Redefining Productivity: Prioritize Your Time to Do Less & Achieve More

In this episode, we hear from Kendra Adachi, the bestselling author of The Lazy Genius Way to discuss compassionate time management. Kendra shares her journey from perfectionism to finding balance, introducing her transformative framework: "Be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don’t."  We explore actionable strategies for prioritizing what truly matters, embracing small steps, and showing kindness to ourselves in every season of life.

Key Highlights:

• The Origin: Kendra explains how her journey as an overachiever and mother led her to create the framework of focusing on what matters most in each season of life.
• The Myth of Productivity: A candid discussion on the male-dominated productivity industry and why traditional time management systems often fail women.
• Naming What Matters: Learn practical steps for identifying priorities by narrowing your scope—whether it’s a life category, season, or even just a single day.
• Compassionate Time Management: Discover how to align expectations with the energy you have, rather than striving for unattainable ideals.

More about Kendra: 

Kendra Adachi is a two-time New York Times bestselling author of The Lazy Genius Way, The Lazy Genius Kitchen and The PLAN and host of nationally ranked The Lazy Genius Podcast. As an expert in compassionate time management, Kendra helps others stop doing it all for the sake of doing what matters. She lives in North Carolina with her husband and three kids.

You can learn more and follow Kendra at: 

https://www.thelazygeniuscollective.com/

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Transcript

Prioritizing and Time Management

Speaker 1 0:00

Our options are not only lazy or only genius. Some things we want to be a genius at, we want to give our time and our energy because we care about those things right now, in this season of our lives. But in order for that to happen, there are other things that we have to be lazy about for now. It doesn't mean you're lazy about them forever or that you're a genius about this one thing forever. It's about what matters to you in your season of life.

Speaker 2 0:37

Welcome back to the show. Hope you all had a great holiday season and to your 2024 and happy 2025. Welcome to our first show of 2025. And I really think you're going to love this episode because it's so perfect for the beginning of the year when we are all worried about how do I get myself organized, how do I really focus on the things that are important for me to get done and not get overwhelmed by just everything I could be doing. So we have on today for you Kendra Adachi.

Speaker 2 1:11

She is the New York Times bestselling author of the Lazy Genius Way and she also has a nationally ranked podcast called the Lazy Genius Podcast. And what I think is going to be really interesting for you to hear about from Kendra is this notion about how do we manage our time compassionately and, as Kendra says, we need to be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. How do we prioritize and really look at what we could be getting done and say, okay, what is most important, so that you can set a realistic expectation of what you're going to get done, get it done efficiently and really not get bogged down and overwhelmed by the things that are actually not that important that many of us tend to spend time either worrying about. I think you're going to find this episode super helpful if you are someone who is looking, starting off your year, looking to get organized, looking to say, okay, what do I really want to focus on, what's really important to me, how do I develop that list? And then how do I set about getting that done in a way that is manageable and does not drive me crazy? So with that, I'm going to let you hear my great conversation with Kendra and we're going to jump into it.

Speaker 2 2:33

Here we go, kendra. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Happy to be here. Well, I have to start by saying that I have been listening to a lot of your content and it brings me such a sense of comfort. As an overachieving type A, recovering type A personality, I would say it gives me so much comfort to hear what you talk about, and I would love if we could start by talking about just this one phrase, I think on your site, and it says be genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Where did this idea come from? Because it's so smart, it's very much about prioritizing and that not everything is urgent and important. And where did this come from, though? Can you take us back? Tell me about how you came up?

Speaker 1 3:37

with this. That's the foundation of everything we do in the Lazy Genius space is to be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't to you, and part of that came from I also am an overachiever and a perfectionist and really spent so much of my formative kind of teenage and adult years hustling to be great at everything, like that's all. That's all my energy went into was I have to be amazing at everything in order to be valuable to people? It was a part of my identity. It's how I showed up in the world, and then I had my first kid when I was 27.

