The Lazy Genius Way by Kendra Adachi offers 13 principles to help readers simplify their lives and be kind to themselves. These principles include letting people into your home, batching tasks, essentializing, scheduling rest, and celebrating successes. Adachi emphasizes the importance of valuing oneself and being one’s own friend and encourages readers to find ways to celebrate their accomplishments.
https://www.thelazygeniuscollective.com
https://www.youtube.com/@KendraTheLazyGenius
Challenge
Figure out a way without breaking the thing you are working on and celebrate. If you did a fantastic job on your weight loss goals, celebrate by getting an Airbnb next to a waterfall or going to the movie that you’ve wanted to see. Think of something for you and make it a celebration of something that you accomplished.
Transcipts
[Music] Have you ever wondered how you can use this system of being a lazy genius to get more people into your life.
That’s what we’ll talk about today.
[Music] Welcome to my house.
Enter freely.
Go safely and leave something of the happiness you bring.
Bram Stoker.
Today we’re going to continue our conversation, The lazy genius way from kendra adachi And because I love this book so much i’m giving it three episodes, that’s right So lazy genius principle number eight let people in And that means into your home You know, it’s one of those things that when you want to build a tight relationship with someone Bringing them home is an important step because I have an OK house and I’m always working on stupid projects.
I ripped out the carpet in every single one of my house, and now there’s staples all over the place and I’m slowly but surely using small steps, pulling them out.
But it’s not there yet.
The floors aren’t refinished, but I’m just one human being person and I can only do so much at a time.
So you know what.
I never let anyone into my house.
I let people into my backyard.
I have fire pit events with friends in my backyard, never in the house.
So I’m embarrassed.
Really impedes having friends.
It even impedes dating.
I mean, honestly, you know, you go out on a date and maybe you want to watch a movie together.
So the next step is, why don’t you come to my place and we’ll watch a movie.
Oh, well, I’m embarrassed about my place.
And not bringing people into your home, of all things, can be one of the biggest barriers you have to having great relationships.
I have friends at work and because of the pandemic and we no longer go into the office We now can work remotely Suddenly we don’t see each other at all.
And you know what a big step happened.
I went to my friend’s house We’ve been friends for almost a decade and I’ve never been to her house and her house is amazing It’s beautiful, but she let me into her house and letting people into your house I think is a big step.
It shows you who you are Because it shows you your messes and it shows you your good things and it shows you your bad things but people get a chance to know you and This is a part where I loved in the book the most and the thing that I have to work on the most This just has to be one of my next steps She says when you bring people to your house quote don’t you dare apologize.
Not meaning like apologize for you know hurting someone’s feelings or anything else like that.
She means bringing them into your house don’t Be embarrassed about what kind of messes you have don’t be embarrassed about what kind of furniture you have don’t be embarrassed about Anything about the state of your house just bring friends in that’s it Boy, I’ve just avoided that for years.
I’ve had people, you know say oh, I’d love to come visit you Oh, you want to put a panic in me.
That’s it.
Say oh Jill.
We’re gonna come over your house suddenly I don’t know what to do.
I mean, I got this room with all the stuff that I’m going through I have my gym, which is fine It looks fine But it’s just a gym and I have the downstairs with all the carpet that’s ripped out that I haven’t quite finished Panic, but she says, you know in order to have those connections We’re gonna have to do it and she said that may be something like inviting him over for lunch Having dinner having movie night doing something but You have to bring people into your life She also wants you to be reminded that first of all not every relationship is meant to be your best friend it is okay to have friends and It is okay to ask people for help Even if you’re not in an ultimate crisis boy talk about my other thing this whole chapter just ripped me to parts because One like I said don’t have people in my house – I never asked for help not ever it is hard for me to ask help from my closest friends and I have a problem too when it comes to relationships that I always feel Like if I can’t give them everything be their best friend, then there’s no relationship I can have with them And what it does is it limits how many people I’m friends with.
Strangely enough, I started making more friendships lately, and some of it had to do with friends from work that I don’t see.
Some of it are customers of mine that we never got a chance to see each other anymore.
