Kendra Adachi (0:00)

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Ready to simplify your routine? Head to meritbeauty.com and get your signature makeup bag free with your first order. Hey there, you're listening to the Lazy Genius Podcast. I'm Kendra Adachi 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 419, Five Things to Do Before Summer Begins For Most of y' All Northern Hemisphere People, Summer's pretty much here. Today is Memorial Day in the US so pools are opening, schools starting to slow down or finish completely and we are entering the the abyss. I mean, the beauty of the summer season. Anytime we move from one season to another, though, whether it's a season of life or a season on the calendar, it's really good to pay attention to a couple of things so that we don't suddenly find ourselves in the middle of a new season without the tools that we need to live it the way we hope to. So today I'm gonna share five quick things that you can do before summer begins in order to enjoy your summer in an intentional and fun way. Number one, describe this season. Describe this season. If you already have the summer playbook, you have a spot to answer a few questions about last summer, what last summer was like, and then what that means for this summer. Essentially, we want to name where we are. We want to describe this upcoming season so we can know what's up, we can know what things might be thrown at us, we can know what's different this year than last year. Describing your season, it helps you more easily do the next four things on the list. For our family, I would say this summer is a summer of independence if I were to name where we are right now. So Sam, my oldest, is getting his learner's permit. He will be learning to drive. He'll be driving the family around this. This summer. He's also going to be managing his time more on his own because he's 15 and he needs to and he's got places he's going and doing and being responsible for. I am, I'm going to use the pool snack bar. We belong to a little community pool. And I'm going to use the snack bar as a way to teach my younger 2 kids about budgeting so they can learn some independence and how they spend in like a low risk way. It is the summer of independence because it's the first summer that we are not hiring a babysitter for Annie. In fact, she is going to be doing some babysitting on her own with a couple of families, like a little parents helper sort of thing. So she's gonna have her own little babysitting schedule that's gonna encourage a lot of independence in her. I would also love for all three of my kids to end the summer knowing one more meal that they can make on their own. They all have a couple that they can already do, but I would really like to encourage a bit more independence in helping them expand that. Not 10 meals, not five, just one. One new meal that each kid can cook by the end of the summer by themselves. Right. We, we start Small in this. So this is a season. If I were to describe the season this summer, it's a season of independence for my kids, knowing that is so clarifying. Which leads me to number two. So if you describe your season first, the second thing you're gonna do is you're gonna name what matters about this season. Sometimes the description of your season will be identical to what matters. But knowing where you are helps you see what you wanna prioritize. So for us, in the season of develop, for my kids, saying yes to their independence, it really matters this summer, right? This is the season of independence. And so actually engaging in that matters a lot. So that looks like letting Sam drive his places, even when I know we won't get there as efficiently as if I were driving or if. Cause we're driving. Or maybe it's like still letting him drive, even if I'm a very tired mama that day, who just not really have as much energy to, like, patiently be a passenger, I still want to say yes, right? So he can develop that independence. Having independence matter, it means saying yes when Ben asks to spend the afternoon of the pool alone with his friends, or taking the time to stand with Annie while she learns to cook chicken nuggets in the air fryer and not burn herself. You know, I want my posture this summer to be open to the independence of my kids. Saying yes to their independent choices matters to me, like, more than just about anything else this summer. So I want to keep that priority top of mind, and I want to work that muscle of letting them become more separate from me and being engaged in what that process looks like. If you're struggling to name what matters in a particular season, sometimes it's helpful and to look at the season that you just came out of. So are you absolutely exhausted from a busy spring? You know, maybe what matters at least. At least for the first month of the summer, maybe what matters is rest. You know, it's slowness and play and not rushing to anything because all you've been doing is rushing. In fact, it might actually help you to name what matters in each summer month individually. The. The playbooks do help you do that, which is nice since they're broken into months. But maybe June. Maybe June needs to be a month of rest. July can pick up speed a little more with, like, play and adventure. And then maybe August is focused on, like, refueling and preparing for the next season. But as we learned from Emily P. Freeman, the past is a great teacher. Pay attention to where you've been so you can have a better understanding of what you need in the place you are right now. So that's number two. What matters in this season. This episode is sponsored by Primally Pure. I used to think clean skin care meant compromising on results until I found Primally Pure. Their products are packed with powerful, nutrient dense ingredients from farms, forests and fields because nature already has everything we need and let me tell you, these