I talk about the Lazy Genius and how to set the right rules and routines to be happier and get more done.
https://www.thelazygeniuscollective.com
https://www.youtube.com/@KendraTheLazyGenius
Transcript
Have you ever wondered how you can succeed and still be lazy.
That’s what we’ll talk about today.
Last time we talked about the book, The Lazy Genius Way.
Today we’re going to continue that conversation because her book is great.
And I hope that this podcast encourages you to read this book if you’re looking for ways to make your life easier.
She’s got a great sense of humor and I really love her attitude.
She says lazy genius principle number four, live in the season.
And that just means what we talked about in the podcast episode about seasons in general.
There’s a time and place for everything.
You think about what matters, you know, like right now the economy is kind of iffy.
So maybe there are some choices like I would love to buy a new car.
This is not the season for it.
We have to get out of this time of inflation.
And there’s seasons where it’s great to find a job or there’s seasons that it’s great to travel some and get a little bit more enjoyment out of life.
There’s a season for everything.
And we talked about the seasons in episode 91 of this podcast that came out on September 12th of 2022.
And she talks about it, you know, when there’s a right time and a wrong time to do certain things.
She talked about it, you know, time to have more kids or times that maybe having children was over.
And there are places where you have to give yourself a break about when it comes time to seasons.
That again, sometimes it’s easier to get things done.
It’s easier to do things in the right season.
And there’s times when it’s harder.
So you have to figure out what season you’re in in order to make your life easier.
And what she talks about that I didn’t mention is when it’s easy to give up on something because it’s just not the right season.
She said that you can struggle through something and if it’s not the right season again for you, it might be the right season for somebody else to get something done, but it may not work for you.
So you have to decide what season you’re in and where you’re at for certain things.
And again, if you’re having a time where it’s easy for you to do one thing, then do that thing.
We’re she says into this whole all or nothing situation and it’s not like that at all Sometimes we’re feeling good and we’re ready to take on new challenges and some days we just want a snack And a cup of hot cocoa and we want to sit under a blanket.
It’s okay Don’t have to think about doing all the things all the time She says in the end that we are still Us that we’re still that person who has to do things our way And if you’re having a hard season, if you’re wishing things would be different, you know, sometimes they’re not different.
There were a lot of people in the pandemic who lost friends, who lost all sorts of things, and they just wanted it to end.
And it just was not the season for it to end.
Sometimes we just have to do things in that season.
And it’s not always going to be whatever’s happening right now.
Things change.
And so you have to give it that time so that you have the ability to let it change And she says that god has a plan and he doesn’t give you what you can’t handle So make sure that you live in that season And she says quote living in your season means letting your frustrations breathe But not be in charge.
That’s where it makes all the difference.
You can be frustrated that you can’t do something right now because maybe inflation is just too high.
But that doesn’t mean you don’t have to despair.
That doesn’t mean you have to shut everything else out of your life.
Again, I’m living more freely right now because inflation is so high.
This isn’t the time for me to get a new car.
This isn’t a time for me to go on a big vacation, but I’m doing other things like starting podcasts every week because they don’t cost me anything but time.
She brings up, Do the next right thing.
There’s another fantastic podcast and she’s friends with that podcaster.
Emily P Freeman That is another really good podcast.
It’s short.
It gives you a really great piece of advice But even the attitude do the next right thing sometimes, you know what that next right thing is and you’ll Have to not get caught up in all the emotions of all the things that you’re trying to do I feel like at some point the next right thing the lazy genius and small steps podcast just get together and be podcast friends Because we’re all complimentary to what we’re talking about We need to do the next right step however, that next thing is so I have some next right steps for me And there’s going to be different next right steps for you depending on what season you’re in depending what struggles you have or Depending on what advantages you have right now but make sure that you do that next right thing.
Most of the times when I get stuck in life I remember that.
Do the next right thing and I try to think about what that is.
That one statement has meant more to me than almost anything else out there beyond start with small steps.
She says quote “being a lazy genius doesn’t mean loving every season.
It means welcoming each one Unkindly and letting it teach you something what a great attitude that is principle number five build the right routines Having systems she talks a lot about how we are trying to walk away from all this with the systems And she said that routines are not a destination.
It’s a way of getting ourselves someplace I told you in the past that I didn’t like routines.
I didn’t want to drive home the same way every day after work I didn’t want to do the same thing.
I felt like it was going to make my life boring If I just did the same thing every day and that the pandemic really changed that for me where I got into a rhythm Do I feel like I’m boring now.
Do I feel like this routine that I’ve picked up has made my life worse.
