The Lazy Genius Podcast - #371 - How to Lazy Genius a Day Trip

Episode Date: June 24, 2024

Summer is often a season for day trips for many reasons. Let’s apply the Lazy Genius Method to day trips to help you plan yours, but as we do, remember a key phrase: surprise and delight. It’s your energetic guiding light. Helpful Companion Links Pre-order my new book The PLAN or ask your library to consider carrying a copy once it releases in October. Book of the Month Breezy Instrumental playlist on Spotify 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

Hi 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 371. How to Lazy Genius a day trip. Summer is often a season for day trips for many reasons. If you are in education and you have some time off in the summer, going somewhere for a day is much more of an option now than other times of the year. If you're home with kids, you have a lot of, lot of days to enjoy slash fill up and a day trip could be a fun option. If you still work through the summer, like most working adults, and you can't really take time off for a longer vacation, a day trip is more feasible. Or if you love to go places, but money is tight right now, going somewhere for a day is more doable in this season than going somewhere overnight or longer. All in all, day trips might be on your horizon over the next few weeks for a variety of reason. So let's talk about how to lazy genius them. Now, this is a weird beginning, but a phrase that is often used in entrepreneurship and internet marketing is surprise and delight. Surprise and delight. A business

owner's job or a marketer's job is to surprise and delight their customers because being surprised and delighted are, I mean, surprising and delightful. It's a lovely thing to have something happen to you that is out of the ordinary that also makes you smile or laugh or have a good time. It also doesn't require anything grand. You know, you can be surprised and delighted in the smallest way and it still has an impact. I have been a member of Book of the Month forever and I still get so happy that every book I get comes with a bookmark. Like every package has a bookmark. And sometimes they're new designs. It's so fun. It's surprising and delightful every time. So that phrase is actually a great one to tuck away. for a day trip too. Now, you might argue that the broader point of a day trip is to surprise and

delight, but different trips have different priorities. But no matter your priority, there are multiple tiny ways to infuse surprise and delight into your day trip that make the day memorable. And if you have tiny kids, they also make the day more manageable. So today, we're going to apply the lazy genius method to day trips to help you plan yours. But as we do, I want you to remember that for phrase surprise and delight. It's your energetic guiding light. At the end of this episode, I will share some of the things that we do on a road trip for the day that are a surprise in the sense that they kind of only happen when we're on a road trip, and they're also quite delightful. They're the things that get all three kids in the car, even if only one of them is excited about where we're going.

Again, I will share those at the end of the episode. Okay, let me remind you of our beloved lazy genius method before we apply it to day trips. It is five steps. First, prioritize. You name what matters. Step two, essentialize. Get rid of what's in the way. Step three is organize, put everything in its place. Step four is to personalize or feel like yourself. And then finally, step five, systemize. Keep things in a flow. Now for any topic and for day trips specifically, you won't need all five of these steps. in equal measure. That almost always happens when you do this. When you walk through the lazy genius method, some steps are going to be more robust than others, and that is totally normal. Don't think you're doing it wrong if you don't have much for one particular step or even more than one.

For example, it's unlikely that we will have to systemize much about a day trip. There's no flow to really stay in because this is not a repeatable thing, right? Now, you might systemize things like travel house rules or packing lists or something. But the application of that step to day trips is probably quite small. That's very normal. So that's just a reminder. Okay. So let's think through the method and how it might help you plan a day trip. Because my guess is that at some point in your life, you have planned a trip in the wrong order. We've all done that. All right. Now, the reason that we start with prioritize and essentialize and not organize and not just for day trips, but in all the things, is because so often in life, we organize first. We try and set up the details. We put things in

their place and then we find ourselves harried or frustrated or missing something or did we even want to go here in the first place. That definitely happens. And it's because organizing is never first. Choosing where you're going to go weirdly is not the first step unless the priority of the day trip is to go to a specific place. So I really don't want you to skimp on thinking through the steps. The order of them really, really matters. Trust me on this. The order is super due matters.

