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This episode is sponsored by Skylight. I've always loved a paper planner. Pen to paper helps me think, but there's a difference between my planning system and helping everyone else in my house know what's going on. That's where the Skylight Calendar comes in. It's a sleek digital display that shows everyone what's happening, color coded for each person. Plus it syncs with the calendars you already use so you don't have to do anything extra. Your happiness is Skylight's happiness. So if in 120 days you are not 100% thrilled with your purchase, you can return it for a full refund, no questions asked. Right now, Skylight is offering our listeners $30 off their 15 inch calendars by going to myskylight.com Genius go to myskylight.com Genius for $30 off your 15 inch calendar. That is my S K-Y-L-I G H T.com Slasher do this episode is sponsored by Eggo Protein Waffles. Mornings don't have to be perfect to be good. I think that if everybody eats something and gets out the door mostly on time, we're gonna call it a win. Lately, that something has been new. Eggo Protein Waffles. They've got the same great Eggo taste we all know and love. My teens are totally into them and I am into the fact that they've got 20% of your daily protein. They're an excellent source of protein with 10 grams of complete protein per serving and they smell so good coming out of the to Y' all know I'm mostly hands off when it comes to my kids breakfast, so I love that everybody can handle their breakfast on their own without compromising on protein or flavor. These Eggo Protein Waffles are quick, they taste really good and they make mornings easy. Eggo Protein Waffles and pancakes were designed with taste in mind and come in a bunch of delicious flavors. Ben is obsessed with the blueberry pancakes. Head to your local grocery store to fuel your morning with Eggo Protein waffles and pancakes available at retailers nationwide. Hi there, you're listening to the Lazy Genius podcast. I'm Kendra Adachi. This podcast is not about hacking the system to find more time or hacking your energy to get more done. Hustling to be the best or to make the most out of every opportunity is exhausting and unsustainable. So here we do things differently on this podcast. We value contentment, compassion and living in our season. We favor small steps over big systems. Here we are lazy geniuses being a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. And I'm so glad you're here. Today is episode 433, when your to do list feels too long. First, I'm going to give you five questions to ask to help you get your to do list in a place that feels way more doable. It's a really simple process you can follow that takes less than five minutes, and I promise it'll help. Then I'll share what my own personal To Do List routine looks like. Not so you can follow it, but so you can just hear how someone else approaches, how they get their tasks done. As we know hearing ideas from other people, it helps us find our own ideas. Then, for a little extra something, I'm going to share our current meal matrix for this busy fall season. A meal matrix is a meal planning scaffolding, basically, that it helps limit decision fatigue while still leaving room for variety and flexibility. And we have one right now that's working really well for our current season of Life. And like the to do list routine, it might spark an idea of how to approach your own meals by hearing mine. We'll as always share the lazy genius of the week. And then we'll end with a mini pep talk for when you forget to do something you needed to do. Because no matter how short you can make your to do list or how smooth your to do list routine might be, you're still gonna forget stuff. And that can be hard. It'll be a necessary pep talk for this particular episode. All right, before we get into it, a quick announcement that the next monthly newsletter goes out this Wednesday. As a reminder, we are making an awesome change to our newsletter. So usually the latest lazy letter it has a couple of essays from my like regular life things I'm trying. It's just stuff I don't share publicly. I also have announcements and usually book reviews of all the books that I read that month. Well, in order to solve a handful of problems all at once, we are going to do a newsletter spin off so to speak with the book reviews in a separate email called the Book List. So the latest lazy letter, it will stay as usual delivered on Wednesday morning with everything that you have come to know and love about it minus the book reviews and then the book list that will have the book reviews, it will go out on Wednesday afternoon. So you'll get both emails on the same day, just different times of the day. If you get the newsletter already, if you already are on the mailing list for the latest Lazy letter this week. On Wednesday you will see a link to click on to sign up for the book list if you want to. We're not just going to assume that everybody also wants the book list. If you do not already get the newsletter, but you would like to get it now that all the book reviews are gone, you can click the link in the show notes or go to the lazygeniuscollective.com join and you can just get the latest lazy letter. Now if you would like to get only the book list and not the newsletter and you're not subscribed to either, then you can go to the lazygeniuscollective.com booklist and you'll get the first booklist email delivered this Wednesday, September 3rd. Plus on that book list page are some fun lists of favorite books and authors of mine, a few reviews of recent reads just to get the flavor of what you're going to be getting in the email links to