The Lazy Genius Podcast - #63: The Lazy Genius Summer Strategy: Time

Episode Date: May 14, 2018

We're looking at the summer as one huge batch of time, but breaking it down into categories helps. In this episode, let's look at all the ways you (and your kids) can spend your time so you don't confuse them and always feel tired. Companion Episodes: The Lazy Genius Summer Strategy: Mindset The Lazy Genius and Self-Care The Lazy Genius and Time Management Download a transcript for 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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Hey everybody. This is the lazy genius podcast. I'm Kendra and I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. We're in the middle of a series about summer strategies. So welcome to episode number 63. The lazy genius summer strategy time. Last week we talked about creating a summer anchor and maybe even ushering in summer with an opening ceremony, all with the overarching focus on connection. We changed the our mindset. Go back just one episode to have a listen to that. And today we're going to talk about time. How do we structure our time during the summer? Some of you don't have any changes during the summer, but based on what I know of most of you listening, you're either going to be home with your kids, home from your job as a teacher, because we have so many teachers who listen. We love you teachers. Or you work full time, but you have kids who will be home during the summer and they'll be in activities and stuff. And you want to make summer special without your kids feeling like they're always being sent away to the next thing. So we're going to tackle different

ways you can structure your time from a bigger picture. And the next week, we'll talk more specifically about creating a routine that kind of gets down more into your sort of daily and weekly, nitty-gritty. So what are our categories of time we're probably going to deal with in the summer? Alone time. Amen. Productive slash project time. Rest time. Screen time. That's real. If you your kids are home. Mealtime, play time, and responsibility time. So let's just dive into each of these and we'll come out with a few strategies that might help your summer perspective on time. So let's start with screen time. I have no problem with screen time. My kids watch something every day and they're not terrible humans. Now, I have noticed that if they do screen time for more than an hour at a time,

they start becoming terrible humans. They're really moody and they're discontent and it takes them a really long time to get back to equilibrium. I don't know what that's about, but it exists, and I have to acknowledge it. So while we do have screen time every day, they don't do any one thing for usually more than like 45 to 50 minutes. Not always, but we do try. So during the summer, they might get to watch a show or two during their lunch if we're home for lunch. The boys will get to play on the iPad for a little bit during Annie's nap. And we do try to ramp up like educational games during the summer as much as we can because right now my middle kid just wants to watch YouTube kids and watch other videos of other kids playing with toys like it's the weirdest thing it's fine

and then the boys they always play video games for about half an hour after they take their shower at night before they go to bed um i have lived through just i don't want anybody to feel guilty or anything about this i have lived through stages of life especially after ben was born and sam was two where sam would watch tv for almost the entire morning i was so tired and he was really energetic and I didn't know how to take care of a new baby and him at the same time and so he watched a lot of TV. Sometimes that happens and you are not a bad mom for those choices. At least here you're not. I will never ever shame anyone for doing what they need to to make it. So here is your rule about screen time. Choose a time and a scenario that is fulfilling to you.

Make it count. If you find it impossible to have solid. alone time during the day, make screen time you're refueling alone time. Maybe you actually read a book rather than try to clean or cook dinner or something quote unquote productive during that time. If reading or exercising or whatever it is fills you up, you will be in a much better headspace to clean or cook dinner, even with the kids around later. As much as we default to this, I really don't want to use my kids summer screen time to look at Instagram. Or to clean up toys that my boys could totally clean up before they start screen time, or to sweep or do something I can do even if the kids are underfoot.

It might go slower. You know, like the tasks that would be faster and easier when I'm by myself, they'll be slower with the kids. But I can't refuel when I'm not alone, right? I can't read uninterrupted or sit outside in the quiet or take a nap. I can't do those things alone. Those things need solitude. The other stuff doesn't require it.

So use your kids screen time to feel. fill up on purpose. And speaking from experience, if you start that refueling time by opening your phone, 10 minutes will go by before you blink. It happens to all of us. So just try not to pick up your phone unless your phone is your actual refueling. Otherwise, it just sucks you in, like really mean quicksand. So don't do it. Next category. Uh, responsibility time. This is time dedicated to things you need to be responsible for, right? Tidying, cleaning the house, paying bills, yard work, adult things. If your kids are home, they have responsibility time too. For, I would say for the average person, like getting that kind of stuff done early is better than putting it off. The longer you wait,

the more you hate it when it happens. Everyone's situation is different, but try and think of a way to knock that stuff out immediately. If you have little kids home in the summer, maybe you have family chore time right after breakfast. Although we need a different word than chore. It sounds so horrible. But the kids eat breakfast, maybe they're old enough to take their place to the kitchen and their start your responsibility time. Tidy time, task time, get or done time, something time. Put on a playlist. Give everyone a task and go for it. A few weeks ago during an Instagram live, we were talking about cleaning with kids. And several of you shared the strategy of giving your tiny kids something that keeps them busy but doesn't create more work for you. That is key, right?

