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This episode is sponsored by Feeding America. Every act of change begins with a neighbor, with someone saying, we take care of each other. Here in food banks and food pantries, neighbors pack fresh food and dignity into every box, moving food from farms to families through Feeding America's nationwide network. So when that box reaches a home, it carries more than food. It carries a promise that together we can end hunger. Feeding America, led by Neighbors Give now to end hunger@feedingamerica.org this episode is sponsored by Understood.org We Talk a lot around here about naming what matters and building systems that actually work for your real life. I know that for some of you, your real life includes raising neurodivergent kids, which can make a lot of typical parenting advice feel like it just doesn't quite fit. Or maybe it was never written with you in mind to begin with. If that sounds familiar, I want to tell you about a podcast called Everyone Gets a Juice Box for parents of neurodivergent Kids. It's a really thoughtful show full of honest conversations from parents who understand the nuance. Here they talk about things like navigating diagnoses, handling meltdowns, and even mom rage that overwhelm and burnout. That doesn't mean you're a bad parent, it just means you're human. What I appreciate about it is how steady it feels. It doesn't rush you or try to fix everything. It just offers practical help and a quiet reminder that you're not alone in this. To listen, search for Everyone Gets a Juice Box in your podcast app. That's Everyone Gets a Juice Box. Hey 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 get more done hustling to be the best and to make the most out of every opportunity. It is exhausting and unsustainable. So here we do things differently on this show. 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 am so glad you're here. Today is episode 463. It's Office Hours. Oh my goodness. We love office hours. If this is your first Office Hours episode, you are in for a treat. Once a quarter, folks send in their problems that they want to Lazy Genius and I answer those questions and help to solve those problems. In the episode we will get questions that run the gamut and it's always encouraging to hear the normal problems and normal solutions of normal people. This is an episode about solidarity, because sometimes you get to see how other people are struggling with the same things you are. And this is an episode about smallness. Most of our solutions are small, which makes them easier to try and more likely to work. Solving small problems with kindness is really the core of being a lazy genius. Solve what matters, put your energy into those things in small ways, don't be lazy about what doesn't matter as much, and do it all while being kind to yourself. It's truly the lazy genius way, which I love so much. After we answer all the office hours questions, we'll have a little extra something where I share my favorite novel of the year so far. As always, we will celebrate the Lazy Genius of the Week, which is an incredible tip for keeping your chest freezer from turning into an abyss. And then we will finish with a mini pep talk for when you're tired of pivoting. Now, before we get into that, I would love to ask you a favor. I would be so grateful if today you would tell someone something good about this lazy genius thing we're doing around here. We get to help more people be lazy geniuses by spreading the word. And that happens one small share at a time. So here's what that might look like. You could go on Apple podcasts and leave a five star review that's telling a lot of people at once about what you like and that would be amazing. You could go on whatever site that you used to buy one of my books and leave a review about why you loved it. You could actually take one of my books off your shelf and put it in the hands of a friend who you think would enjoy it. You could share the link to a favorite podcast episode on Instagram or Facebook, or just send that link to your group text to friends. I end every episode by thanking you all for leaving reviews and sharing episodes with those friends. And that today I'm actually asking you to do it. Which is like a little bit awkward. But it doesn't need to be awkward. You know why being a lazy genius is awesome? The things we all learn from each other, the principles that we practice, these small problems we solve. All of that makes our lives better, kinder and more grounded. And as that happens in all of our individual lives, it cannot help but impact the lives and even communities around us. I want to live in a world with more and more people who lead with kindness, who focus on what matters, who stop trying to hustle their way into everything and who recognize that greatness is not the only thing worth pursuing. I want a world with more compassionate content, thoughtful people who live in their season, who value small steps and who let people in in all of it. That can only happen when we share those ideas with people who don't know about it yet. So I'm asking you all who listen to the show and who read my books to do one thing today to share what you love about the Lazy Genius space with someone else. It can be with a host of folks like on an Apple podcast review, or you can just text one friend. I'm grateful for all of it and appreciate your support of this work that I think we all really believe in. So thank you, thank you, thank you. All right, before we get into our office hours, questions today, which I again, I am so excited about, let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsors. Our sponsors make this show free for you to listen to. There are no paywalls. There are no subscriptions. You just get to download an episode and listen. So thank you so much to our sponsors for making that possible. Also, here is your quick reminder about the podcast recap email that we send out every other Friday. It is called Latest Lazy Listens and it summarizes the episodes. It shares the lazy genius of the week, other things that we share on the show, and there's a little extra note from me to help encourage you through the weekend. It's also a place where I sometimes share photos of my life, so if you like visuals of different episodes. But those also are in that