both newsletters are in the Show Notes. All right, announcements over. Let's get to the episode. So today we are talking about what to do when your to do list feels too long. We all know the feeling. We look at the the written down list or simply think of all the things in our head and we immediately get overwhelmed. Like immediately we think this will never ever get done. This is too much for one person. There is simply no time. We've all been there. I'm going to share with you a series of questions to ask so that you can manage your to do list better. But before you start asking those practical task related questions, I want you to first remember what you know or what we know collectively as lazy geniuses. We know that all of you listening. You're a grown person who has many long to do lists that you've experienced in your life and you are still here. You made it through, right? Sometimes the urgency of whatever list is in front of us, it can feel so insurmountable that it feels like it's gonna like negatively affect our lives in like a very dire way, y'. All. It's rare that that happens, right? Undone to do lists. They happen all the time. We survive them. We will make it. Now think about how you might talk to a friend or your kid who is overwhelmed by all there is to do. Okay? You would not start off the conversation by shaming them for not getting more done. You also probably wouldn't start by immediately giving them orders on what they should do first. You would likely start by telling them that they're going to be okay. That it's normal to feel super overwhelmed by this long list of things to do, but that life isn't just about checking off lists, even ones full of important things. So I want you to do the same for yourself. If we start with what we know, we know here in this lazy genius space that integration is more important than productivity. We know that being a person and honoring our own limits and humanity are more important than efficiently crossing stuff off. We know that staying grounded is more important than staying on task. That is where you begin. You can do that. Very annoying first piece of advice that we often hear, which is breathe. You can breathe. You can slow down your breath and your body for just a few seconds, and you can remember that your list is not going to ruin your life. Getting it all done is not at the core of who you are as a person. In this world, you will be vigilant. In this listener, you will be vigilant. And you will not sacrifice your humanity on the altar of productivity. Right? We do not do that here. That mindset, that is where you start. Remember what you know to be true. Now, another thing you need to know to be true is what is actually on your to do list. Now, if you have it already written down, that's great. If you don't, if it's all in your head, I want you to get it out of your head. You need to see. You need to see with your eyes what you need to do before you can make choices about how and when to do those things. So if your list is currently in your head, I want you to get it out. Do a brain dump. You can write it all down, whatever it is. Things always feel bigger in our heads than they do on paper anyway. All right? So once you're in the headspace of remembering that you are a human person and you are not an optimization robot, and once you write down your to do list, you can start to answer a few questions to help make that to do list feel, feel shorter, both practically and emotionally. So let's get into the five questions. The first question, what do I have to do today? What do I have to do today? And I mean it. What must happen today? Or else it could be a work thing that has, like, a hard deadline for today. There's no choice. You have to finish this task. You have to feed yourself and or your family dinner. Like, what you feed the people is up for negotiation, but you have to eat. You have to pay this particular bill because it's literally due right now. When you ask yourself, what do I have to do today? Be so vigilant and essential and specific. Like, what can only be done today and not later. Write out those things separately on a little piece of paper. If you can separate from the chaos that you're seeing of the whole list at once, that right there is your list for today. Just that? Just that. Keep it so simple. The reason you start here is so that you can pull out what has to be done today and get it actually done. But when you ask yourself that, what do I have to do today? What sometimes happens is that there's very little that is essential for today. Like, you might have an onslaught of things that have to be done, like fairly soon, and maybe you don't know how to prioritize them right now. And I get that struggle. But the beauty of this first question is that it offers a laser focus into what is literally only on the table for today. You might be surprised at how little there is and how. How you have less urgency today than you originally thought you did. Okay, so that is your first question. What must happen today? What do I have to do today? No questions asked. Okay. Then you move on to the second question. What do I hope to do today? Now, this list can get a little longer, right? But I want you to think about what is the most urgent thing that you hope to get done today, Especially if that thing is probably going to be a have to tomorrow. Right. I have often used a to do list labeling approach called now, soon, later. Never mind, we just did the nows and now we're at the soons. But you can make that soon even smaller. Like, what do I need to get done soon? By thinking about what you hope to do today that will probably have to get done tomorrow or the next day. Okay, Now, I