The Lazy Genius Podcast - #96 - The Lazy Genius Works from Home

Episode Date: February 18, 2019

Although this is a frequently requested topic, I get that your situation might be very different from mine and from each person listening. I hope this episode is an encouragement on how to think about your own work, whether professional or what makes you feel like a person outside of motherhood, laundry, cookings and all the things. Helpful Links For You Join the Lazy Genius mailing list. Don’t sleep on this, y’all. The Meal Plan is coming back! Here’s a starter pack of episodes where I talk about productivity and household chores that you may find helpful: The Lazy Genius Finds the Best Way to Do Things, The Lazy Genius Cleaning Routine, The Lazy Genius Tidies the House, and The Lazy Genius and Time Management. 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 everyone. You're listening to 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. Today is episode 96. The Lazy Genius works from home. This is another really requested topic and I'm so excited we get to talk about it today. Now your situation, it might be very different from mine and from each person listening. So as I share how I work from home, just let it be an encouragement on how to think about your own work, whether like professional or just what makes you feel like a person outside of motherhood and other responsibilities. I'm going to give you the nitty gritty of my working from home. Not for you to copy, but for you to just consider as you develop your own nitty gritty. Before we get into the nitty gritty,

just a heads up. Good news, friends. The meal plan is opening up again. It's going to be available from February 24th to March 7th. So that's like about a week and a half. And it looks up, it looks a bit different than it did. last time, we're still kind of putting the finishing touches on it, but it is still the lazy genius guide to happy dinners at home. I'm going to keep you posted here on the podcast when it is available. I mean, it starts February 24th. But if you want first word of when it's available, especially like there is a chance that there is like a little early bird special happening, but just for folks on the mailing list, join that mailing list. You can go to the lazy genius collective.com slash join or you can click the link in the info section of this

episode in your podcast app. Okay, let's talk about working from home. This entire conversation, it assumes you have kids in the house, simply because other humans are the biggest reason. It's hard to do our work. Now, if you don't have kids, I think you might still get some really good tips and mindsets in this episode, but I'm working from the starting point that the reason you struggle to work from home is all the tiny humans. In this episode, I'm going to offer five simple points, the five commandments, if you will. of working from home. Number one, use your free time for your stuff. It's nap time or like one of the two mornings a week your kid is at preschool or, you know, grandma's in town and just took the kids to the park

for the morning or something. Yeah, you could clean the house. You could get a jump start on dinner or like lots of things. But if you can do those things when your kids are around, don't do them when they're not. Don't do them during your free time. Only use your free time for your stuff. that you have to do alone. If you want to write, it's really impossible to write with other people around. If you're trying to take online classes to develop a skill in something, it's hard to concentrate when someone is like constantly asking you for juice. If you have a boss and you want to do a good job and the work expected of you, it's nice for that work to have your full attention. You know the thing you need to do and you know that you could do it at a high level if you can do it uninterrupted. That is why

commandment number one is to use your free time for your stuff. It's not for cleaning or dinner or running errands. I know that all those things are like a lot quicker without your kids, but they're not impossible with your kids. Your work mostly is. I'd rather be a little rushed at dinner than waste my rare mornings on meal prep instead of on work. Okay, so number one, use your free time for your stuff. Number two, take what you can get, but on purpose. if you have lots of little kids at home or even just one feels like lots your only free time it might be when they're sleeping i've lived those days i ran businesses during those days it is not easy i feel your pain but working from home with kids is often harder in our our minds and our expectation than in the execution let me explain if all you get as an hour a day during nap time you know if your kids

happen to like nap at the same time for an actual entire REM cycle, you might feel discontent with that, that that's all you get. Like only an hour and it's not even a consistent hour. I know, I've been frustrated with that lack of time too so often. But accepting those tiny pockets of free time as they are, rather than resenting the fact that you don't have more, that you don't have more time, it's really helpful. Take what you can get. You will eventually get more.

