The Lazy Genius Podcast - #381 - The Real Reason Planning Is Hard

Episode Date: September 2, 2024

We’re into compassionate time management around here, but it’s not just pep talks and high fives. We’re practical and kind, but we’re also educated. We are trying to understand why we struggle with time management, why we own so many planners, why we never feel like we’re doing enough, and even if we finally have let that go, we still struggle against the tide of everyone else making us feel bad for our beliefs. Basically, the problem is not you, and today I’m going to show you why by reading you the first chapter in my new book, out October 8, called The PLAN. Helpful Companion Links Pre-order my new book The PLAN or ask your library to consider carrying a copy once it releases in October. To thank you for pre-ordering the book, I’m sending out pep talks every Monday through the end of the year. Get yours here. 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. 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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Begin your next chapter. Book your seat at westjet.com or call your travel agent. WestJet, where your story takes off. Hi 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 381. The Real Reason Planning is hard.

It's not what you think. And I'm really excited to bring you into the light of the productivity industrial complex that we are all under. I do promise it's more exciting than that just sounded. The best way for me to explain the real reason planning is hard is using words that I already wrote that were edited many times over and are currently being printed into my new book, The Plan, Manage Your Time, like a lazy genius. We are into compassionate time management around here, but it's not just pep talks and high fives. We love those things too. We are practical and kind, but we're also educated. We are trying to understand why we struggle with time management, why we own so many planners, why we never feel like we're doing enough. And even if we finally have let that go, we still

struggle against the tide of everyone else making us feel bad for our choice. cases. Basically, the problem is not you. And today I'm going to show you why by reading you the first chapter in my new book out October 8th called the plan. Here it is. I grew up going to the mall. If you're of an age where you're not sure what a mall is, now is a good time to tell you that I am in perimenopause. I've never downloaded TikTok and I didn't have a cell phone until I was 17, not because my parents were strict, but because people didn't have them yet. Consider yourself generationally warned. Back to the mall. I loved spending time there as a kid. The mall is where I got my ears pierced, where I awkwardly hung out with a boy I liked, where I ate a truckload of synobons,

where I learned to confidently walk past Victoria's Secret without looking or breaking stride. Say you grew up in purity culture without saying you grew up in purity culture. But my favorite thing about the mall was the You Are Here Map. Holy moly, I still love that thing. Not only, do you you have the stores organized by category on a giant screen, but you also have a beautiful red dot that tells you exactly where you are. Say you're an enneagram one without saying you're an anagram one. You can see everything and you can see yourself. Chances are you would like that for your life too. Wouldn't it be amazing to see everything at a glance so you can quickly chart a route to an imagined future where life is beautiful and under control?

That's probably why you keep buying planners. A planner is the closest thing we have to a you are here map to that bird's eye view. You want your day, week, month, quarter, year, to do lists, tracking bubbles, words of gratitude, meal plans, and five-year goals, all available at a glance. You get your next new planner and you spend hours setting it up, answering questions about what you want to accomplish and what habits you want to begin, and maybe even trying your hand at a doodle or two. Once you're done, you let out a deep, gratified sigh. There it is. There's everything at once. Life is going to be better now. But then, much to your chagrin, life happens again, and you can't

keep up with your plan. You manage what you can for as long as you can, biding your time until the next opportunity to reset and see everything at once, the beginning of summer, the school year, January, and you repeat. I bet you've been repeating for a long time, yet you're still drowning. Why? Everything at once is the problem, not the solution. Everything at once is why you push your palms against your eyeballs multiple times a day. Everything at once is why you dooms scroll in the bathroom hoping no one notices you're gone. They will. Everything at once is why you listen to an audiobook while cooking dinner, while helping somebody with her homework, while wearing microfiber socks because somebody on the internet said it was like sweeping. Everything at once is not how we're

meant to live. Before you lose hope, let me be the Robin Williams to your Matt Damon and tell you that it's not your fault. It's not your fault. It's not your fault. It's not your fault. You You are not the reason you're drowning. You are not the reason everything at once doesn't work. You are not the reason time management principles aren't sticking. The reason is far beyond you. Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa, whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower.

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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. Let's sit crisscross applesauce and do a little history. corner, okay? Remember the industrial revolution? America quickly went from, whoa, coal, to OMG, gas is amazing, to have you heard about this electricity thing? The West got bigger and better, and consequently went cuckoo for productivity. This guy's factory had to beat that guy's factory,

and he did that by making stuff faster than the other guy did. When the digital revolution happened, it gave us more the computers and AOL instant messenger, we were given the promise of more time. Technology would create efficient production for us, freeing us to do other, presumably more enjoyable things. Amazing. However, that digital revolution happened so fast that we never disentangled ourselves from the Industrial Revolution's culture of productivity. Unfortunately for us, that same technology incidentally made the productivity obsession worse. It makes me think of that scene in Sabrina when Harrison Ford, Linus, and Julia Ormond, Sabrina, take a helicopter to board a private jet to fly to Martha's Vineyard for the day.