Embracing Balance in Life

Speaker 1 4:22

Kids start to change how you see your ability to produce, and so with this first, with my son, I kept that genius mentality Well, I'm going to be the best mom, I'm going to get everything done, I'm going to make his food, and I had just all this list of these arbitrary things that I thought needed to matter and I could not sustain them. Well then, what happened is I had a second kid two years later and I swung the opposite direction where I went well, if I can't be good at this stuff, I'm not going to try at any of it, I'm just I'm giving up. Like lazy hair you know it was the messy hair, don't care sort of idea that I wore as like a badge of honor, that like everything's falling apart, it doesn't matter. But that was also unsustainable because it did matter. Like, my environment matters a lot to me, and having something that is reasonably tidy makes me think more clearly and be more calm.

Speaker 1 5:19

So then, when I had my third kid, I started going to therapy and I was like, hey, I think there is a wide middle here that our options are not only lazy or only genius. Some things we want to be a genius at, we want to give our time and our energy because we care about those things right now, in this season of our lives. But in order for that to happen, there are other things that we have to be lazy about for now. It doesn't mean you're lazy about them forever or that you're a genius about this one thing forever. It's about what matters to you and your season of life. We have to get smaller, and so that's kind of the foundation of everything that I talk about now.

Speaker 2 6:00

Wow when you said that the season of your life. It's so important for people to understand that the seasons of our life differ and what we care about differs, and I think that's one of the things. That's hard, too, is to look back and to say, well, 10 years ago I cared a lot about that thing. Yeah, If you were explaining to us the theory of how it works, could you describe?

Speaker 1 6:29

it for us. So the first thing I'll say is that when I began talking about this, there were some principles that surfaced, in sort of putting this together. Here is why I find your question of like how does this work? To be a really interesting and telling one. We have been conditioned by the productivity time management industry, which is dominated by male writers. 93% of time management books are written by men. 70 to 90% of those books are read by women.

Speaker 2 7:03

What yes, I'm stunned by that. I'm stunned to hear that most time management books are read by women.

Speaker 1 7:12

Yes, they are. Because and here's why because women are expected to hold and do hold so much more in their lives and their schedules and their brains that invisible scaffolding of your life, no matter what your family might look like, if you live alone or if you live with many, it doesn't really matter, you are the one holding all of these details. So what we have been taught over the years especially if you are a millennial, if you are like a Gen Xer, if you're kind of like an adult running your life, and you might even have humans that live in your house who are also starting to become humans, people as well, running their own lives you have been taught for years and years that the way that you are supposed to plan your life is that you imagine an ideal future. However many years down the road, you reverse, engineer how to get to that ideal future, and then you work the plan. Every day is meant to build on the next day, and if you have a day that does not align with that future ideal that you came up with when you were 24 years old, then that day was a waste and you are not disciplined or you are not motivated enough, or maybe you need to come back to the big system or whatever. Everything is set up as a formula and a predictable, repeatable system that we are supposed to put on our lives, because that is far easier for a man to do to his life than a woman to do to hers.

Speaker 1 8:48

I always want to bring a spotlight onto our inclination to focus on the systems and the hows. And how does this work? Because we have been programmed. We have been programmed to almost take the life out of our life, and so that's one of the biggest things in being a lazy genius is like, hey, our whole point here is we are grounded people, right where we are, that we are humans, that we are kind to ourselves, that we are honoring our humanity. We are not sacrificing our humanity on the altar of productivity. That is not what we do here, because that's not the goal, that's not ultimately what matters.

Speaker 1 9:28

So so much of it is this huge paradigm shift that what we've been given so far is desperately incomplete for people who are women, but also for people who perhaps want a different goal than just to be great at everything all the time. So how you can kind of move into this lazy genius space is first, with a deep breath because it's like oh good, I don't have to be great all the time, but I also can be great at the things that matter to me. I can have permission to focus on those things. What a beautiful thing. I wrote a book in 2020 called the Lazy Genius Way. It's my first book and it is 13 principles that you can apply.

Speaker 1 10:07

One of the principles is to be kind to yourself. I already mentioned that. Let's start with kindness and softness towards ourselves, rather than being like a mean, almost like a trainer, like an athletic trainer that's yelling at us all the time Like you're the problem, you need to get it together. It's like actually, no, you're doing great, like you've got a lot on your plate and you're doing the best you can. Then we have practical principles like decide once, make one decision one time about one thing and then keep doing that until it doesn't work for you anymore. Another favorite principle and I'll stop because these are my three favorite are another favorite principle is to start small. I believe that is one of the most impactful things that we can do.