am not going to boss you here, but I would really encourage you to have one small piece of paper with your answers to question number one separate, and then a second small piece of paper with your answers to question number two separate the have to's and the hope to's that keeps you from getting distracted by the the hope to's before you're done with the have to's. Okay, so what do you have to do today? What do you hope to do today? There is such freedom in not having to get that second list done today. It's a hope to, it's not a have to treat it like one. Don't beat yourself up if you don't get it all done. That was never the intention or the expectation. Okay? So keep both of those little lists as small. As you can see, smaller lists are visually more calm and logistically more doable. And then honestly, those are the first two. You could stop right there. You could stop there. You could actually stop after the first question and call it good. Like, if your to do list feels long and you just do the things that have to happen today without worrying about the rest of the list, you would be more or less fine. You're attending to the most urgent things without getting bogged down by the rest. But I also know that many of you like the idea of tending to the necessary before it becomes urgent. You know, we're, we're more emotionally accepting of the survival state that we often find ourselves in, especially in busy seasons. But you would probably prefer to not always have to be like surviving. Like, maybe you don't expect to thrive all the time, but you would like to feel like you're floating in the water more often than you're drowning in the water. So the second question of what you hope to get done today, it can help with that, right? It can help get you a little bit closer to not feeling like you're always responding to what has to happen right now. But involving these next three questions into your process, it's going to help even more. So we're looking at what is left of your list after you have removed the have to's, and you might have even removed the hope tos for today. That's great. Now, as you assess the remainder of your too long to do list, ask this third question, what can I combine? Look at your to do list and group like tasks. Group things that are similar. Batch it, if you will. That is a beloved lazy genius principle. So what tasks on your list use the same type of energy or can be combined into one long errand, or one sit down at your computer, or one conversation with your partner? What can you combine? Now, I do enjoy rewriting things into their own little groups because it helps me not be so overwhelmed by the disparity and disconnection of the entire to do list. Remember, there's no real connection among all the things on your list, except that they're just next to each other and they're all happening to you. I shared this quote in my book the Plan, which, by the way, that book has an entire chapter on making better to do lists, if you're interested. But I quoted this by Robert Kraft. He said this in Psychology Today, and it's in the book he writes. Lists are useful because they document what we ordinarily forget memory strongly prefers internal structure. And without this structure, remembering is hard work. Unlike stories in which events are connected by cause and effect, items on a list have no internal structure except verticality. The first item on a list does not cause the second. A series needs to be written, otherwise we will forget what's on it. Now, doesn't that make so much sense? Our lists have no natural structure that help us triage what to do next or to connect tasks to each other. They're just listed on the same piece of paper. So by asking question three, what can I combine? You're creating a little bit of that internal structure. You're putting things together that go together, tasks that are part of the same story. Now, this is also where you might spot ordered tasks, things that actually do have a cause and effect, like meal planning for the week and making a grocery list. They are two deeply connected things. You can't make a grocery list until you know what ingredients you need, probably from your meal plan. Right? So those two things can be not only combined, but even ordered. Okay, so you have removed the things that have to get done today. You've put them on a separate list. Maybe you have removed the things that you hope to get done today and you put those on a separate list. Or maybe they're still on the list. That feels too long. No worries now. So, looking at that too long list, what can you combine? You can use different symbols or highlighter colors. You could rewrite similar tasks together, whatever works. But create some visual differences for yourself as you combine things that naturally go together. All right, before we get into the last two questions, we're going to take an ad break which makes this episode free for you to listen to. So thank you sponsors. This is your quick reminder that we do send out a podcast recap email every other Friday. Friday. It's called Latest Lazy Listens and it summarizes the last two episodes. It shares the lazy genius of the week as well as other segments that we have on the show. And it has a little extra note from me to help encourage you through the weekend. This next one will have these five questions already listed out for you. So if you would like to get that recap, you can head to the lazygeniuscollective.com listens. This episode is sponsored by Ollie. While the Adachi family does not have a dog, my producer does and her dog Griffin has made it very clear that he is an Ollie dog for life. Ollie's fresh food, like turkey with blueberries, is made with real human grade ingredients. No fillers and dogs go nuts for it. Griffin's more energetic, his coat is shinier, and his human loves the free health screenings through the Ollie app to keep tabs on how he's doing. It's easy, it's high quality and and apparently it's delicious. Dogs deserve the best and that means fresh, healthy food. Head to ollie.com genius tell them all about your dog and use Code genius to get 60% off your welcome kit when you subscribe today. Plus they offer a happiness guarantee on the first box, so if you're not completely satisfied, you'll get your money back. That's o l l I e.com genius and enter code genius to get 60% off your first box.
