The Lazy Genius Podcast - #172 - Resurrecting Routines

Episode Date: August 24, 2020

A couple of days ago, I asked folks on Instagram what one word they would use to describe their current relationship with routines. There were very few positive words, words that would indicate that routines are working. Here’s what we’re going to do for the next few minutes. We need to examine our expectations of routine, reframe what routines actually are, and then give you a next step or two to resurrect them. Helpful Companion Links Leave a review on Apple Podcasts right here. Buy a copy of The Lazy Genius Way for yourself or a friend! Hear me and Erin Moon talk more about morning routines in a bonus episode from a few weeks ago. Other routine-themed LG resources you might find interesting: The Universal Path to Life-GIving Routine (blog post), Lazy Genius Morning Routine, Lazy Genius Evening Routine, Lazy Genius Cleaning Routine, and more. Get all the details about The Lazy Genius Way Book Club, which starts Thursday! Join me on Instagram @thelazygenius for everyday Lazy Genius content (it’s where I’m active the most!). 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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genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Today is episode 172, Resurrecting Routines. August is such a transitional month for so many of us. Kids are not, school or not, and after several months of our regular rhythms being interrupted because of the pandemic, getting back into the swing of things, it feels more important than ever. So this, episode is for anyone who is trying to get back into a routine no matter the season. Before we jump in, though, I have a request for you. Would you be willing to leave a podcast review on Apple Podcasts? There's been a beautiful influx of people coming into this space because of my book, The Lazy Genius Way, that came out a couple weeks ago. And I would love to

give some context for those new listeners who might wonder if this show is for them. So if you love the lazy genius podcast and have not yet left a review, I would be so grateful if you did that this week. And while this next part, it does kind of sound like bribery. I don't mean for it to be bribery. This is really just a way to say thank you for taking the time to leave a review because I know that anything extra, even something as small as like typing out a podcast review, it's kind of a lot right now. So I'm going to choose three reviews, two that are left from the time of this episode, and then one from before to online. honor those of you who have already left a review. And those three reviewers will get a $50

Amazon gift card. Once next week's episode releases, the gift card possibility closes. So we'll just choose from reviews left just for this week. So head to Apple Podcasts. We will put a direct link in the show notes for you. Click leave a review, say a few words about why you love the show. No pressure to do it, of course. Of course. But if you have thought before about how you like the show and you would like to demonstrate that in some way and share it in some way. Leaving a review is actually incredibly helpful both to me and to new listeners. So if you're into it, I would appreciate it so much. All right, let's resurrect some routines.

First, we need to start with where we are before we name where we're going. So a couple of days ago, I asked folks on Instagram what one word they would use to describe their current relationship with routines. There are very few positive words in that list as I read through that words that would indicate that routines are working. Mostly the words were things like inconsistent, messy, desperate, chaotic, disappointing, failing, numb, and avoidance. There were also many variations of words like needed, wanted, and necessary. My favorite word was just in all caps, nope. So basically I think the majority of us feel the need for some kind of routine, but are not achieving it even close to the level that we wish we were.

Here's what we're going to do for the next few minutes. We need to examine our expectations of routine, reframe what routines actually are. And then I want to give you a next step or two to resurrect them for your own life. So first, let's examine our expectations. of routine. A friend said to me just this weekend that every conflict is a result of unmet expectations, every single one. And when I think about arguments I've had with my husband, times I've gotten frustrated with my kids, encounters in the store where I was just kind of like annoyed or even seething under my breath, all of those situations are indeed rooted in unmet expectations, all of them. We have to name what we're actually.

expecting of our routines and see if we're being realistic about them. Otherwise, we'll just keep using words like chaotic and messy to describe them when the reality could actually be better than that. So ask yourself, what am I expecting from my routines? Or if there aren't really any routines yet, what am I hoping they achieve? I think for most of us, we expect a smooth day. You know, we expect to know exactly what's coming next. We expect to not rush or scramble in our tasks. We expect our kids to be happy and compliant and to understand what's expected of them at any given point in the day and easily transition from one thing to another thing to another thing until they go to bed.