But for now, have realistic expectations about this stage of your life. I know that's basically the worst because it feels like it will never end, but it does. It does end. And also, it kind of feels like the worst because you don't want to wish these years away, right? It's like all the things jumbled into one ball of like nonsensical emotion. But it's not. It's not nonsensical. In fact, it is incredibly normal. It's okay to look forward to having more time without resenting where you are now. It's okay to be frustrated with the fact that you're so tired and have literally 15 minutes to yourself every day and still take what you can get on purpose. In some ways, the time is secondary. An hour a day that you take and embrace on purpose,

it could very well result in like way more stuff done and a calmer spirit than say four hours, three times a week that you wish was five days a week and you also had a housekeeper. You see what I mean? It's all about how we see it. So number two is take what you can get on purpose. Know that it won't always be like this. And if right now has tiny bits of time, I know it's frustrating. Just be intentional with how you fill those tiny bits rather than resenting,

not having more. I know it's easier said than done, but it's also an invaluable practice and just learning to be a more self-aware, compassionate, patient, human. Okay, number three, use timers. timers are weirdly magical. And here's some ways that you can use them, especially when you hit the season of having larger chunks of time. Because let's face it, if you have babies at home, they're your timer, right? Crying, lunchtime, dirty diapers, nap is over. Like those are life timers. But if you're in the season of a kid being in preschool a day or two a week,

or you have a more dependable afternoon nap time that lasts longer than an hour, consider using timers. just because we're given larger chunks of chunks of time, it doesn't mean we're automatically awesome at managing them. We get distracted with that time just as easily as we do with like any other time. Timers keep you on task and they give you permission to play. They give you permission to like focus on things other than work every so often. There are a lot of names and kind of like iterations of this particular idea. But the gist is, you use. set a timer for a certain amount of time and you go hard. And at the end of the timer, you get a little time to do something else like scroll Instagram or unload the dishwasher.

So a timer, you like set a timer for like 45 minutes, let's say. And then you have another 15 minute timer to do whatever you want. Do that three or four times during like a preschool morning and you're all set. But you might think like, well, that's an entire hour of my four hours. So if I'm doing like 15 minutes for all that, like that's a lot of time given over to non-work stuff. It feels wasteful and you're right. It might feel that way. But almost certainly you are unintentionally using that much time, if not more, to not focus on your work. We all think that when we have like that big chunk of time, we're just going to like sit and bust it for hours without stopping.

But instead you get a text, you answer it. But you check your email real fast while you're. phone is open. You use a bathroom and then you like stop to put a little laundry away on the way back to your desk and you get distracted by a mess in your kid's bedroom and then you start like hate throwing wooden trains into a basket. You you might even just see your four hours as like so luxurious that you don't need to rush because you've never had this kind of time before and that's a lovely way to think about it but you also maybe don't use your time like super effectively because you're just not focused. But with a timer, you work for 45 minutes with your phone flipped over. Your email tab

is closed down on your laptop and you work, knowing that it's not going to be long before your time will be up and you can do whatever you want for 15 minutes before getting back to work. You're allowing yourself time to be distracted, which keeps you from actually being distracted while you're working because you know it's coming. Now, I do, you might have heard about the book called Deep Work by Cal Newport. and I do love that book. I love the idea of deep work. He's not a fan of distractions at all. And he wants us to like train our brains to focus on one thing for a really long amount of time. Now this practice of setting a timer where it can actually help you develop that skill. You might start with a timer rotation of like a 30 minutes of work and 10 minutes of break. And eventually that'll grow to like several

hours if that's how you want to engage your brain. Or you might just want to like give yourself a chance to about once an hour. So you just give yourself that permission with a timer. It also helps with being distracted by the messes around you at home while you're working. So when your 15 minute timer starts to do what you want, you know, prep dinner, you can like speed tidy a room, put away a load of laundry, like do those things on purpose within a certain confine of time because you're giving yourself permission to do them. And you're just, you'll be so surprised at how much more productive you are. It's pretty wild. Okay, number four, you can't do everything, nor do you have to. You can't do everything, nor do you have to. When it comes to working at home, women often have a mental block