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This episode is sponsored by Wayfair. When the weather cools down, all I want to do is make my space feel a little cozier. And Wayfair is always where I look first. I've ordered a lot from Wayfair over the years, everything from furniture to art to a mirror that totally transformed our dining room. The selection is big but manageable, and there's something for every style and budget. This time of year I start thinking about layering in warmth, pillows, lighting, textures. And Wayfair has everything to help you do that, whether you're swapping out bedding, adding fall decor, or creating a comfy little reading nook. Wayfair makes it simple, fast, free shipping even on the big stuff and everything in one place. Cozify your space with Wayfair's curated collection of easy, affordable, affordable fall updates. From comfy recliners to Cozy bedding and autumn decor. Find it all for way less@wayfair.com that's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com Wayfair Every style, every home this episode is sponsored by Squarespace. Whether you're starting something new or finally bringing that idea in your head to life, Squarespace is the all in one platform that helps you do it beautifully. You can claim your domain, build a site that actually works, and create something that feels like you all in one place. I've built several websites over the years, and I can tell you it's never been easier than with Squarespace. Their design tools are next level blueprint AI, helps you create a personalized site in just a few clicks. And if you like to tinker, their templates are stunning and totally customizable with simple drag and drop editing. Even if you're not a tech person like me, Squarespace makes building a beautiful, functional site totally doable. Go to squarespace.com lazygenius for a free trial and when you're ready to launch, use offer code LAZYGENIUS to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com lazygenius code lazygenius all right, we have separated today's have to's and today's hope tos. We have combined whatever we can combine. Fourth question. What can I delegate, delay or be lazy about? All right, what can you delegate? What can be given to someone else? They might not do it as well as you do, but right now, when you're overwhelmed, does it really matter? So I've been fighting a cold for like the last week or so. And the other day I. I was just out of energy completely. I was so tired. It was also the first day of school, so my kids were out of energy too. So we finished dinner. I took some meds to help with my raging headache, and I looked at the dirty kitchen. Now, Kaz usually cleans the kitchen with the help of the children. I don't usually captain that, but he had to run an errand so he couldn't clean up. It was just me and the kids. We had eaten later than usual, so cleanup was bumping up against Annie getting ready for bed all day. That all sets the stage for me to choose to either push through and clean the kitchen because I would really like for it to be done or to delegate it to my teenage boys. I delegated it to the boys. Yes, they had long, busy days too, but I knew that they could totally do it. And they could get it done more easily by doing it together. So I just called them both from their rooms. I was like, hey, boys, will y' all clean up the kitchen tonight? It would really help me if y' all would just take the lead on that and get it done as best you can. And they both gave me a neutral like, sure, mom, and clean the kitchen now. They did not do it the way that I would have done it, but who cares? I didn't have to do it on a day where I felt awful and cause wasn't there to do it. And I wanted to save my energy to get an overstimulated fourth grader into bed. So what can you delegate? If there is something either on your list or as you're living your life, what can you delegate? Text or email or yell down the hall about it right now. Like, go ahead and take care of it right now. Delegate it right now. Okay, what can you delay? Lots of things feel urgent, but they can wait a little. Make a note of what can wait until next week or even later in the month to handle. You only need to worry about right now. When you're this stressed out by a too long to do list, just worry about right now. And if you're worried about forgetting the thing that you're pushing till later, just put it on your calendar in two weeks so you'll see it again or whatever process works for you. And then the third part of this fourth question is, what can you be lazy about? If we go back to the first question of what do you have to do today? I mentioned the possible answer of eat dinner. Well, guess what? You can be lazy about what that is today. And that's okay. You can eat cereal or hot dogs even though you had a lazy dinner or cereal or hot dogs for dinner yesterday. Some days and weeks are like that. So help ease the load of today by making the lazy choice for certain things, there will be space later to make a different one. So