products work. My skin feels bouncier and looks brighter since I found Primally Pure. I especially love the cleansing oil. It feels so good on my face and leaves my skin feeling great hours after I use it. And a fun bonus, the packaging is delightful. The secret Grass fed Tallow, AKA Nature's Botox. It's deeply nourishing, non toxic and works with your skin, not against it. Plus, every ingredient is carefully sourced so you're never putting anything on your skin that you wouldn't want in your body. If you want simple, effective skin care that delivers real results, Primally Pure is the answer. Use Code genius to get 15% off your primary pure purchase. That's www.p r I-m a l l Y-P-U-R e.com and use code genius at checkout for 50 dol. 15% off your order. This episode is sponsored by Everyplate. Dinner does not have to be dramatic. You don't have to spend a bunch of money or a bunch of time to make really good food at home. Every plate makes getting dinner on the table easier and dare I say, more fun. Meals like crispy Buffalo Ranch Chicken or cheesy Mexican Street Corn Hash are totally doable and totally delicious. Everyplate is not just tasty, it's wildly affordable. When you have seasons where life is busy, it's so great to have everyplate in your corner to make recipes that are simple and clear and on the table in under 30 minutes, especially on days full of energy and I personally do not have it. 1 favorite hack for Everyplate Use your Everyplate meals to help teach your kids how to cook. They can follow the directions and make something they're proud of. 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Backed by science, Headspace offers expert LED meditation for every experience level. Feel good and mean it when you say it for a limited time get headspace free for 60 days go to headspace.com lazygenius that's h e A-S-P-A c-e.com lazygenius to unlock all of headspace free for 60 days headspace.com lazygenius this episode is sponsored by Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. I love my hometown and I've always got my radar up for ways my family can get involved and give back in our local community. That's why I'm excited to tell you about Student Visionaries of the Year, a campaign by Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, the largest nonprofit dedicated to creating a world without blood cancers. Student Visionaries of the Year is a seven week philanthropic leadership program for high school students. Participants form strong teams and fundraise in honor of a child with blood cancer in their community. This program is transformative. It not only helps students develop valuable life skills like project management, communication, financial literacy, and entrepreneurship, all of which look great on college applications, but also, most importantly, it's a chance for them to engage in meaningful work within their community and make a real impact on blood cancer patients and their families. This is something I'd love for my kids to participate in when they're older. You can learn more about Student Visionaries of the year@lls.org students that's lls.org students so first you describe your season, what does it look like, what's going on right now? And then second, you're gonna name what matters now that you know where you are, what matters most during this time. And remember, remember, it doesn't have to matter forever like you're living in the season. Quite literally. It only matters right now, maybe even a week or a month at a time. And that's great. That's great. Okay, that leads us to number three, which is a bit more practical. Number three is to plant see some flags. I Use the phrase plant your flags to reference things on the calendar that are, like, pretty set in stone, right? Vacations, camps, work deadlines, and the time needed leading up to that deadline. Maybe you're preparing for a surgery or there's some other kind of, like, before and after moment this summer. Go ahead and plant your flags. So we have a product in our digital store called the summer docket, which helps you name what matters specifically about summer specific activities. And there are undated calendar pages that you can print out that might help you plant your flags. So you can, like, see it. You can write it down in, like, big, bold letters, the things that are unmoving. Our director of community, latoya, she uses the summer break calendar from the company, the Essential calendar. I love the essential calendar. We have one hanging in our house right now. She uses the summer break calendar to do this kind of thing. It's like. It's one single paper calendar, like, one big page, and you can see everything from Memorial Day to Labor Day. And that might be a really helpful place to visualize your flags. The point here. The point here is to mark what isn't moving so that you can anticipate your rhythms a little bit. This is. This is definitely happening right. Right here. And in fact, man, there are three things in a row that are definitely happening. Hmm. I did not. I did not realize that that might mean I need to pay attention to the time after those flags and not plant anymore for a little while. Right. Too many flags can make any season feel rushed and robotic. Like, even with great flags, even things that you're really looking forward to, it can be hard to be present where you are when you're just doing planned thing after planned thing. So notice how many flags you have. Like, after you get it all down and you see what's set and unmoving, notice how many flags you have, how close they are to each other, and then visualize how you might want to experience the time in between. For our family, there is this stretch in late July, early August that's very flaggy. Very flaggy. It's like I'm on a work trip that overlaps with a youth group retreat for my husband and my boys, followed by our annual team team LG retreat that overlaps with Sam's marching