The Lazy Genius Podcast - #177 - The Lazy Genius Plans a Day

Episode Date: September 28, 2020

I’m not going to give you my single day and tell you to copy it. I’m not even going to tell you what should be included in your day. This isn’t a one-size-fits-all situation. It rarely is. We’re going to quickly work through a lens you can use to plan your day, any day in any circumstance. Helpful Companion Links The IGTV video I mentioned in the episode. Grab a copy of The Lazy Genius Way here for yourself or for a friend! Join me over on Instagram this Thursday around 11:30 a.m. ET because I’ll be going through The Holiday Docket! Be a Lazy Genius VIP and get yourself on my mailing list! 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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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 177 The Lazy Genius Plans a Day. You might already be excited for this particular topic, so cool, welcome. But if you need a little convincing that it's worth spending an entire podcast episode thinking about how to play in your day, remember that starting small matter. small moments matter, small choices matter. The author Chris Bajalian wrote, life is filled with small moments that feel prosaic until one has the distance to look back and see the chain of large moments they unleashed. There's just something really special about paying attention to our small moments and intentionally making small choices, like how we plan a day,

a single day. Now, as usual, I'm not going to give you my single day and tell you to copy it. I'm not even going to tell you what should be included in your day. This is not a one-size-fits-all situation. It rarely is. We're going to quickly work through a lens that you can use to plan your day any day in any circumstance. It's incredibly simple and maybe even simplistic if you don't try it first, but we often overcomplicate things before we even start thinking that if it's not some giant multi-step process or it doesn't have charts or whatever, that it can't possibly work. No, the opposite is true. Small steps matter.

So we'll start small and stay focused on what matters to you about your day. So the lazy genius way of planning your day involves, ready, flags, chairs, and bunting. I'm serious. Word pictures are such a delight. And that's what we're going to do today. But let's start first where we should always start. What Matters. Name what matters about today.

or tomorrow if you're planning your day the night before. Name what matters. Is it that you finish a project that's due? That you spend time outside because it hasn't been cool and beautiful and weeks and you want to enjoy it, that you go to sleep before 10, that you have that conversation with that loved one about that thing, that you don't snap at your kids in so much as that you have the power to do so? What matters about today? The reason you, you ask this every day is because the answer will change every day. No day will look exactly like the one before. Different things matter to different people and different seasons. What mattered on days that I had two kids under two at home versus what matters lately, having all the medium kids, what we call

a medium kids, and they're home with different needs and schedules and different personalities. Like those answers are different. So I don't think I have to convince you about this, right? There is just tremendous value in daily asking yourself, what matters most about today? Now, if you want to categorize it a bit, I ask three versions of this question at the start of every week, and sometimes every day. I shared this on IGTV a while back, so this might sound familiar. What matters in my schedule? What matters in my home? And what matters in my soul?

If I were to tell you to just ask what one thing matters every day and you answer paying the bills, but your kid is also sitting there in front of you wanting to play, you feel like a turd saying that paying the bills matters, right? But it does matter. I mean, paying bills on time is something that enhances many aspects of your life. It is an important thing to do. So sometimes it helps to put loose categories around what matters so that you feel permission to put deadlines and non-relational stuff on the forefront to,

not just connecting with people. So once you have named what matters most, plant your flags. That's your next step. Flags. Flags mark the things in your day that are fixed. You definitely have a doctor's appointment at 9.30. That's a flag. You definitely have a grocery pickup at 3. That's a flag. You definitely need to eat lunch for real today because you keep skipping it and feeling cranky and tired by the time you hit the 3 o'clock grocery pickup. Okay. That's a flag. So plant your flags. Mark the times of day. that are fixed and or, I guess, like immovably important. They might not be as attached to a time, but their importance is fixed.

Now, you can do this digitally in your calendar app, you know, putting the flags like in their own color. You can do that in your planner where you highlight the flags once you've named and written them down. Mark your flags and whatever way helps the most and helps you see them as flags, if you can, to distinguish them. Now here's why. There are two things that are helpful about flags. Number one, flags give context to your day. They offer a loose path from one thing to the next. You know you've got to get to that next flag, right? Now, like how you get there or how quickly you get there, it kind of depends. But you have a context within which to make your choices. So it's nice to see the flags as a sense. separate thing from the rest of your stuff so everything doesn't carry the same urgency or lack of

urgency. Just an opinion, but setting them apart somehow, I think it just really, really helps. And then number two, flags help you see when you have too many flags. If you have a day full of flags of immovable things, especially when they're really close together, you can make better decisions about how to still be a person in a day like that. Maybe you'll start to notice why you're more tired than you want to be. So flags, whether a color on your calendar or highlighted in your planner or written on a whiteboard or scribble on a post-it note, like whatever, they help you see when you're doing too much. Our days can only be filled with so many immovable things.

