The Lazy Genius Podcast - #403 - How I Get Stuff Done When I Don’t Feel Like It

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

This is a universal problem. All of us have stuff we have to do and we just don’t feel like doing it. So either we don’t do it and get behind or we do it but with much reluctance. Neither option is fun. So today, I’m sharing ten things that help me get my stuff when I don’t feel like it. Helpful Companion Links Order my new book The PLAN or ask your library to consider carrying a copy. Episode #238: How to Get Stuff Done When You Don’t Feel Like It  Episode #341: The Real Reason It’s Hard to Get Stuff Done Episode #21: The Lazy Genius Does Laundry (see also: Episode #113: The Lazy Genius Does Laundry Updated!) Episode #51: The Lazy Genius Cleans the Bathroom The next Latest Lazy Letter comes out Wednesday, February 5th. Get on the list 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

Welcome aboard via rail. Please sit and enjoy. Please sit and stretch. Steep. Flip. Or that. And enjoy. Via Rail, love the way. 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 403, how I get stuff done when I don't. don't feel like it. This is a universal problem. All of us have stuff we have to do and we just don't feel like doing it. So either we don't do it and get behind or we do it, but with much reluctance. Neither option is fun. Like responsibility to be honest can be a huge energy suck, but we still have to do stuff. We still have to be responsible. We still have to be disciplined sometimes even though it's kind of a drag. So over three years ago, we released episode 238, how to get stuff done when you don't feel like it. That's how you get stuff done. So feel free to go back

and listen to that if you want some overarching help. It also might be beneficial to listen to episode 341. The real reason, it's hard to get stuff done. Both episodes give some helpful reframes, but today's episode is through a more personal lens. I'm going to share how I personally get stuff done when I don't feel like it. I had to take the time to figure it out because sometimes we We just do things intuitively without naming them. And lucky for us, there were literally 10 things when I worked it out. Like, I will never get over when that happens. The roundness of a natural list of 10 things makes me smile.

So today I'm going to share with you 10 things that help me get my stuff done when I don't feel like it. Number one, I remember how much I hate urgency. Now, this is a personal take, obviously. I mean, this whole episode is a personal take. but I do not enjoy the feeling of urgency at all when things are on a deadline or they have to be like right now or else I quickly, very quickly fall into behaviors that I don't enjoy about myself. I become really short with people. I'm impatient even if someone is trying to help and it takes

me a long time to come down from that energy. It's maybe my least favorite physical and mental experience. So because I hate the feeling of urgency so much, I will do whatever I can to not be in that place. It matters a great deal to me to not let things wait until the last minute, even things I don't want to do. It is rare, if not like impossible for my dislike of one thing that I have to do for it to be greater than my dislike of urgency. urgency is just my least favorite thing. And that's a pretty solid motivator most days, especially for things that have a natural deadline. So the first way I get stuff done, what I don't feel like it is to remember how much I hate the feeling of urgency. Number two, I'm motivated by a systemized home. Now, what do I mean by systemized? I like when things are in a flow. When most of the pieces of the very kind, very soft life machine, are working in harmony with each other. In fact, maybe it's like it's less a machine

because there's not a kind or soft machine. Maybe it's like less a machine and more like a song. You know, I like when my home is moving like music. It flows. It's mostly harmonious and it's pretty pleasant. To the same degree, I hate urgency. I love flow. I love for things to just roll in a natural way.

So I'm motivated to not let things fall off so that I can keep that flow going. Dishes are a really good example. Now, this isn't how it should necessarily be in every single home, but it's true in mine and universally relatable enough to possibly be true to our home too. So people are eating all through the day in our house, right? We are a family of five, and it's rare that we go a day where no one has dirty to dish. Like even during the week when all the kids are in school, like dishes only stay undurdyed when we're on vacation. Now, we do have a dishwasher. So our rhythm of loading and unloading the dishwasher is fairly set. It gets loaded throughout the day by multiple people.

We run it overnight on a timer. And then my kids each unload a level of the dishwasher because we have three levels and I have three children every morning. It's in a daily flow. Great. Okay. Now, the dishes that have to be hand washed, they do not have a daily flow because we don't always have daily handwashed. Now, I do not enjoy washing dishes. Like, I'll do it because we all have to do stuff that we don't love.