I don't think any of those expectations are reasonable. I think that is expecting too much from our routines. There is a certain safety in doing things over and over again, doing the same things. And we assume that people who have routines that seem to function like that, that seem to function the way that we want our routines to function, we assume that those people have it all together. They're doing something right. Whenever I think about routine, I always think about the movie Turner and Hooch.

I don't know if anybody has seen Turner and Hooch. It came out in the 80s, I think. Tom Hanks is a, he's the star of the show of the movie. He is like a buttoned up, uptight, orderly detective whose life is turned upside down when he has to take care of a messy dog that's connected to like a murder case or something. I don't remember. The particulars of the movie don't really matter too much here. But the point is, the opening credit scene of Turner and Hooch, it feels like a masterclass and routine. It shows Tom Hanks getting up at the same time and not wallowing in bed. He just gets out of bed.

He's not hitting the snooze button. He exercises. He makes a very neat cup of coffee. He eats his breakfast while reading the paper and he like washes the pan when he's done. His closet is super organized. Like when he goes in a get clothes to get dressed. He brushes his teeth with a timer. He even flosses. Now obviously we're being set up as the audience. We're being set up with his order to make the subsequent like dog slobber all over his apartment be more comedic, you know, for the sake of the movie. But I always loved that opening scene. It felt so safe, so dependable. I want to do all those things before I go to work every day. You know, I want to have a neat house and vacuum up crumbs the minute that they land on the ground. And I don't know, there's something about it that it feels

like we have more control over our lives when things are orderly, right? And by orderly, I mean, I do mean like neat and organized, but I also mean moving in order, going seamlessly from one thing to the next. But that's not real life. That is not a reasonable expectation, especially if you live with other humans, namely tiny ones. We see snapshots on Instagram, right, of kids working at their desks with their cubbies of organized school supplies at home. And then we glance at our dining table that is covered with markers and schoolwork, but also unfolded laundry and a piece of toast from yesterday's breakfast. We see snapshots of nature walks and then glance at our kids who are on their third hour of screen time. We see sticker charts and chore lists, kids that are helping make

their own lunches instead of whining while they pull at your pajamas as you try and figure out what to feed them. So not only do we likely have unreasonable expectations of what routine is supposed to do for us, we are also inundated with snapshots, with reflections, not realities of what other people are doing in their homes that looks very different from what we're doing in ours. And you know what? Even if you're the mom who's showing the nature walk and the cubbies and the family lunch prep, you could still be holding onto those moments so tightly as evidence that you're doing all of this okay. You take a photo of your kids in the trees, but literally every other minute of the day, things feel like they're falling apart around you. Like all of our stories are so very different in this, in this experience. It's just like very gnarly and complicated and everything is saturated with unmet expectations. So we need a reframe, okay? We need a new way to see routines and a balanced expectation of what they're supposed to do. And as we experience that reframe in our own lives, I hope it helps us to be more compassionate towards people whose lives look different than ours do. Just because your life,

your routines, your priorities look different than mine, it doesn't mean. It doesn't mean. that either of us is wrong. We get to choose different things, care about different things. We get to function and even thrive under different kinds of order. Order doesn't always mean organization. Sometimes order is simply not being stressed out on the inside from the pressure of doing everything perfectly on the outside and our homes and stuff. We all get to care about whatever is most important to us and our families without it being an indictment on someone else's choices. I talk about that in my book in the lazy genius way. And it is seriously the most important foundational message of the whole thing, I think. As long as we are holding our own standards hostage,

as long as we're comparing our way with someone else's way, as long as we're looking for the right way of doing things based on other people's priorities and not our own, we're going to keep using words like chaotic and desperate and failing. So what is our reframe? What should our routines do for us? Listen up, fam. A routine is an on-ramp to something. It is not the destination itself. The A, B, and C of a routine is not the goal. It's not even the point. And yet that's where we put our energy on the order of our routine, on the components, on doing them the exact same way every day so that it counts. But that doesn't work. That's making the routine the main thing instead of the on-ramp it's supposed to be. Building the right routine is such a