Okay. So our first step in the lazy genius method is to prioritize. You need to name what matters about your day trip. Okay. Now, if you do not have a location chosen yet, don't worry. Like I said, that's actually kind of good. You get to decide what matters most about the day trip in general. Is it that you want a new experience? Do you want quiet adventure? Does it matter the most that

nobody complains, or at least they complain as little as possible? Does it matter most to experience comfort and ease, but in a new place? Because you just need to get out of your house for the day. You don't need to stretch anybody's comfort zones. What is the main priority here? Once you know that, you'll be able to narrow your focus, your choices, and you'll have a more rewarding experience. that more closely match your expectations. Okay, so step two is to essentialize. We've prioritized. Next, we're going to essentialize.

We're going to get rid of what's in the way so that you can have what you need. So what is in the way of you accomplishing this priority on your day trip? Is it that your kids are different ages and they like different things? Is it not having as much money to spend as you would like? Is it navigating a new place on your own with three tiny humans in tow? is it that you still don't know where you want to go? Name what is in the way. Get rid of what you can and then also name what's missing. What do you still need to have the type of day trip that matters to you? And now you can organize. This is where step three is meant to be. Now that you know what matters,

you've gotten rid of what's in the way, whether emotionally or logistically, and you've named what you need, you can start to put things in their proper place. You can organize where you're going, how you're going to get there, what you're going to do, that kind of thing. Logistics are best after you have prioritized and essentialized. All right, step four is to personalize. How do you need to feel like yourself, either planning the day trip or actually being on it? What do your people need to feel like themselves? My sister and I often joke that we do not have resilient children. I see other kids try new things and go to new places and like they're just gamers on a hot day. And my kids are literally in a heap on the sidewalk begging to immediately go home.

Hannah's kids are that way too. We just have like creature comfort children who are not much for adventure. But adventure is still a good thing to do, right? Resilience is something that can be developed. So our family still takes trips, both day trips and longer, to show our kids that they can pivot in new situations. They can learn to have a good time wherever they are. But one of the hardest things for me personally about family trips is the complaining. What immediately makes me not feel like myself is when I am internalizing all the complaining

and the balls of children on the floor. It makes me a crazy person. So it's important for me to feel like myself as much as possible to fill my bucket, to wear comfortable clothes, to have a book in the car, to bring headphones if the kids are going, you know, they're going to listen to music that I do not like so that I do not run out of energy before we've even done anything yet, right? And then I'm more prepared for the balls of children on the floor later. We all have things that make us off-center, not just kids. So personalize as much as you need to. And then the final step is to systemize or keep things in a flow. Again, this is unlikely to be a necessary step, but still ask the question when you're thinking through your own day trip. There might be an interesting answer waiting for

you. 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. Recently, our family took a day trip to a near- by city. And I'm going to give you the rundown of our day so that you can see how the lazy genius method worked to help us plan. And also share with you the things that we always do on day trips to surprise and delight our children and ourselves and some of the things that didn't

work out so well. So a couple of months ago, I saw an Instagram ad for something called the Brick Convention. It was a fan event for Lego. It's touring the country. And there was going to be a stop in Durham, North Carolina, which is about an hour away from where we live. Well, my middle kid loves Lego, Ben. Sam, my oldest, he used to, and he gets the bug occasionally still. And then Annie's kind of meh, but she tends to be game for things as long as I'm going. So we didn't have to worry about where we were going here because the whole impetus for the trip started with this Lego convention, right? I sent the link to cause. He thought it would be fun. So we got tickets. Now, the priority for us with this is to do something unusual and new. in the hopes it would be fun. It was like a tiny little adventure. That's our priority, okay?

But what's possibly in the way of that adventure being fun? What do we need to essentialize here? Since not all of my kids would be equally into it, I thought that something we might need was friends. Even if you're doing something you don't love, but you have a friend around, it makes it better. And as much as I wish my kids were friends with each other, they are siblings. They are not really friends. So I asked some family friends of ours who also like Lego if they wanted to come. They weren't sure for a little bit. And then finally decided they couldn't do that day since the weekend was already kind of busy for them.