So like a tiny spray bottle and a rag in front of the kitchen cabinets and let them just go to town. They're not going to hurt anything. Baseboards, windows. Somebody said she tries to keep her kids on the edges of the rooms so she can tackle the real stuff in the center. I love that. We can have our kids be involved in the practice of keeping our home without making them mop and almost certainly dumping a bucket of water everywhere. So make a list of like tiny kid tasks that won't make you crazy to pull from during this responsibility time. And for the sake of routine, which little kids really do need, try and have this happen every day or at least the first three or four days of the week, or as we'll get to in a

little bit, maybe even like one whole day in the week. It's easier to keep momentum when that expectation is there, whether it's attached to a time of day or an actual day. If your kids are older, okay, so here we go, hear me out on this, you might consider making an entire day responsibility day. If everybody gets on board with Monday or Tuesday being task day, you know, chore day, whatever you want to call it, you clean all the things, mow the grass, whatever's on your weekly list, and then the rest of the week is legit home free. That is why I love doing laundry on a single day. No matter what clothes get dirty, I don't have to think about them again until the next laundry day. Cleaning your house, it can work the same way.

if you wanted to. So if you're home alone, if you, depending on the age of your kids, the one-day approach, it could be really good for responsibility time. So like if you're out of work, if you're out of class, make one day a week your adult day and just get it all done. Just clean your house and do all your adult things in your house. And then that leaves so much time for the other kinds of time that we're going to talk about. Okay, so next step, let's talk about playtime. Specifically playing outside time if you have kids. We like for our kids to be outside, but unless you're at the pool, playing outside in the summer is a bear for a lot of folks, depending on where you live. And if your kids are little, you have to be outside too. I live in North Carolina. So we have,

like, we have pretty hot summers. We've already had a few 85 degree days and it's just early May. If the temperature, for me personally, if the temperature is like much above 75, I start becoming kind of a whiny wuss real quick. If you're the same way, try and put outside time as early in the day as you can. I just said, I mean, I know I just said that maybe like your task time comes right after breakfast, but maybe an order that works better for super hot days is breakfast playing outside immediately after breakfast while it's still tolerable, come inside for, you know, task time, and then head into lunch. And then you save your errands for the, the afternoon when you can be in the air conditioning. You can go to Target. You can have your kids share

bag of popcorn. And all God's people said, amen. During the school year, we're used to errands in the morning. You know, you drop off maybe one kid at preschool or something and you do your errands in the morning and then playing outside after school because that's the only time our kids are home to play. We need a switch in the summer. So if you're dreading outside time, but know your kids need it, play outside in the morning. Afternoons can be spent inside. praise reading crafting having the beloved screen time or running errands don't be outside when it's the hottest just don't do it and for the love hang out with other people in your same situation again this is very true for those of you home with elementary age kids and younger play with

other families meet at a park for a breakfast picnic at eight in the morning man you're already up and then play for a couple of hours before it gets too hot rotate hosting a weekly morning playday with a couple of other parents and kids to have something built in when it comes playing with others. Just don't forget about the people around you. And if you happen to not have a lot of friends, maybe you're in a new city or you're a new mom and you don't have mom friends yet or any number of situations, it can be tough. And I get that. I've been in that situation before. It is not easy. It's very lonely. But you can take the first step. You can stop and say high to that mom at your church who has a kid the same age as you, but you don't know her name.

Offer to meet at a park or some other neutral spot where either of you can like, you just peace out if you need to, right? Join a class. Awkwardly speak to that mom at the park or at the children's museum or at the library. You can go to community events and have your antenna up for connections. You don't have to find a best friend. You can find a park friend or a library friend or a museum friend, start small, and don't be afraid to say hi, and have it be weird.

Most people long for the same connections that you are. So you go first, and it's going to be okay. Now, if you are home with or without kids, playtime is important for you too. I don't need to go into much here, but don't forget to make time for yourself to do fun things.