And in fact, it hasn’t what it means is I got very good at this routine of how I do things So now I can get to other things much quicker I made boring things that I don’t like doing like the laundry like cleaning my kitchen and including exercise made those things so much easier that now I can get back to my things that I love doing faster than ever and She said that making a routine means that it’s something that you can repeat that means that something that you can be more consistent with and And it means that it’s something that you’re not going to have to think about.
You’re going to build small steps.
You’re going to put them in order.
She says that we should quote, make your first step stand alone.
She invokes the book, the one thing, which is a fantastic book by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan.
It means that what is the one thing that was the most important thing and that if you do it, everything else will be easier.
And we talked about this in episode two of this podcast.
But when you’re trying to find that single action, and if you can get that done and make it a routine, make it part of every day of your life, everything else in your life’s gonna be better.
And so it is for me too.
I’ve found a routine where I can clean my kitchen.
I found a routine where I can exercise every day.
I’m not saying that it’s been easy, but using all of these tips of making it small, making it known what I really need to get done made it much easier for me then to build a routine around those things.
Lazy genius principle number six is she says set house rules.
The thing that you have to remember is that this has to be rules again for you.
If you don’t hear any other messages out of this book when it comes to small steps or routines or doing the next right thing, make sure you hear for you.
This is not a book that’s going to tell you what to do, tell you what’s important, tell you how you should get it done.
It’s gonna tell you to dig deep and to find out what matters the most to you.
We all get triggered by different things.
Believe it or not, I get so stressed out about money all the time.
Money is the one thing that just takes me down and I wish it wasn’t that way, but I could look at it more methodically and I tried to do it so, But I know that it’s a tender thing for me.
So I have to have rules when it comes to money.
I came up with rules that I must fill my rings every day on my Apple watch so that I at least get a little bit of exercise every day.
And I just don’t sit there on my chair all day long because I love sitting and all my hobbies, knitting, podcasting, working, watching TV, reading books, all sitting.
So having a reminder to stand up every once in a while and shake out the ankles a bit is important I take the trash out every sunday.
I listen to the nozilla cast live show, which is at seven o’clock central time and between dinner And the live show I take out the trash I clean up my kitchen and I reset everything for the next work week so that everything’s in Where it needs to be so I can go to work I mean, I do have my own rules and those rules make everything else easier for me.
I also created a rule where all clothes have to get put away before bed, after laundry time.
And the reason for that is because I just don’t want to look like a big wrinkled mess all the time.
I enjoy looking like a big wrinkled mess all the time.
It’s again, I’m not a fashion person per se, and I can look real slobby if I want to, But because I don’t want to look like a mess at work or places I go, every piece of laundry must get put away on Sundays when I do my laundry right before bed.
Lazy genius principle number seven, put everything in its place.
She says that the problem is that when we have too much stuff around, it may not be that we actually have too much stuff.
You’ll read the minimalist books or the Marie Kondo books and it talks about getting rid of things and I’ve been trying to get rid of things.
I realized that I have way too much stuff and I’ve been working very hard to get rid of it.
But she says that in the end, what may be the case is that we just don’t have a place for it.
It may be that we have the right number of things without the right storage for it.
So that’s something to take into consideration when you’re looking at it.
You may need less stuff.
Again, I’m looking through things and finding places for it, But she said that if you can figure out putting things away in its right spot, if it doesn’t have a right spot, find a right spot for it and you’ll do better in life.
And the reason for that is, is that let’s say that you have something like a power cord for your cell phone, but you can never find it.
So then you go buy another power cord for your phone and suddenly you have plenty of them.
Or maybe it’s something larger, like you have coats for winter, but then you can’t find your coat.
You put it in this box or this bin or you stored it away for summer and now you can’t find it.
So you buy another coat and another coat and another coat.
I grew up with people who hoard in their life and no one ever plans on becoming a hoarder.
I think it starts with a lot of this inability to find things.
So a few years ago I started a project where I took everything in my house and found a home for it.
Cleaned out junk I don’t use anymore and then found a home.
You know, this drawer is where all the silverware is.
This drawer is where all the cooking things are.
This drawer is where all the eating things are.
Everything had a place.
And so now when I buy something new, I know exactly where it goes.
Here’s the other kicker, is if there’s no room in that place, I have to decide, am I going to make a bigger place for it or do I have to get get rid of something.
It’s important to know that if something isn’t going to have a place because it doesn’t fit, you have to think before you buy it, where should it go.
And I think if you get things organized, you know where your coats are, you know where all your shoes are located, whatever it is you’re looking for, you’ll be able to then use those things.
They’ll actually matter to you and you’ll know where they should go.
I made the unfortunate decision, or maybe it wasn’t unfortunate to take everything that didn’t have a home and put it in the spare bedroom.