email. So if you would like to get that recap, head to the lazygeniuscollective.com listens this episode is sponsored by Good Ranchers. Spring always feels like the start of spending more time outside, having people over and thinking a little differently about meals at home and when I'm planning ahead for that. I already know that I'm trusting Good Ranchers. I've been a subscriber for a couple of months now and it's changed how I think about what I keep on handling. Everything comes from American Farms and shows up right at my door, which takes one more thing off my list. And they have custom boxes now which I really like because I can choose the cuts I know my family loves. We're a big steak family and I am the winner of said family. When I come in with a steak off the grill for dinner, it's so great to open the freezer and see items we'll actually use from farmers I can trust. And with my Code Genius, you'll get free meat for life and $25 off your first order. That's free meat with every order and $25 off your first order with my code genius. When you subscribe on goodranchers.com good ranchers.com American meat delivered this episode is sponsored by Wayfair. I feel like I don't notice something in my house isn't working until I've worked around it for a little while. Like moving the same thing out of the way every day or avoiding a spot because it's not very comfortable or. Or realizing no one ever sits in that one chair. And eventually I hit a point where I'm like, okay, I'm done with this. And that's usually when I end up on Wayfair. I can get pretty specific about what I need there, which I like. I'll filter things down, read reviews, look at photos from other people's homes, and get a sense of what it's actually going to be like in real life. I got a leather upholstered bench for the foot of our bed. Now I have somewhere to sit when I'm putting my socks on. And it's one of those things we use every day without really thinking about it. And even though we use it for those middle ground, are they dirty? Are they clean clothes? The bench is so pretty. The clothes don't even bother me that much. Way day is the sale to shop the best deals in home. We're talking up to 80% off with fast and free shipping on everything. Head to Wayfair.com April 25th through the 27th to shop Wayday. That's W A Y F A I R.com Wayfair Every style, every home. All right, let's do it. Let's get into office hours. We are going to save the kid slash parenting questions for the end. So you know those are coming down the road if you want to listen to them specifically or if you want to skip them entirely. We try to group those together. All right, let's jump in. First we have an audio clip from Emily.
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Hi Kendra. It is Emily from Raleigh, North Carolina. I need help watering my garden. I have a small little garden, but I love to grow my flowers and my herbs and then I also have several potted flowers and things outside and I'm just really bad at watering them. I've tried a daily reminder on my phone to go off a little before sunset, so I change that time throughout the year, but then I just ignore it because it goes off every day. It doesn't need to be done every day, but. But watering does need to be done more often than I actually do that. So how can I be better about watering my plants and my garden?
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I love this question because it's tied to something that Emily loves. And it's also small enough to solve, but also maybe so small that it feels like it should already be solved. Those kinds of problems are the most fun for me and maybe the most annoying for y' all because it feels like it's. It's like, too easy. That, hey, listen, the small problems in our lives that kind of get under our skin a little bit, and we think, man, I should have this solved already. No, you shouldn't. It's okay. It's okay. These are small problems that we can solve right now. And you can also leave things unsolved. You know, not everything has to be optimized and awesome all the time. But let's figure out how we can help Emily water her garden more. Okay? So we know, Emily, that you love your garden. You love your flowers and your herbs, so caring for them matters. You also have already tried that daily alarm. That did not work in the way that you hoped. I wonder if the alarm didn't work because you didn't actually need it every day. If your plants don't need daily watering, then that reminder, it kind of loses its value. It's easy to be like, ah, nevermind. And then that becomes more of a habit of like, ah, nevermind, because it feels less important. So I wonder what would happen if you chose two days a week instead of seven, where you are the most likely to go out around the same time of day. You know, maybe it's when you get home from work or it's after dinner or it's at dusk, and you set your reminders then. If you only have two days a week, I think you will feel the importance of that reminder because your plants do need water, but it's not so urgent that you can forget it without consequence. So I wonder if you pick two days instead of seven and just see how that works. One other small idea is if you already have another household habit that does not happen every day but a couple of times a week, you could try tying your watering to that. You could lean on a rhythm that you already have that ultimately try reminders again, but not every day, because you don't need them every day and see how that goes. I hope that helps. All right, next we have Corey. Corey says we're making a triumphant return to City living, but going from two separate offices to one which will predominantly be used by my husband, who is on teams, calls all day and needs more monitors than NASA. I am an academic, so I've got notepads, fancy pens, folders in addition to my computer. I am generally pretty flexible with where I work. I can happily work in a library or a cafe for a few hours, but I'm in my head about not having my own workspace. My desk currently has notes for a few different projects on it. Not so tidy piles. Any suggestions for a more mobile or flexible space? I've got one of those goofy 80s kneeling chairs, and I could put that at the kitchen table during my workday. But where does all my stuff go? One of those Ikea rolling carts. I