The Lazy Genius Podcast - #249 - How We’re Lazy Geniusing the Boat Situation

Episode Date: February 14, 2022

You might have heard that all the copies of my next book, The Lazy Genius Kitchen, were on a boat that had a rough day and lost some of its cargo. Today I want to share the story of my drowning book but more importantly how Lazy Genius principles have saved us during such a strange, frustrating time.   Helpful Companion Links The first run of The Lazy Genius Kitchen may be underwater, but that means you have more time to preorder it! Download a transcript of the 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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Hey there, you are 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 249, how we are lazy geniusing the boat situation. You might have heard that all the copies of my next book, The Lazy Genius Kitchen, were on a boat that had a rough day and lost some of its cargo. As of this recording, we still don't know if my books were. part of that lost cargo. And if Ariel and Aquaman and all the fish have now lazy genius their kitchens. It's just a whole thing, y'all. But it's been an interesting few weeks watching myself and my team and even this community, lazy genius the problem. So today I want to share the story

of my drowning book, but more importantly, how lazy genius principles have saved us during such a strange, frustrating time. Okay, a quick intro of the boat situation. for those of you who don't know anything about the boat situation. About three weeks ago on January 17th, to be exact, I got a text from my operations manager, Leslie. Leslie doesn't text me unless there's an emergency. So it was weird already. Her text said, Lisa wants to hop on a Zoom with us today. What time is good for you? Now Lisa is my literary agent, which is the person who is the liaison between authors and publishers. There are other kinds of agents, like talent agents,

and they are your go-between, your voice in the room when you're not in the room. Now, I've been with Lisa for a few years. We have a good relationship, and she has never once gone through another person to schedule a call with me, especially an urgent one. So on this January 17th morning, I thought maybe I was getting fired. Like, maybe she didn't want to work with me anymore. Or she had some very bad news to deliver. because if it was good, Lisa would have just texted me. That's what she's done in the past.

Basically, this whole situation was strange and it made me uneasy. Now, within five minutes, five minutes of Leslie's original text, the three of us were on a Zoom call. We did that small talk you do to be polite, but that's also extra awkward because everyone is nervous and doesn't know what's about to happen. You know, that small talk before like a very important conversation. We're like, hi, how are you? You can't just be like, hey, let's skip the pleasantries and get to what's going on. Lisa says, okay, we got some news about the Lazy Genius Kitchen. The boat that the books were on. And I'm going to stop right here real quick. Why were the books on a boat? You might ask. That's an important question. In publishing, most books that are printed in

color, which the Lazy Genius Kitchen is, are printed overseas. It's pretty standard in the industry. And it's also enormously expensive to fly thousands of books over the ocean. so a boat it is okay back to Lisa the boat that the books were on was in a storm and lost some of its cargo overboard so there's a chance that all your books are at the bottom of the ocean and then we all sat in silence because what Lisa just said was absurd and y'all I'm pretty sure I just started laughing because what else are you supposed to do I mean my books are aware so Lisa gave us a couple more a couple more details, but not much more because no one knew much more than what she already knew. All we knew was that the boat was in a storm, lost some of the shipping containers, and we didn't

yet know if my books were in one of those drowning containers or when we'd even find out. Also a very important side note before we continue. No one was injured in the storm. All the people in the boat were okay. Just the stuff was hurt, so that's excellent news. Wanted to make sure that was clear. The three of us said, like, a few more words, naming like, all the complications that this was posing out loud, right? Because y'all, we were in the middle of planning a massive, well, massive to me, because I've never done one, but a massive book tour. We were about to sign contracts with venues to do launch events. Special guests had already booked plane tickets. Our pre-order bonus plan was based on a specific release date. Like, so much was happening.

