The Lazy Genius Podcast - #352 Office Hours with the Office Ladies

Episode Date: February 12, 2024

Jenna and Angela are here! This very special episode celebrates The Lazy Genius Podcast being the first show to join the Office Ladies Network! As you may know, we do Office Hour type episodes a few times a year, where I Lazy Genius questions from listeners. Today, we’re Lazy Geniusing things for Jenna and Angela, and I’m so excited for you to hear our conversation.   Helpful Companion Links Learn more about the Office Ladies More Office Hour episodes: #315; #327; #338 Follow @thelazygenius on Instagram to keep an eye out for our next listener Office Hours episode Sign up for the Latest Lazy Listens email. Grab a copy of my book The Lazy Genius Kitchen or The Lazy Genius Way! (Affiliate links) Since this is more of a conversation, there’s no transcript for this episode. Thank you for understanding! 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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What fun this is. Oh, my mouth hurts from smiling. Everybody knows y'all from the office and from listening to Office Ladies. I would love to have an office hours episode with the Office Ladies. We do an office, an Office hours episode once a quarter where I just take questions from people, like, what problems do you need to solve? Like, let's solve it. And then I will answer them on the office. episode. But really what's hard about that is that I don't get to ask follow-up questions and kind of

help the person kind of find a really great way to where they want to go because I don't know all the details. I only know what's in one comment. So we can actually do that now because I can ask you questions back and we can solve some of your problems. So we will, we're going to do that. We're going to do that now. And I'm so excited. Office hours with the office ladies. Okay, Jenna, what do you need to lazy genius? School emails. School emails. Okay, tell me more.

Okay, there are so many. And they often contain links to other documents within themselves. And each teacher does it different. So some have a link to a Google Doc and some have an attachment. Some require action, some don't. They are addressed to both me and my husband, and it's, you know, who's going to take action on it? How do we division of labor, the school emails and all the things that they require? So much of it is like, do I have to add these things to the calendar?

You know, the coach sends you a thing. Who's doing that? I get easily, and it's so funny because I'm so great with work emails and I'm so good at other things, but for some reason, maybe because they are like addressed to me and my husband, you know, they're addressed to two people. I get easily very defeated and don't know how to take action on them or when to take action on them. Mm-hmm. Okay. So let's back up. We'll start from where we always want to start, which is what matters, trying to name what matters about something. If you were to imagine having a positive relationship with school emails, what do you think matters the most about getting you there? Oh, boy. Some of the things and the process that we go through to do that too is like, well, sometimes you have to name some of the things that could matter, right? Because you're like, not sure yet. Because there are a few options. So like I would think one of the things for if I if I was in that situation, one of the things would just be like the constant need for decision making because it's not

just the thing that's coming from the school. It's am I doing this or is Lee doing this? Yes. Or is this like what is the thing that's being done? And sometimes you don't know how long something's going to take. You know, like you click on the link and you're like, well, this is a 20 question survey thing. I didn't know I was supposed to answer. Like you know, it's it's like blind. Like every bit of it feels blind. So maybe it's trying to eliminate that. Maybe there are lots of things that can matter. But what do you think might the most?

I think one of the things is the division of labor. If that could be clearer, if like there was an agreement where like we know that one of my strengths is calendar. And so if I know that my only job with this email. that I'm going to get and when I open it is that I know that I'm calendar. So if there's a date, if the school's going to tell me this is parent teacher day, this is we don't have school for whatever reason. This is, you know, this thing, then I know I'm calendar lady. But if there's an email like, let's say from the coach and there's a calendar, but then there's also in there a link where you have to sign up for and pay for, uniform, is there a decision ahead of time that Lee is, is uniforms, sports, you know, stuff? Like if you have to bring your own soccer ball, he's going to do that. But I'll take care of putting all the games on the calendar. I think that's some of it is just, uh, because every email feels like it's now, now it's a

conversation like, Lee, did you Venmo for the teacher gifts or should I or? Should we? It like makes me so tired. We can feel that energy. Should we? So I think that's part of it. But you know what another part of it is, which I'm realizing, which I'm very shy to say, is that a good portion of these emails are weekly downloads of everything your child is studying. And like, this is what we learned in math this week.