love that Corrie's, like, verbally processing her solution in the question itself. I do that too. I do really love this question, Corey. And I think this taps into something that a lot of couples or roommates or even office mates might deal with. How do you share space with someone who uses the space differently than you do and more often? Right. So two things come to mind for you here. First, I want us to pause where you said, I'm in my head about not having my own workspace. I think that's really important and something to pay attention to. You have already unearthed a potential invisible problem, and it's probably a great idea for you to explore that as a potential problem before trying to physically solve anything else. So are you in your own head about it? Do you want your own workspace? Are you feeling like you rarely get deferred to, you know, and maybe this is another example of that. Are you actually fine with not having your own workspace, but you feel like you should feel worse about it and therefore you aren't, like, letting the flexibility all the way in? I don't know the answer here. Those are just some ideas. But I would stay there before figuring out the mobile office situation. If there is an invisible problem living under the surface, this is true of everybody. There's an invisible problem living under the surface. No amount of problem solving on the practical side is gonna really do anything. So just see what's going on there first. The second thing that I see is that you're flexible with where you work. It sounds like you don't mind so much working in libraries and cafes and coffee shops and stuff. Like you might even like that a little. It's just the fact that if everything feels mobile, it's hard to know how to lock in at home. Or maybe even feel like your work matters if it's like always being displaced. So I think we need to use the lazy genius principle, put everything in its place. You already touched on this, Corey, but your stuff definitely needs a place. So here's what I would encourage. Find a place where for your stuff that can be portable, like an Ikea rolling cart or something. But that thing, that cart, whatever it is, it lives in the actual office space that you share with your husband. Okay, Now, I'm not assuming that this is necessary, but I can see a lot of value in having the office be home base for your stuff. Even if you don't work in there as often, it stays there in the office as its regular home. You are not always displaced. So if your husband needs to be on a lot of calls that day and you need to be more portable, you can roll your card out, right? But it's not that it's just out floating all the time. Its permanent home. Its place is in the office. Because ultimately you get to use the office too. You also sound like an analog person, not just because of your job, but because of like, it sounds like you like notebooks and fancy pens and you know, you have handwritten notes about projects instead of those notes being on your computer, you know. So if you like pretty functional analog things, I would love to see you explore getting some kind of, some kind of bag. Maybe you could get like an 80s briefcase to go with your 80s kneeling chair or something, I don't know. But just get something that brings you a lot of joy that is your true mobile. I am leaving the house office. So maybe that bag already has like a little collection of post it notes and pens you love. It has an extra set of earbuds since those are always easy to forget at home. Maybe you put all the coffee shop gift cards that you have accumulated over the years in your bag. And once it's time to go to the library or the cafe, if you need to truly be mobile that day, then you can add, you know, any papers or folders that you need in your laptop and you take your mobile office with you. And then once you're back, once you're home, you hang that bag on your IKEA rolling cart or whatever and then you put the whole thing back in the physical office. I think you deserve the office space just as much as your partner does. And also I get that your job is more flexible than his. So it's a kindness to both of you to find ways for you to be more flexible since you have that ability. But it doesn't mean you have to flex your way all the time or all the way out of the office. So keep your stuff in there too. Just in a way that you can move and go whenever you need to. So I hope that helps. All right, here is a great question from Kate. When do you do things that never matter most? I have a brain dump list of various house tasks. Clean out the art cabinet that has coloring books that my 14 year old will never use. Clean out our kitchen cabinets. Reorganize my office drawers that are a hot mess. It feels like I'll never hit a season or a point when it'll be like now I can tackle even one of the these. That is such a great question, Kate. I think everyone listening has that list too, either on paper or in their heads. So we are going to use the principle, put everything in its place. Once again, I love this principle so much. I wonder what would happen if you chose one night, day, whatever time of day works, but one time every couple of weeks, once a month, once a quarter. That has a. It's like a repeated appointment on your calendar where you focus on one of those it doesn't matter so much projects, right? Give yourself a place for it without making it super often or full of a lot of pressure. You can call it, I don't know, Kate's project night or whatever. And like we learned in the episode a few weeks ago about getting better at finishing projects. I would make make the details on project day easier, make dinner easy or give it to someone else entirely if you have kids, maybe don't do regular bath times or whatever on Kate's project night. You know, kids get their own PJs on and you know, maybe you like, they can help you with the project depending on what it is. Or they can, you know, eat popcorn or watch a movie while you're working on that project. So if you make it less often, kind of like Emily's plant watering, it's not gonna feel as overwhelming or like you're constantly putting something to the side, right? If you only do it once a quarter, the motivation and the energy, those are different than if you try to do it once a week. You probably don't even have enough projects to fill