But I don't have any, like, romantic feelings about washing dishes. Unless I'm feeling extra contemplative or I'm listening to something like really sad in my headphones, I don't have an emotional connection with the chore of washing dishes. Now, I'm in the kitchen a lot each day. So I will see the dirty skillet from last night's dinner in the sink. Okay, it is unwashed. It needs to be washed, but I don't want to. So I'll just leave it.

It's not urgent either. I don't need it, right? Then, when it comes time to make dinner again, though, I just use a different skillet. I just use a different one. Now, we're starting to run into a problem because I only have two big skillets. So I'm now running out of cooking vessels here, right? That's when the flow starts to fade.

If the skillets stay dirty in the sink, for too long, it starts to mess with the flow of cooking dinner because now I have a chore to tend to before I start cooking. And since I'm already on a tight dinner window, because of like school pickups and clarinet lessons and random early dinners on Wednesdays because my boys have to leave early for youth group, adding a chore I really don't want to do to the start of that limited dinner time, it creates, you guessed it, urgency. We are no longer in a flow, my friends. We are rushed.

The water has gone from a lazy river to rapids because of two dirty skillets. Now, a couple of things to note. First, washing a skillet does not take long. It sometimes takes longer for the water to get hot than it does to wash the pan. So this is not a huge time thing. but if I wait and I let the dishes build up, it becomes a bigger, more overwhelming chore. It does take more time. That's why tending to things before they become urgent is generally something I like doing.

A second thing to note, if you relate to this scenario and you're also thinking, dude, this happens with laundry and bills and the kids' rooms and the bathroom too, you have just identified why you might feel even more overwhelmed by the things you don't want to do because there are many of them and they're all. a little behind. So I encourage you to start with one task, one chore or one area where you decide, you know, I'm really going to try to not let this get to an urgent place. I'm going to wash the single skillet, even though it could wait. You pick whatever your metaphorical skillet is. But if this energy feels relatable, this situation, you're like, yep, that's my house. Start small with

your version of a skillet. Okay. Do that thing. The third thing to note, about this particular story is that my husband almost always washes the dishes when he cleans the kitchen like pretty much every single time the dirty skillets are from when I leave them in the sink and even when I do leave them he still sometimes washes them so as I talk about walking past the sink of dirty dishes please know that I do not expect myself or you to be the only person who is responsible for those dishes unless you're the only person in your house unfortunately that means it is yours to do, which is a huge bummer. But don't hold the burden of the urgency and flow all by yourself if you don't have to. So because I don't like urgency and because I do love flow,

I tend to be fairly motivated to do the things I don't want to do in order to preserve the flow. The flow matters more than my dislike of the chore. It did not mean for that to rhyme. Number three, I depend on systems for stuff I really hate. I think that even in this lazy genius space, systems sometimes get a bad rap. If you depend too much on them, maybe you're a robot. Or if you depend on them at all, you're not letting your home just be alive and flawed and human. We've kind of had systems drilled into us so deeply that it's understandable that we all feel a little skittish to use them at all. I feel a similar way about diet culture.

told for years that walking and moving and watching what I ate would make me thinner and smaller and therefore more attractive. Garbage, gross. But that was diet culture's message. And also, walking and moving and watching what I eat helps me feel better and positively impacts my mental health and my sleep. I don't care about being smaller. It's not changing my body. But I do care about my mental health and my sleep. So the same behaviors come from different motivations. But If a previous motivation was unhealthy for you, it is understandable that you might want to throw the baby out with the bathwater and drop the behaviors because you don't want to be tied to those old motivations again.

The same might be true of systems. If you are a recovering perfectionist or at some point you used control of your life to feel safe in an unsafe environment, you might feel really uncomfortable trying to lean on systems again. You know, you know that that was not good for you, but right now they're too close to the raw nerve of what you used to be like, of what you used to depend on. And if you don't want to depend on that anymore, the behaviors just go out the window along with it. I understand that and have felt that and will likely continue to sometimes feel that way. Systems were dangerous for me for years because they really did turn me into an unkind, unrelenting, impatient,

fiercely independent robot. But the systems themselves weren't the problem. The reason I was using them was so perhaps, perhaps acknowledging that difference will help you move towards helpful systems again. So all that to say, I do depend on systems to take care of things that I hate doing. I hate doing laundry. I hate it. My system, well, my husband does it. Praise be. But also, I, I do. I I used to for years do the laundry before he took over. And I had a system. I had a laundry day. You can learn about laundry day in a very, very old episode.