Yeah. This is our social studies thing. And I don't care. I trust that the school is on it. I don't need to know those specifics. I appreciate that they're sending them because perhaps I might want to know. I might want to be like, oh, you're having trouble with your homework and what is it? And I can go refer to it and say, oh, we're in fractions.

or decimals or whatever it is. But I don't think I need that weekly download. And can I skip it? Yes. Or am I a bad parent? I feel like a bad parent because my mom was a teacher, my sister is a teacher. I know the free time that it took these people

to write their paragraph about what they taught my kid that week. And I feel such immense guilt if I don't read every word. of the math lesson summary. But the truth is I also just trust the teachers. And I believe my kids are learning and it's all okay. Can I skip the paragraph? I haven't been able to skip it. And I, I want to. So here we're going to talk real quick about the. There's so much to unpack. No, there's really, it's actually incredibly normal and makes all the sense to me. So the lazy genius method, the five-step lazy genius method. You begin by you prioritize first, which is what we're trying to do here.

We're trying to be like, okay, you want to limit the number of decisions. You want to try to make the decision-making of these emails more efficient somehow and automatic. You know, you want to automate like, this is who's doing this, this is who's doing this or whatever it is. The second step in the lazy genius method is to essentialize. It's to get rid of what's in the way. It sounds like those emails are in the way because they're part of your, inbox and you're looking at them and it all, it feels like all of the school emails are part of one category. And so it's taking energy. And anything, anything, this always happens, always happens

with people. Is there something that we feel guilty about letting go? In this step of essentializing, there's always something we feel bad about. Because if we didn't feel bad about it, we would have let it go a long time ago. Mm-hmm. You know? So I think it's so normal to go, I don't, I feel bad, but also this is causing, this is causing me to not see the emails that I need to read in the same way because I just don't need to read these other ones. So this could be a great thing to essentialize. It's like when those come through or maybe Lee is the one that reads those. Here's my practical question. Do the emails go to both of your email addresses or are they just addressed like dear parents?

They go to both email addresses. Okay. So do you think that could you just delete them in your own inbox? And if Lee wants to look at those, he can. Sure. But the weekly recap ones that you're just like done, you don't even have to open them. If you know what it is, you just pull it out and you trust that he'll catch it if there's anything important in there. I mean, I don't think he reads them.

Okay. So you can move. No one's going to read them. No one will know what our children are learning. You will when you go to. We hope at the end of the year they've learned something. Yeah, they usually learned something. Oh my gosh.

I will tell you, Jenna, that this is an elementary school chapter of your life. And once your kids are in middle school and high school, they don't get the update. That's what you know. It's just, you don't. You know, you have no idea what they're learning in math anymore. It's the opposite. There's no weekly update. It's like they, they get emails sent to them from their teachers.

And it's their responsibility. to have that correspondence. So part of it is just waiting it out. Yes. I don't know. This is a season. This is a season. Yes.

Well, here are a couple of thoughts that came to mind of how you might be able to organize, because that's step three, right, is to organize the things. Once you get rid of what's in the way, which is the guilt and the unnecessary emails, perhaps, is how do we put this in its place? And a couple of things that came to mind that you could tell me if you think they would work. How are we going to divide? It feels like the division, the division of the labor actually matters here a lot. Because if you know what's yours to do, you'll do it.

It's fine. Like you can figure it out for you. So it's more about what's yours and what's Lee's. So a couple of ways that you could do that. You have two kids, right? Yep. Yeah. You could be that you have one kid and he has the other kid.

I have never thought of that. whatever emails come to you for one kid or yours and the emails that go for the other kid or his. Yes, I'm on fourth grade. He's on sixth grade. There you go. And that's it. Oh my gosh, that would be so great. Yeah. And then what you could do. I never considered that option. Yeah. Because because there are too many granular pieces within each email, I think being like I'm calendar, how do you even define what calendar is sometimes? Yeah. Because of all these different things. We need a simpler way to divide. So that feels like that could be one thing to do.

And then maybe what you do is you have like if you all have some sort of check in each week already built in or some sort of like logistical conversation you already have. And you go, is there anything I need to know about sixth grade? Is everything from sixth grade on the calendar? Is there anything? And then, you know, you can just kind of like touch base on the things that you've taken care of and making sure everything's covered. but from an email standpoint, you just delete everything from the other grade. This is amazing. I'm going to tell you right now I'm going to pick sixth grade because then I know he's going to

middle school. Yeah. And I'll be like, I'm on middle school, babe. I've got, I've got middle school. emails. You get so few emails. I'll handle it. Oh, my gosh.

