the time you spend on finding and buying those gifts. We're going to go through a step-by-step process and I think that by the end of this episode you'll feel so much better about things and really excited to get gifts for your people. If you like searching for gifts and buying and wrapping and doing all the things, I think this episode, it will help you too. It'll just give you a framework for your thoughtfulness so you can have more space for other fun holiday things as the month goes on. Now, this episode is more about how to think about buying gifts. I might mention a couple of specific things, but if you're looking for actual gift ideas, I have a gift guide because I want to offer really great ideas for you.

But this gift guide is different than a lot that I see around. Everything on this. I'm talking every single thing. I have and I use and love. I'm only recommending things that I know work and have enhanced my life and my family's lives. So know that if you buy something from my guide, it has been tested for goodness. You can find a link to the gift guide in the show notes or just like open up your laptop right now while we're talking and go to. to the lazy genius collective.com slash blog slash 2019 gift guide.

Okay, let's walk through a few steps so that you're happy with what gifts you give. Step one, write everything down, like everything. Now, I have a free download for you if you want to use it digitally or print it out to write in it, but it's so helpful to write everything down. So if you want to help, like, not having to think about it, there's a download. There's a link in the show notes for that. But here's what you do. Think through all the people you want to give a.

gift to. Family, obviously, friends, kids, teachers, coworkers, neighbors, your babysitter, just like write down all the people. Also write down for each person, the budget. Gift ideas for that person. When you're going to give that person their gift, which helps with when you need to have it bought. I also like to have a place for if I bought the gift or not because like we forget what we've bought in those, you know, late night internet scrolling sessions. So write everything down all at once. Now again, if you want to help with that, I have a free download for you so you can check the link in the show notes. Also, by writing everything down, you see what you need to think about over the next few days. Like, I'm talking like right now over the next few days. You have to decide what you're going to get people.

I know that's kind of dumb to say, but like that's why buying gifts is overwhelming. It's a lot of decisions about a lot of different people. And here's my biggest tip for that, to narrow it down. get something that makes them feel like themselves, that makes them feel like a person. You can even have this in your sheet of info that you write down. What makes this person feel like a person? Think about hobbies and dreams and ways you know they like to relax or recharge or have fun. That's such a helpful gift-giving lens. And writing down that answer for each person is a really lovely gift to yourself too as you

narrow down what to give. So that's step one. write everything down or type everything out whatever fits better with like how you process information and don't pretend like you can keep all this in your head like for real it just doesn't work that way it's too much to carry and don't we want our brains freed up for like the fun things coming our way having all of your gift stuff written down in one place and out of your brain will do you a massive favor down the road okay so step two name your gift giving essentials what is to your own buying or making, if you're going to make gifts, to your experience. Maybe you want to shop

local or from small businesses, or at least not exclusively from Amazon. Maybe you care the most about efficiency. So you're going to go and try and get most of your gifts in one place. Maybe you're on a tight budget. So price is the most important thing. It could be quantity of gifts for people over quality or the other way around. Name what matters to you when it comes to the gift giving experience in the same way that it's incredibly stressful to try and have it all in like meal planning and decorating your house what I call house hunters syndrome where we expect everything for the price of nothing go ahead and name what matters most in the process I personally really love supporting small businesses around the holidays because I am one and I know how much work goes into being

your own boss and creating something that is meaningful to people and I don't even have the type of business model that has inventory or a storefront or anything. These businesses work so hard. And I would rather support and buy from them for as many Christmas gifts as I can rather than save a little money on a target sale. But that's what matters to me. It doesn't have to be what matters to you. Anything can matter to anyone. And it's lovely to have like open arms to however people want to approach giving gifts. But name what matters to you. Makes a big difference. Okay. Number three, set your limit. Now sure, there are like budget limits, but limits help narrow decisions and they often also spark

creativity. Consider what limits you might set for yourself to make the process of giving gifts a happier one. Maybe it's a limit of everything needing to be done by December 17th because you don't like being stressed out with last minute gift searches the week before Christmas. Maybe it's a limit of only book related things or game related things or comfort related things. I love the idea of so many of those subscription gift boxes because they often have themes, you know. So maybe like give yourself a gift giving theme to help you narrow in on what gifts to get people, especially the adults in your life. This is also where you can decide how to handle homemade gifts versus ones you buy. Just set your limits to help you stay focused on what matters.