Still excellent. Episode 21, 21, you guys, 21. Today's 403. Episode 21 is The Lazy Genius does laundry. And I had a system then, and it worked. I depended on that system because of how much I dislike doing laundry. The same is true for cleaning the house. part of our system right now is hiring a house cleaner who comes every other week now that is a new thing for us

you know it's just in the last couple of years and now i will actually make sacrifices of all kinds in order to pay for that it is so worth it to me now i also have three kids who are now parts of my system like a lot of mess can happen in the two weeks between our official cleanings and the messiest room that i hate dealing with the most is the bathroom i hate cleaning a bathroom i hate it i hate it Now back in the day, before I had kids to help, which they do now, or before I had a house cleaner coming, I had a system. I had a dependable way to clean the bathroom and a specific day that I did it. Now, you can listen to that in episode 51, again, super old. The lazy genius cleans the bathroom. But now I use my kids because I don't want to do it. So the systems change,

but the result is the same. The laundry still gets done. The, bathrooms still get clean. I hate both tasks so much. So they get most of my system attention. So that third way that I get stuff done when I don't feel like it is by depending on systems for the stuff I hate the most. 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, number four, if I choose to not do something now, I fill that time with enjoyment, not distraction. I think this one's,

really, really important. Imagine yourself staring at something you really don't want to do. You know, maybe it's a pile of laundry, maybe it's dishes, whatever. You might be staring right now, actually, that when we are like, oh, I don't want to, when we have that energy, sometimes our response is to distract ourselves or procrastinate while we feel kind of bad about the thing that we're not doing. We scroll social media or we just piddle around kind of whiny and avoidant. We avoid. We procrastinate, we distract. I stumbled upon a pretty great procrastination hack a while back that I will share with you now. When you are unmotivated and you just don't want to do the thing right now, don't do the thing. Just don't do it. Like if you have the ability to not do it, just don't do it.

But instead of feeling guilty that you're not doing it and distracting yourself with something that doesn't matter, do something that does matter. Do something that matters. For me, I read or I paint or I play guitar. Like I do something fun and creative that fills me up. I try to avoid anything that involves a screen because it's just too distracting. That I do something fun. I enjoy myself. I fill my own cup. Then weirdly enough that filling up, it gives me enough energy and motivation and now go do the thing I didn't want to do. Now I still don't really want to do it. But I do feel more energetic and kind of full and alive and like myself and I don't mind as much as I did before. This one's really important.

The fourth way I get stuff done when I don't feel like is to not do the thing, but also instead do something I really want to do. Number five, I start small. This is an obvious one, but it's still so good. Especially when I'm faced with a larger task I don't want to do, like cleaning up our dining room that has become the catch-all for the last two weeks, or putting away mountains of laundry that Cause has been cleaning and folding for me because he's a gym, but I let them build up and I have not put any of them away and he's done many loads and now my laundry is everywhere.

Or more complicated kind of unknown projects like figuring out if our will is up to date and how and when do we actually get it up to date. If I'm faced with something like that, I have to start small. I have to. If I'm staring at a dining room full of stuff, I say, okay, I'm just going to unpack the delivery boxes and take the cardboard to the recycling bin. Or if I'm staring at my mountain of laundry, I'll say, okay, I'm just going to hang up this like small pile of shirts that I will wear often. I'll wear them again soon.

So let me hang those up. Or if I'm trying to figure out the will thing, I'll just say, okay, I'm going to contact our financial planner and I'm going to ask her to remind me when and how we made our will and what I'm supposed to do next. Now, if you can't tell that last one is a real thing, I don't feel like doing right now. We made a will 15 years ago through legal Zoom or something.

And we have had two more kids. We have different circumstances than we do then. We have provisions we need to make for the kids like going to college in case the worst thing happens to us before they go to college. Like it's more complicated. And because it's more complicated, it feels huge and overwhelming. So I start small. I'm going to email my financial planner and say, hey, I know I should know the answer to this.

