The Lazy Genius Podcast - #364 When Life Feels Like a Fire Hose

Episode Date: May 6, 2024

Sometimes life feels like a fire hose, a constant stream of events or tasks or humans or needs or stimulation that wear you down, metaphorically soak you through, and create an environment where what you need keeps getting pushed to the back of the line. In those times, what do we do? Today, I’m going to share four things to keep in mind when life feels like a fire hose (one is super duper practical, promise!).   Helpful Companion Links Pre-order my new book The PLAN or ask your library to consider carrying a copy once it releases in October. Episode #310: How to Pivot Around Any Obstacle The Eisenhower Matrix 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) 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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It's never too early to plan your summer story in Europe with WestJet, from rolling countryside to cobblestone streets. Begin your next chapter. Book your seat at westjet.com or call your travel agent. WestJet, where your story takes off. Hey there, you're 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 364, when life feels. like a fire hose. We had a completely different episode plan for today, but my life turned into a

fire hose life this week. My youngest got hit with Pink Eye and had to miss a couple days of school. Then shortly after, kind of overlapping, actually, my oldest got sick with both strep and COVID. He's in the house right now. He will be for a few days still, which means he has to miss his final middle school band concert. Some of you saw the video of him playing in his Allstate Band performance last week. I posted on Instagram. That's probably where he got strep in COVID. But you know that music is this kid's life. And it's such a bummer for him.

He's got to miss his last middle school concert. With all that upheaval and tending from me, this week has been the type where I do not thrive. Even though I talk a lot about pivoting around plans and being kind and flexible and compassionate, I mean, I love a good plan. I wrote a book called The Plan out October 8th. Creating order around chaos and knowing what's coming, it's my literal favorite thing. But one of the things that is almost more important than the plan itself is learning and practicing what to do when it doesn't work out. After many years of failed plans, I have seen the value of learning to pivot over learning to plan. Plans are always going to fall apart.

So our ability to navigate that is crucial. That's why one of my favorite episodes that we've done of the podcast is episode 310, how to pivot around any obstacle. It's so good for us to learn this. But pivoting around a particular plan that goes awry is one thing. Feeling like life is a fire hose of chaos is another. This week has felt like a fire hose of chaos of decisions and stimulation without letting up. With two kids home all week on the heels of a very busy weekend and on the cusp of another, my own plans have had to severely pivot. And we're doing it like we're doing it. Like we're doing okay, and we're doing it. But the barrage of decisions of my kids needing something constantly, of feeling so incredibly overstimulated, of wearing the same clothes for literally three days

straight and feeling like the emotional exhaustion is just not going to let up. That energy is not my favorite. I mean, it's no one's favorite, but I do not do well there. Oh, and I'm also PMSing. I didn't mention that. That does not help at all. So all that to say, sometimes life feels like a fire hose, a constant stream of events or tasks or humans or needs or stimulations that wear you down, metaphorically soaking you through. And they create an environment where what you need keeps getting pushed to the back of the line in those times. What do we do? So today I'm going to share four things to keep in mind when life feels like a fire hose and share how I applied them this past week. One is super duper practical too. So don't think this is like all pep talk energy,

even though I love PEPTock Energy. Okay, let's jump in. Okay, number one, fire hose seasons are normal. Y'all, they are so normal. We hear a lot of messages about, you know, controlling our lives and keeping things in check and an order. So when chaotic things happen, it often leads us to feel like we're responsible for that chaos. And while occasionally, let's be real, that might be true. Like procrastinating on the laundry so long that no one has clean underwear, which,

can be rectified and it happens and you're not a bad person because of it. But most of the time, fire hose seasons, they just are. They're independent of us. For whatever reason, the combination of tasks and needs and our own energetic and emotional bandwidth just crash into each other in such a way that we feel like we're standing in front of a water hose. I think we need to normalize this feeling so that we don't sit in it alone thinking we did something wrong. You didn't. Sometimes you have a day or a week or however long that just feels like a fire hose. It just won't let up. It's like that children's book that I loved as a kid. Alexander's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. He got gum in his hair. His brothers got toys in their cereal boxes, but he only found cereal.