in, you know, the norms of like stereotypical recent gender tradition. Women who work also have to manage the house. Like women have to manage the house. That's really what it comes down to. That's what it feels like. Now we're thankfully moving in a direction of like equal partnerships in the home between spouses or partners, but often women who have a job or a side hustle or just a dream they want to cultivate feel like any time spent on that is at the expense of time doing something else for the home for the family that probably feels more important. And we need to stop with that mentality. You know you can't do everything, which is why your work is probably what's put on the back burner more often than the other stuff. But you also don't have to do everything. You don't have to see

your work as some grand sacrifice that your family will suffer from and like they're never going to eat a hot meal again. It's not all or nothing. Work, dreams, spending time on yourself. It doesn't mean you're terrible and you have to find ways to be less terrible. That's not what this is about. So, okay, so what does it mean to not have to do everything? Now one way, is to share the load with a partner. My husband has an eight to five job. And for a long time, I saw him as a babysitter, you know, like as a kind of babysitter when I wanted to do work or do something for myself, something fun. I apologized over and over again for taking his valuable free time to spend with his children. And even if you are laughing at me about that, you've probably thought

it before too. Most of us have, I think. It's a weird shift to see. It's a weird shift to see. our work as equal to our spouses in importance, even if the measurements of money and obligations are different. Being home with the kids is a job too. We know that. And we should all get rest and breaks from those jobs. Now, it's weird because there's often like a higher calling to motherhood than to say accounting. And if that resonates with your beliefs, that might not with everyone, But if that resonates with your beliefs, that's kind of like part of your hang up. You can be called to motherhood. I still need a break.

You can be called to motherhood and still acknowledge that you and your spouse have equal needs of rest and rejuvenation in whatever ways that looks like when the weekend comes. So you trade off. Maybe on a Saturday afternoon, you each get a couple of hours to do whatever you want while the other person is on kid duty. no apologies, no weird comparison of like parental sacrifices or feeling like your husband should just get to relax after a long week at work. Your week was long too. And that's okay. You can't do everything, nor do you have to. That's why partners are a beautiful thing. You're on an equal playing

field, encouraging each other equally, supporting the other in what they need, but not in like, at the absolute expense of yourself. It's equal and it's not. It's not. selfish to see it that way either. You're not being selfish. You're just being a person. This episode is brought to you by Defender. With its 626 horsepower twin-turbo V8 engine, the Defender Octa is taking on the Dakar rally. The Ultimate Offroad Challenge. Learn more at landrover.ca. Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa. Whether it's Verde, Roha or the orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower.

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Now, what are some other ways that you don't have to do at all? If you heard that first rule about like only doing your own work during your free time and you thought, well, when am I supposed to clean the house or whatever? First, you're not the only one who can help with cleaning the house, for one, but you can also be creative in maximizing your cleaning time by doing something like this. You can partner, obviously, with a spouse if you have a spouse, but you can also partner with a friend. Grab a mom, well, not physically grab, but have a conversation with a mom who is in a similar life stage as you with kids home, like around the same time, had the same sort of nap schedule and all that kind of.

stuff and swap days swap like house cleaning days so for example every other Tuesday one of you takes both kids while the other mom goes home for three hours and just bust the house clean you can listen to the lazy genius cleans the house um as well as lazy jeans cleans the bathroom lazy genius cleans the kitchen if you need some inspiration on that front but the point is you're already like with your kid anyway as is the other mom so share the low like give your kids playmates and then each of you like gets a morning a month or something that's like dedicated to that thing that you love or that you feel like you're sacrificing for the sake of your work you could even like do it every Tuesday like have a standing play day like every Tuesday morning with

that mom like every single week but you like flip it you know like one day you just hang out together just be people and have a conversation in one of your houses and the next week one mom gets two kids and then you flip again where you're all together and then next week the other mom gets two kids. See what I'm saying? You can find partners who you're not married to so you don't have to do everything on your own time with no help at all. You can also like just not do everything when like for when it comes to dinner, let's say you don't have to eat new things. You know, maybe you're in a season of like a two or three week meal rotation over and over again. And if the people and your family aren't a fan of that, they can cook to change it up.