that's the fourth question, what can I delegate, delay, or be lazy about? And then finally the fifth question, what am I trying to do that doesn't fit in my current season of life? This one's gonna get you every time. If you find that you are relying on cereal and hot dogs most nights, it might be that you are trying to fit the meal rhythms of a different season into this new one. Maybe you just started working out of the home again and you no longer do like a little bit of meal prep during lunch to make dinner easier later because you're not home for lunch anymore. Maybe your kids have football practice or they're in, like, a new level of martial arts class that meets at a different time of day or day of the week than before, and it's interfering with how much time you used to have to make dinner. Maybe you broke your leg or you broke up with a partner or you have a tighter budget than you used to. All of those things are going to impact your season of life and how you live inside it. It's so important that you look at that to do list that feels too long and see what tasks you're expecting to complete that simply do not work fit in your season of life anymore. Be willing to let something go, do something differently, or adjust what matters to you right now. The world of traditional productivity sometimes makes us feel like we're on a conveyor belt heading in, like, one smooth, linear direction where everything gets done in the same way and at the same rate that it always has, which is, like, fast. That's just not how life works, especially for women. We got too much happening, y'. All. There's too much happening. So be kind about your season of life. Don't force yourself to do things that don't fit right now. Don't expect to do things the same way you did in a previous season. Notice what on your list needs a fundamental adjustment based on your current season of life. So your five questions when your to do list feels too long are one, what do I have to do today? And make a separate list for that? Two, what do I hope to do today? Keep it small and potentially make a separate list for that. Three, what can I combine? Four, what can I delegate, delay, or be lazy about? And five, what am I trying to do that doesn't fit in my current season of life? If you take just five minutes to look at your too long to do list and you answer those questions, I guarantee you're gonna feel better about what you have to do, especially what you have to do. Just for today. Okay, now I'm gonna share my personal to do list routine so that you can see how things like, stay mostly together and in a flow. I was about to be like, I'm not an expert, but actually I think I am. I think I am an expert at compassionate time management, and that includes compassionate list management. Okay, so this is how I handle my list. You can either copy it, you can adjust it to make it work for you. You can do something completely different. It doesn't matter. Regardless, keep compassion towards yourself and your people and contentment with who and where you are today at the center of all of this. Okay. All right. So here's what I do. I do almost all of what I'm about to explain in whatever playbook I'm in the season of. So I've mentioned playbooks for several weeks now, but if this is your first episode that you've ever listened to. Hi. Welcome. So glad you're here. You can pop over to the lazygeniuscollective.com playbooks to check them out, or you can listen to episode 417, my favorite planning tool ever, where I explain what the playbooks are in detail. We. We made them. It's something that we create and we sell in our store. Essentially, one playbook. It covers three months at a time, which is short enough to feel like, you know, you can sort of see ahead and plan, but not so long that you're, like, overwhelmed by it. Right? It's just. They're tiny. They're so. They're so cute, you guys. They're so cute. Anyway, it's where I keep all of the important words and tasks and reminders and priorities and moments that I want to remember, all the things in one place. It's like my cue for life. It can be used alongside your favorite planner or in place of your planner, whatever you want to do. So unless I say otherwise, everything that I am writing, everything I'm doing in my to do list routine, if it's written down, it's going to happen pretty much in the playbook. Okay, so first thing, I start at the beginning of each season. I walk through the playbook this fall, that September, October, November. So I just started the new fall one. There's guiding questions in there, but essentially I'm reflecting. I'm like, okay, so what worked last season? What's coming up in this upcoming season? What do I remember from last fall that is probably going to impact things? What's different from last fall that's probably going to impact things? I write down all those things that are probably wise to consider so that they don't get lost. So, for example, like this season, this upcoming fall season, I'm planning a couple of big trips. I'm doing a couple of big projects for work. I need to find some sweaters that fit before it gets too cold to just wear T shirts. Just big picture stuff at this point. But all of the big picture stuff, it lives inside my playbook. So that's at the start of every season, right? Next, I do something very similar at the start of each month. I look at that month. Right. I write down some have to's and hope to's for the month ahead. I get a little bit more granular about what needs to get done, what or what needs to be left behind. This month, I. I'm able to look back at the previous season, or not the previous season, but like, at the beginning of the season to see what kinds of