Speaker 1 10:49

We don't think that small steps matter. We don't think that they make any difference, but in fact they are the things that make the most of a difference, because we're able to pivot in the moment, we're able to notice what is working and what is not and make adjustments. Like there's just such a gift and smallness making our problems smaller so we can solve them, making our seasons smaller so we can see them more kindly and more realistically. Starting small is just really really crucial.

Speaker 2 11:16

One of the key principles is okay, let's focus on the things that you know tend to the necessary before they become urgent, right? I know this is a theme that you talk about, like how do I determine what I need to, like what matters if I'm struggling? Can you give me any? Can you give us any guidance?

Speaker 1 11:39

on how to do that. So there are three things that come to mind. The first one is the way that all of us triage what is urgency or what is urgent is very different, and most productivity books up until just the last few years really have not included neurodivergency in any sort of and any sort of like productivity skill sets that are taught. So, or or we don't take into account grief, we don't take into account a chronic illness, like. There are so many things that prevent or create a barrier to normative triage, and so I want us to sort of take away the expectation that everybody needs to fall into this normative path of naming what is urgent. Not everyone has the same ability to do that, and so we just need to, we need to broaden that and give ourselves in a lot of in each other, a lot of grace in that area. So that's the first thing is that if you're like, well, I really struggle with naming what is urgent, that's okay. That's okay. You can either kind of begin to learn in a way that works for your brain from people who are experts in that area, or you can just be like you know, I need to manage my time differently than that. That doesn't work for me, and that's a beautiful, beautiful thing.

Speaker 1 12:56

The second thing that comes to mind when we're talking about how do we name what matters. So I have written three books and my third book, the Plan, just came out a couple of months ago, and one of the I already mentioned a little bit about kind of the foundation of it, which is we have been taught by the productivity industry for years and years and years that the goal, the goal of all of it, is some form of greatness. It is optimization, it is hustle, it's reaching your potential, it's making the most of every opportunity, and that is in the air we breathe, it is in the water we swim in, it is in our companies. We have been taught that that level of greatness is what we should be reaching at all times. Yeah, when that is your paradigm, whether known or unknown, when that is your paradigm, you are going to have a really difficult time naming what matters to you, because there's still part of you that thinks everything should.

Speaker 2 14:01

Yeah.

Speaker 1 14:02

Yeah. So when you begin to remove I kind of call it the lens of greatness, if you take off your greatness glasses and you start to remove this idea of like, how am I going to make the most of this holiday season? How am I going to make the most of this, this pitch? How am I going to make the most of this holiday season? How am I going to make the most of this pitch? How am I going to make the most of this brand launch? How am I going to make the most of this opportunity?

Speaker 1 14:20

If you start to take off those glasses of, how am I going to make the most of this and instead you put on a new pair of glasses, a pair of glasses I call integration glasses. That's, our new goal is integration. And you're going to say to yourself how am I going to be myself here? How am I going to be a grounded person here? How am I going to be kind and show up as myself? How am I not going to be influenced by my circumstances? When that is your lens, when that is really your ultimate goal, it changes what matters. It changes what matters. So that's why we have so much difficulty with it is because we're still wearing glasses of greatness and we don't know they're on our face.

Speaker 2 14:58

I want to talk about women in particular for a second, and I think women, we tend to be so earnest, we want things to go well, we want them to be right, we want everyone to be happy to do is I think it can distract us from, ultimately, what really is the most important thing, and so I guess my question to you is is there an approach that we can think about to help us really get down to the core of okay, what is most important?

Speaker 1 15:37

The first is you have to set your scope. So when you're naming what matters, if you just say what matters, to me that's too big of a question, because what does that even mean? Right?

Speaker 2 15:49

It's overwhelming.

Speaker 1 15:50

The thought of it is overwhelming, that's right. So the first thing you want to do is you want to set your scope, and that scope can be a category of life, it can be a season of life that you're in. It can literally be what matters today. The smaller your scope, the easier it is to name what matters Right. What is the core thing there? That I want to be sort of the umbrella that everything else falls under Right. So the smaller you make your the the umbrella that everything else falls under Right. So the smaller you make your scope, the easier it is to name what matters. You're setting your own scopes.