once a week. So make it less often, make the details around it easy and then do whatever project on your list fits your and energy that day and then be done until the next one pops up on your calendar. All right, this next one is from Alex. I would love Help Lazy geniusing. My Clothes situation. We have a bench at the end of our bed that becomes the in between clean and dirty clothes. Catch all during the week, I don't always have the energy to hang up the clothes in our closet or put the clothes in their drawers, which is fine, and I let myself off the hook for this. However. However is in all caps. I hate how chaotic it looks. What matters is calming the crazy and walking into my bedroom feeling relaxed instead of immediately being annoyed at the clutter. Okay, Alex, So Angela Kenzie from the Office Ladies asked this exact question in an old episode I did with them that's sort of like that. That half clean, half dirty laundry pile. Like that is such a thing. Or like a laundry chair. I feel like so many people have a laundry chair. You have a laundry bench in your room, but so many people have a laundry chair. Like, it's just a thing. Now, our solution for her, for Angela, was containment. Right? Clothing laying out on a bench is less fun to look at than a pretty basket next to the bench that just happens to have clothes inside it. Containment is your friend when it comes to visual clutter that you do not enjoy. All right? Now, the challenge I'm seeing here with you is that the clothes on your foot of the bed bench, which we have one of those too, actually, are sometimes hanging clothes. Same for us. We sometimes have clothes that can be thrown in a basket or honestly, like, on the other side of the bed, like, literally on the floor where I cannot see them when I walk into the room. Sometimes I'll just leave my pajamas in a pile, but they're invisible. They're out of the way. So containment and invisibility are, like, huge with visual clutter. And I just make them invisible by putting them on. Who cares? Nobody can see. I just want the bedroom to look clean. And my PJs are right there. So. But there are things that can't necessarily be contained in a basket or thrown on the floor because they might get wrinkled or whatever. Right? Hanging clothes are different. Again, this is why people love clothing chairs, because you can drape the clothes on the chair without worrying about wrinkles and stuff too much. So here's what I would do, Alex, because this is actually literally what I do, because we have the same situation. You already said that you let yourself off the hook about it, which I love. And. Same. Same. Now, there are certain days, though, where the visual chaos is too much and it becomes frustrating again. That's, you know, same for both of us. So do you know what I do on those frustrating Days, I just hang up the clothes. Like, it usually takes less than five minutes, and then the chaos is gone. I think what happens is that we sometimes feel like we need to create a system for something when really we can just respond to our frustration when the frustration is there and when it's not, we can leave the problem alone. Otherwise, like, you don't need to invest in some kind of rolling hanger thing or change where the bench is or whatever. If it doesn't bother you all the time. Just know that on days where you're like, you know, I would love the room to look cleaner right now, and you have the margin to hang up those clothes or even just a couple of them for now, and then you can do the rest in an hour. When you've got a few more minutes, just do that and then be done. Otherwise, it's kind of fine leaving them laying there. You can neaten up the pile a little bit if you want. Sometimes I'll do that. I'll drape things more lovingly and more orderly on top of each other, but ultimately you can just leave them. That's like almost the opposite of solving a problem. But some problems, they don't need systems. They just need a choice that makes sense with how you're doing that day. And since you're already in a decent place with the clothes being there in the first place, I feel like you're in a great place to try this, too. Just on days that it's extra frustrating, hang them up. Or when you walk past it and you have time to hang up one thing. Hang up one thing. It doesn't have to be all or nothing, right? You can do one thing and then leave it alone and then do another thing the next time you pass it. It's all fine. All right, next we have Carrie. Carrie says my husband is currently having an unexplained health issue that makes it impossible for him to eat solid foods. Everything must be liquid. While we're working on getting to the cause and hopefully a solution, I've been shocked at how disruptive this has been to our normal family life. So many of our rhythms and celebrations revolve around food. Everything from regular dinner as a family, big events, date night, snacks after the kids are in bed, hospitality trips. All of it seems to include eating and often involve other people. How do we live in the season when we have no idea if it will last weeks or years? And what are some ways to reframe celebrations and mark special moments without them always being centered on food? I feel like our family culture has been turned on its head. Well, first, Carrie, I just want to say how sorry I am about this. This sounds incredibly hard, and you have articulated the challenges of it really well. I can totally see how you feel. Like your family culture has been turned on its head. That makes all the sense in the world. Plus, you don't know how long this might last, right? Not to mention the potential fear and anxiety and even the logistics of just figuring out what's going on. It's a lot. It's just a lot. Now, you asked two questions. First, how to live in the season when you have no idea how long it will last. One day at a time. Which is the most annoying answer ever, isn't it? But that really is the only answer. You live one day at a time with kindness and patience, with honesty about how hard this is. And you watch yourself and your husband become deeper versions of yourselves with each passing day. It's like that Heraclitus, Greek philosopher or whatever, that quote that says, no man ever steps into the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he's not the same man. I find