So we send emails back and forth to each other, text message each other every once in a while too.
And other places are people remotely that I’ve made friends with across the United States.
And I’m starting to get other friends and it’s really been good for me.
So lazy genius principle number eight ripped my heart out and I hope to do a better job with it.
Lazy genius principle number nine she says batch it.
That means we’re gonna put like things together you know so we’re not gonna sit there and try to nickel-and-dime everything we’re gonna try to bundle things and maybe that’s going to be cooking meals ahead maybe that’s going to be doing something like I have a podcast maybe I record a couple of podcasts together maybe I sit down and I write a whole string of podcasts so when it comes time to recording I have a bunch of them I can record but she said the part of it too is thinking about the future that also means storing things in a better way she said that you know a lot of times when you take notes or you rip something out of a magazine or something like that or you keep a piece of paper or an instruction thing that came with a product you bought, that paper ends up just sitting at your house and gaining clutter.
Not just think about what you need today, but think about what you’re gonna need in the future.
And maybe what you need in the future is not having a lot of paper.
So by having what she calls a future zone, you can take a snapshot of it with your phone, you can download a PDF manual of something, and then have a system in place to store it.
There’s a lot of great apps out there when it comes to where you can store documents.
There’s Pinterest, there’s OneDrive, which comes with Microsoft Office 365, there’s even Dropbox.
You can do all sorts of different ways that you can store these digital copies of things so they don’t clutter up your life and then in the future when you need it, it’ll be right there.
She said then you can go ahead and start making all these tasks, do them together and once you do that, you can, she says, go on autopilot and it’s not a bad thing.
Again, it’s just like automating certain things.
We’re going to automate the things.
We’re going to do the batch work together so that when it comes time to do something, better prepared and we’ve made those steps easier.
Again, if I write out 10 podcasts and then I go in and record 10 podcasts, now I have an organized system in place so that I can get ahead of my podcast whenever I travel for work.
By batching things together, it actually makes the task a lot easier.
Lazy genius principle number 10, essentialize.
And I talked about that in podcast episode three.
Boy, this see I told you I’m glad I read the book now.
It makes me reflect on the podcast.
I did a while ago, but that book essentialism from Greg McKean that book is about what I called ruthlessly eliminating noise how to get rid of the things that don’t matter.
It is important that we know what matters and it’s important that we do things that matter to us.
But everything else that doesn’t matter Is awful.
She calls it noise And even when she talks about like your social media and essentializing that which means get rid of the people You don’t want to read anymore because it’s now distracting you from the people you want to read Heck I started this project last week of going through some of the podcasts that I loved to listen to And I just don’t anymore either because I don’t have time or because now my interests are a little bit different.
So I’ve cut out a number of podcasts that I have.
That’s essentialism, but it goes beyond that.
Again, it’s like maybe gardening.
I tried for a while to garden.
I’m terrible at it, so I got rid of it.
Now I just mow.
My life is better.
I actually hired some yard people to come in and remove all the garden pieces and they were able to come in with tractor equipment and just strip the whole yard and putting grass everywhere.
Now, I don’t have to think about it anymore, but you want to think about what it is you can take away from your life And she says quote addition by subtraction Your life gets better When things are gone that don’t matter.
It’s like cleaning this house Are you just shifting stuff from one side of the house to the other but if you got rid of it, you wouldn’t have to anymore Same thing with tasks if you’re doing something that doesn’t matter you don’t enjoy and really doesn’t matter much in your life, get rid of it.
I started working on getting my clothes in a different sort of way.
I work from home now and so what I wear doesn’t matter as much.
So the number of office wear clothes I need is greatly reduced.
I started getting rid of it.
I don’t want to look in my closet and see a bunch of office wear.
I’d rather have some of my favorite shirts.
So maybe I’d wear it to church on Sunday, or if I get invited to a wedding or something, I have something to wear, but I don’t need the volume of clothes I did when I went to the office.
So I’m going to do essentializing so that I have the right amount of things.
And again, she mentions this has to be for you.
Don’t let Marie Kondo tell you that you should see if it sparks joy.