things I named that matter to me, you know, one or two or three months ago, which is so helpful to see. And since the playbooks have separate pages for individual weeks of each month, it just says like week one, week two, week three, four. I can immediately write down a task to the week that makes the most sense without seeing every single task for the month at once in one giant list. Kind of like what we were talking about earlier in the episode. One giant list, if it stays that way, is just too unwieldy. So using those weekly pages, it helps me triage my tasks in a way that feels manageable. I'm just putting things in their place for now until it's time to go back and get them. So those two broader rhythms of seasonal planning and monthly planning, it makes the rest of this a lot easier. Okay, so here's where the rubber meets the road. Each Sunday, I plan my week, although I am considering moving it to Saturdays in this season because Sundays just feel busier than usual. And I wanna rest a bit more on Sundays amidst that busy. We'll see if that adjustment happens regularly. But for now, I think the accurate thing to say is that I plan the upcoming week over the weekend. So what does that mean? I make a list of tasks, things that have to happen that week. Right. I'm pulling from what I've already written down from seasonal and monthly planning. I'm looking through my digital calendar just from, like, random alerts and regular rhythms of each week. Right. So I usually have one long weekly list in my playbook. But if there is more than I can batch or structure inside the playbook, which does occasionally happen, then I will have, like, this random weekly notepad. I mean, it's. It's. It's nothing. It's just like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. It's. It's nothing special where I will put specific tasks on specific days. I've shared with y' all that I just. I'm pen to paper, like always, so it helps me kind of work it out to be like, oh, this would be really good to do on Wednesday, probably. Let's do this on Wednesday. And I kind of map all of that out on this Weekly sort of notebook. Sometimes I won't use this weekly notepad thing. I'll just like get a piece of paper and make sections for days. Sometimes I really need to only worry about Monday through Thursday. So I just get a piece of paper and make it into quarters, right? But sometimes I just need. On certain weeks, I need to decide ahead of time what's going to happen on certain days of that week just because of how busy that particular week might be. Now, I might not stick to it exactly, that I do this thing on Wednesday and this thing on Thursday, but it's kind of the same vibe as having a meal plan. Like, it's nice to work from something rather than from nothing, right? So I just kind of loosely put things out there as a weekly plan. The weekend before that week. Then every single day, every morning, I make a daily list. So I used to just read it off of the weekly plan. You know, I would just look at my weekly plan, especially if I had like a little M next to it. It's like, on Monday, what am I doing on Monday? And then I would just cross things off the weekly list. But there is something about looking at the whole week at once, even a planned week. It can feel overwhelming. It can feel too long. So I have gotten in the practice of writing down what I have to do today and what I hope to do today on two random pieces of paper. Like, it's just the essential list for today. It's short and it's physically disposable. So like, random post it note with just today's to do list. What it does is it sucks the emotional urgency out of the day, making that singular list and therefore that day more manageable. So having a short, simple, disposable daily to do list, it's just like. It just sucks the drama out of the day in a way that I really, really love. Now, that may not work for you. You might not want to do the work of rewriting what you have to do today on a separate piece of paper. That might not be necessary, but it has really helped me a lot. So if that intrigues you, you could just try it now. The nice thing about. About all of the day's tasks being still on my weekly list is that they're not forgotten, right? And if something needs to be added to that weekly list, you know, things come up. A kid comes home from school and they're like, mom, I need to bring bottle of water to band practice or whatever, then I will just add that to the weekly list, not the daily One. Right. Because the Today list is just for today. It's just what has to be done today. So hope tos that I might have from today, they're going to be carried over into. They're all living in that weekly list. So they'll be carried over and not forgotten because they're in something that's held tight. Right? Like the Playbook. The daily list can be disposable, but I don't write anything on that daily list that's not going to get done today because I don't want to dispose of it. And that would be sad to forget that thing. So basically it's me like bopping around with my playbook, a small notepad or a post it pad, and my Google calendar being a swipe away on my phone. That's it. I'm an analog person, so that really works for me. But no matter what ends up working for you, I think you will probably appreciate developing some sort of regular practice of looking at what has to happen today. Start there if you're totally overwhelmed and stay there for as long as you need to. Just focus on today. You'll be getting the essentials done as best as you're able until a rhythm for beyond today develops. Right? But you can take this slow because here's the thing. Some people are naturally wired to plan and prepare and make lists