that reframe really beautiful in hard seasons that seem like they don't have an end every day is changing you in really lovely ways. You're never stepping into the same river, which can feel maddening, but it's also permission to not expect the same river. So I would assemble like a little team for yourself. Like, even if it's just one person to share that changing river with, it's almost like. Almost like a one line a day journal, but shared with a friend. Like, let people into this hard season and share the burden of not knowing when it will end. And pay attention to those tiny, tiny things that. That are changing in you as you learn to be more patient and kind as you move through a really hard season. The second question you asked is, what are some ways to reframe celebrations and mark special moments without centering them around food? So my answer to that is the principle. Start small and to do it one thing at a time. You don't have to redefine your family's culture right now. You can pay attention to just the next thing. Like, what's the next family event or a moment that you would like to mark. You know, you can start thinking about how you can center that single thing around something other than food, and you can also bring food into it too. My guess is that your husband doesn't want everyone else to sacrifice their enjoyment of food, especially during celebrations. Just because he can only eat the smoothie version of whatever it is. So we can cheers like the pieces of cake with the cake milkshake and it still count. But I would start small with one event, one meal at a time. You'll be a different person stepping into a different river during this event, as you will the one in a month or two. So don't redefine the culture now all at once. You can acknowledge the fact that you feel like you've lost it, but you don't have to rebuild it tomorrow. Start small where you are. Alright, this one is from Julie. Julie says, I'm starting a new chapter in my life with a new job in the short term, about less than six months. I am commuting more for this job, six to seven hours of travel a week and I'm used to driving 10 minutes to my previous job. I should also mention that this is the first time I have a new job after 12 years. I'm very excited about my new role. That feeling anxious energy about being new and not putting too much pressure on myself. And with the shift and having a commute. I'm definitely going to listen to some audiobooks and love your album project. That's good timing. Any advice for the ride and for the new job? I think, Julie, that you need permission in your bones to just be new. Just be new and adjust. New seasons make us feel unsettled, even exciting new seasons, which it sounds like you're excited about this because we've never done this before and we don't know what to expect. But for people, people who are generally drawn to the Lazy Genius podcast, not knowing what's coming is like not a good time. Y' all like to know what's up. You like to have it all set as best you can and new seasons make that really, really hard. I love that you are excited about audiobooks and albums and I think that'll be super fun. But really, I just encourage you to be new and to go into each day with that newness and be kind in it. You don't have to manage it or control it or systemize it. You can just be there, see the good in that newness. Right now, you'll get used to those commutes in a shorter time than you probably think. And even if you don't, even if you don't, you'll get some reps in that will help make your decisions make even more sense down the road. It's the same thing as before. It's like a different river, right? Every Day is a different person and a different river. So just enjoy the newness, don't try to systemize it, and good luck with your new job. All right, our last non kid question is from Elizabeth. Elizabeth says I am struggling with how to lazy genius making boxed frozen food fit in an organized fashion in my pullout freezer drawer. I've thought about pitching the box when possible and leaving the food in its bag, but then I'm left with a sea of beige waffles and chicken nuggets. I find the color of the boxes triggers my memory to eat said food. And sometimes I need the instruction on the box as well. Looking forward to any help or ideas you might have for my small conundrum. I actually have a really great small solution for this and I'm weirdly excited about. Okay, so what matters here is that we maintain the color of the box and the instructions on the box. Right? But we don't. The ease of bags versus boxes is so much better for storage. I get that. So here's my idea. Ready? Take the bag of frozen food out of the box. Okay. Then I want you to put that bag in a gallon Ziploc bag and take the piece of the box that has the instructions if you need them. Or just like the brand top, just like the box top in the back or something. And then stick that piece of cardboard into the Ziploc bag with the bag of food and store it. That way you can reuse the gallon Ziploc bags again and again. You can even, like, keep the cardboard in there because presumably you're gonna buy the same waffles and chicken nuggets again and again. Right. But this way you can store the food in bags with zippers rather than the bags they come in with like clips that are gonna fall off and they'll get snagged on freezer tray. Tell me how I know about that. All those chip clips getting snagged in the freezer shelves. So you can store the food in bags with zippers and then you keep the color trigger of the box and the instructions, all while fitting them better in the drawer. I am so excited about that idea. I really hope that you're just as excited and that it works for you. Or at least some version of it does. Okay, let's finish up with a couple of kid parenting related questions. First, we have an audio clip from Christine.
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Hi, Kendra. I'm wondering if you could help me, Lazy genius. Ordering restaurant meals for my children. They are seven and four. They have learned to eat a good variety of things at home. And I'm tired of ordering chicken and fries or Mac and cheese at a restaurant. So we eat out about one to two times a week for lunch or dinner. And I'd like them to start trying adult food, but I don't want to buy large portions and expensive plates that they just look at and ask me for more food when we get home. That defeats the purpose of eating out. Please help. Thanks.