Don’t let the minimalist tell you what it is you should have or you should get rid of.
This has to be what you need to get rid of.
Lazy genius principle 11, go in the right order.
This one was harder for me to understand exactly what she meant.
But she said that when we think about things that matter and we do things in the proper order, it will make everything better in our life.
And that means that you should do what matters the most first.
You have a basement and your basement’s a disaster and you keep thinking, “I just have to go down the basement, clean it out.
I’ve had that thought too.
I got stuff in my basement and I don’t need, but you know what.
I never go in my basement.
I go in my basement to do laundry.
I go in my basement to put my camping gear down there, but quite honestly, no one ever goes in my basement unless I need my furnace fit.
So even though it is probably the room that needs the most attention, it’s not the thing I’m going to do first because it’s not the thing that matters most to my life.
To someone who is a cleanliness person, they’d probably say, “Tackle that basement.
Look at the mess.
Look at the boxes you have down there.
” But to me, less important than what happens in the rooms I actually live in.
So understanding the proper order for what you need to do, that’s the most important thing.
When it comes down to certain tasks I have to do, this podcast goes right up to the top of the list often.
Why.
Because I have to get an episode out every week.
I have to get an episode of the other podcast every week.
So podcasting goes to the top of my list for getting things done because it has a definitive schedule.
Other things, while I want to get them done, doesn’t quite have that same schedule to it or that same immediate need for me to get it done.
And in the end, the only person who can tell you what is most important in your life is you.
So make sure you talk to yourself and figure out what that is.
And then lazy genius principle number 12 says schedule rest.
That means you’re not a machine.
You need to rest and you need to rest so that you don’t get exhausted.
If you get overly exhausted, you’re going to fall behind and all the things you love to do because you’re too tired to do them.
You will not feel great.
You will not feel good about yourself.
And you’ll just be burned out on almost everything.
So you’ll need to figure out what makes you feel great and what makes you look forward to the next day or the next week and start taking those opportunities to do those things.
And she said there’s a couple of different kinds of rest.
There’s seasonal rest, which Which might be something like a vacation, you know, maybe every so often you go out and I go camping in the woods.
I need that kind of woods time, camping time, to just burn off all the stress I have.
Nothing makes me feel closer to God.
Nothing makes me feel more relaxed than camping.
Gotta figure out what that means for you.
That’s a seasonal rest.
But then you have to have some rest every week.
I try to make it that every Friday night I just rest.
You know, I’m tired from work.
Usually I try to get a bunch of things done on Friday.
And then the weekend I do things with friends and I do some other tasks.
So I try to make Friday.
My rest day, it’s when I’m most in need of it.
And most of my friends are just quite frankly busy on that day.
So it’s a good day for me to do whatever I want.
And so I call Friday nights my personal date night.
It means I can do anything I want.
If I just want to sit there and watch TV, that’s fine I just want to play video games That’s fine, too.
I can do whatever I want on Friday nights And then she talks a little bit about daily rest, you know Make sure that every day you have some time where you’re doing something fun That’s doing something that’s great for you that you enjoy doing and she mentions like she likes to bake or she likes to look at cookbooks to her that’s enjoyable and a great time for her.
So again, you’re going to have to figure out what a daily enjoyable thing is for you.
What would really make you feel that your day is going well.
And then of course rest is sleep, which means that you have to get a good night’s sleep, that you’re just not going to do anything well if you’re just exhausted all the time.
And she said that even God had a Sabbath day and and then told us to have a Sabbath day.
So if he feels that rest is important, it is.
And that the best thing that we can do is to make sure that that rest time is honored, is scheduled, and we set it so that we actually get that rest.
Lazy Genius Principle 13, she says, “Be kind to yourself.
” And so you have to be your own friend.
I’ve mentioned in podcasts before that if we ever talk to our friends “We talk to ourselves, we wouldn’t have any friends.
“We cannot talk to ourselves poorly.
“We cannot beat up on ourselves.
” And she said that it’s her golden rule to be your own friend.
And this was another statement that really got to my core.
She says that we’re not a project.