Once they're buckled into their plush seats, Linus immediately begins working, looking at nothing but the reports in front of him. Sabrina, frustrated by his indifference to the present moment, asks, Don't you ever look out the window? I don't have time. What about all the time we've saved taking the helicopter? He awkwardly pauses. I'm storing it up. No, you're not.

She replies. And y'all, we're not either. In fact, the obsession with productivity is so deeply woven into our culture that we live in a productivity, industrial complex. Even though I did not thrive in any form of social studies class, allow me to explain what that means. An industrial complex is essentially when an industry is in a feedback loop with some element in society. The public and private sectors become so intertwined that separating them is almost impossible. And that connection is often at odds with what is best for society itself.

Let's take weddings as an example. The U.S. wedding industry was worth over $70 billion in 2023, with the average wedding costing just shy of $30,000. I'm not knocking anyone's choices, and if you want an all-out wedding, enjoy it. But what if the wedding industry began pushing the idea that smaller, simpler, less expensive weddings were great, that you didn't need to follow the trends? Think about Instagram worthy elements. impressive in any way. If that idea took root, people would spend less and the industry would suffer.

So even though it might be collectively better for folks to have whatever wedding they like, the wedding industry cannot encourage that. Therefore, we will continue to have magazines, blogs, and social media telling us what kind of wedding we should want. That's the wedding industrial complex. Another example is the prison industrial complex. Many are championing reform in the judicial system, which would lead to fewer people in prisons. However, the U.S. prison industry makes over 10 billion a year. And incarcerated individuals in the prison system generate revenue from goods and services on top of that. So even though justice reform and prison reform would be beneficial for society, the prison industrial complex makes them extremely.

difficult because of how deeply entwined the justice system is with the industry. The same has happened with productivity. The current productivity paradigm of optimization, efficiency, and success is so pervasive and so expected that it stands to reason we need resources and structures to uphold that paradigm. The global productivity industry is projected to generate $79 billion in 2024. That's a lot of billions. As long as productivity matters, the marketplace will thrive. And as long as the marketplace thrives, productivity will remain in the cultural conversation.

The snake just eats its tail while also becoming very rich. And that snake does not want you to be content with your life. That snake wants you to keep trying and striving and planning and dreaming and wondering if any of it is working. That snake wants you to, as the horrible saying goes, rest when you're dead. Because when you keep going, you spend money and you keep the industry going to. As my friend and New York Times bestselling author, Kelly Corrigan, once said to me, contentment doesn't stimulate economic activity. in short, your preoccupation with productivity to whatever level is not your fault.

It was built into the system long before you were flipping through your first planner. And that's not the only thing that's built into the system. Now it's time for Women's History Corner. White women couldn't vote until 1920. Black women couldn't vote until 1965. Women could legally be fired for being pregnant until 1978. women still get paid less than men for the same jobs. Oh fun, we can throw a little implicit patriarchy into the productivity industrial complex. Essentially, women are in a white man-made world

that's supported by white men's rules for the benefit of white men, and we haven't had a voice for long enough to see many tangible results of being heard. Now, exceptions exist everywhere, but generally speaking, men aren't expected to make every meal, do all the laundry, remember every birthday, get their body back, stay at home for the sake of the kids or have kids at all. They're not shamed for being single. They don't worry about going for a run at night or automatically walk through a parking deck with their keys between their fingers. Men don't daily exist with the weariness and injustice of not being listened to in a male dominated field. They aren't the ones to leave work to get a sick kid from school.

Men typically do not take it upon themselves to remember every detail of a home's invisible ecosystem. Men aren't told to smile, calm down, clean up, or get in line. Men don't bleed every 28 days. Do you see the disparity here? The productivity industry makes a ton of money teaching us to produce all within a culture that holds us to a startlingly high standard of what a woman's production should be. We have no choice but to live according to the rules and strategies written by and for men. It's exhausting and it's time for another way. And that completes the first chapter. of the plan. I didn't mean for this to be like so much of a tease, you know, like a dramatic movie trailer that is the end of chapter one. But the rest of the book completely lays out that other

way. It is full of helpful principles to change how you think, actionable strategies that you can use in your planning literally right now, and then a whole section of labeled pep talks for when you need a reminder about what matters. The real reason planning is hard, has nothing to do with you, y'all. So let's make it easier. Let's make it about the right things, compassion, contentment, good practices we can use today and kindness when our well-laid plans don't work out. Plus, again, lots of actionable real-life help.

I cannot wait for you to read it. Now, if you've already ordered the book, don't forget to register your pre-order with TMLG at the lazy genius collective.com slash the plan. When you do that, you get access to a weekly pep talk in both written and audio form delivered to you every single Monday for the rest of 2024. I am writing them as life happens around us, so hopefully all of them will feel wildly seasonal and relevant to whatever you're dealing with. I can't wait for you to start experiencing them while you wait for the book to release. So register your pre-order at the The lazy genius collective.com slash the plan.

All right. There is no lazy genius of the week today, since all of you who pre-order are lazy geniuses of the week. Kidding. Kind of. However, if you would like to be considered for the lazy genius of the week, email us your idea at hello at the lazy genius collective.com. 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. 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, 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.

We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You wherever you get your podcasts.