But can you help me know what the next step? is for updating our will. I'm just going to do that. Just do one thing. Start small. So the fifth way I get stuff done when I don't feel like it is to start small. Number six, I rarely do something I don't want to do without simultaneously doing something I do like to do. This is one of the common go-toes when getting stuff done when we don't feel like it. Do something fun at the same time. You know, listen to music or a podcast or an audiobook while you're cleaning or cooking, drink tea. from a favorite mug while you're doing administrative stuff on the computer, like looking up your will. Get yourself a fun coffee while you're running errands. Do whatever you're doing with a friend,

you know? I do love this as like a mainstay response, which is why it's like the sixth way that I get stuff when I don't feel like it. It is definitely on the list because this should be a go-to. I do like the others as a little bit more of a foundational beginning. But yeah, do something fun while you're doing something you don't like. Okay. Number seven, I do. do hard, annoying things with my kids around. I remember when my kids were younger and more needy and home a lot more. I felt like I needed to save the bigger chores or mental tasks for when they were napping or contentedly playing, which was never very long, or after they'd gone to bed. But those were the times. I wanted to do something I enjoyed. Not something I'd been avoiding. Still, I had this

like tripwire in my brain that doing stuff with the kids around was not the best use of my time. I needed to be available to them or not distracted by them or something like that. And sure, while sometimes that does make sense, like especially when your kids are very tiny, I think as a default, the opposite should be true. I think we should do the stuff we don't want to do when the kids are around. Let them see the chores. Let them be around when we're doing the thing. even if it takes longer with them there.

Depending on your kids or, you know, if you have kids or your parenting style or kind of whatever, you might not resonate with this. You might want to be super present and available to your kids, not really doing anything else, no matter their ages, as much as possible. And I think that's great. I think you get to choose that. I also think that for me, especially, more of my tasks are interruptible than I give them credit for.

Like as an example, I currently have a task back to the big. dining room thing. These are all very real. I have a task that I've written down, like, multiple times at this point where clearly I don't want to do it, where I just have to unpack a bunch of packages that I've gotten recently. I have like five from my PO box. There's seven others, maybe seven or eight others from like various things. You know, there's like toiletries from Target and skincare from Sephora and new shoes for Sam because he's growing like a weed and there's a couple of boxes from Amazon. There's a couple of other boxes from other people. I have no idea what's inside them. There is quite a stack of boxes on our big dining table where we don't eat, our kitchen

tables where we eat. And as much as packages are super fun. As that pile grows, all I can see is the other task connected to unboxing everything. I got to break down the boxes. I got to take them out to the recycling can. I got to put away all the things, right, that are in the boxes. And some of those things have tags and I have to cut the tags off first and find the scissors. I do have scissors in every room. This is one of the reasons. But then I have to like pick those little plastic tag pieces off the floor because they always fall on the floor. I basically just see a tiny row of annoying dominoes after I do the fun part of opening the boxes and knock over the line of dominoes. Now it's not going to take forever. The whole thing will probably take 20 minutes start to finish. But I just don't feel

like doing it. I just don't want to. I don't want to. Now it's funny is for the last couple of days, I keep saying, okay, I'll just do it once Annie gets in bed. Like somehow I need complete solitude and zero interruptions in order to open these boxes. That is hilarious and completely untrue. I can just do the thing when my kids are around. It's not even hard. But sometimes I get tripped up by that old thought that I used to have, that the chores I

keep putting off will only get done if they get my undivided, non-parenting. attention. And I have actually found the opposite to often be true. Doing the thing with my kids around, it keeps me more focused on the thing. It's sometimes a little more efficient because I'm having to focus on other things that are happening around me and so I move a little bit quicker. Other times it helps me be a little less precious about the task and the speed of it because it's okay if I get interrupted. You know, it's all right. I procrastinated this long. So the seventh way that I get stuff done, when I don't feel like it is I'd do it when my kids are around. Number eight, I set timers, super straightforward, right?

But sometimes incredibly helpful. In moments of peak lack of motivation, I can say, okay, let's just do this for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, we can stop. Like I'm a we, you know, there's two of me. There's the unmotivated task doing part of me. And then the inner cheerleader, like holding a stopwatch. But it helps. tasks we don't want to do.

They often feel that way because the end seems so far from where we are, right? The task is boring or gross or hard or annoying. And we can't imagine ever being done with it. But 10 minutes? 10 minutes is always just 10 minutes. And then often after the timer goes off, if I'm not done, I kind of have enough momentum going already and a reminder of how much I love flow and despise earth. urgency that I'll just finish, right? So number eight, I set timers. Number nine is like a little bit

weird, but super helpful sometimes. It is, I do what I call get up countdowns. If I'm super tired and just cannot get up off the couch, but I know I need to because dinner has to be made or the groceries have to be put away or a kidney cell with homework, I'll give myself a little countdown to get up. Like I'll literally count down on my head. Sometimes even out loud, I'll take breaths in between the numbers. And I'm just like, okay, we're going to get up in five, three, two, one. And then I get up after I say one. It's almost like, it's almost like I know I can be a grown up. Like I can get up. But it's also okay that it's hard not to. So giving myself three or five or ten seconds to gear up for it, sometimes really helps.