foundational lazy genius principle that there's an entire chapter about it in the lazy genius way. By the way, we've just been doing routines all wrong for too long. So what's the new way? instead of listing out all the things you want to do in the morning, like Tom Hanks and his running and flossing and washing his breakfast dishes, I want you to name one way you want to feel or one objective you have for your energy, for your family's energy, for the space that you're in. If your expectation of a routine is smoothness or serenity, maintaining a 10-step morning routine is not going to get you there. You'll forget a step or seven of them

and you'll feel like you're stumbling instead of being smooth. You won't feel serene because you're freaking out about a kid waking up early and cutting your 10 steps down to two. The steps don't matter, you guys. The steps do not matter. What matters is the objective because you can reach your objective in multiple ways. You can experience that freedom and be flexible and nimble and patient with yourself and your people when you're not putting so much pressure on the steps, on the routine being the main thing. Make the objective the main thing. And that's really all you have to do next is name your objective. Name what matters. If you're feeling out of sorts with routine right now, choose the one time of day where you feel the most out of sorts, the most stressed, the most out of control, the time that

you lose your temper the most. You get to choose the gauge of that of like what time of day needs attention first. Because listen to me, you've got to start small. Start with one time of the day, not all the times of the day. If you start with all of them, you're back to maintaining more than you have the margin to maintain. So please start small so that you'll actually start and then you'll keep moving. So pick one time of the day and then name what matters most about that time. What is your main objective? Here's some examples, some practical examples. Your main objective in the morning is that you feel calm and not frenzied so that you're not like impatient and reactionary with your kids. Now what gets you feeling calm? Because it's different for all of us. For me,

it is getting up before everyone else and reading in the quiet. That's sort of the one that seems to be lauded as the winning answer. It's not the case. It's not the case. For Erin Moon, I learned in, I did a bonus episode with her a couple of weeks ago and we talked about her morning routine. What gets her feeling calm is getting to stay in bed and sleeping a little bit longer after her kids get up. Now, we are achieving, she and I are achieving the same objective in seemingly opposite ways. And that is why this principle of building the right routine and seeing it as an on-ramp to a destination is so powerful. Your steps can look different than someone else's, even when you're both after the exact same thing. You get to choose what works for you. Stop looking around at what everyone

else is doing. Trust that you know what you need more than the internet does. Aw isn't something we need to travel for. It's something waiting for us in everyday life, whether in a city street or a moment with a work of art. I'm Dr. Keltner, host of the Science of Happiness podcast. Join me for Cities of Aw, a special series on how our public spaces can spark awe, wonder, and enhance the quality of public life. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. Another example would be school routine. That's definitely real for a lot of you listening, who are moms with kids at home, doing online learning.

So what is the objective for school time? What really matters? What's the actual destination here? For me, in our house, because again, we get to choose, not only do we get to choose different steps to get us to the destination, we get to choose our own destination and they can be different. it's that my kids enjoy doing school as much as possible. Of course, I want them to get their work done and be where they're supposed to be when they're supposed to be there and stay focused and whatever. But really, the ultimate objective, the thing that matters most to me is that there is at least a little joy always associated with school at home. It's just really tough for all of us.

This is hard. So it matters to me a lot that we nurture joy in this time. So what does that mean for school routines? It means that they can do their work wherever they want in the house. Having one set spot, it doesn't really work for our family because I have three different kids with different personalities and different needs, different assignments, who sometimes wake up needing something different today than they did yesterday. So our routine, it does not include all of us transitioning into school together into one designated school space. the boys start their work whenever they'd like to now to support that we got them both cheap headphones at that fancy kind of dollar store five below where everything's below five dollars so that they can work wherever they want without disturbing anyone else okay so what else um can i do to support their joy in learning if they need to take a break every 10 minutes i let them it's really hard to stay