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I am weirdly obsessed with this question, like, for real, what a great specific challenge this is and one that I think a lot of families can relate to. And it's nice to see kids expand their palates. There's independence and learning to go to a restaurant and choose a meal on your own. We gotta move out of the kids menu eventually. Like, all of this is so great. I have a couple of thoughts. First, if what matters is that they try new things, let's figure out what's getting in the way of that. Is it fear of buying something? Like ordering something that they won't like and that feels like a waste. Totally valid. Is it being rushed when you get to the restaurant and feeling like you have to make a decision that you're not ready to make? Also valid. I don't know what the challenges are to what matters that. I have three ideas for you. First, you could look at menus ahead of time. So if feeling rushed is a thing, maybe on the drive to the restaurant, someone can scroll through the menu on the phone and read things out loud to the family. People can start getting ideas of what might be fun to try. You just talk about the menu. You don't have to decide. You're just sort of getting familiar. That can also be, you know, fun reading practice for the kids. So that's the first idea. The second idea is maybe you can start small instead of ordering something more adventurous. That's not chicken nuggets for both of your kids. As their meal, you could try like a sharing meal. You can decide as a family to order one extra entree or an appetizer. That's something new to at least half of the family, right? You can order it, share it, and then still everyone can get their regular meal. Or if you always end up with leftovers when you eat out, if you y' all can never finish everything you order and you would rather not order an extra sharing meal on top of that, consider taking one for the team, either you or your partner, if you have one. And just know that, like, you'll be fine eating the sharing meal if the kids aren't into it. Right. If you do the sharing meal idea, I would try something that saves, well for lunch the next day. You could think ahead, like, okay, let's try this thing. And also once they try it, if they don't like it, I got lunch tomorrow, which is always fun. And then the third idea, if you eat out weekly and you want this to be a regular thing, you could get something like a little restaurant notebook that your kids can bring to restaurants and they make notes in. So there are some people who like sell stuff like that, like little restaurant passports or. Or you can just use a tiny notebook. Like you don't need a special thing, but kids can like write the restaurant you went to what everybody ordered. Maybe there's a field for like new food with a star rating or something. Or you could just literally write down only the new foods. You know, it's like the new food notebook. Either way, a notebook makes it more of like an ongoing thing so that there's less pressure on whatever you order at each restaurant. It's more a small part of a long, fun adventure. So those are some ideas, Christine and I hope they help. All right, we have two more. This one is from Alicia. Here is my problem. I'm a mom of five kids, ages 7 through 17, and I'm working on finishing a master's degree during the day while the kids are in school. I also have a fill in the blank neurodivergence label style brain, and I really struggle with overwhelm and overstimulation during the transition between my daytime on my own hours and my evening family time hours. Oftentimes once a kid, once kids get home from school, I hear about school and get everyone aimed in the right direction with snacks, homework, chores, et cetera. My brain is needing a moment of quiet, so I tend to go to my room for a bit of alone time to calm the overstimulation. The problem is that I often struggle to re engage with the hustle and bustle of of kid stuff, dinner prep, and all the many needs of the family in a timely or peaceful manner. After this little break, my husband doesn't get home from work until later. I need suggestions for ways to gently but effectively start the mom entrance back up after the post pickup crash in order to reengage in the rest of my evening with my family. What matters most is that I can fully be fully present to my family even in the midst of a chaotic time of day. I love the intentionality of this Alicia. That's such a hard thing to transition in and out of for a lot of folks, but it's particularly challenging for a neurodivergent person. Now, I am not an expert in neurodivergence at all, so honestly, I'm not even sure if this is great advice and if it's gonna be specific to you, but I will answer this the way I would for a neurotypical brain that struggles with overwhelm and infused with the kindness and compassion that lazy genus principles have. And maybe it will work much of what we do here in this space. It has been used by dozens and dozens of therapists in the space of neurodivergence. Like and even for folks who are they use the lazy genius principles because they're like accidentally appropriate for neurodivergence. So it's just it was a happy accident. It's the best news. So hopefully what I share will spark something. I will start by saying check out the podcast episode the Lazy Genius Guide to an Afternoon Routine. There may be some things in there that can help you think about that time of day in a full podcast form. But other than that, I have two thoughts. So the first is I am curious if you are trying to calm your body or your brain when you take your break. If you're going to your room for some quiet, which have course is deeply understandable. You're I'm guessing you're lying down on the bed and you're quieting both. You're quieting body and brain, which might be great and might work. But personally I find that if I quiet both at the same time, if I quiet my body and my brain, the distance from rest to regular life feels wider. Like even when I take a 17 minute nap, which is resting. Both things. When I wake up I am rested and I'm a little ready to keep going, but I'm not all the way in it yet. So I wonder