Speaker 1 16:22

But what about when, like I just said, when your kid is keeping his ride waiting outside and doesn't have his stuff together yet you are, that's a reactive moment where you are in a position to react one way or another and you go what matters right now? What matters right now? That's the smallest scope there is right, what matters right now. So I think that that kind of broader tool of the smaller the scope, the more easy it is to make what matters and then to recognize am I doing this proactively or reactively? And the more reactive it is, the smaller you need to make that.

Speaker 2 17:00

I love that. Think about setting a scope. The smaller the scope, the better, and then think about it really in two key areas the proactive if you can, I have time to think about this, I'm marinating, I'm, you know, coming up with some great ideas about it or reactively, which I think happens to us each. How many?

Speaker 1 17:23

times a day, oh, so many, so many times. And this is where going back to a principle, one of the 13 lazy genius principles that I mentioned before, this is where going back to being kind to yourself is critical, because, guess what? You are going to reactively choose in a way that you regret many, many times. Yeah, or you're going to forget to ask, you're not even going to ask and you're going to yell at the person. You're going to have an attitude towards the cashier at the target because somebody didn't go fast enough. You're going to resent your partner for not helping in a way that you expected them to help, but you didn't say that that's what you wanted. There's all these things that we hold and that we're going to kind of look back on and go oh man, I lost the thread there. Just generously, obsessively, inject kindness into how you treat yourself in this, because y'all, being a person is a whole thing.

Compassionate Time Management and Self-Care

Speaker 2 18:17

It is so hard, and for women in particular you've mentioned a few times this idea of giving ourselves grace. It's two things. It's giving ourselves grace and, honestly, I think, giving others grace 100%. It's about do both of those things and it's not about saying to yourself well, I'm gonna just say I'm great, I'm this, the positive self-talk. It's about saying we are all going to make mistakes, and and and. Multiple times a day we're going to feel like why did I do that? Why did I say that? Why did I? But it's understanding that we're in this journey and each and every moment is part of that journey and it's maybe moving away from like okay, it's about the destination and it's this thinking of how do I get myself to be comfortable and productive in my own mind in these day-to-day moments? You have this concept that I would love if you could talk about, which is compassionate time management. Can you just tell us a little bit about what that is?

Speaker 1 19:25

Yeah, I mean really, it's all that we've been talking about now. Time management so far has just never been very compassionate. It's been deeply robotic. It's been follow this formula do the system. If you don't, if it doesn't work for you, you are the problem. And that's mostly true of women, because women just cannot. We have more expectations and less support to do what most people are calling us to.

Speaker 1 19:52

I want a way of looking at my time and my life that is imbued with compassion, that is understanding that. I want a way of looking at my time and my life that is imbued with compassion, that is understanding that I'm a person and that there are variables every day. The people I live with, that they are people. How do you plan your day compassionately? How do you plan a week compassionately? Because we still have to get our stuff done and we still want to. You know we still, to a point, have motivation to do that. But how do you do that in a compassionate, human way?

Speaker 1 20:18

One of the principles that kind of ties what we were talking about just now in this question together. One of the principles is match your expectations to the energy you are willing and able to give. So if we're talking about, especially if you're, you know, kind of involving other people in this whole thing. So often, when we, like, set a goal or we make a plan or whatever, we have an expectation for that thing. Right, this happens, for you know, we'll use the standard like January, new year, new you vibe.

Speaker 1 20:51

But and what we have sort of kind of implicitly absorbed into how we live our lives is that if something isn't working like if we set a goal, if we made a plan or whatever and that thing is not working, we're trying to hack our energy. We don't change our expectations. And so what I'm saying is match your expectations to the energy you're willing and able to give. Don't try to hack your energy. Go like, actually, maybe my expectations are too high, and that is true of the people that you live and work with as well. Yeah, match your expectations to the energy they are willing and able to give. Yeah, right, if you have too high expectations of them, all you're going to do is resent them. It's going to cause conflict, all of it. It's just so. That is a way that you can also be compassionate in your time management is that you recognize that your energy and your expectations they have to align and you more than likely need to change your expectations as opposed to the energy.

Speaker 2 21:47

There's such. I mean, I can't tell you how helpful that concept is, because I think we frequently just decide we're going to do it, we're going to do it to a hundred percent, and then we're overwhelmed by it, so we opt out.