and keep up with them and know how to identify what's urgent and what's not. Some people are naturally gifted at that and some people are not. And if you are one of those people who's not naturally gifted at it, that is okay. We are all skilled at different things. If you're not as good at preparing, you're probably really good at either adjusting on the fly or noticing what's going on in a way that others just don't. We learned this from our Plan Pyramid. In my book, the Plan, Right, preparation, adjusting, and noticing are all equally important to living a life that matters. Preparation is only part of it. It's only part of it. And while this particular episode is heavily, heavily focused on the preparation side, don't feel bad if it doesn't come naturally. You have other necessary skills. They're just less visible than the preparation ones. And that's okay. Okay, so to recap when your list feels too long, remember what you know. You as a person matter more than your productivity does. Believe that, even for right now. Before you start tackling what you have to do, ask those five questions to help shorten your to do list and make it more manageable. For your season of life and then start to develop a to do list routine that works for you. It does not have to be mine, but start small with something that might work for you. One step at a time. You can go from daily to two or three days at a time, maybe to weekly every two weeks. Like you just start small and build up. It's almost like developing muscles. You're going to build up that process and that's what you do when your to do list feels too long. All right, let's get in. Today's a little extra something. So our fall life has been a bit of an adjustment. As is expected, going back to school, adding different school pickup times and band practices that don't end until 6:30 and then late nights working and all of the things it can make for an unruly dinner plan. That's why I love to depend on a meal matrix during a busy season. It's just making a decision that is true on a certain day to help narrow down your choices for meals. Whether it's dinner or something else, dinner is our only meal that really needs a plan. So this is the meal matrix that we use for right now. So when I go to meal plan, I just know this is what happens on this day and it's so helpful. So here's our meal matrix. On Mondays we still do pasta Mondays, y'. All. I think eating pasta, if you are able to eat pasta on a Monday, is the greatest gift ever. So Mondays are still pasta Mondays. And since pasta is Sam's, my oldest, is his favorite meal, it works out really well because every kid gets to pick something each week. So Sam just gets Mondays and it's usually pasta because that's what he picks. So Tuesdays are something that Annie really likes. And since Sam, my oldest, doesn't get home until way after dinner on Tuesdays, if he doesn't like what Annie picked, which is often the case, he can eat leftovers from the night before. That's fine. So that's Tuesday. Annie picks on Tuesday. On Wednesday, it's Ben's turn. Ben's my middle kid. He gets to pick. Now Ben has a more adventurous palate than the other two. So usually what Ben picks is also something that Kaz and I really love too, which is fun. Now Thursday is some sort of kid friendly meal that both Ben and Annie can kind of make themselves or serve themselves because Kaz and I go out for a quick date night before picking up Sam from his practice after dinner. So we're in a season of life where Kaz and I don't. We don't really see each other much or like, have a lot of time to really connect every day because the kid's always like needing to be fed or picked up from something or put to bed sometimes all at once. So having this weekly date night in the works is so great. Plus it gives Ben and Annie more practice at being independent with cooking. They. My mom lives down the street and so she kind of hangs out with them, which is so great. So having that set is really, really nice. Now, we don't always go out. We don't always leave something for them to cook, but that's where we begin. Right is where we begin. Now on the weekends, Friday, Saturdays and Sundays, they kind of rotate depending on what activities are going on. But one of the meals is always going to be pizza and another meal is always going to be leftovers. And then the third meal is probably something either new or with people. Those things adjust because of like football games and different activities we have and whether our community group for church is meeting for dinner on Sunday night or whatever the case may be. But it's so nice to know that, like, once I plug in the things on the weekends, it's gonna be pizza leftovers or something else. And that's where the new things can go if there's time for the new things. Okay. What makes this so great is it's just really easy to plan from, right? Every kid gets a pick. They're confident in their picks. What they pick is like always something I can make easily because I've made it a million and a half times. Right? I'm gonna get like grown up food because we're probably gonna go out. Ben usually has pretty good picks. There's something over the weekend that's gonna be fine. And then those weekends are just a rotation of fun, easy things that can adjust based on what's going on. It is such a great meal matrix for the season of life. And so that is a little extra something for you to chew on if you would like. All right, let's celebrate the lazy genius of the week. This week it's Abigail de Gans. Abigail writes, my decide once is to use ChatGPT for choosing recipes if I have ingredients that need to be used and I have a general idea of what I want to make. Examples, lettuce