band camp. It's basically like two straight weeks of ships passing in the very windy wind. So guess what? I have already made sure that those last two weeks of August after the crazy weeks, those last two weeks of August before school starts, they're pretty much Empty. One of those weeks, I'm even taking off work completely. And with the exception of, like, getting school supplies, we're just gonna hang out and enjoy going to the pool, and we're gonna go slow, and we're gonna avoid flags. Like, I won't schedule doctor's appointments or meetings or essentials. Then nothing essential is happening because so much that was essential just hit us like a ton of bricks, right? So planting your flags, it helps you see where you need some space to just be. Okay, so that's number three. Plant some flags. Number four, ask the magic question. This is a lazy genius principle. I haven't. I feel like I haven't mentioned this in a long time, but the magic question is, what can I do now to make something easier later? And in this case, what can I do now to make summer or some aspect of summer easier later? This can be small, big, a series of things, whatever you want. Now, as we all know, you know, smaller things tend to happen more easily than the big things. Smaller problems are easier to solve. So perhaps starting small is a good call here. But one thing I know that's going to make our summer easier later is to clean out our hallway. Closet, slash pantry. It's where we keep a bunch of food, but also, like, wrapping paper and coolers and like, all those random things. Now, it's fairly organized until it's not. And right now it's not. Right now, it's very much not. The speed of May has created a pantry where things have not been put back in their places. They're just put back in the closet. It's getting hard to walk in there. Plus, the things that we need for summer, they're in the back rather than the front. And I know that that pantry, it will irritate me every day because we will use it every day, but it is not suited for the summer season. So guess what would make the summer easier? Lazy. Geniusing. That pantry. The other day, I found a bottle of Thai curry paste in that pantry that expired two years ago. And I bet that's just the beginning. I bet that's just the beginning. I need to essentialize and throw out or move things that are not essential to summer. And then I need to organize what matters most in a way that will make life a little easier. That's a small project on my radar that I might even be doing today while you're listening to this, because it's supposed to be chilly and rainy on this North Carolina Memorial Day, so we'll see if we're not Eating hot dogs at the pool. I might just be cleaning out the pantry, but I might be moving the things that are on one part of the pantry to another because it's easier. We need to get to them more often because of the summer. So I'm really excited about magic questioning my pantry. Okay, so step four is to ask the magic question, what can I do now to make summer easier later? And then finally, number five, schedule, rest. This is also one of the 13 lazy genius principles. And for some of you, well, I think we all need this, but there are different ways that we could look at scheduling rest in the summer. I think some of you probably have a rhythm of summer that actually doesn't change a whole lot right from the rest of the year. Like, maybe you don't have kids, you're still going to go to work and do your job and live your life. You know, maybe, maybe some of the weekends are like, buy water or like, you're outside with friends more than normal or something. But for a lot of you listening to this, your summer is kind of the same that it normally is. Others of you, it's the same because you have tiny kids at home and you're always home with your children. And so summer's just hotter. Like, it's. That's the only difference, right? But a lot of you, summer is a whole different animal because your kids are at home. A lot of you listening are parents, which means that during the summer, you are, you are a working parent. Like, no matter what, you're a working parent. You're either working by having your kids at home all the time, or you're working a job somewhere else and having to manage your kids not being in school anymore. There is a different set of skills required to be a parent in the summer, and those skills will likely SAP your energy at a different rate than other seasons. Not only that, if your kids are no longer at school, that means that they're probably home, which is maybe where you are, too. Like, summer's not the season for alone time. I've mentioned this before, but one of the hardest things for me about transitioning to summer is losing my day off. I take Fridays off of work, which means I get to be in my house by myself with nothing productive to do once a week. And it is maybe one of the most important rhythms of my whole life. In the summer, the ease of that is gone. Someone is always home. Like, even Kaz, even my husband, he's a school counselor, which means he gets to be home for like a solid four to six weeks every summer. And it's amazing, but also it's another human at home who usually isn't. So as you prepare for summer, schedule rest, schedule breaks. Think about how you can experience some solitude or quiet or energy for your own personal enjoyment this summer. Every day now, like anything, like anything, starting small is gonna be really important here. You might be a mom of tiny kids and you're like, Kendra, that's adorable. But there's no solitude or quiet. Ever heard Chef? And it is possible to name something really small in this season that can help sustain your energy and rest if you keep an eye out for it. So I really want you to start thinking about a way to schedule some form of daily rest. Maybe it's shifting how you spend a kid's nap time or where you eat your lunch, you know, just