He had to sit in the middle of the car back seat instead of by the window. His teacher told him he left out 16 when he was counting and he's like, who needs 16? And he didn't get dessert in his lunch like his friends did and he had to go to the dentist after school and he had a cavity. I mean, that is a fire hose day if there ever was one. And the pylon is actually part of the problem. That onslaught of stimulation and disappointment and needs and keeping things afloat, it can really wear you down. Just one more thing. We're like, I can't, I can't do one more thing. And it happens to all of us. So first, remember that you're not alone in the fire hose experience that this is perfectly normal. It's not your fault. It's annoying, but it's normal.

Okay, so what do you do about it? That leads us to number two. This feels counterintuitive, but you need to slow down. Slow down. Now, yeah, that doesn't make a lot of sense because you're literally trying to stay sane in the wake of fast moving everything. So going slower just seems stupid. It's not. It's not. Yesterday, I had an intense fire hose moment where the following things all happened within five minutes. I got three different texts from three different people with benign, like fairly easy to answer questions, but in my head, each one felt like they were asking me the meaning of life. It was like so overwhelming. The dryer beeped to tell me that a cycle was done. One kid asked me for water, goldfish, the remote, and her blanket. Not all at once, mind you,

four different requests sequentially. The other kid asked me was for dinner for like the fourth time that day. That does something very particular to my attitude. The doorbell rang because groceries were delivered. The doorbell ring again because the mosquito guy needed to tell me he was going to spray the yard. I passed my to-do list that was on the counter and I saw how many things had not been marked off yet. I then noticed the container of chicken I had marinated but forgotten to put back in the fridge. Then because I was rushing around, I stub my toe on a pair of shoes left in the middle of the floor that were not mine, mind you. That was the last thing that happened because after I stubbed my toe, I literally stopped right where I was. I sat on the floor next to the shoes and I tried not to cry.

Now, not because crying is bad, crying is fantastic, but because I was so exhausted and I knew that if I released all the tears right then, I might not be able to stop. And I had two sick kids to still take care of and chicken and put away and clothes and get out of the dryer and groceries to bring in the house. Basically, the time for like a half hour sob session was not right now. But also, I wasn't about to pick up my speed and just power through, ignoring how I was feeling. No. So instead of metabolizing.

like the last few fire hose minutes with tears, I sat on the floor, I slowed down, I took several super deep, slow breaths, I just took a pause. And while it was a different kind of catharsis than crying is, it was what I needed right then. I needed to breathe to slow down and to calm my body. Even when there is so much to do and so much to respond to, we need to slow down in those moments because otherwise we will spin out, like literally spin and spin until we can't even do the things we need to do anymore. You know, when you're in a rush and you, like, you can't get your shoes on suddenly, or the key gets stuck in the door, or you drop a glass and a brace on the floor. When you're stressed out and you go fast, oh, the worst is when you like do the mascara

really fast and then you like mark it across your whole face. That's the worst one, man. When we go fast, our brain kind of like goes offline a little bit and we make more mistakes. We're freaked out. We're not present. We can sometimes cause more damage like metaphorical and maybe even literal in the case of like your morning coffee mug because of how quickly we're trying to get through all the things. So instead slow down.

Breathe. Slow your pace a little. Even just for now while you recalibrate and then do it again in a half an hour, an hour when you fill yourself spinning again. Now you might be saying, Kendra, okay, fine. slow down a little, but what about when there are so many things to do? What about when I want a minute to be quiet and breathe, but this baby I'm holding won't stop crying? Or this stressful work meeting is happening in five minutes, no matter what, no matter how I even feel about it. Or I have to

answer these texts actually right now. They're not going to wait. That leads us to number three. Welcome aboard via rail. Please sit and enjoy. Please sit and sip. Play. Post. Taste. View and enjoy 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 Dacre 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, number three. Number three is to get better at urgency triage. Get better at urgency triage. Let me give you a lot of caveats here first. I almost called number three, get good at urgency triage instead of get better. But good is relative, and it might make you feel like you aren't good at all. And then you'll get in your own head about not being good.