Speaker 1 22:00

That's right. It's that greatness thing again. It's that greatness lens and if you set it up, you better make the most of it, you better fulfill it, you better reach your potential, you better hit all those marks, you better check all those boxes. That does not have to be your measurement anymore. That's not how you have to measure your life anymore.

Speaker 2 22:17

Oh, I love that. All right. So let's say someone who's listening to this and is feeling that they're just overwhelmed what is one thing that you would recommend that they could do today to begin to kind of regain that focus and create a plan when they're feeling so overwhelmed?

Speaker 1 22:39

Yeah, well, I would almost say this is not a terribly fun answer, but I would actually say I think that you need to lower your expectations that a plan is going to solve it. Okay, because it's probably not. The reason that most of us are overwhelmed is because life is overwhelming. If we have an expectation that it's not going to be sometimes, then we're always going to be chasing this invisible finish line or this invisible measurement of like everything is calm and easy and organized. And so if we first I think that's actually the answer I think that would be the first thing is to be like hey, we need to adjust our expectations about what life actually looks like. That being overwhelmed doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong. It just means life is overwhelming Now, from a practical standpoint, because that's not very fun.

Speaker 1 23:31

If you're like well, okay, great, I'm just going to wallow, that's what, that's usually what some of the that's. The response I get to that sort of answer is like what are you expecting me to do? So? But I think if you begin from that posture, right, your practical choices are going to land more deeply. They're going to have your roots go more deeply because you're kind, you're being kind and compassionate towards yourself, right, that you're not trying to fix something that is broken your life because it's overwhelmed does not mean it's broken. Okay, so what I would say from a practical standpoint is it's a principle that I already mentioned it is to start small. That is the least sexy. Less, it's the least fun of all the principles.

Speaker 1 24:13

Like nobody likes her, nobody likes start small. They're like oh, I'm going to do something big. Big doesn't work. I call big. I don't even have to explain what it is big black trash bag energy. We all have it. When you're like I've had enough of this and you get a metaphorical or actual physical big black trash bag from under your sink and you start chucking stuff in it and you're like we're downsizing everybody, it's declutter time. You change all the colors on your Google calendar because you think somehow that's going to fix the fact that you've got too much on it. Like they're all of these reactive, responsive things. We're trying to solve this big problem of an overwhelming life and that is too big. So instead I want you to start so very small. And if you can just look up from wherever you are and you can say what one thing is overwhelming me the most right now, and the answer cannot be my life. It cannot be my life. You have to keep going.

Speaker 2 25:16

You have to keep going. I'm not going to solve the whole thing right now.

Speaker 2 25:19

No, it's impossible to do I am going to take one small little thing that's right, that I can actively change, that I can have an impact on, yes, and build off of that Right and learn and build, and I think that goes back to one of the things that we as human beings need, which is to feel like we can have an impact, I think, when you're overwhelmed. Well, I have one last question for you, kendra, and I feel that this one will be a good way to kind of distill some things from you, to take it down to town, to the basics. If you could go back in time to the young Kendra, what would you go back and tell?

Speaker 1 26:09

her. I think for me, honestly, it would be. I would tell her to be kind to herself.

Speaker 1 26:18

I would just be like, hey, you're doing great and you're going to have what matters to you right now. It's not going to matter forever and that's normal and human and good. And so just be kind. As things change, as you mess up, as people hurt you like that, you just hold kindness in your bones, man, when we are carrying kindness or when we are choosing to regularly access it, and the softness within us, that changes everything. It changes everything. So I would tell her to be kind to herself.

Connecting With the Lazy Genius

Speaker 2 26:56

Mm. I love that. Well, kendra Dr E would tell her to be kind to herself. I love that. Well, kendra Dr E. Thank you for spending this time with us. If people want to follow you, learn more about your books, what is the best way for them to do that?

Speaker 1 27:06

The best way is to go to my website, thelazygeniuscollectivecom, and it has links to all three descriptions of and links to all three books. You can get them wherever books are sold. I have a podcast, the Lazy Genius Podcast. We're coming up on 400 episodes. It's very, it's a very resonant, snappy 20 minute. Let's help you with this thing show. All of the stuff is at that hub, that website hub thelazygeniuscollectivecom.

Speaker 2 27:32

Well, thank you. Thank you so much for spending this time. Thanks for having me.