That might happen during your alone time if your kids are home, but whatever your situation, make time every day to play. make something paint go to a rock climbing gym walk in your cute downtown right as the stores are opening in the morning to enjoy you know the outside before you're gross and sweaty again just don't forget to play whatever play looks like for you don't forget to do it 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 kelpner host of the science of happiness podcast join me for cities of of awe, 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. Next up, rest time. We all need rest. Adults, kids, teenagers, creating a space where we get to rest is essential. And if you're an introvert or you have a kid who's an introvert, this is literally crucial to your summer survival. If you're an introvert and home with kids, again, you have to use that screen time or that nap time to refuel.

Don't use it to get ahead. Use it to refuel. It is vital. As far as your kids go, we often spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to create environments for our energetic social kids to get out all their energy and fill up. You know the ones, the kids who are like bored after two minutes of sitting still. My oldest is that kid. When he's around other kids, it's like he's shh.

shining, but if he has to be alone, it kills him slowly. I can see it happening. That's easier to recognize than the introverted kids who feel like they're dying slowly by all the movement and the playdates and the people we throw at them. Let's just be sensitive to our introverted kids and create space for them to thrive too, just like we do for our extroverted kids. Some of that is accomplished during rest time or room time or whatever you want to call it. everybody retreats to their room or to a room alone with a book or a pillow or a pat of paper and a jar of markers. My introvert Ben has to learn to socialize sometimes. And my extrovert, Sam, has to learn to be alone. It's good to know our limits so we can stretch them in a healthy way.

And your energetic kid needs to learn to be alone and rest just as much as your introverted kid needs to deal with being around people sometimes. So when do we create rest time? You choose the time a day, but I encourage you to choose a time before the damn usually breaks, right? That goes for you or your kids. Do you start losing your mind or losing your cool or losing your motivation or whatever it is around 4 o'clock in the afternoon? Have rest time at 3. If you don't have kids, do you find yourself growing weary of the day at a certain time of day? rest before the weary

do your kids start showing the wear of not meeting each other's needs after playing together for more than two hours around the two hour mark my boys will be at each other's throats then has run out of energy and Sam is just getting started

so you you can be intuitive about your kids you know your kids so if you know that they're going to start grading on each other's nerves around a certain time after being around each other for a certain time have a short burst of rest time before that happens. You can have rest time a couple times during the day.

It doesn't have to be just one time. For those of you who work full time and have kids in like various camps and programs during the summer, I encourage you to think about how rest time might look in your family. If you have kids who will be just like straight run down after a day of being with people, let that kid spend the time before dinner alone in her room. Be willing to wait to out.

ask questions about his day. My husband is an introvert, and I've learned that he's in a better place to talk about his day after he's been home for an hour or so without really having to say much. He's a counselor at a middle school, and so sometimes his days are really tough, and they're full of really hard things. He's been around people all day, up in their junk, and coming home to an immediate flurry of questions, and that can be really draining. My kids' questions are a little bit easier to answer.

You know, like, Dad, will you play basketball with me? But my asking him how his day was, it's a kinder question asked an hour or so later. So pay attention to that kind of thing with your kids who've been out of the house all day. I know you miss them, and I know you want to connect with them, and based on what some of you have said,

you might feel a little bit guilty about not being with them during the day, but don't be afraid to wait a bit. Allow rest time for those who need it, and I think that that connection will be even deeper. when you do ask. Two more. Two more types of time. Let's talk about productive time or like projects. Time to work on projects. Oh, those projects. So many of you shared on Instagram that one of your biggest frustrations with summer was not feeling like you were being productive.

Before we talk about this in a tangible way, let me remind you again that some of you, well, some of us have a wonky relationship with productivity. If you have nothing to show for your time, your time is a waste. I'm just going to straight up say that's not true. If you're home with little kids, you won't have much to show at the end of the summer other than like a sunburnt nose and kids who are like a little bit taller. And that's okay. Please, please release this pressure that you put on yourself to be productive. Remember to pack light on those things. Don't carry around things that are just going to make your summer heavy. Don't do it. Bringing along guilt about getting stuff done is only going to make you discontent with anything you end up doing because you will never do enough. So just let it go.