So no harm, no foul. But I did lose one of the things that would have helped me essentialize this day trip and have what we need, friends. Otherwise, two of the three kids would still just think this whole thing is kind of boring, which, spoiler alert is exactly what happened. So this is a great spot to talk about the things that we always do on a trip. depending on the kind of trip that we are taking. Okay. One thing that we always do when we're driving longer than two hours is we do a gas station snack stop. The kids know that we will stop at a gas

station, preferably a big one like sheets or something, and everyone gets whatever snack they want. They think it's the greatest thing of all time. However, we did not do that on this trip because our drive is just one hour. It felt a little unnecessary. I was prepared to have us do it as a way to surprise and delight if the kids got restless, and I couldn't take it anymore. But weirdly enough, we never hit that point in the car. However, depending on the ages and attention spans of the people in your car, a gas station snack stop is a built-in part of your trip is a really great idea, one that we didn't do this time, but whatever, we didn't super need to. Something we also do on a day trip or otherwise is we stop for ice cream every time.

Our kids love ice cream. I love ice cream. Cause tolerates ice cream. But he's just happy to be there because he's in any grim nine. He's just content as a, what's content? I was going to say content as a peach. That is not the phrase. Carry on. But we always make an ice cream stop on a trip. When we take a longer trip, we like a full vacation, we usually get ice cream every day. It's just part of what makes things fun for us. We compare shops and flavors. We try and organize the ice cream into part of the day that makes the most sense for like a needed energy boost because we know we love it. It just never fails for us. Ice cream has never. never failed us. Side note, we're doing an ice cream challenge this summer in our town. We have made a

list of 10 ice cream places within a 30 minute driving radius that we love or that we want to try. We're going to go to one every week, rank the shop according to taste and experience. And then the final week, we'll go back to the one with the highest family score. This is how much we love ice crate. Okay, so back to the day trip. Choose your own type of ice cream. You know, what is something that you or your people really love without fail. Add that into your day trip every single time. That way, even if the experience itself is a fail, the quote unquote ice cream isn't. It's like playing your hot dogs. Playing your ice cream. Which takes me back to our recent trip to Durham. We had something going on in the morning of the brick convention. So we decided to organize our day by just going in

the afternoon. So the plan, which we know is just an intention, right? It's a It's not a pass fail. Plans are just intentions. If they don't go according to plan, you didn't fail anything. Our plan was to do, like, our morning thing in town, eat lunch at home so everyone could kind of rest and recharge after a busy morning. And then we would drive straight to Durham. Since the convention started at three, and it only takes like an hour to get there,

I decided it would be better to go get ice cream first. There's a Jenny's in Durham. And I never say no to a chance to go to a Jennings. the reason I opted that I opted for the organization of ice cream first. I put, that's where I was going to put ice cream in its place, was the very first thing, is because Sam and Annie were decidedly unhappy about this trip. They really did not want to go, especially once our friends could no longer go with us. So rather than have them keep asking when we could leave the convention to go get ice cream,

I decided to sugar them up first. I think that was an excellent plan. Kaz and I figured that we would let the convention be what it was. You know, we would just explore as we go. And depending on how late we stayed there, we would either get takeout on our way home or right when we got home and then take the food home. How's that for a sentence? Anyway, no matter the plan was takeout for dinner.

We just didn't know in what city or at what point it would happen. So that was our plan, our organization part of the Lacey Genius method, putting everything in its place. Now remember step four is to personalize. And as I already shared, this is important for me and my family. We are not a resilient group. So being able to have full buckets in whatever way, it makes a big, just a really big difference. That's why one of our travel rules, like our house rules, is that you can bring whatever you want in the car. I am not kidding you. Annie brought her entire bedspread, a pillow, and two huge stuffed animals. Okay, do you think, girl. Ben brought a book because he always brings a book. I brought my Kindle and I wore my

comfy summer jumpsuit that I've been wearing all summer so far. Feel like yourself. And one of the ways we do that is to let our kids take whatever they want the car, no matter how large it is. We also have a playlist that is our go-to for traveling, at least for shorter distances. It's called Adachi Van vibes. And it is a mix of specific songs that each person adds. The idea is that no matter what song is playing, you're not that far away from a song that you personally like. Now, this playlist, I'm not necessarily going to share it because it wouldn't work for other families because it has concert band music since that's what Sam likes. It's like a wild mix. It's a wild mix of concert band music, Imagine Dragons, Van Morrison and Taylor Swift. Like what can you do? But it works for us.