if you wish that your husband helped with the cooking, but he has no idea what he's doing, then give him, don't resent him for it. Give him the easiest brainless crowd pleasers on your list of brainless crowd pleasers, like heating up a bag of that Trader Joe's orange chicken and making rice in a rice cooker. Like you can't mess that up. Or send him a link to change your life chicken. That thing is so hard to mess up, even for people who don't know much about cooking. You don't have to do everything, nor do you have to. Release the shame. Share. the load. Don't feel guilty because somehow you're supposed to like be superwoman. You're not. You're not. Sharing is lovely. And this is not a flippant comment. But here's a final point to this.

If you are in a relationship where there is resentment from your partner about sharing that domestic load, say on the weekends or like cooking dinner a couple times a week, I'm going to lovingly ask you to not DM me about how to get your partner on board because I don't know you or your partner and I'm not a licensed therapist. What I will say is to instead go to couples counseling or at least have like a conversation with a trusted couple friend to process how everyone's feeling. It is an important conversation and it has so many layers and personal like attributes and nuances. So don't go looking for a simple hack to like get your husband cool with making dinner once a week. So you can write in your room. That is a very very very. That is a very very normal communication issue that is best process in a safe space, probably with a counselor,

or at least with trusted family friends. And you're not weird or dysfunctional or anything but normal for needing that. It's really good to need that and acknowledge it. I am such a personal fan of therapy and like dealing with the junk that we think is fine to just like stay buried. It doesn't have to stay buried though. It's okay. It's okay to dig it out. It is. I know it's hard, but it's worth it. Okay. So you can use your free time for your stuff. Take what you can get on purpose. Use timers. Remember that you don't, you can't do everything, nor should you have to. And then number five, batch. I live my life by batching. It was my absolute favorite. Batching is simply doing the same kind of task all at once rather than doing

just the next urgent thing in front of you. So when it comes to your work, especially when your time is probably already blocked out in kind of obvious ways because of naps and school pickups and all that batch in blocks okay so let's say you have work that requires three different kinds of energies one is like straight creative energy like writing or creating like a marketing plan for the nonprofit you work for something like that another energy is administrative data entry returning emails that don't require like a ton of attention that kind of thing and then a third personal communication, Skype calls, project meetings, stuff that requires a conversation. Rather than doing a little of each when you have those blocks of time batch, have one day

be all creative, another day, all administrative. And the third, like, that's the only day that you schedule meetings. Your job might have two kinds of energy or 10, but the point is to group similar tasks. And I think more importantly, similar brain energy. together in one block of time. You can get in a groove that way. You don't have to switch from like one mindset to another. And somehow you, you do feel more productive. You get more done. Now, um, on days, like maybe like administrative days where you don't really want to do that work, those are great days to definitely use your timer. Reward yourself. Work for 45 minutes and then for 15 minutes. Watch funny videos on YouTube or pick up the novel that you keep close by. Like put it on your desk to

read when your timer goes off. Walk around the block if the sun is shining, listen to some fun music, like do something rewarding if certain batches are like more of a drag. And those are my five commandments of working from home. Now, here is a kind of quick rundown of how I personally use these concepts from my own work. Here's my nitty gritty. My boys are in elementary school. So they're gone most of the day. You know, they leave at 730, 745 and I pick them up. between 2.30 and three. I also have my daughter, she goes to preschool two mornings a week for four hours. And I also have a babysitter who hangs out with her a third morning a week for three hours. So that's three big blocks of time that I have each week, like in the mornings. I also have about an

hour or a little more when she's napping in the afternoon before we get the boys from school. Right now, I'm using three of the four weeks a month to just write the book that I'm working on. That's kind of like a big batch, right? And then the fourth week is a very focused, deep work week of working on the podcast. I come up with topics, I break down outlines, I work out the content, and then I have them ready for when I record, usually during like one of those afternoon nap times the week before it's due. And on those weeks where I'm working on the podcast, and this is just for right now because I'm in a weird work season with writing the book. It's just different. in writing an entire book to the work that I've been doing with no extra time. So on those weeks,