and kind of locked in. Now, this is an understandable sentence that I'm about, what I'm about to say. But everything in the book world centers around a release date, right? I'll just explain that for a minute. That is kind of your son. Your release date is your son. All the plans revolve around that date. And on January 17th, the day of this very strange boat news, that release date of March 22nd

was nine weeks away. nine weeks is nothing in launching. It is so short. And at this point, nine weeks from the release date, the books could be in the bottom of the sea. So, you know, so anyway, after all that, we just kind of stared at each other for a few minutes and realized that we had literally no answers and we decided to end the call. Leslie, my operations manager, said to me, Kendra, do you want to stay on and talk through any of the potential scenarios? And here is an important place. to pause the story. Did I want to talk about all the scenarios? I did. Yes, I did. I was feeling pretty spinny, obviously, with this news. But we had also established on that call that we really

didn't know anything yet, and we wouldn't for several days. I also was paying attention to my body and knew that I was on the cusp of spinning out, of getting more anxious than I was comfortable with. So in that moment, I realized there was no real benefit in talking through the potential scenarios. We didn't have enough information. And while some of the verbal processing, it could have helped. I knew that for me, all the talking and wondering and waiting would make it worse because there was literally nothing we could do. So I told Leslie now.

It's like, no, we can all just get off the call. We'll just wait for word from the boat captain or whoever's going to tell us where the books were. And then I called cause to tell him. I texted my mom and my sister, my friends to tell them, and everyone had the reaction you would expect. It was a giant, I'm sorry, what? What is happening? It was just so absurd. And an absurdity with no answers and no solutions, no timeline, just like a floating piece of absurdity that we could only stare at. It was not great. I do think it, It helped that it was so absurd that we could only laugh and shock, you know. But it was really tough news to get my head around, like obviously.

But here's the thing. Here's the thing with unexpected circumstances. Sometimes you can't control a dang dang thing. Stuff just happens, right? Obviously, there is a wide spectrum of that, right? Of unexpected circumstances. From the sudden loss of someone you love. like that's one horrible, horrible side of the spectrum to the other side, you know, the dress that you

had ordered on purpose for a particular occasion didn't arrive in time for that occasion or the occasion was canceled altogether and you're having to pivot or be disappointed. Now that is the other side of the spectrum, but it is still an unexpected circumstance. So I'm very much not saying that how you handle the loss of a loved one is how you handle the loss of a dress. Please hear me in that. but unexpected circumstances don't make sense no matter what they are they don't have a box to go in in our brains we just get this news that surprises us on some level and then we just have to live with it to figure it out and process the emotions that come from it over an unknown period of time which is also annoying unexpected news has to be dealt with in some way and you don't always have

the margin or even the understanding to do it. And you don't know how long it's going to last either. That's how I personally felt. I didn't fully understand what was happening. And I had a variety of feelings that would come and go in the following days. And I had to deal with them. You know, like I had to deal. That's what I'm saying. Stuff happens that is beyond your control. But then you have to deal with that stuff no matter how little you had to do with it. One of the things I dealt with in those early days of the news, and even some now, is disappointment. I mean, that's obvious, but I had to name what I was disappointed about specifically. So much goes into the launch of a book, so much. And we were going big. I had big, fun plans, partly because I didn't get to really have

the book launch I dreamed of when my first book came out in August 2020, because it was August 2020 and we were all scared and inside our houses trying to figure out how dystopian our world was going to be. Plus, writing a book is an enormously long process from coming up with the idea to writing a book proposal to pitch that idea. You have calls with publishers. You try to help them catch the vision for your idea. You have to write a whole dag on book, which is stupidly hard. You edit that whole book multiple times make all these tiny choices about covers and headshot photos and who you hope to talk to about the book and you cross your fingers that they say yes, setting up email machines so that people get their pre-order bonuses without a hitch and then finally getting to share the

book with the world but feeling the fear and the pressure of hoping people actually like it enough to buy it and are you a fraud and should you celebrate and are you thinking too highly of yourself? But no, this is a big deal. You want to celebrate. But wait, it's still a pandemic. Like you guys, it's a lot. It's a whole thing. Because of all the time and energy that went into this book and still is, frankly,