Our kids like music, praise be. So that's a way we can all feel like ourselves. We play music that everyone likes at least in part for some of the playlist. Okay, quickly. The reason that this does not work for longer trips for us, this is perfect for a day trip is because the longer we're in the car, the more tired and introspective everyone gets. We're not big chatters after about an hour, sometimes way less than that. But when the music is intense or you're like suddenly being forced out of your quiet reverie because Taylor Swift's 22 just came on, it's not a great vibe. So we usually start a trip with Adachi Van vibes. If we're going on a day trip, that's just all you play. But if we're going to be in the car for a while, I will eventually

transition to breezy instrumental, which is a playlist that all of you love. That playlist is part of my legacy. It's like that and change your life chicken. That playlist has over 10,000 stays on Spotify. 10,000. It is the weirdest magic that just gets any group of humans to just chill out and have a good time. Like, I still don't understand why, but I will not question it. It is so good. Breezy, instrumental, everybody. So the way that we feel like ourselves is that we make the van like a pleasant place to be. People can have what they need. We play music everyone likes and we call it good. Okay. Now back to the specifics of our day trip. We did our busy morning. We ate lunch at home. And then I rang the bell to signal everyone that it was time to start packing up because we have a bell that does

that because the children respond better to a bell than to my voice. Ben was pumped, right? He was so excited. He grabbed his book. He went straight to the car. He eventually had to come back inside because he was out there for a solid 15 minutes before anyone joined him. Like, he was ready to know what else was. Sam and Annie were pretty whiny about going. And I was whiny because they were whiny. It was not a great start. But we packed up water bottles and Annie's entire bedroom and loaded up. we had to have a little family pep talk as we were leaving about attitudes and how sometimes we do things as a family that one person likes more than everyone else. And we still do that with a happy attitude because we love each other, a forced idea for some of my children. And because we don't

yuck on yums. This was mostly aimed at my oldest, whose teenage birthright is to argue with things right now. But he eventually came around, especially when we learned that we were going to go get ice cream first. Apparently, the way that I anticipated the needed organization of the day was on point. Ice cream first was the correct call. So we went to Jenny's. I got three flavors, and I remember how amazing wildberry lavender is. I hadn't gotten that in a long time. Man, it's so good. The kids all got chocolate because they are rather conventional and I did not argue with them. And it was just delicious. Then we drove the four minutes to the convention center, super close. The kids, y'all, it was so funny. the kids were so confused because the convention was in a hotel. They don't go into many hotels.

They also did not understand the concept of a convention center. Like that lack of knowledge made them question our judgment in actually coming to this thing. They're like, are you guys sure we're in the right place? This seems weird. But we got into the hotel, found the convention center. We scanned our tickets. We went inside. I immediately realized this was not what I imagined. It was a hotel ballroom. So the lighting was weird. It was like very yellow and dim. The epic Lego builds that I imagined and that were advertised, they were epic in design, but they were still like fairly reasonable in size.

They were not huge statues like I assume they would be. We had to stand in line behind a velvet rope and walk a path to see all the Lego creations. And the actual creators of those builds were standing there, like waiting to be talked to, but we didn't know them or have a lot of questions. So I didn't have to do this, but I did anyway. I basically carried their responsibility of the emotional fulfillment of everyone in earshot. I tried to be encouraging about details that I saw. I was overly enthusiastic about how cool certain things were.

So my kids did not suddenly realize this was actually kind of boring. And then the second ballroom, while cool, was really just a glorified overpriced gift shop. This brings me to another day trip rule. We like souvenirs. My kids love them. They still keep them. But we do go in with a budget. It depends on the place and the trip.

But for this one, we said to them, okay, kids, you can have $10 each to get something you really love. If you see something you really love, right? But anything beyond that is on you. And even then, we do like to talk to them about it first, you know, because sometimes their decision-making skills are questionable. So there was a make-your-own minifig station. with just bins and bins of pieces to choose from.