Side note, I think this is one of the reasons why moms at home with kids are so tired right now. I mean, we all have reason to be tired. Kids are no kids. I'm not trying to idolize moms here. but most of the moms that I know, they are living in a life of flags. We've got our flags and everyone else's flags. We've got the emotional burden of everyone else's flags too. And when there are too many flags, you feel the weight of it. So flags are helpful in giving context to your day,

but they also help you see where you need to change a thing or two to keep yourself from drowning in flags. It's too much to like not have a little white space here and there. Which leads us to the next part. Chairs. Park your chairs. Now that you have your flags planted, park a few chairs where you can in between them. Maybe it is mentally blocking off an hour in the afternoon to listen to music and make dinner while your kids kind of float in and out from the yard or the table that's covered and glue and construction paper, you know. That's a place you're going to park and just be. It might be the way that you imagine it, you know, with like a grateful, tiny smile on your face. You know that smile and you're just like, this is a good moment. With that smile on your face

and your kids are magically getting along perfectly. Or it might be chaos and dinner is more rushed. But because you parked your chair there, you're more mentally prepared for whatever happens. you're there no matter what you're sitting in that space doing that thing no matter how it goes the thing about chairs is that whenever you're parked like whatever you're doing it's actually not as essential as the flags like if you park your chair again metaphorical parking of a chair but if you park your chair in the space of dinner making but something happens where you don't get things prepped for what you we're going to cook and you end up, you know, just boiling water again for another night of spaghetti, that's fine. The end result doesn't change where your chair is parked.

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the backyard of Nora Ephron's dreams, basically. And you imagine your flags and chairs in chronological order of your day, right? They're kind of along the hours. You'll get an idea of what we're going for here, if you can imagine that. So if your day is flag after flag after flag without any chairs, without any chances to relax into whatever you're going to try to do, without any place to sit, without any released expectations of what's going to come out the other side, where a chair where you can literally sit, because sometimes I get to the end of the day and I sit on the sofa and I think, dude,

this is the first time I've sat down that wasn't to eat or pee. We need chairs. We need chairs. We need the flags and the chairs to be spaced out a little. So if you can see one day as a circle, almost like a clock, notice how distributed the flags and chairs are. Is it a clumpy day? Does a chair not show up until the end of the day? That's when you bring in the bunting. Bunting. Bunting is your third and final step. It's what exists between the flags. You know, you hang it from flag to flag. You can imagine it. and it like gently hangs over the chairs, you know, what does your bunting need to look like today? Bunting is sort of the joy. It's like the through line of the whole day, connects the whole thing. Is your bunting music that keeps you like buoyed on a pretty flag heavy day? Is the bunting a stack of mindless tasks that need to get done, but they can get done in random order as you have time between your flags or while you're sitting in a chair? Is your bunting a mantra that you need to read?

repeat all day to keep you from not drowning in all your flags? Is your bunting another human who's sharing the load with you as you go about your day? Basically, what's the connective, life-giving, joyful thread through your day? Bunting hangs from point to arbitrary point, right? It's just a simple thing, like real bunting in real life. It's just a simple thing to hang at a party or in your living room that gives just a sweet bit of joy. Our days need metaphorical bunting. We're not burning the flags or ignoring the chairs. We're just noticing that our days are filled with all three things. We have elements that have to happen. They just have to. There's no real way out of it, right? Those are our flags. We also have other stuff that needs to happen like laundry and making

dinner and experiencing rest that are important every single day, but they're more flexible. Those are our chairs. So we all have those things to plant and park, those flags and chairs all throughout the day. But what is really nice is to have those threads of joy to propel us through to connect all those things together, to have bunting. Now listen, the goal here isn't some perfectly balanced day of equally distributed flags and ample seating and perfect bunting like your days are going to be different from day to day. Lots of flags. One flag. Bunting hung well in tension at the start of the day dragging in the mud by the day's end. Evil wicker chairs instead of, you know, chase lounges. But this image of flags, chairs, and bunting, it helps me personally put stuff in the right place.