if you're jumping off of both tracks, off of both physical and mental stimulation, the way back is gonna be harder because you have to get back on two tracks. So I'm curious what would happen if you rested your brain and the noise but not your body? What if instead of going into your room and lying down, what if you went outside and walked around the block like super slow, just like a meandering or even up and down your driveway or like you do stretches on a little balcony or something? Like I wonder how it would feel if you could still your brain and you can get away from that noise but move your body. That keeps you on the track a little bit and might make the transition back into mothering and kind of the hustle of all that a little easier. That's a thought. It might not work, but it might be worth a try. And then the second thought is to make the transition from regulating yourself solo back into being a mom. Make it more fun and connective. So maybe you have like a hype song that you listen to when you're about to get back in it, and you don't immediately get back in it. You play the song and you, like, dance to it or whatever. Or maybe you call everybody in for like a group family hug to bring that, like, relational visceral piece back into it. Both of those things might sound kind of silly and small, but they're deeply grounding in your body. They're not productive in any way. They're just connective and they could help your brain get on board a little bit easier. It's like a stepping stone, you know, it's like a fun stepping stone from one energy into another. So I hope one of those. One of those things helps. All right, our last question is from chantelle. I have four kids from ages 4 to 13. I love them dearly and they make small requests of me all day long. I love the disclaimer at the beginning. I love them dearly, and I notice it wearing me down and making me feel tapped out and overstimulated. We homeschool, so we are together a lot. And I know it's normal behavior for kids these ages, but I'm trying to teach them to wait until the right time to ask me for things. For example, my seven year old might ask me to look up the price of colored pencils on Amazon while I'm in the middle of a math lesson with his sister. Or my 10 year old might ask me to text message a friend's mom to ask about a play date while I'm in the middle of sweeping up an entire spilled box of Cheerios. Their requests feel so urgent to them, but they don't seem to notice when I'm literally on the floor in a pile of cereal. My older two kids can write so they could learn to pass me notes or something, but my younger two are not independent writers yet. How can I kindly teach them to notice what's going on with me and what's around them before they ask something? And also, how do I keep my cool and not get snappy when they forget how real this is? Also, I feel like Chantelle literally just like, climbed out of a box of Cheerios. This situation feels like it just happened. This is such a. Oh my goodness. This is such a real thing. The tiny questions. Goodness gracious. So we are once again going to use the principle, put everything in its place. Okay? The tiny questions need somewhere to go. You cannot eliminate the questions entirely. And some of those questions, they need answers eventually, right? There's nothing wrong with the questions. So I feel like this is twofold. We need a way to keep hold of the questions that a kid wants to ask and also maybe empower them to solve their own problems a little bit too. If your kids are like mine, Chantelle, some of the tiny questions, they do not matter in five minutes. Like the number of times I've said, hey, I wanna hear you. I can't right now, so just hang on. Remember it, hang on. And then when I go back a few minutes later to see what they wanted, they're like, nevermind, I figured it out. Which is great. Far more annoying is when they're like, I don't remember. Which means it wasn't important to begin with, but important enough to interrupt me with, you know, So I get the frustration. I totally do. So I have a couple of, like, tiny ideas for your kids to consider and then a final one, maybe for you as their mom. So first, you can put the tiny questions in their place by giving them a name. You can call them Tiny Questions or Later Questions, or even if you want to go hard in the paint, quarter questions. If a kid wants an answer to a quarter question, right, then they have to pay you a quarter. You have like a quarter question jar that everyone contributes to. And then you get to use the money for a coffee or, I don't know, they might even be able to fund a massage. Depending on how many questions you get, you likely are not going to get many quarters. The money part is just sort of funny that there is a way to communicate to your kids by naming the question, by giving it a name that this is a question I cannot answer right now. But if the question is important enough to you, if the money is involved, it's gonna cost you something, just like it's costing me something. You know, it's like, we're both gonna make a sacrifice to make this happen right now because it's something important. Or you can just say, that is a later question. That's a later question. But what do you do with later questions? Like you said, your older kids, they can write, but the little ones can't independently yet. So if everyone could write, I would say that all later questions need to go in one place, like a little notepad on the homeschool table or something. If a kid has a question, they write it down and you'll answer it either on the pad or with your voice later. You could even answer them all at once. Younger kids could ask an older sibling to help them write something, or they can just draw a picture to remind them. Like, that's really all the later question needs is a reminder of what the question was. So then you could use the principal batch it and answer all the later questions at once while the kids are all around. But you're not in the middle of anything. So that's just a. That's just an idea. But the point is, put the later questions somewhere, because I don't think that you're going to be able to eliminate the kids asking the questions. As we all know, kids are always asking questions, but it values their question while also valuing your own boundary. So if there's