And then during the pandemic, my project was to go out and clean that stuff out, either get rid of it, find a home for it, put it in a bin, which is labeled, or use it somehow.
And I’m still going through that process of getting rid of those things.
I had all these things to hang pictures on the wall.
But every time I go to hang a picture on the wall, I forget where that stuff is.
I go buy more hangers to hang things on the wall.
Well, going through this room and organizing that stuff, I put all the things in a particular drawer and I named it hanging picture drawer.
All the things that go into hanging something, framing something, you know, to make the house nicer looking goes into one drawer.
I have another drawer that I call weird tape.
It’s not tape tape, but it might be packing tape, double sided tape, other weird tapes.
So anything that’s a weird tape goes in that drawer.
That has been really the saving grace of my entire organizational system, because now when I need weird tape, I know exactly where it is.
I need to go.
All the charging cables are in a drawer.
all the hard drives for backing up computers in a drawer and everything that has to do with packing for my trips with work in bins.
I have these travel bins and some of them are little bags, some of them are travel food, other are little toiletries.
So I always know where I can go if I need to find myself another little tube of toothpaste to bring on my trip.
So putting everything in its place made a world of difference in my life.
Still getting there, but it’s really useful She says that you should do a purge very frequently.
She says a little purge every week Pay attention to what she says your stuff is telling you I think that means that if you’re always clunking around something always tripping over something.
I had these um Baskets that I had these wicker baskets.
I used to put my knitting in and then I reorganized my knitting So that they would go in their own little separate plastic bags Every time I went to organize something these baskets just got in the way they fell over I tripped over them I knocked over this little Christmas tree because I tripped on the wicker basket and I clunked my head You know what that wicker basket was telling me it was time to get rid of those baskets They were causing more woe for me than they were actually helping anything.
Wicker basket’s gone.
As a side point, I do try and I have it on an app called Streaks.
I use this app called Streaks.
And what they try to do is try to get you to build habits of doing things and then you check it off when you do it.
In my Streaks app, I have to pray, read the Bible every day, but every week I need to throw away a bag of something and I need to take a bag to goodwill.
And it’s been getting harder and harder to do that.
So I got rid of a bunch of books I no longer plan on reading.
I got rid of a bunch of hobbies that I thought maybe I would do and you know what if I haven’t done them in a decade I’m not gonna do them now.
And the side effect is as this gets better and better you will find everything.
I I don’t think we realize how much time stuff takes.
Moving it from this side of the house to that side of the house and organizing it and cleaning it and oops, this got dusty.
Stuff is a drain on us.
And so if we can either get less stuff or get it organized, it’ll make everything better.
One important lesson to me in all of this, and I think it was a message I learned from growing up in a place where there was a lot of hoarding going on was just to throw trash out.
It’s funny how easy it was to accumulate trash.
You look in the kitchen and there’s the bag for McDonald’s and you look on the other side of the room and there was this thing that you liked but you broke it and now you just forget to throw it in the trash.
One of the simple ways that people get buried in stuff is just by not taking out the trash.
And believe me, it is the easiest thing on the planet.
The first step that you can do if you’re just being inundated with things, just get the trash in the trash.
I remember, you know, talking to someone about it and I said, “Why don’t you just get this stuff into the trash.
” She goes, “Oh, well, I wanted to bring it to goodwill.
Maybe someone can use it.
” I think that there gets to be so much shame in the fact that you bought something and either you no longer use it or it’s no longer useful.
But you’re not in a position to make it to where you can give it away.
So you end up keeping it.
Oh, I’ll fix it and then I’ll give it to Goodwill or I’ll fix it and then I’ll give it to my sister.
At some point you have to decide to just put something in the trash.
It is depressing.
I know as I’ve been going through all my rooms and getting rid of things.
I remember when I bought this and I thought I was really going to use it.
Or I remember when I really loved this bowl and I used to put everything in it.
And now it has broken crack in it.
Wonder if I could fix it.
You know, at some point, get it out of the house, just throw it away.
Just get rid of it.
Get the trash in the trash.
And it may be unpopular to say, but even if that means throwing away something.
That could be fixed.
throwing away something you might use, maybe someday, maybe in a decade.
Just get it in the trash.
It’s the one step that’ll help you get unburied.
So my challenge to you is come up with three rules that work for you.
This is your life, three rules for you.
Something that will put your life better.
Something that you never have to think about again.
Then go and build habits, maybe small steps, around those rules.
The emotion is taken out of it, the priority is taken out of it, because on Sunday nights you do laundry, or on Tuesday afternoons you take out the trash.
But come up with some rules that work for you and make your life a little bit better.
Hi everyone, thanks so much.
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Have a great week.
And remember, getting your house in order can happen by taking small steps.
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