I wanted to have a fun book launch for the lazy genius kitchen. And this boat news put all of that in jeopardy. I might not be able to have the book launch I had so carefully planned. And that was deeply disappointing. And so we waited. We were told that we would have word by the end of that week, whether the books were wet or dry. But spoiler alert, I am recording this episode on February 10th, and we still don't know if the books are wet or dry. So suffice it to say, we eventually had to stop waiting and start doing something. We'll be right back. 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. Once we got to the beginning of the next week, my whole team, mostly me, was itching to make decisions. Everything was put on pause for a few days, right? But most of those pauses greatly affected other people. We couldn't just tell these venues, hey, can you just hold this for us? Like, indefinitely, we're dealing with some stuff, thanks. Like, we can't do that. We had to know how long we could wait before waiting was no longer an option. enter decide once oh praise we kept looking at the calendar and like scenarioing our faces off well if the date

gets pushed here can we change this and what if it's pushed three weeks should we cancel this thing and what about the launch party that was going to be in person like can you do that not on launch day can you have a launch party without a book there were just so many questions so i decided once i looked at the calendar and said, all right, what is the latest, the release can be pushed to where we can still make our current plans work? Let's just decide once that one day is our cutoff point rather than adjusting tiny bits for any new release date we got here and there, you know? So after looking at the calendar and factoring in my energy and my time, my family schedule, all the many, many things, I told my team that if the date was pushed as far as four weeks out, which at that point was

April 19th. We would just keep everything as is and just called a baby shower where we were celebrating something that wasn't here yet, you know? April 19th was our decide once cut off. Anything on or before that and we just keep rolling on our book tour plans. It would be fine. And that took a lot of the pressure off of all of the planning and the scenarios, right? Now the crazy thing was, we still had a sliver of hope that the release date would still be March 22nd. I mean, if the books were on the boat and okay, could we still? make it. When would it be too late even if the books were still on the boat? And that was our next marker. We had to decide again what our new release date options would be so that if we had to change

the date because it didn't matter whether the books were wet or dry, they were just still stuck on the boat. Then we would have some idea of what we would change the release date to. This is getting in the weeds a little bit, but I'm just going to assume it's mildly interesting to you if you're still listening. Publishers vary with how much they allow their authors to ask for certain release dates or months, not even just the specific date, like a release month. Publishing houses release plenty of books over the course of a year, and they have to consider what they're capable of producing according to their own sales calendar. You can't release all of your books in two months, right? You have to spread them out. Hope that you're putting the right book in the right season for

the right reader, you're paying attention to market trends, all kinds of things. Anyway, my publisher was kind enough to let me contribute to the conversation around the original release date, like over a year ago. And I landed on March very purposefully. Launching a book is about a three-month, like intensive undertaking. You're pretty deep in it for the month of release and the two months before. So I wanted to make sure, again, this was over a year ago, I wanted to make sure that I wasn't just choosing one month that worked for me, but I was choosing all three. So back then, before I even started writing Lacey Genius Kitchen, I wrote down all the months of the year on a whiteboard, and I marked out when I did not want to be in book launch

mode. I definitely didn't want to do it over the summer. So that took out launches in June, July, and August, and even September, because that would take July and August to launch it, right? I didn't want to launch a book over the holidays. So that took out November, December, January, and February. Now, if you're counting, that leaves March, April, May, and October. Then I wondered if there was an industry standard for when cookbooks were released. Now, The Lazy Genius Kitchen is not a cookbook, but it'll be in the cookbook area of your bookstore. Now Leah, who is on Team LG, Leah and I combed through the internet looking at publications for hundreds of popular cookbooks and found that around 70% of all cookbooks release in September

and October. 70. Isn't that crazy? But it also kind of makes sense. People get really excited about cooking in the fall and into the holidays. Now, I'm going to tell you something about me. I like to do things well. I don't need to be the best. That's my old enneagram one's self trying to get prominence when I do think that. But I like to do things well. I do. I like to do this work in a way that is exceptional to the people who care about it. I want to write books

that you return to again and again. I have a very specific philosophy on how I create content. here in the space, what I want this business to accomplish and how it can serve you well. All of those things matter. I also know that I'm competitive. That be the best default in me. It can get pretty loud, especially when there's something big at stake. That is why when the lazy genius way came out in August of 2020, I knew myself well enough to know that if I stayed home on launch day, all I would do is refresh sales numbers and

obsess over how well the book did. I remember at one point, Way hit number two on Amazon's new release list of movers and shakers across all books, which is wild, shocking. Like, I never expected to rank that high in anything. And do you know what I then suddenly wanted to be number one? If I was number two, there was a chance I could be number one. And that energy, while fine in some people, and sometimes even in me, depending on how well I'm doing in counseling and with my like overall self-awareness, that energy would destroy my launch day. I would just be so deep into competition in comparison that I wouldn't enjoy what was actually happening. So on the publication day for the lazy genius way on August 11th, 2020, I got in my car and I drove for hours around North Carolina stopping at bookstores and Jenny's ice cream scoop shop.