Just let it go. Now that said, what if you have a big project you want to complete? This comes down to a simple distinction. Does it need to be done in huge chunks or can you chip away a little bit at a time? So let's look quickly at the possibilities. If you work full time but also have a project to complete over the summer, either commit to spending one hour on it for all eight Saturdays of the summer or commit the first two Saturdays of the summer to completing the project so it's done and you can rest and have fun the rest of the time. Commit and then front load the summer as best you can. The worst is when we put off the project and feel badly because we don't finish it or feel so rushed that we lose our rest at the end of the summer and then we go into the fall,

feeling like crazy people. So front load. Front load those projects. if you're home for the summer and alone, do the same thing, but not just for Saturdays. Like, you can deem the first week or one of the first weeks of the summer project week. Just get it done, you know, just jump in and get it done. You'll have lots of time left to travel and sit by the pool and all the things. But if that project, if finishing that thing is really important to you, commit to it early and get her done. I can't believe I just say get her done like that. If you're home with kids, this is definitely a law.

harder. There are really, there's like no such thing as huge chunks of time when little kids are involved. If you need a huge chunk of time, swap an entire day of child care with another family. Hire a babysitter for three mornings in a row. Ask your spouse to be on like all out kid duty the first full weekend or two of the summer so you can have time to do that thing that you need to do. It does take a bit more creativity and definitely takes help from other people. But you can't complete that project this summer, even with kids. Just remember that your rest and those refueling times, those take precedence. Please, don't spend that precious alone time working on a project unless that project does the refueling. Those are two different kinds of time. Rest time and project time are two

different kinds of time. So please don't confuse them. And rest time comes first. And finally, meal time. Planning your meals in the summer. I think. it's more crucial than during the school year. I know. I really think that though. The summer, it feels like it should be really relaxed and spontaneous. Your kids, like, they play outside longer, or you're at the pool with friends. A lot of times the summer days are extended and look a lot like those school year days when you're panicking about what's for dinner and you scramble for hot dogs because you're out of time. But if you don't have a plan and you have a lot more more days of those late afternoons where you might not get to prep a meal.

You know, you have more chances of panic days, honestly. You're going to be eating those hot dog panic meals way more often in the summer than you do in the school year. It's like every day requires a panic meal because every day is extended. So this summer, even if you don't have kids at home, plan your meals. Plan your meals. Plan your meals. In a couple of weeks, I'm going to talk specifically about some dinner strategies,

like strategies for the summertime. but for the sake of thinking about meal time during the summer right now, just to have a plan. Bring the whole family in on it on a certain day. Make your list, buy your food, maybe even prep a lot of it on the same day. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to do this or not, but I'm considering pretty heavily this summer having one day a week be our family's food day. We pick our meals together. We go shopping together. We didn't pack the groceries together. We might even wash the vegetables and chop some stuff together. We cook a bunch of chicken on the grill. My boys whisk up some marines or sauces or whatever we need that week. And then we have a fridge full of mostly prep food so that when it's time to cook, the annoying stuff is done.

If we can do all that annoying stuff at once, the week will go much more smoothly. And it's okay if we stay at the park another half hour because I know what's for dinner. And a lot of it's already ready to go. So this summer, plan your meals, plan your meals, plan your meals. This goes for folks home alone, especially for those of you working with, with your kids and camps and stuff. Maybe on Friday nights, you make a quick meal plan, order the groceries online to be picked up the next morning,

and you spend Saturday morning like breakfast hours hanging out in the kitchen together. It's so essential to meal plan during the summer. Have I said that enough yet? And that way, this is the last lot of problem. You can actually enjoy going to a restaurant because it's planned. And it's not McDonald's in a panic, right? If you spend all your eating out money on panic meals, you won't get to go to that cool burger place that's more expensive but a lot more fun. So please, please, please plan.

Now, there are lots of strategies about how to meal plan. We're not going to get into those today, but it's as simple as just all it is, is just choosing what to eat. And if you shop on the same day you plan, if you prep on the same day you plan, or at least close to it, it's all going to make a little bit more sense. So just give it a try. Even if it's just for like one week, try for one week and see if it makes a difference. If it makes you crazy, go back to the other way. It's no problem. You've learned. But give it a try for a week and just see what happens. Okay, that was a lot of talk about time. But hopefully you heard one or two actionable things that you can do to make your time work better for you this summer. There are so many variables, but use one strategy to help you think of others that makes sense for your family. You know, like just choose one thing and other things can kind of branch off from that. Because doing it the way you've always done it, it doesn't have to be the way that you do it now.

make a tiny change in your time and in your perspective on it, it will most likely yield some pretty exponential dividends. So give some of those things to try. Let me know what they are. I'll be on Instagram this Thursday, 1215 Easter, and you can ask me your questions and share your thoughts with me there. I am at the lazy genius. All right. That's it for today. Thank you for listening you guys. Next week we'll talk specifically about building a summer routine. We've talked about big mindset and looking at these different types of time. So next week, we're going to kind of put it all together and come up with a kind of a rough summer routine for you and your people that you can create. And until then, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that

don't. Bye, guys. 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.