And then it becomes a whole self-esteem thing. And we're not going to do that. We're going to leave that behind. It's also important to recognize that not every brain works the same, right? When it comes to looking at all the things coming out of the fire hose and determining what is actually urgent right now, like what order do these things go in? Some of you listening are neurodivergent, and your brains literally do not have the same executive function skills that other brains do. You might never be, quote unquote, good at urgency triage in the normative way because your brain tells you that everything is urgent. or it just doesn't naturally order your tasks without a lot of effort.

So get good at urgency triage is actually not what we're after here. It's not very accurate. Instead, let's think about it like this. Like get better at urgency triage, but a little bit better, a little bit at a time over a long period of time. It's a skill you're developing. It's not right away. And it's not even to the same end for everyone listening.

So instead, I want you to just consider how you deal. deal with the fire hose in front of you. How do you pluck out what you need to do first? However you do it, maybe you can do one small thing to help you do that a little better in a way that serves you specifically that's more helpful to you. When you hear the doorbell ring and you see chicken on the counter and a kid ask you something and another kid asks you another something and you stub your toe and you go into an emotional tailspin, what on earth are you supposed to tend to first? right? Well, we already said, you know, first slow down and tell yourself it's normal. That's really important, very helpful. But then how do you decide what to do next? Okay.

I'm going to give you a couple of ideas here. One is mine that I've shared before and another is a bit more organized that came from a former president of the United States. We'll start with that one. Have you ever heard of the Eisenhower matrix? Apparently Dwight D. Eisenhower had to manage a lot of details when he was a five-star general in World War II. Go figure. Then he became president. And I don't know, he probably added a bit more to his to-do list than he had even when he was a general. He was excellent in urgency triage at knowing what to do first. And there is a triage tool called the Eisenhower Matrix. It would be easier for you to see it.

So even while I'm explaining this, you could like Google it. But it's also fairly simple to describe. So imagine four blocks, two rows, two columns. Okay? Four blocks. Two stacked on top of two. across the top of the two blocks, you see the words urgent and not urgent. Okay?

And then down the side of the left two blocks, you see the words important and not important. We're creating a matrix here. So the top left block is urgent and important. Top right is not urgent and important. Bottom left is urgent and not important. Bottom right is not urgent and not important. See it? Okay.

The Eisenhower matrix gives you an action based on the block that you are looking at. If it is urgent and important, you do it. Do it now. Prioritize that thing. If something is not urgent but still important, schedule it. Make sure it happens by carving out time for it. That that time does not have to be right now. And you don't even have to schedule it right now. You can just know like, okay, I need to find a time to do this, but like, I'm not going to worry about this right now. And then if something is urgent but not important, delegate it. Give it to someone else to do. and if something is not urgent and not important, don't do it. Let it go. Delete it from your brain. Okay, so let's go back to my moment on the floor as I had all of these stimuli and needs hit me at once.

In many ways, I think the most urgent and important thing in that moment was to slow down and breathe for a minute. Like, I needed to calm my body. Awesome. Okay. Now I can do an urgency triage. So from that list of all the things that happened in those five minutes, honestly, one of the most urgent and important was the chicken on the counter. That puppy needs to be in the fridge, pronto. Awesome. Okay, so I got off the floor and I did that. One thing down. Next came something that's urgent, that's important but not urgent. Important but not urgent. And that was Annie wanting goldfish and the remote and water in her blankie. Those things are important to her, but they were not urgent for her, which is why she delegated them to me. Hilarious that she's already really great at this. But guess what? I had other more urgent things in that moment.

than getting her a cup of goldfish, like bringing in the delivered groceries into the house, right? So instead of yelling at her, get your own stuff, or ignoring her, or fragmenting myself yet again by stopping what I was doing to tend to her and then forgetting what I was doing in the first place, I said, hey, Annie, I can get those for you in a few minutes, but I can't right now. If you want them now, you can get them. If you're good waiting about five minutes, I'll bring them to you later. Okay. So she can delegate to me, but I can also delegate right back to her, depending on how urgent this need is.

Now, that is super in the weeds when I break it down like this. And I wasn't necessarily thinking about it to this level of detail in my head. Like, where does this go on the eyes in our matrix? This is kind of what happens in a split second, you know? And to be fair, y'all, I'm, this sounds weird. I'm naturally gifted at urgency triage. We all had different giftings, and this is one of mine. I'm an amazing person in a crisis.