And finally, number 10, I ask for help or I ask for solidarity. When I'm gearing up to do the thing I don't want to do and I'm, you know, whining about it or I just can't imagine finishing it or legitimately don't see how I'm going to be able to finish it for whatever reason, I either ask for help or I ask for solidarity. I ask for help from somebody to help me do it, you know? Now, that person might be my future self, one of my kids, my husband. my mom, a friend, if something really needs doing and I'm just not in a place to get it done because of mental or physical health issues that day or a schedule that just kind of went haywire,

right? I'll ask someone else to help me. Or if I'm just kind of like, me and bleh about it, I will text somebody who I know won't try to fix it, but will also like, me and bleh with me. it's usually somebody who feels that same way about the same thing you know they just understand and that solidarity is weirdly galvanizing it takes my my puddle of emotions and it sucks them up into this tube of understanding which is a sentence i'm not sure anyone has ever said before but does that make sense solidarity does in fact solidify us it makes what was all over the place feel more put together simply because it happened. Somebody just saw us in this moment.

Being seen is really quite powerful. So in summary, the 10 ways that I get stuff done when I don't feel like it are. I remember how much I hate urgency. I find motivation and enjoyment in keeping my home in a reasonable flow. I depend on systems for the stuff I hate. when I actively choose to not do something for a minute, I fill that time with enjoyment, not distraction. I start small.

I do something I like while doing something I don't. I do hard things with my kids around. I set timers. I do get up countdowns. And I ask for either help or solidarity. Now, as always, the purpose of this list isn't to say that you should do or feel the same way as me. We're all different, right? But I do hope it puts to words some things that might be helpful for you as you create your own little toolkit of doing stuff, even though you don't feel

like it. And that's how I get stuff done when I don't feel like it. All right, if you are listening to this episode within a day of it coming out, the newest latest lazy letter is landing in inboxes this Wednesday, February 5th. I'm going to be sharing book reviews of the like 10 or so books I read this month, one of which is almost certainly going to be in my top five of the year. And another that is by far the scariest book I've ever read that I could not put down. I don't know how high it's going to be right now. It's number two behind the one I just said would be in a top five. Like two fantastic books that I just read. I will also be sharing how an approach to new year goals has been working really well for me, like in a way that it never had.

and my whole entire life, how I have set some peaceful boundaries for myself in recent weeks that are generally working pretty well. And then some comically relatable words about kids and movies. If you are new around here, you might not know this, but my kids, they all hate movies. Like as a concept, they say it's got too much escalating conflict. That's the quote. It's pretty great. But we've actually had like a couple of success stories in recent weeks, movies. And this feels well worth documenting because a lot of you were like very invested in my children liking movies. So if you would like to get this newsletter, you can sign up at the lazy genius collective.com slash join. All right, before we go, let's celebrate the lazy genius of the

week. This week, it's Blake Batchera. And this is a little bit longer, but this is what Blake writes. I have recently been applying the meal matrix concept to all the movies and shows that I keep meaning to watch, but never actually do. Because by the time, I'm actually sitting down on the couch. I cannot fathom, making one more decision. So I divided shows and movies up into buckets. A few of mine are stuff I don't really have to pay attention to, visually pretty, ploddy, and exciting. When I'm in a funk, seasonal and reliable go-toes. Then I populated each bucket with a few options, some that I've seen many times before, and some that are new to me. Finally, I made two decide once rules for myself. Number one, if I

can't or don't want to choose a category, the default is reliable go-toes. And number two, if I can't or don't want to decide within a category, I automatically choose the one below whatever I watched most recently. I have already watched so many of the things that had previously been languishing away on my list. I can already see so many other places this concept could be adapted. Games for game night, restaurants we've been meaning to try, weekend adventures, wardrobe choices, so many. This is so great, Blake. Again, it's just another example of how the lazy genius principles refuse to be put in a box. They are so versatile, so applicable to all kinds of things. You just listed a bunch. You just have to start by naming what matters to you around a challenge that you're having

and then try a principle and see how it helps. So this is so fun and a great idea for getting through the shows you actually want to see. So thanks for sharing Blake 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, 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.