The Lazy Genius Podcast - #240 - How to Plan a Personal Retreat

Episode Date: December 13, 2021

When I sent out December’s Latest Lazy Letter, I mentioned taking a personal retreat day the week between Christmas and the New Year, and a woman named Rebecca wrote back asking me to explain it. Like, what do you do? How do you plan it? Where do you go? And I realized that I had never really talked about this before. So let’s talk about how to plan a personal retreat.   Stuff Mentioned Check out The Lazy Genius Way (commissionable link) for a whole chapter on scheduling rest. Episode #177: The Lazy Genius Plans a Day Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir The Lazy Genius Collective Facebook Group  Join the mailing list and get in on the Latest Lazy Letter action! 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

Hi there, you are listening to the Lazy Genius Podcast. I am 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 240, How to Plan a Personal Retreat. This episode was a last minute edition. A week or so ago, I sent out the latest lazy letter, which is a monthly newsletter. That is one of my favorite things to write, one of your favorite things to get, which is so kind. Anyway, in that letter, I mentioned taking a personal retreat day, the week between. Christmas in the new year. And a woman named Rebecca emailed back asking if I could explain that more. Like, what do you do? How do you plan it? Where do you go? How do you structure it? And I realized that I had never really talked about this before and that it would be a much better episode than the one we had originally planned for today. So here we are. Let's talk about how to plan a personal retreat. Step one is to schedule the time. That's kind of a duh, but also it gets forgotten a lot. This episode is releasing on December 13th. And I wonder if a lot of you, might have the opportunity to take some time the week between Christmas and the new year,

like I do. A lot of people have the week off already or simply just take the week off. Also, the energy between those two holidays is very retreaty. It's got a great vibe for just being a person. So the first step is to schedule your time. Schedule it. Perhaps start by looking at that last week of the calendar year. Now, I like to take a day or like a day-ish. My ideal is to leave in the morning. I kiss the kids in the morning and then I go and I have coffee and breakfast somewhere. And then I will come back by dinner. Or my kids have screen time usually on most days before dinner. So sometimes I'll actually come home right at the start of that screen time. So I can get kind of some chill time at home without having any real responsibilities. But I can still be home. You know, I can kind of have

an on ramp back into being home. But that's what a day means for me from early morning until just before dinner. You could do that. You could do half a day. You might need an overnight and do a breakfast to breakfast situation. The point is to choose what you'd like and then schedule it. Step two is to release the guilt. I'm not stupid. I know you have it. There is something so icky to so many of you about taking such an excessive amount of time for yourself. And yet you know you desperately need it. Probably more than once a year, you guys. If you want some specific words about scheduling, rest, which is a lazy genius principle, by the way. There's a whole chapter on the different kinds of rest to think about and schedule in my book, The Lacey Genius Way. But I know you feel badly about it.

I know that about taking time to just be a person. And I want to tell you right now that you do not need to. I saw someone post on Instagram a couple weeks ago, the phrase, you do not need to earn rest. The biggest amen of all time to that, for one. And I just want you to know a personal retreat day. it's not a reward. You know, you don't have to prove your reasons for doing it. You don't have to have a big project or be falling apart or anything huge to require it. You can just do it. So go ahead, leave the kids with your partner if you have either of those things. Hire a sitter. Ask a family member for cash for that sitter as your Christmas present if you want. If you don't have kids, be intentional about taking a day on purpose for your own rest. Like there's zero guilt here. This is a

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Okay, so step three is name your one thing. What do I mean by one thing? Okay, one of the biggest questions about this kind of day is, what am I supposed to do? There are so many things I could do on this day. I don't even know how to spend a day like this. So name your one thing. What singular thing would you love to do? That if that was the only thing you actually did during your time to yourself, it would be fine.

Like, do you really want to take a long walk through the woods or go on a solo hike that you don't usually get to take? Do you want to browse a bookstore with no one needing you? Do you want to have a long, luxurious lunch with a friend you only see when your kids are around? Do you want to go to thrift stores and just like piddle? Do you want to get a hotel room and watch TV all day? Do you want to get a massage?

Do you want to bake something intricate you don't usually get to spend time on? What's the one thing that if it happens, the whole day is worth it? name that thing. Create your day around that thing. Now for me, depending on the weather and my mood, usually when I take a day like this, my one thing is either taking my time in a bookstore, because I love us so much, or going for a long walk with music in my ears. Those are my two things I love more than just about anything. They make me feel like myself. They're just like a deep breath in action. So I try and make one of those things happen for sure, if not both. So what, your one thing? Step four, and this is kind of an expansion of step three, feel like yourself.

That's the whole point here. I wrote in the lazy genius way that self-care is doing whatever makes you feel like yourself. Now that's different for everybody, right? So it's important to name what makes you feel like yourself. I think right now at the end of 2021, there is a solid chance that we feel less like ourselves than we have in a while. We're still. We're still. We're still pretty tired. The season is tiring anyway. And trying to navigate life and hold appropriate expectations for getting back to normal and all those things. It's just a lot, right? I also think that there is a decent chance that the last two years have offered some great perspective on what really matters to you. And maybe what does in fact make you feel like yourself.

So maybe between now and your personal retreat, think about what makes you feel like yourself. name two or three things and try and do those things during your retreat time. Now, if you are one of the many, many people who just does not know what makes you feel like yourself, maybe this particular day that you're planning, it can be an exploration of that. You can figure it out. Name a few things that might be ways that you would feel like yourself to feel happy, feel joyful, feel like a deep breath is running throughout your body. name a few of those things and then try them out. It'll be kind of like a fact-finding mission.