I'm not necessarily the one to comfort you in a crisis. Like I'm working on that. But I can manage your fire hose for you, for sure. But even if you're not naturally inclined to think this way, maybe something like the Eisenhower Matrix can help you know how to see your things, right? You know if it's urgent or important or not. And then there's an action there. Do it, schedule it, delegate it, delegate it or delete it.

Like just get rid of it, right? the more you practice this, the more you practice getting better bit by bit at urgency triage, the more easily this will be for you. It's like any skill that you develop. You can get better a little bit at a time over time. Now here's another option, another way to see it. You can do this reactively in your head or on a piece of paper if that helps. And that is my beloved list categorization of now, soon, later, and never mind. This is a way that I triage. This is a way that I triage, the urgency of my to-do list. And I love it so much. You either, you know, write down all the things, or you just think about one thing you're about to do in the moment and ask, does this have to happen now?

Can it be soon or even way later or even forgotten about completely? Just ask in the moment. It's so helpful to catch your brain in that tailspin, remind it that not everything is urgent, and simply name what is. Now, soon, later, never mind. If you have a lot of learning and growing to do in the area of urgency triage, honestly, the most important thing that you can do to help yourself as you decide what is important right now is to slow down and breathe. Truly, you will not make the best decisions when you're scattered and frantic and thinking that everything matters right now. In fact, if you stay in that space, you'll probably start to get resentful and mean and also, you know, break your coffee mug while you're rushing around.

chaos begets chaos. So see what you can do to calm it. And that leads us to number four. Number four is that kindness is crucial. Kindness is crucial. Kindness to yourself and your people and fire hose times is maybe the most important critical part of making it through. And in a weird way, it's one of the things that calms the chaos the most. When you are kind to yourself, when life feels like a fire hose. You don't get bent out of shape, or at least it takes a little longer to bend you out of shape. When you're kind to yourself, you might say to yourself things like, you know, we're doing okay. We don't have to get all this done right now. We're doing okay. You might speak into the old ways that you did something and name that you have grown so much and you are handling this so well.

I do that often. I have grown in pretty significant ways over the last decade or so, and I celebrate that as often as possible. When I don't yell at Sam for asking me what's for dinner again, that's a victory. I'm so grateful that I have learned to be softer and less reactive over time. When I leave the dishes on the counter for another few hours, rather than taking care of them right away, because I know that a nap will be better for me right now, that's growth. And I'm kind to myself in celebrating that growth. So notice how you have changed, even in the tiniest ways, and be kind as you navigate a difficult season, especially when you're in. You know, and how you navigate it has improved a little.

I think that's so rad. It's also crucial to be kind to our people. Last night, after a long day of caring for Annie, dealing with her boredom and her constant need of me, even though I had work to do and I had another kid to take care of, I had to take Sam to the doctor. That's when we found out he had COVID and seeing the whole week turn upside down.

I had to write the newsletter that went out last week. Time is weird with podcast recordings, but that's already been out, of making food for our family to eat and for some friends to eat the next day because they just had a baby and I'm taking them food tonight on the day that I'm recording this quite happily mind you and of tending to the groceries and the mosquito guy and the text and the disappointment every time I passed a mirror and I was still in the same clothes with the same dirty face and hair just trying to make it.

Last night I had this pivotal moment where I could choose kindness towards my husband or not. I had finished putting Annie to bed and I was getting settled on the couch to draw a face If you read my newsletter last week, I'm on a kick of learning how to draw and paint faces. It is so fun. And I had been looking forward to finally getting that time all day, all day. So I sat down. I put my sketchbook on my lap. I picked up my pencil and immediately heard a kid yell from the other room.