Wow.
You know, I do treat myself a little bit like I’m a project.
She says, “You’re not something that needs to be fixed, sculpted and assessed on a daily basis.
I mean, I run a personal improvement podcast.
So all the time I’m trying to learn new things, read new books, and then try to make myself a better person.
And you know what.
She’s right.
I treat myself like a project way too much that if I’m going to try to lose weight, I think about, well, did I did I reflect on my day.
I plan the next day.
You know what.
I am not a project and I have to keep reminding myself that.
That sentence right there, I think, meant so much to me in this book, almost more than anything personal for me.
And so she is right.
We are a human being.
We are loved creatures.
We love people.
They love us too.
so we have to value what we are as a human being, what we do, and we have to show ourselves some kindness.
And she said that the next part is that we should also try to figure out what we’re becoming.
We talked a couple of episodes ago about the future you and how it’s really hard to determine what the future you is.
You can see things right now that are in the works.
I’ve been losing weight.
been going well for me.
Is the future me thinner.
Is the future me more organized.
Does the future me have four podcasts.
I mean I can kind of see how that is and by taking a look at what I think my future me will look like I’ll be able to prepare for it and know exactly what it is I need to do in order to get to future me but not treat myself like I’m some sort of work task, something to check off in a box and she says that we should be thankful for who we are.
We should look at the mirror, she says, and smile.
I mean, it’s so great.
And then the last step is part of this is to celebrate all the things that went right, all the things that were, she says, tangible or intangible improvements.
If we did something well, we have to celebrate that.
It’s funny because my work, we have core values for my company and one of them was celebrate.
And I’ll be honest with you, that one was the hardest for me more than anything else.
And someone even asked me in an interview, they said, what is your favorite core value and what is your least favorite core value.
Now nobody on the planet says that their least favorite core value is celebrate, except I did.
It was hard for me to celebrate, to be quite honest, because I’m buried in my work.
I try to get tasks done.
I try to make my customers happy.
And for me to spend time at the wedding shower for people in my company, even though I do want to celebrate them, and I’m so happy they’re getting married or having a child or having a birthday, to take that time out and do that, the company recognized as being important.
And so I tried very hard to learn how to celebrate.
Isn’t that funny.
But we have to learn how we can celebrate our own successes and our own great things.
And remember to really show yourself some care.
She mentions that one of the ways that she likes to celebrate is with the show “Poldark” and eating fancy ice cream.
I don’t blame her one bit.
First of all, ice cream is amazing.
And second of all, “Poldark,” My friend and I used to call him “Poldark and Handsome” because he’s a good looking guy.
And then she ends the book, “Stop trying so hard, friend.
Stop trying to build it big.
You weren’t knit together in your mother’s womb so you could run after a moving finish line.
” And then she talks about the God of the universe and says, “That’s not a God who gets a laugh after watching you drown in the deep end of life as you try to manage schedules and chores and ridiculous expectations.
Wow, I have to say that when the book ends like that, I just feel inspired.
I feel warm.
Again, I want her to be my podcast friend.
I think Emily P.
Freeman and Kendra and I are just Right in the same angle.
And so I appreciate all that.
She does her podcast her blog her youtube channel And the same thing with emily p freeman just two great human beings So if you’re looking for more podcasts, or if you’re looking for a fantastic book to read I highly recommend this one So my challenge to you is see if you can find a way to celebrate you.
What is something that you’ve done.
Well Something that you took on as a challenge and you made progress with it.
Figure out a way without breaking the thing that you did to celebrate you.
If you did a fantastic job on your weight loss goals, why don’t you think about celebrating by getting an Airbnb next to a waterfall or going to the movie that you’ve wanted to see even though though you haven’t had time, but think of something for you and make it a celebration for something that you accomplished.
Alright everyone, thanks so much.
I appreciate listening to the podcast.
Please remember that you can always email me at jill@smallstepspod.
com and let me know what your challenges are.
You can let me know how you’ve succeeded or other podcasts that you like to listen to that inspire you to do better.
And please remember that that celebrating your own life can happen with small steps.
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