and enjoying backroads and music and meeting some of y'all along the way. And it was the best day. All right. So those are all of these like seemingly dissonant, but like tentacles on an octopus, you know, of like this whole launch story. All of that to say, publishing a book has a lot of layers for me. It can be a really creative, empowering, exciting process. And it can also be emotionally complicated if I'm focused on the wrong things. Okay. Now, I want to talk about the actual release date. Let's go back to the release date for the lazy genius kitchen. When I was looking for my possibilities for launch months, you know, over a year ago, March, April, May, and October, I knew that I did not want to be in that 70%. I did not want to launch in October because I would be

too close to a harmful comparative energy with all the other kitchen cookbooks that were coming out then. and I just didn't want that. I didn't want that. So of the three remaining months of March, April, and May, March felt the best because we could start the year with like big launch energy as a team, you know, that fresh start energy anyway that you get at the beginning of the year. And then we would sort of be out of big time book launch energy before school was over, before summer. So it was a very intentional decision to publish in March. And my publisher kindly, kindly went along with it. Now let's come back to the present day, ish present day. We've heard about the boat, but we're still waiting. We haven't moved the release date yet. I get an email from my publisher

saying this. We need to start considering other publication dates. We can maybe make June, may happen, probably June, but we could even consider pushing it to the fall. And I started to cry. I had gone two weeks into this news. This was two weeks into it. from the boat, the original boat news. And the suggestion to push the release to the fall, that's what caused my first tears of the whole thing, which is kind of wild, actually. I compare, I compare this whole thing to planning a wedding.

You're going through the stress, but excitement, you know, of this like carefully planned day. You're making these intentional decisions. You're getting excited. You're celebrating this really fun thing, even though there's like a lot to manage. And then you're in the room on your wedding day, in your dress, with your bridesma,

or whatever. The ceremony is not started yet. And your wedding planner comes in and it's like, hey, interesting news, someone kidnapped the groom. They might give them back in an hour. They might not give them back at all. We have no way of knowing, but you still have to get married. That's how it felt. That's how all of this felt. But then especially the thought of having to move the release date to fall was like someone kidnapping my groom and being like, hey, you figure it out, figure it out. We're not going to give him back. for months, maybe, but you figured out. Like, it was so devastating, and that's why I cried. Now, if you go back to that process that I went through to pick my best publication month before I started writing Lazy Genius Kitchen, I did that again. I decided to do that again,

but for weeks this time instead of months. I looked at my calendar. I eliminated weeks in the spring and summer and even fall that were off the table for release and then the ones that were ideal. and where I landed was, and I told my publisher this, that if we had to move the date, if we had to move the release date, because I really didn't want to, but if we had to, May 3rd was ideally my very last day to release, anything after that was like very much not my preference. Now, part of that is because I want you to have access to this book before Mother's Day and before the end of school for teachers' gifts and graduations and weddings and baby showers

and like all the transition things that seem to happen in May and in the summer. Plus, I just want you to have it. Like, I'm just tired of you not having it. This book is so good and I want you to have it. And I want it to change your life in your kitchen. So releasing anytime later, but especially after May 3rd, just felt so sad. So even though we still don't know if the books are wet or dry, we have now missed the window to release on the original March 22nd date because the books

just can't get to where they need to be in time for you to get them in time, which is a bummer. So we have officially changed the release date to May 3rd, the absolute latest day that I wanted to release. But it's also super early for the situation. There were two highly anticipated cookbooks on the same boat, and their release dates have been moved to June and September. We are being super ambitious with the May 3rd release for mine, and I am very grateful to my publisher, the name is Waterbrook, Multnomah, by the way, for trying to make. For trying to make this happen. But guess what May 3rd is? May 3rd is two weeks after our decide one state of keeping or changing the book tour. So we are very much changing the book tour. We have to. But we have some