I usually take about six hours on a Saturday morning, so like 6 a.m. to noon, and I do more of that work. And again, that's because my time, it didn't change when I signed my book contract. I added a gigantic thing to my plate without the ability to take anything off of the like podcast, blog, lazy genius plate. I need enough. chunk of time, sometimes more than one. My husband and I have gotten into the habit of talking every Sunday night about the upcoming week, how we can support each other, who's in charge of dinner and bedtime, how the laundry won't be folded at the end of laundry day. So we'll do it together after the kids are in bed because I, you know, had like a appointment that afternoon or something like

that. We have that conversation every week because every week for us looks different. And we also want to be on the same team. I don't want to resent him because he doesn't know that I need him to help me this way. If I don't tell him the way I need him to help me and vice versa. So my work mornings are set. I use the time that Annie is gone just for my work. I take what I can get. I use it on purpose. I definitely use timers. And I batch my work in those box of time. Now in those afternoon hours when she's napping, like I said, I'll take one of those to record the next week's podcast episode. I'll do an I'll take another one to get ahead on like some household.

things. Another day I'll probably do some kind of food prep. And then I try and I don't try. I do. I always take at least one, often two, afternoons a week to nap or read or do something super fun and completely unproductive. It's the tiniest beat of a weekly Sabbath, but it's so important and worth it. And I'll write it in my planner. Like I'll write like don't, don't do anything. Like nap time break for me on certain days of the week when I'm doing that. Sunday conversation with my husband. Now, I don't get up at four to write. I don't have a housekeeper, even though that's probably not far off of my future because I just need to get a house clean. I don't have the time to really do it the way that I would like to with what's going on in my life

right now. And I do have a friend with a daughter who's my age and we sometimes switch weeks watching each other's kids. And so I can clean my house during that time or the house is just going to be a little dirty, right? Or ask my husband to take over a few of the chores that I usually do during the week during this season. You just can't do everything. I can't do everything. None of us can. It is hard to fit in our work for a number of reasons. But don't let your hang-ups about what you deserve be one of them. I know what that's like because sometimes my mind still goes there, but it does no one any good. It is okay for a task that I usually have, like cleaning the bathrooms that I ask my husband, like, hey, I can't clean the bathrooms this week. Can you take care of it? Like, I don't have to

feel bad about that. Even though it's normal for that to kind of like spark something in me, it's like, oh, but that's my responsibility, right? I'm supposed to be the one to do that. I'm supposed to do everything. No, you're not. You don't have to. You don't have to. And you know what I love. I love leaving at the start of a Saturday morning of work or for like a writing weekend that I have to take to write this book and saying to my kids, I'm going to work, have fun with dad and not feeling guilty about it at all. It shouldn't be unusual for their dad to be the primary parent sometimes, just like it's perfectly normal for me to be. We are all in this together. A family is the best kind of team. And I love showing that team spirit to my kids because I want my sons to maybe one day get

married and not think it's the least bit strange to be with the kids while their wives get filled up doing something else. I want my daughter to become an adult woman who knows that her dreams and her work matter just as much as any man's, whether she's married to them or not, and that her security as a mother, if she has kids, it isn't threatened by her desire to also do work separate from her kids. It is a good practice for all of us to let go of unnecessary pressures and become people who work together for the good of the people we love. And that's all I have to say about that. If you want to talk more about this or you have questions for me, I'm going to be live on Instagram this Thursday around 1215 Eastern at The Lazy Genius,

which I always am so you can join me anytime no matter when you're listening. If you show up on Thursday, I'll be there. And if I'm not going to be there, I will have said so in a story or in a post. and don't forget to join the mailing list, not just for like first word news on things like the next release of the meal plan, but also for my monthly latest lazy letter that many of you have said is like your favorite email to get, which is so kind. And I just love getting your replies to the email. They're so encouraging. I just love it, love it.

So if you want to get in on that newsletter, you can go to the lazy genius collective.com slash join. Okay, that's it for today. friends, thank you for listening. I'm Kendra, and until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. 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.