focused. And if I nag them to go back and work and go sit down and you've only been working for like 10 minutes, get back to it, the joy starts to dissipate. Now listen, this works for us. This particular way of having a school routine, or basically we don't have one, we don't have set times or set spaces or set orders every day. This particular way works for us. It does not work for everyone. But you know yourself and your kids. You know what you can do. What small step you can take. to support the joy of learning if that is the thing that matters the most. Maybe it's music. Maybe it's playing music while you're doing school. Maybe it's moving a picnic table to the front yard so you can do school outside really easily. Maybe it's bringing them surprise snacks while they're working to kind of give

them like a mental reset and where they feel really loved because they love food and they love snacks. And you showed them that you know that about them by doing something simple like bringing them like sliced oranges or whatever. You and your kids might really thrive under an A, B, and C structure or the traditional way that we think of school routine. And I just want to say that that's great. That's not a bad thing. I'm not trying to make that sort of quote unquote ideal look bad.

It just doesn't need to be the ideal. We all get to do different things. But you do that. if you are an A, B, and C person, you're doing that to achieve your primary objective of getting school done and seeing it as a joyful thing to do, right? Like all of us can achieve that objective in different ways. In fact, we have to. We're too different not to. So stop expecting that your objective or that your way of getting to that objective has to look like everyone else is. Okay. So to recap, go ahead and call out what you're actually expecting from the idea of a routine is it feasible are you being too demanding of your routine probably no day is going to be perfectly smooth and ordered because life has too many variables we cannot control everything we cannot anticipate everything and we will run ourselves into the ground trying so call out your unreasonable expectations of routine of routine

next reframe what a routine actually is for it's an on ramp to a particular destination not the destination itself that means you can choose the steps to get there in fact you can change the steps every single day based on whatever is happening sometimes you can achieve morning calm and refueling by sitting on your front porch with your coffee sometimes it comes from listening to your music in your ears while your kids listen to their music in the room. Sometimes it comes from lying in bed and saying a breath prayer before you get up because you slept late and you didn't have time for your regular coffee or your regular time alone. Just remember that vital reframe. The steps of the routine are not the point. The direction they take you. The destination is the

point. So be cool with changing your steps. Don't focus so much on the steps. And finally, you get to decide what those steps are based on your objective, based on what matters to you. Start with one time of day, one objective, start very small with how you get there. Now that your expectations are reasonable and your reframe is clear, those small steps will likely feel like they're enough, like they're doing a good job. and pay attention. As you try this today and throughout the week, pay attention to how naming what

matters and taking one small step at a time to support that, kind of in those fixed regular times of the day, where you might usually stick a complex routine, notice how you feel. Notice how the energy in your home feels. Notice how your kids respond. You're not trying to build an elaborate machine to plug into every day. You're not a robot. Simply name what matters and respond to it in kindness and with small steps. And if you're kind of annoyed with me for not giving you like several multi-step routine possibilities that you can just implement right now, I want to remind you that you've tried that already. You have tried to copy other people's steps and it didn't work. That's why you're listening to this again. The problem isn't that you cannot find the right system. The problem is that you cannot find the right

system. The problem is that you're focusing on the wrong thing altogether. You don't need a big system. Start small. Name your destination and slowly build an on-ramp to get there. Don't worry that you're doing it wrong because your on-ramp looks different than you thought it would or looks different from someone else's. Expect that. Expect it to be different. It's going to be different because we are all different. And that's good. If you're having trouble naming what steps you can take to support the objective, because I get that. Sometimes life is just so loud and tiring that we can't even think straight, right? If you're having trouble naming those steps or even naming the destination that matters the most,

ask someone who knows you and who you trust, whose opinion you trust, who's kind to you in this kind of conversation. Ask them for insight into how this all could work for you, what small step you can take. that makes sense for your life, your family, your personality, your margin, your current emotional health, your budget, all of it. Which actually, it's funny, I didn't plan this and I kind of love love it when this kind of thing happens, but we're actually doing a lazy genius book club, which is designed to help you name these things in community with your people. We're going to read the lazy genius way together over the next three weeks. And I've created like a little book club guide with some questions to help you think through the 13 lazy genius principles