super exciting things planned. I will be sharing details of those in the coming weeks once we get contract signed and stuff finalized. But we are rallying and pivoting and figuring out. The way we have decided to figure out what to do is to name what matters most. Big surprise, right? We didn't want to shift our 10-week launch plan forward because I wanted to be done with the heavy lifting of the book launch by the end of May. And if we had pushed it just forward 10 weeks from May 3rd, that's like the whole summer. Summers are sacred to my family, to me. And I want to be home for as much of them as I can. That matters. So that impacts how we schedule a plan B book launch. My energy also matters. I don't want to cram 10,

weeks of stuff into a three-week window just to fit it all in. No, ma'am. Some stuff, actually a lot of stuff, we've just had to let go. Naming what matters has been essential in figuring out how we pivot because of this whole boat situation. We name what matters. We essentialize and get rid of what's in the way of what matters. And then we put it all together. We're in the middle of that last bit now. I cannot wait to share with you our plans once they're shiny and official and ready to be shared. ultimately this has been a ride. It still is. It still is. But we have stayed focused on what matters most. I have scheduled a lot of rest lately, going to bed earlier, shutting down my computer once the kids get home from school, ignoring Instagram completely at times,

like for days, just to have a little space. I've had to schedule rest. As I already said, my team and I have done some deciding once, as well as using the magic question. What can I do now to make a changed publication day easier later. We did an interesting thing for the podcast that I'll share next week, actually, when I give you a behind the scenes deep dive of how the podcast comes together. But we've been applying the magic question all over the place. We're sticking with our routines because they are leading us where we want to go. And we have a company culture document that lists like all these things that matter to us as a company,

and that's keeping us afloat. two components of that company culture document are being nimble, which we are having to do quite a bit, and avoiding cynicism. It's easy to whine about this whole thing. And sometimes that's helpful and warranted and cathartic, you know. But being cynical about the situation, it doesn't really help anything in the long run. As a company and as a team, and even as an internet space that you are all part of, we want to be people who avoid cynicism when possible being cynical is to be distrustful of a person's

integrity or sincerity that is not how i want to live or how i want to lead we want to believe the best in people and move forward seeing the humanity in others rather than be inconvenience by their choices or even by situations beyond our control cynicism is me focused and i want to be other focused. So all of these things, naming what matters most, scheduling rest, asking the magic question. And when I haven't mentioned yet, which is to be kind to yourself, which I've had to do many times over the last few weeks, all of these lazy genius principles have saved us during this boat situation. We're all okay. We're figuring it out. We're not super overwhelmed. And when we do feel overwhelmed, we're taking steps to take care of ourselves in it. It has been a gift, really, to figure this out.

with tools and people and a community that are also supportive. And we will celebrate the publication of the Lazy Genius Kitchen on May 3rd with all the bells on. Again, this is a very In the Weeds episode. But I hope it was interesting, maybe even a little inspiring to you and helping you see how these principles can be applied to literally anything, even your books possibly being at the bottom of the sea. Now, before we go, let's celebrate the Lazy Genius of the Week. it's Amanda and I don't know her last name. I'm so sorry Amanda, but Amanda sent this message to

Team LG and I love it for many reasons. Here's Amanda. I'm off on a three-month maternity leave, short by our Canadian standards, with a toddler and a now seven-week-old. For the past six weeks, I ask myself the same question all throughout the day. If I can only get one thing done, what do I actually want it to be? Basically, whenever I realize I'm in a stretch of time where I can get something non-baby, non-todler-related done, I really quickly guess how much time I have and always make sure to underestimate it. So I'm talking five to 15 minutes. And then I choose one thing. If I get that done, then I move on to the next thing. It helps with the part of me that likes to feel like I've accomplished something. By choosing only one goal at a time, I can usually hit it. And it's amazing how much I can

get completed when I'm only doing one thing at a time. Most importantly, though, is how my list of what I actually want to get done has evolved. This is my favorite part of Amanda's message. It started off being much more of a chores list, necessary, but not particularly fun. And now it's just as likely to include laying on the couch of the book, drinking my coffee in silence, staring at the baby, or leaving a friend of Oxar. And because they all get put under my same mental category of daily goals, my days are that much more enjoyable. Isn't that so good? I love it so. much, Amanda. This message is such a joy to read. And I hope those of you who listened to it got a little spark of inspiration on not just doing one thing, which by the way is a great way to build

a routine that works, but that you start noticing what that one thing actually is. Like, this is good permission right here. So thank you, Amanda, for giving it. 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. 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.