for the season. Maybe it's naming that, like if you guys, if you go to the pool or something. Maybe it's naming that the first hour at the pool is your time. You can tell your kids who love for you to play with them that you cannot wait to get in the water with them after the next swim break. But for the first one, mommy is going to sit in this chair and she's going to read for a little bit. You know, it's taking those moments, those deep breaths, those chapters of a book, those snippets of conversation where you can get them, but also choosing where some of them happen. Be intentional about those moments of rest where you can. I would also love it if you would look at your calendar, check where those flags are and go ahead and schedule a day of rest, maybe even longer than a day. You know, organize an all day babysitter. Ask your parents to take your kids for one weekend wherever they live and then like rest and enjoy yourself while they're gone. If you can, take a day off of work, just one day, or maybe even work from home without any meeting scheduled or something, all while your kids are at camp. Or you can just be in your house by yourself. Like you could do that. You could split a local hotel room or an Airbnb with some friends and like do a sleepover just one night where you just like laugh and read and play games and go to sleep when you want to schedule some rest. Little, little daily rest, maybe bigger if you can, in places. But please don't skip this. Be vigilant about noticing when you can rest so you can live. So in summary, before summer begins, carve out a few minutes to think through these five things. Number one, Describe this season. What's going on? What does it look like? Where are you right now? Number two Name what matters this summer. Now, that might be the same answer as the first question, or the answer to the first question will at least help clarify the second. But what matters? 3. Plant your flags. Look at what is immovable and what rhythms you might need to not always feel like your summer is just jumping from one thing to the next. 4. Ask the magic question, what can you do now to make the summer easier later? And five Schedule. Rest. Honor yourself. Prioritize your time. If you are so hesitant to do that, if it makes you cringe or twitch, your homework is to Right now. Go listen to episode 406 of the Lazy Genius podcast, which is a big sister pep talk about how you're not being selfish when you choose to do things that fill your own bucket. I think you need a big sister kicking your adorable soft pants if you are convinced that you do not have time for or deserve rest. No ma' am, we do not do that here. I refuse to believe it's true. And I want you to stop believing it's true so you can go listen to that episode if you if you need a little reminder. So those are the five things to do before summer begins. All right, I already mentioned the summer docket in this episode. You can get that anytime that you want to get started on what matters to you this summer. Remember, if you do download that, it's it's like lifetime access. You can print it out as many times as you like. You can grab your copy at the lazygeniuscollective.com store. Also, if you still have not gotten the Summer Playbook but you keep meaning to, here's your reminder to go ahead and place your order. You can you can grab the Seasonal bundle, which is like all four seasons of Playbooks at a discounted price. That way you don't have to rush to order the next season in time you know to have it before it starts. You'll already have it waiting for you, which is fun. You can find info about that@the lazygeniuscollective.com playbooks. Okay, before we go, let's celebrate the Lazy Genius of the Week. This week. It's Kristen Brank. Kristen writes, A few years ago, while doing a major declutter, I decided to pare down mugs a lot. I drink coffee every day, so this was kind of traumatic. I decided to keep my favorite seven mugs, one for every day of the week. Now I can enjoy each of my absolute favorites. But I also know that if it's Tuesday, it's the white one. If it's Friday, it's the pink one. Etc. This is tiny, but it is one less decision I have to make. Kristen, I love small choices like this. First, I love that you have like a coffee cup cue. You know we talk about like a meal matrix or whatever. You have like a coffee cup matrix. This is what I drink out of on this day, right? This is also utilizing the lazy genius principle of essentializing, which is a concept that Greg McKeown started around business, but it actually works beautifully for regular life too. And, and that's to only have what you need. Only have what you need. Kristen decided she didn't need as many mugs as she was storing and kept only the essentials, only her favorites. So that makes decision making and and storage easier that it also leaves lots of room for enjoyment of the mugs that matter most. So I just love this. I love this. Kristen, thank you for sharing and congratulations on being the Lacy Genius of the Week. This podcast is part of the Odyssey Family and the Office Ladies Network. This episode is hosted by me, Kendra Adachi, an executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fisher and Angela Kenzie. Special thanks to Leah Jarvis for weekly product production. Thanks y' all for listening. And until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra and I'll see you next week. We've all been there when you really want to splurge on that gift to yourself, but you don't want to wait until your next paycheck. That's where Klarna comes in. Klarna is your smarter everyday spending partner, helping you make confident choices with your money without sacrificing what you love. With Klarna's Pay in 4 product, you can split your purchase into four interest rate payments. The that means you're not paying for more to pay over time. 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