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Okay, so here's the thing. Give guides are everywhere and are often actually very helpful. here's my suggestion. If someone you love to follow on social media or whose podcast you love or something, if they have a gift guide, chances are you'll get a good idea in there because you already trust them. Don't set yourself up to read like every gift guide everywhere. Don't look at every website that's ever existed or every store you can think of. That search is because you're after the perfect gift, that is not a thing. Instead, use that lens of buying something that makes someone feel like themselves and then go searching for that in trustworthy places, like websites and

stores you already love or from gift guides, from internet people, you already trust. Number five, set aside time to shop. Now, I know this seems like a no-brainer, but we actually forget to use our brains sometimes. We just assume we're going to like squeeze it in, squeeze in all the shopping. There's no squeezing it in, you guys. Look at the list you made when you wrote everything down. it's probably really long. And you haven't even thought a lot about ideas for half of those people. You've got to set aside time to shop and search. Once you have that time scheduled on your calendar,

you now have a deadline for knowing more specifically what to look for. When you know it's time to actually shop, you have a deadline for your ideas. Now, based on how you like to shop and what you already named as your essentials, you might set aside time to shop at the mall or at a shopping center. Now, it might also be setting aside time to shop online or going to a craft fair. Just carve out intentional time to shop so that it's planned and expected and can actually be enjoyed rather than forced into regular life and feel stressful. And be sure to set aside at least two blocks of

time. So you have a like a second overflow block in case you still have stuff on your list after the first shopping day. Okay, number six, set aside time to wrap. Now, this is a personal preference for you, but go ahead and name if you like to have like a big wrapping session for everything. If that's the case, everything needs to be bought and wrapped before the time you're giving that first gift. That's why it's good to write down when you're giving a gift to someone to kind of help you reverse engineer the whole thing. Now, I used to love wrapping everything at once. It was like so fun. You put on the music. through the movie and just like go to town. But I'm getting old and it like makes my back hurt a lot

to do that in one big stretch. So I'm probably going to have to break it up this year. I haven't really decided because I still love like the idea of doing it all at once. But the point is to go ahead and just decide. So you don't have to choose later. Will you wrap as gifts get delivered or brought home from the store? Will it be done like one or two big chunks? Will you do it alone? Is are a way to kind of group think it and make it a thing with friends or something like that. Just think creatively and be intentional for like two minutes about what matters to you with wrapping, how you want it to look, how you want to do it, and then set aside the time to actually do it.

Don't leave it for the cracks. And finally, number seven, check your expectations. Again, you're not on the hunt to get every person, the perfect gift every year. Perfect gifts just don't exist. but there is something really lovely about giving someone a gift that makes them feel like themselves. That's why I love that lens to buy gifts. If you get them something that makes them feel like themselves, it's a great gift. And there's this kind of invisible beauty to buying or making gifts in this way because you're reminded of the personhood of each person you're buying for.

You're focused on them and what makes them special, not on impressing them with the coolest new gadget or whatever. So check your expectations. and if at all possible, please try and avoid giving a gift and leading off with the phrase. If you don't like it, you can take it back. Just give the gift thoughtfully and don't put that person on guard or in a position to make you feel better for not being honest with yourself about your expectations. You can write a card or like say the words. I remember you're saying that you love to bake when you feel stressed.

So I thought this pretty apron or this cool cake stand or this baking cookbook would be a fun way to unwind or affirm the person with your words as well as with your gift and help them remember their personhood too. That is actually what I personally love about giving gifts the most is we get to think about how much we care about someone and the specifics of why that is and then remind them of that with something tangible. It makes me a little teary thinking about it. I love it so much. And that is how you can be happy with gifts that you give. Those seven steps. I hope that you feel excited to move forward with gift giving this month. And again, if you want to jump start on writing everything down, you can click the link in the show notes to get a free download

to keep track of everything in one place, just a little sheet. And if you're looking for specific gift ideas, again, once you know what kind of thing you're looking for, my gift guide is up on the website at the lazy genius collective.com slash blog slash 2019 gift guide. Again, every single thing on there is in my house or has been used by me, every single thing. And a lot of the gifts are from small businesses. So if you're hoping to spend less in Amazon this year and a little bit more on those small businesses, there's some really good ones in that guide. Okay, that's it for today. I'm so glad you spent these few minutes with me, and I'm really excited to hear how these ideas shape up your gift-giving approach this year. If you have any questions, I will be live on Instagram this Thursday,

around noon to answer them, you can follow me on Instagram at The Lazy Genius. And all the links you need from this episode are in the info section of the episode on your podcast app. I want to say show notes. That's one of the places I mean. Or you can find them on the website at the lazy geniuscollective.com slash lazy slash happy gifts. Thanks so much for listening. Until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra and I'll see you next week. You ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life? It's so dangerous to live that. More dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life because when you're living a B or B plus life, you don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it? I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast called

Becoming You. People think, okay, an A plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You wherever you get your podcasts.