And Sam found a tiny saxophone. And so he wanted to make a mini fig of himself, of course. He's, it's concert. He's, uh, it's concert black. He's like, it's like a little mini fake with brown hair and concert black holding a saxophone. It's pretty rad, actually. Annie, for her $10, she recently got her ears pierced and she found a pair of Lego dolphin earrings that she loves.

So she got those. Ben was the only one who wanted to get something on his own. There was a Lego set from the Marvel universe that I had never seen before, and he wanted to buy it. It was $90, which is a lot, but also he really loves his Marvel Lego sets. He has Captain America Shield, Thor's Hammer, that Infinity Stone hand thing, several others. They're like up in his room. He's a big fan. The problem was, I didn't know if 90 bucks was us being fleeced or not. And since I also had not seen this set before, or maybe it was one that was retired. Like the whole ballroom was full of retired sets.

Sadly, the hotel Wi-Fi was awful. And I could not get a signal at all. So I couldn't check Amazon to see if we could get it and get it for cheaper. I was like, well, all right, fine. Ben was in. So we got it. So we got back to the parking lot and I got a signal. I found that thing on Amazon for 70 bucks.

Oh, well. You went to some, you lose. But once everyone got their Lego item, we, you know, we gathered up. we were actually like sitting in a circle in the middle of the ballroom, like not the middle, but like away from everyone, but just on the floor. We collectively decided we were done and we left. Our ticket window for this convention was three to six o'clock. And we were ready to go.

It was a few minutes after four. Now, in the past, I might have seen that as a fail. You know, we need to use all of our time. Or I might have thought that we need to stay in Durham longer to make the trip worth it. Like we were in the car longer than we were at the convention. Or I would have blamed myself. I should have done more research to understand what this thing was. We don't do that anymore, guys.

We don't do that anymore. Plans are just intentions. They are not past fail. This trip was not quite what I pictured or what I intended it to be. But that doesn't mean it was a fail. That doesn't mean that I screwed up. That doesn't mean that we needed to like force our force a new trip into a bad shape of a trip because of the, because the timing wasn't what we expected. No, you just pivot. You go, all right,

I think we're good. I think we're done. Let's head home. It was like just a day trip. It was, it was barely even half a day trip. And that's okay. That's okay. So we left Durham early enough that we just got fast food like a few blocks from our house once we got back to Greensboro. We took it home, which was an option in the plan, if you recall, and it worked out fine. we did not have to pivot much, honestly, except in terms of expectations and then just the timing at the end. Our plans mostly went according to plan. But they were also fairly loose to begin with, which really helped, you know. We had a little adventure. We did something that not everyone was stoked about and survived. We found ways to surprise and delight with gift shot mini figs, ice cream,

and comfy vans. In some ways, I realize this is not like a super tip heavy episode on day trips, but day trips y'all they are so vast on what they can be it depends on who's going where you're going your budget your energy your purpose all of those things that is why i love the lazy genius method it is a process that helps you name the things that you need so you can have an experience that you enjoy and even if the experience itself isn't what you expected you can be kind and pivot and still feel like yourself the most important thing though that i want you to take from this episode from a logistical standpoint is to prioritize and essentialize before you organize. If you do not already have a place or a thing to go to, don't start there. Start with what you're wanting from this day trip.

What matters? What might be in the way of what matters or what's missing? Then fill in that gap with the actual place and the time you go. It doesn't always work that way. But when you're just wanting to go somewhere, save the somewhere for later in the decision, process and then also find your ice cream. And that is how to lazy genius a day trip. Okay, before we go, let's celebrate the lazy genius of the week. This week it is Jessica Moran with a very relevant idea to today's episode. Jessica writes this, often summertime involves travel. While our packing lists have everything each person needs to pack, it also has a section of things to do before we leave. I started this dock when my kids were little and I still printed off and have

made edits along the way. Now everyone can run around and cross things off our main list as we prepare to go. I really love this, Jessica. While everyone is busy gathering things to pack, they can stay in that active energy to do certain things too before leaving. It also demonstrates a very important concept of the whole family working together to get out the door. It's not just one person's job. So this is a really great idea. Thank you for sharing Jessica. And congratulations on being the lazy Genius of the Week. This episode is hosted by me, Kendra Adachi, and 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. Thanks y'all 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. 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.