But I really like this, Kendra. this is a great new like take on this problem that has weighed me down for a long time. And I love, you know what I love, I love framing things as an experiment because it's too much for me to just decide that I'm never going to read the last work updates. That fills me with too much like dread and guilt. But what I could commit to is experimenting with skipping that part. for a period of time and then check in with myself and see how I feel about it. So I like this idea of dividing up the kids and also of me letting go of that real like in the weeds nitty gritty detail of knowing everything about every subject that they're learning

each week. Right. As a way of simplifying. Yeah. I love that. This feels like a great way for you to start small. Yes. This is my kid.

This is your kid. And I'm going to maybe not read these emails for a little while and see how it goes. That feels very doable. Very doable. I love it. I'm so much lighter. I know. I was going to say, you're like, you're talking differently.

You're not blah, blah about it. I have like a weird sort of positive of relationship with school emails now. This is a first. I can't wait for the updates. I can't wait. I know. I know. We're going to have to get an update.

We're going to have to get an update. Okay. Well, problem kind of. Salt. Yes. Go team. There's more to life than finding the perfect car. But finding the perfect car can help you get the most out of life. Like the SUV that handles everything from drop off to off road and the car that hulls groceries and hockey teams,

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Via Rail, Love the Way. 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. Okay, Angela, what's yours? What do you want a lazy genius? You guys, this is something that is totally embarrassing. We all die when we start. We're like, no, this is something that's, well, it's just, you know, it's a little embarrassing. But here's the truth. I put things away all the time. I sort of do like the little putaways, little putaways, you know, of all the little areas that where clutter happens. I do it for the downstairs of the house. I do it. for the kids bedrooms. I do not put away my clothes, y'all. I don't. And I don't know why. I struggle

with this. I have piles of clothes. Listen, I used to have a treadmill in the corner of the bedroom. And you know I never used it. It's just where I put all the piles of clothes and hung clothes. It was the treadmill hangar is what it was. And then I thought, you know what? I'm going to get rid of that treadmill. I don't use it. And I'm going to start putting my clothes away. You thought that was the problem. I remember you were very excited. And I had to like wrangle a few of my husband's friends because it's so heavy. And we finally got it downstairs.

And my husband was like, we're never, we're never carrying this thing anywhere ever again. So heavy. I gave it away. I gave it to a friend of mine. And then I was like, now I have this big empty corner in our bedroom. I'm going to make a reading nook. I spent so much time doing this. I got a little cozy chair.

I got a little in table at a flea market. You guys, supposedly it's from France. I don't know. It looks so cute. I got some art. I made my reading nook. You guys, you can't even see the chair. It's covered in clothes.

It's stuck with clothes. Yeah. I can't put away my clothes and I don't know why. And it bums me out. And then now I have a little bench over in the other corner and now that's got clothes on it. Why can't I put my clothes away? What is my problem? And it bums me out.

Kendra, like, when I go in my bedroom, I like, oh, it's cluttered. Is the, is the bother, is the thing that bothers you that you don't put your clothes away or that you are in a room where clothes are not put away? Maybe the latter. But it's the room I have to be in. It's supposed to be in my sanctuary, right? Your bedroom is your sanctuary. Oprah told us that.

But sometimes that's not the case for everyone. like we all know, we all know those messages about, yeah, your bedroom is supposed to be your haven. Don't even put a TV in there. You're supposed to be restful, all these things. And so I think I just want to start like, if it were normal and accepted and everyone was like, actually, the way to live in a bedroom is to leave your clothes, wherever you want to leave your clothes and just gather them up whenever you need to gather them up and live there. If that was what was normal. Would you be like, yeah, baby, look at me. And it wouldn't bother you anymore. Or do you actually want your room to be less cluttered with clothes, genuinely? I actually want it to be less cluttered with clothes. I really do.

And I think, you know, one of the things about it, it's like, it's like my, I don't know, like my small protest to the fact that I put everyone else's clothes away. And I think there's something that I'm just, by the time it gets to me, I'm just maybe a little ticked off that I'm at the last on the list to put my own things away. Maybe that's what's happening a little bit. I think if you're saying that, I think that probably is something worth paying attention to. Yeah. Maybe I need to start with myself and put my stuff away first.

Yep. And then go put everyone else's stuff away. And then I won't have a cluttered room. My mom used to always say a cluttered room is a cluttered mind. And I think about that a lot when I walk into my bedroom. I'm like, oh, no. I have something to throw out. Do it.