There's a principle in the lazy, genius way of putting everything in its place. Most of the chapter talks about your stuff, you know, like your plates and jackets and kids' toys and stuff. but putting everything in its place extends far beyond your stuff putting your to-do list in its proper place is so helpful like mentally naming what's a flag and what's a chair it takes the pressure off the chairs it helps you focus on the flags paying attention to how you can incorporate a threat of joy through your days you know through the bunting it's it's just such a nice place to put that um that new album that you've wanted to listen to or that sunshine that you've been meaning to take advantage of. Like, if fall sunshine is your bunting, let's say on a particular day, you park your chair

outside. You roll the windows down on your way to your next flag. You see what I'm saying? Now, I realize some of you might think I'm talking in riddles and I'm very sorry for Rumpelstilts skinning you, but planning your day in a concrete way, you know, It just doesn't stand the test of time. Even those ideas of like eating the frog, you know, which that's the thing of doing the thing you hate the most first or marking your big three that you want to get done or whatever other productivity hacks you have run across. Those things, they just don't always work.

I remember when I was a stay-at-home mom without a job and tiny humans and I would hear people talk about their big three each day and be like, I mean, I have, I have, I have big nothing except big exhaustion. You know, productivity, it just looks so different for people based on personality and stage of life. And also we put so much emphasis on productivity as the chief marker of our days. If we didn't get anything done, the day was a waste. But I think seeing your day this way, I mean, it can just help us shift that narrative and that focus. Because the goal is to embrace what matters to you to ditch what doesn't and then get stuff done within that context. Flags get stuff done. You get stuff done while sitting in your chair. But the goal is to feel like a

person at the end of the day, not to have more lines through your task list or have a house that's clean, even though you have two babies at home and can't imagine cleaning a bathroom at all right now. like we just get so distracted by what doesn't matter because we're letting everything hold equal weight and be in the wrong place. So the lazy genius plans a day by naming what matters, planting flags, parking chairs, and hanging bunting. Think through what that can look like for you day to day. Every day does not have to be the most productive ever. I have a saying, which that sounds weird just to say, I have a saying, but I have a saying that don't judge every day against your best day. We think that if we have a day where, you know, everything gets done,

we're clean, like we feel cute, we didn't stress eat or yell at a kid, the house is relatively picked up, nobody complained about dinner, we're actually smiling at the end of the day, you know, all those things that we think are supposed to exist in a regular day. When that doesn't happen every day, we blame ourselves and say we don't. have it together. And that's just not a thing. Don't judge every day against your best day. And you know, maybe as I say that, I think maybe we should amend the saying in the first place. Stop thinking that that's your best day. Use a different word than best. Best is already comparing your days to each other, which is a recipe for disaster. It's kindness every single day.

So maybe it's don't judge every day against your most productive day. Optimization is not the goal here. Being a person is the goal. You can get stuff done with that being the goal. But starting in the right place with what matters will put your day and its purpose in the right place. And these tools, as silly as they might sound, these flags and chairs and bunting, having these visuals for how you want your day to feel, it can really help with that. And that's how a lazy genius plans a day. I hope you enjoy this. I hope you enjoyed this. episode. I'm so grateful that you listened and I hope that it encourages you just to think about even today or tomorrow one single day a little bit differently. Okay, so really quickly before we go,

I have a little announcement. So I'm going to be on Instagram live this Thursday at 1130 a.m. Eastern to show you, wait for it, the holiday docket. So some of you know what the holiday docket is And you might even have it if you pre-ordered the lazy genius way and you claimed your free lazy genius digital library because the holiday docket was in that library. But for those of you who don't have the holiday docket or would like to walk through it with me if you do have it, I'm going to go live on Thursday to show it to you. Now, what is the holiday docket, Kendra? It's the lazy genius guide to celebrating well. This time of year is obviously, you know, It's kind of scattered. It's crazy. It's great. But it's also really tiring. It's just a lot. It feels like a lot October or two, December. And who knows what the holidays in 2020 are going to look like for us? I want to give you a path to naming what matters about your holidays and then plan the stuff that matters so it doesn't have to get crammed into the cracks. I want to help you say no, come up with family traditions, put the different components of the holidays in the right context for you.

basically just help you celebrate in a way that you'd really like to. So the holiday docket will be available on Thursday, October 1st. I will announce it on Instagram and over email. So be sure that you're connected with me in at least one of those spaces. So I'm on Instagram at The Lazy Genius. And then you can click on the link in the show notes to join the mailing list or just go straight to the lazy genius collective.com slash join. I love the holiday docket so much. I use it myself. It's It's the best selling lazy genius product by a lot other than the book. But that's like a different, it's like a different category, I suppose. But it's the best selling of all the digital products I've made.

It has just made a huge impact on a lot of your lives. I love that. I love to see so many of you enjoy the holidays in the way that you want to individually. And so I'm just really excited to offer it again for this holiday season. So join me Thursday, October 1st on Instagram at 1130 a.m. Eastern Time to walk through what's inside. Okay, that's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. And 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. Have 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. 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.