Hey, mom, can you come look at something? Y'all, the whole neighborhood probably heard how deeply I sighed. But I put my book down and I got right back up. Now, Kauz was also on the couch. And when I passed him, he smiled a. very like, I'm so sorry, you're always on call kind of smile. He's even thanked me like multiple times over the last few days for holding everything. He offered to take a day off so we could switch out. But frankly, it just made more sense with our work and the kids needs. Like people love their

mamas when they're sick for me to be the one who was home and the parent at home with the sick kids. And yet as I walked past him while he got to stay on the couch, I was so mad. How dare he just sit there? Why does this always have to be me? And then right away, right away, because I have learned the value of this practice over years and years. I accessed kindness. I felt kindness towards him in that moment, and I started to feel my anger seep away. So I don't talk about my faith much here, but I'm a Christian, and I believe that the Holy Spirit lives in me. And kindness is a fruit of that indwelling. If you've ever heard the phrase, the fruits of the Spirit, that's what that means. Kindness is something that we have access to. And y'all, I'm so glad because I do not have access to kindness on my own.

On my own, I am so mean, for real. You should be in the car with me sometimes. That's where I'm the meanest. On my own, I am mean and resentful and passive aggressive and then actually aggressive. So I am personally so grateful for my faith and my belief that I have access to supernatural kindness. And in that moment, as I pass Cause on the couch, that's what I felt. I had access to kindness that did not come from me, but it was still mine. I immediately recognized that guys had come home from a long day of working. He's a middle school guidance counselor, which is a tough job, y'all. He went straight into dinner with us and then immediately into playing games with my two younger ones and filling their buckets. And then while I was putting

Andy to bed, he was helping Ben with his math homework. He had started a load of laundry with the rest of the laundry sorted and ready to go. But because I was resenting what I was doing that I had to get up in that moment when I'd finally sat down to draw a face because I was resenting what I was doing. I lost sight of what he had already done. He had been on just as much as I had all that day, in a different way, right? But he'd been on. And then he had come home and he had been an active participant. And he was also just taking a minute to rest on the couch. He just got there before I did. And also his name is not mom. So he's just not beckoned as much as I am. When I access kindness towards him. I felt so much better. My life didn't feel as much of a fire hose because I could

see it more clearly for what it is. So the fire hose life, it happens. It is normal. When you have two kids suddenly homesick with antibiotic schedules and eyedrops and I drops and cancel COVID plans and work that still has to happen and groceries that need to be put away and all of it, life is just going to feel upside down. Of course it is. But by naming that it's normal, by slowing down, by getting better at urgency triage even in the moment. And by accessing kindness towards yourself and your people, the fire hose is still the fire hose, but it's not knocking you over. And even if it does, even if it does, you'll sit down, but you'll maybe rotate a little

so it hits your back instead of your face. And you know that you're going to be okay. You know you're going to be okay. This feels like a good place to remind all of us of the lazy genius mindset. good is here right now. Even when life feels like a fire hose, good is there. It's there. It is there in the form of kindness towards yourself. Of your kid laughing at her fifth SpongeBob episode of the day. Of a friend who sends you a funny meme along with the question that she needs an answer to. Of the lone, not sick middle kid who comes home happy from school

instead of downtrodden and holy moly, are you so glad you can just celebrate him and not have to do any more hard parenting? That the three-day old clothes that you're wearing are the softest clothes that you own. The good is here right now, even when life feels like a fire hose. I hope this episode helps you see your own fire hose life with a little more kindness. Okay, before we go, let's celebrate the lazy genius of the week. This week, it's Elizabeth Huber. Elizabeth writes, it's gift-giving season.

We just got an invitation to a graduation party and knew we'd been invited to his older brothers, so we wanted to give an equal gift, which I had done this before. I use my notes app for this, but can't be. easily use Google Docs or whatever. I made a file called Decide Once and I started a list for wedding gifts, graduation gifts, teacher appreciation, kid birthdays, adult birthdays, and the amount that we would be spending. This is such a helpful idea, Elizabeth. I bet a lot of you listening either already do this or we'll like totally make a note-sap-note right now. Consistency in seasons like this is so helpful to you as the giver and it's also really kind to the recipient, right?

Especially when the recipient is like a sibling of someone you already gave a gift or money to. So thank you for your message, Elizabeth, and congratulations on being the lazy genius of the week. This episode is hosted by me, Kendra Adachi, an executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fisher, and Angela Kinsey. The Lazy Genius podcast is enthusiastically part of the Office Ladies Network. Special thanks to Leah Jarvis for weekly production. Thank you guys 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. 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. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You wherever you get your podcasts.