Ask yourself how you feel before, during, and after the thing that you try. Just pay attention to what makes you feel more whole, more human. Step five, schedule only in a way that matters to you. All right, you do not have to schedule this day. You don't have to, it doesn't have to be like, At 8 a.m. I do this. And at 10 a.m. I do this. Unless that's helpful to you. Unless that makes you happy. You could have flags, kind of like how we plan a day. Remember, there's a podcast episode about that, about how to plan your day, where you have flags, like a couple of set things that don't move, right? A lunch date with a friend. You're going to hit the bookstore when it opens at 10 o'clock. Anything connected to time. You could have a couple of those and then just let the time in between,

kind of ebb and flow, however it wants to. So you could be totally scheduled, not scheduled at all, or somewhere in the middle. But I think it's a really good, important idea to name what way does matter. If you go into the day overly scheduled, when you just want to move through the day at whatever pace the day calls for, you're going to lose a little of what the day is for, you know? And then the opposite is true too. If you don't schedule the day, but really do like having somewhere to go, kind of knowing what you're going to do, then you'll feel like you're wandering around aimlessly and you'll get frustrated. So schedule in a way that matters to you. And then finally, step six, release magical expectations. This is probably the most important part. Whenever I take a day away,

especially if I take a weekend away, oh my goodness, there will always be a stretch of time, sometimes a fairly long stretch. One time it was like almost an entire day of a weekend where I am exceptionally restless and listless and feel like I'm wasting my time. It's just the way it goes. Not every bit will be magical. Not every choice you make will land. Not every stroll through a bookstore will feel as romantic as you imagine. It will. Not every retreat will leave you refreshed. But that does not mean you shouldn't take one. You should as often as you can. The more you spend time this way for yourself without a project necessarily the more you'll start to know what you need and what will land but even without the promise of that even without getting in the reps it's still worth

taking the time for yourself to feel like yourself do the fun stuff do the stuff you only ever cram into the margins take longer on things you already love now part of the challenge there is that we don't often get to take longer you know so our attention span is isn't as great. So the weekend retreat I mentioned when I felt like I wasted a whole day. I sat in an Airbnb with a book and plans to read it for hours on a comfy couch. And I got about 15 minutes into that puppy before I started getting super antsy. And it was a great book. It was not the book's fault. I was reading Project Hell Mary by Andy Weir, which I adored. I think it's one of my favorite books of the year. But I just wasn't used to reading for more than 10 or 15

minutes uninterrupted in the daytime. I kept interrupting myself. So expect that. Expect the scattered attention. And when you spend like your three hours of reading time, not actually reading, please be kind to yourself in that. You didn't waste your time. You just spent your time a little different than you intended. Remember, we talk about this a lot. Plans are intentions. They are not pass fail. And sometimes what we intend doesn't happen. That doesn't mean everything is ruined. It just means it was different. And that's actually kind of normal. So schedule the time, release the guilt. Name your one thing you for sure are going to do that will be enough if that's the only thing that happens that day. Feel like yourself. Schedule the way you need to schedule and release

magical expectations. Just let the day breathe and be kind to yourself during it. And that's it. That's how to plan a personal retreat. I really hope so many of you do this in the next couple of weeks and then do it again before next year at the same time. Like don't let this be the only time. In that chapter I mentioned in the Lacey Genius way, I talk about seasonal rest about taking a stretch like a day or a weekend every season, like every three months to do this. Be yourself in other seasons. Be yourself. Be yourself. yourself in the summer, in the fall, in the spring, not just in the winter, not just in this week. Take time. Schedule it. If you don't schedule it, it won't happen. Okay, before we go, let's celebrate the lazy genius of the week. This week, it's Laura Beth

Davidson, who I've actually had a conversation with and is a lovely human, also a very talented family photographer. She wrote this in the lazy genius Facebook group. Just wanted to share a decide once that might be helpful. A few years ago, I began giving my daughters an ornament for Christmas, but soon ran into the headache of choosing the perfect ornament for each personality, milestone, new hobby, times four kids every year. Then I decided to give them each an ornament that represented that year's Halloween costume. I've had great luck finding them on Etsy, and as the collection grows, it reminds us of how each kid chose to dress up that year. I hope that helps someone else. Laura, Beth, this is such a fabulous idea. I have no doubt this will inspire

someone else's desire to mark moments, but in a really easy, decide once lazy genius way. This is such a great idea. You nailed it. And congratulations on being the lazy genius of the week. Okay, before I sign off, I would love it if you would consider signing up for the lazy genius mailing list. Okay. So like I said, I send out the monthly latest lazy letter.

And it is a really great newsletter with all kinds of helpful stuff I don't share anywhere else, which is true of most newsletters. But it's also where I'll be sending an email in a couple of weeks with my favorites from 2021. It's where you'll get first news like book tour info and stuff like that. We send email only when it's like super necessary and we really try and make sure that it's fun and helpful. Also, we have started doing a, when I say we, I mean team, Team LG. We have started doing a giveaway every month for two people on that mailing list. One person that's been around for a while and then one that is a new subscriber from that past month. And we announced those winners in the latest lazy

letter. So yeah, I would just love for you to join that mailing list. If you enjoy the podcast, if you enjoy the book, if you enjoy anything about kind of this lazy genius space, you'll really enjoy the newsletter. It's like the most personal, detailed, helpful version of all of the things that you encounter. So I would love for you to join the mailing list if you have not already. Okay, y'all, 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. 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.