with the sole purpose of talking about how you can use them, how you can apply them in your particular personal individual life. And the beauty of doing that in community is what I just said. It's inviting people to give you ideas based on what they already know about you. So trusted people who love you and who champion the right things in you and in themselves. People who aren't trying to help you maintain a big system, but who are willing to walk next to you one small step at a time. We all need those kinds of people. We all need each other in this kind of work, even in this work of resurrecting routines in a very challenging time. So if you're interested in having some kind of loose direction in conversations with your friends or your sister or whoever,

or even just like yourself with a journal or something, you can find all the info for that at the lazy genius collective.com slash book club. I'll be doing live book club discussions the next three Thursday nights, August 27th, September 3rd and September 10th, I think those are the right dates. So we'll save all those videos too, so you can still see them later if you can't make the live discussion. But the idea here is to give you a place where you can work out stuff like this, where you can lazy genius your routine or anything else that needs attention in community. So again, you can get more details at the lazy genius collective.com slash book club. And it's free, by the way. There's no cost or anything. I just want you to have a resource and a

path in learning how to apply lazy genius principles to your life. But book club or not, you can resurrect a routine. You can move from desperation and case. chaos to contentment and calm. Does that mean every day is perfect and like totally in the flow and every child is compliant and every meal is made like while you're humming or something? No. Again, that's not reality. But as you let go of that being your expectation of the reality and you start to take small steps and supporting what actually matters to you, I believe you will feel contentment and calm. Even when the particulars of the day are not exactly that all the time. I want us to be people who can experience

contentment and calm when our surroundings are not that. The point isn't to control our surroundings. The point is to have a lens on how to see them and move through them with kindness and intention. So high fives on learning to resurrect your routines this week in a very lazy genius way. I'm rooting for you, man. You can do this. And that's it for today. I will put some links to a couple of other routine related episodes in the show notes. Obviously, there's that conversation I already mentioned with Aaron Moon about morning routines. It's such a fun. She's so funny. She's so funny. It's such a great conversation. There is also an entire episode about morning routines. There's another one about evening routines. There's one about kid bedtime routines. I think

there's one about cleaning routines. There are lots of resources. And, all will be in the in the show notes as well as a link to where you can leave a podcast review. Thank you again for that. If you're into that, I'm pumped for the three of you who get a little extra cash to spend on something that you need or want. And we'll also have a link to the book club in the show notes. Also, in case you missed it, I share this on my Instagram feed, which is at the lazy genius if you don't follow me on Instagram.

but The Lacey Genius Way is a New York Times bestselling book. It's crazy and amazing. It is currently number two in its category. And it, I mean, seriously, it's like just the coolest, most exciting thing. So thank you for reading and sharing. And even if you haven't read it yet, I'm still grateful you're here. If you're curious, if the book is for you. Honestly, if you resonate with anything in this episode, it's for you. Because it teaches you how to think. It gives you guiding principles on how you can lazy genius anything in your life. But if you're still curious, you can check out the reviews on Amazon. There are a lot of them.

Last I checked, there was like $2.50, I think. They're really specific and amazing on how the book has helped people in different ways. One woman sent this to me on Instagram. It wasn't an Amazon review. But she said, this is the best self-help book I've ever read, and I've read them all. I feel motivated to do what matters to me and have steps to actually make it happen. Thank you for not gilting me into doing things your way. It has just been, it's been so encouraging to read words like these, to see how your lives are

like already changing in ways that you want them to after reading this book. And while being on a bestseller list is not proof that the book is valuable because that would be stupid. Plenty of books are incredibly valuable and never hit a bestseller list. It's really exciting to me that this book has more eyes on it right now. And this is a way of getting it in front of more eyes and hopefully giving more people freedom to embrace what matters, ditch what doesn't, and actually get stuff done. Because that's good too. That's important too is for us to actually get stuff done. So it's just been, it has been quite a ride this past week with this news. So thank you for sharing in it with me for being so instrumental and making it happen. A book does not become a bestseller without a lot of people buying it. So thank you for buying it. I just don't have words for how grateful I am. Okay. That's it for today. 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.

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