What if you only put your clothes away and then you put other people's clothes in a pile on their bed and they had to put them away? We're working on that. We're working on them doing their own laundry and putting clothes away. But then what happens is it doesn't all get put away or put away properly. and then I find myself doing a little bit of that, that background work, you know, of getting it. And then I get annoyed because I'm like, well, now I didn't get any of my stuff done, you know? Right. Yeah.

Yeah. But the house, it's five people, you know, it's like, and now, listen, I know there's people with much bigger families, but it's just a lot of daily putting away. Sure. And especially because you said that every person has their own laundry day. So it sounds like there's a lot of putting away energy all the time. Yeah. Yeah. But we can't do it all on one day. It's too much. Sure. No, no. But yeah, by the time it's you, though. Yeah. Yeah. So we discovered, I don't know if this is going to work or not, but we discovered in our conversation last week on the Office Ladies podcast, how much you love baskets. I do. The e-melf variety and the storage variety, all of those things. If you think about the types of clothes, the categories of clothes that are lying around your room, because I have those two. I don't put all my clothes away all the time. I've got like things that I sleep in or it's like there's a there's like I wore this thing that was soft during the day.

And then I was just ready to go to bed. And so I just wore it to bed. And I could probably wear it to bed one more time. But then there's like a workout maybe pile. But sometimes those are worn during the day. You know, there's like lots of these fluid clothing categories sort of lying around. Things that are like sort of dirty but not really enough to wash them yet, all of that. So is that part of it too?

Is that you just sort of have like mid, mid process clothes all over the place? Yes. On my bathtub, what I flop over the bathtub or the pajamas I might wear again because I only slept in them one time, you know, and that feels silly and wasteful to wash them again. So I have my sleep clothes flopped over the bathtub. And then on the bench I have like sweaters and stuff that I was going to maybe do that little comb on the sweater, you know, because it's got the little peely things. And then I've got like some leggings that I was going to wear on a walk that I never went on,

but I might still go on. So if you were to incorporate a back. baskets into your room a little that are like holding grounds for these clothes that are mid-process. I mean, I think that would be great because then I would actually have my chair I could sit on. Exactly. So if you like, especially if you're like the tub is where the pajamas are, if there was just a little, a little basket or bin that was cute and pretty and you like, you know, you like making things work and pretty.

If you focus your energy that way, because one of the, the lazy genius principle for this is to put everything in its place. You have in your head that the place is either the laundry basket or the closet or a drawer. You know, it's like, it's like fully dirty or it's packed away in its place. There is a middle place for things for clothes that we wear. And we just sort of forget that it's not, it's not just laundry or closet. So if you brought that kind of gray space and have that place, you put those clothes in a place, even in the place in your room where you put those things. Like if you have the basket by the tub for your pajamas, if you have a basket by your chair for the, yeah, for like the leggings. The random clothes. Yes. Yes. I'm very excited about this. I'm very excited. If you have a project basket

of like these are the sweaters that I need to like that I'm going to do my thing to. Yes. Or the dry clean basket because I have some stuff that needs to be dry clean. It's just like in a sack on the floor. And I hate the way the sack on the floor looks. Sure. That's the thing. You are giving me permission to use more baskets.

And it is more baskets, man. Rock in my world. I'm so glad. Just use more. Because if we imagine, I mean, if you think about your house, if you walk into any room, if you took the doors off of all of your kitchen cabinets, if you took all of the like snacks in your pantry out of their their basket that's in the pantry, everything is chaotic. The only thing that makes things not chaotic is that you can't, they're either contained or invisible. And so right now,

your clothes are not contained. They're not contained. They're not contained. Yeah. So you need to either contain, you've been trying to make them invisible by putting them away. Yeah. That's not working for you. What if you contain them? Yeah. And then see how it goes. I'm very excited. I'm very excited to try this. I'm so excited for you.

I'll see you a picture. Angela, maybe you can use that big basket I gave you recently. Are you having it yet? I have blankets in it in our TV room. And it's great because the kids never put the blankets away really well. You know, they're always just scattered on the couch. So now they just toss them in the big basket. But I, let me tell you.

you know I have more baskets. And now you don't have to even go shop for any of these baskets. As soon as we're done here, you just go to your basket closet. I'm going, I don't have a basket closet, but I have a shed. Your shed. My shed is full of baskets. That's what I meant. That's my autobiography.