wraps, quiche sauces, restaurant copycats. Rather than strolling scrolling, endless blogs looking for a recipe that I like, I put my ingredients and serving amount in ChatGPT and I ask it to write me a recipe within seconds. I have the perfect recipe because it compiles everything that's already on the web. So far all the recipes have had great results and it saved me so much time and decision fatigue. That's such a great idea. Like, obviously we all have complicated feelings about AI, but this is the kind of thing I really love ChatGPT for. Like let it be your carefully curated Internet eye to find things for you way more quickly than you could Now. Quick isn't always the priority and especially not for everything. But for dinner decisions, quick is often a win. So this is a great tip. Thanks Abigail for sharing and congratulations on being the Lazy Genius of the Week. If you have your own ideas to submit for the Lazy Genius of the Week, there is a form linked in the show notes of this episode. We'll also have it in our next podcast recap email all right, as we end our episode, I want us to come back around to this To Do List what happens when you forget something important? What happens when you get sick and everyone else has to pick up the slack or things might get dropped in that picking up the slack or drop just completely because you're by yourself? What happens when your dad dies or your friends move or your kid is going through something hard at school and life has to dramatically shift for a while? What happens to your to do list then? I don't know. That's the honest truth. I don't know. I don't know your life. I don't know what has to get done inside it. But here's what I do know. People matter more than productivity. Now, in your regular life at home and in your relationships, you're allowed to make that true. Now, it might not be true at your job because you don't always get to decide that. But if you have a job where productivity matters more than you do, you had better make the choice that people matter everywhere else, that you can make them matter. So in your regular life, things can get dropped. They will get dropped. You will forget to send an important form with your kid to school that causes like a few extra phone calls and maybe some tears from your kid because they didn't get to go to the thing that they thought they were gonna get to go to, or it caused a kerfuffle before they did. You're going to get the time for the baby shower wrong and you're gonna show up an hour after it's already over. I did that two years ago and Annie will never let me live it down because it made her miss her first baby shower ever. You will make a commitment to yourself to go on a daily walk or to lift weights every day or go to bed at a certain time, and then you won't do it. And you might even hear the voice of another woman who's had a lot of success in the self help industry tell you that you're breaking promises to yourself and that you're letting yourself down by doing that. That you're not being a good friend to yourself by backing out on what you said you would do. Listen, big old fat no to that. You are learning to juggle and prioritize and live with contentment. And integration is the center of things and it takes time to do that. Plus, life is life and things are going to fall through the cracks. And you'd probably rather let something of yours do the falling than something that belongs to someone else that you love, right? If Annie is tender after a long day at school and she says to me, mommy, will you snuggle with me? Will you stay with me while I fall asleep? And I had actually planned to do like a bicep video instead, y', all, I'm gonna choose Annie. I am. Every single time. I refuse to believe that choice makes me someone that I can't trust. So if you let things fall through the cracks, just take that as a sign that life is just being life and you are a human inside it. Now, most of the time, what falls through, it will not cause a rupture, but if it does, you can do the work of repair. You can apologize to your partner or your parent or whoever it is that you forgot about. You treat yourself with kindness and you forgive yourself. You remember that being an integrated soul in this crazy world is more valuable than getting everything done in an orderly and efficient fashion. People over productivity every single time. So remember that when you forget to do something, it does not define your character for an eternity. And that's a little pep talk for when you forget something. If this episode was helpful to you, or if you've been looking for a way to support this work, it would mean the world if you would share this episode with a friend or leave a kind review on a Apple Podcasts. Both of those things seem small, and in some ways they really are. But it's those small things that add up to get the show in front of more people. And the world needs more lazy geniuses for sure. So thank you so much for listening, sharing, and supporting this work. 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 Kinsey. Special thanks to Leah Jarvis for weekly production. If you'd like a podcast recap every other week, be sure to sign up for the latest Lazy Listens email that goes out every other Friday. You can head to thelazygeniuscollective.com listens to get it. 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. This episode is sponsored by Smile Generation what does a confident smile say to you? With Smile Generation, it says you're taking care of more than just your teeth because confidence doesn't start and stop at a bright smile. It's about your oral health and wellness. 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