So good. Basket lady. Kendra, that is great advice. I love it. That's the thing that I'm missing. And it's so simple. I don't have that middle space before laundry. and that I'm not ready to put away.

I don't have the middle space. Yep. Well, we office hours, the office ladies. Let's, as we close up shop, there's a question that I answer about once a quarter in an episode, and it is what's saving my life right now. And I would just love to know for each of you, what's saving your life right now? Well, I can start. I have started doing something called the five-minute journal.

And it is absolutely saving my life. I love it so much. It was sent to me. And I don't know from who or from where in the gift pile of presents over the holidays. I found it. And thank you to whoever sent it because I absolutely love it. And it's very simple. It is a gratitude journal.

and you write in it for maybe three minutes in the morning and two minutes in the evening. And it has really centered me. I have a desire to journal more when I was younger. I journaled all the time. I did The Artist's Way, which has morning pages journaling. But now in this season of my life, writing nitty-gritty journal entries is just not practical for me. And the idea of trying to do it stresses me out. But the idea that I could maybe journal or center my mind in just five minutes a day was really exciting to me.

And I've been at it now for longer than any other journal I've had in a long time. I've started many journals. And this one has really stuck and I'm excited. And it simply asks questions in the morning like write down three things that would make today great? What would make today great? And when I really think about that question each day, the things I write down sometimes surprise me. And then at the end of the day, it asks you to kind of check in, like, what went great today? And I was like, wow, like really great things happened today and the things that happened today were like we laughed really hard at dinner. Someone told a

story. And so often like the thing that makes today great is just a moment of laughter or I want to get in my body somehow today. I'm not going to, you know, there's no like step goal. There's no like exercise class I have to get to. But how could I get in my body? And when I have that goal in my head in the morning, then I just all throughout the day, I see these little opportunities where I could get in my body today. And I just love it. It's been a real positivity thing for me, especially because my mind can get a little bit into accomplishment mode and maybe out of gratitude appreciation mode or go with the flow mode. And so this has been really great for me. I love it. That's beautiful. Well, Angela, we know yours in general is always baskets, but is there something that's not a basket?

Yes, there is. There's another, I guess, well, basically, I normally don't make lists. You know, Jenna's very list oriented and I don't enjoy a list. I would sometimes just jot a few things down on a Post-it note. I'd have like post-it notes everywhere. And then my mom got me, you know, she, I don't know, she was just out shopping and she found a long, skinny, spiral notepad. And it's the exact length of my laptop. This is coincidence.

And I just set it next to my laptop. And every day now I make a list. In the morning, I get my cup of tea. And the list can be what I need to. get done for, you know, whatever they need for the middle school, you know, parent social or what it's, it's what is timely for me for just that day. And I think that's why I didn't make lists because I thought I had to make a list for the whole week or I'd have to make a list for the month. And that was just too much for me. And I'm task oriented. I like to be able to check something off.

And if I have a bunch of things written down that I don't check off, then I just get bummed out. So I just do a list for each day, but I do it the day of. And it helps me process and prioritize. I love that. I love the, yeah, I have done several episodes on to do lists and love to talk about, obviously, like, task management and time management and life management. And it's always such a, it's such a treat to hear someone land to release. kinds of lists and approaches to time management that just don't work because nothing works for everyone like literally nothing works for every single person. So I love that you're like, I love to make a today, a today list. It's not a to-do list. It's a today list. That's an even better name. Yes. It's my today list. That's right. It's so good. That's so good. Well, I'm just thrilled

to have y'all on the show and I can't wait to hear how your email and clothes baskets go. We'll check in. We'll check in later about this. We'll be back. We'll be back. But thank you all for coming on on the podcast and for inviting me into your network. This is just the most fun thing. And I know that everyone listening is just as excited about this as we are.

And it's a real treat. So thank you. Well, I can't believe that I got to be in the ears of the lazy genius listeners because I am you. I am a lazy genius listener. And now here I am. So this is really, really cool. And thanks for having us. Yes, Kendra, thanks for having us.

Lazy Genius folks. And Office Ladies, folks, all my favorite folks combined. That's right. That's right. We're, yes, this is a good, this is a good combination of people, all the folks. I was trying to come up with a folks joke. And then it just sounded like the F word. And so I had to have an abandon ship really fast.

All right. Thanks so much for listening to the Lazy Genius podcast, enthusiastically part of the Office Ladies Network. 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. I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to becoming you wherever you get your podcasts.