a place for the later questions, then there's time set aside for the answers eventually. And it values everyone's time. Now, the other thing is just your own reaction. You said in your question, how do I keep my cool and not get snappy when they forget? My oldest is 16, and he still yells, mom, like, as he walks into the room, interrupting me before he. He's even seen what I'm doing. Like, some kids are right now kids. I have a right now kid. The other two are less right now. But the questions are still plentiful and constant from both of them. But when you have a right now kid, it's really, really hard to teach a different way because that's just how their brain works. It's how they're wired. So one phrase I use all the time now that my kids are older when they ask me a question is, I love you. You can solve that problem. If I know they can solve the problem, I'm like, you can solve that problem. Sometimes they ask because I'm faster, or they didn't even think about doing it themselves, right? They didn't even consider it, so I'm giving it back to them. Or sometimes they're just verbally processing. Like, Sam will ask me what he should eat for breakfast every morning, which can drive a person bonkers. But also, I know that he's just a verbal processor and he loves the back and forth as he makes his decision. I don't always have the energy for that back and forth. And on days that I don't, I'm like, have fun deciding your breakfast. You know, like I'm acknowledging the fact that that's what he's doing. He's just deciding, but he can do it. And then I go back to what I'm doing. My point is that, like, even when they're old enough to answer their own later questions themselves, when they can text the friend about hanging out, when they can look up the price of colored pencils, they're still gonna have a lot of things to ask. And so no matter what system you figure out, you still want to pay attention to your own reaction, which you're doing. You're doing that, which is awesome. You're gonna repeat yourself often. You will say, possibly even multiple times a day because of the multiple children. I'm happy to help you. And I'm happy when you figure things out on your own too. You know, that's good practice. So well done. Like, you get to empower them to figure things out. To ask someone other than you for help, like a sibling or just to wait. This is easier when you expect the repetition. They will forget a lot. The frustration as a parent is that if we expect them to remember as quickly as we would like them to, we will be severely disappointed. So keep staying soft, be patient, be boundaried and direct with putting those later questions in their place. But expect that you're going to repeat yourself. Expect to still be interrupted, but kind of like the simplicity of the principle, decide once if you know how you're going to respond when that happens, when you have to repeat yourself, if you've decided, like, almost like if you have a script, it does not dysregulate you as quickly. You can mostly stay where you are, doing what you're doing, staying there even emotionally, and empower your kids to handle the later question in whatever way. You practically decide whether it's a notebook or leaving voice memos on a phone or drawing pictures on a whiteboard. Whatever it is, the path doesn't matter. Just start walking a path, expect to talk about it often, and stay soft while you do. Great questions today, everybody. Thank you so much for sharing them with us all. And that is today's episode of Office Hours. This episode is sponsored by Dell. Dell PCs with Intel inside are built for the moments that matter. For the moments you plan and the ones you don't. Built for the busy days that turn into all night study sessions. The moment you're working from a cafe and realize every outlet's taken, the times you're deep in your flow and the absolute last thing you need is an auto update throwing off your momentum. That's why Dell builds tech that adapts to the way you actually work, built with long lasting batteries so you're not scrambling for the closest outlet and built in intelligence that makes updates around your schedule, not in the middle of it. They don't build tech for tech's sake, they build it for you. Find technology built for the way you work@dell.com DellPCS built for you. This episode is sponsored by Squarespace. If you've ever wanted a place online that actually reflects what you do, whether that's your work, your writing, or your ideas, Squarespace is an all in one platform that makes that really simple. You can build a site, claim your domain, share your content, and manage everything in one place. I've used Squarespace for a long time, over 10 years, which is like a century in Internet time. And one thing I really appreciate is how straightforward it is. You don't have to be a designer or a developer to make something that looks clean and feels like you. They have really beautiful templates to start with and you can adjust everything from there so your site doesn't feel generic, it actually feels like your space. And if you want help getting started, their AI builder can walk you through it and get something up pretty quickly. Head 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. All right, today's A Little Extra Something is my favorite topic ever, which is reading. I love to read. It's my favorite hobby. I own so many books, it's just the best thing. So today's A Little Extra Something is my favorite novel of the year so far. Up until just a couple of weeks ago, I thought I knew the answer because my favorite novel of the year had not changed since January. But we have a new top pick, my friends. We have a new top pick. So my favorite novel of the year in the first three months of the year is called Mrs. Christie and the Mystery Guild Library by Amanda Chapman. I talked about this book in my most recent reading newsletter called the Book List. So for those of you who get that already, you already know that I love this book. You might not have known it's my favorite book of the year. I also mentioned it when I was in the middle of reading on an episode of the Office Ladies on a chit chat episode with Jenna and Angela and they were like, what are you reading? And I was like, oh my gosh, I'm in the Middle of this book. This is Christie and the Mystery Guild Library. I hadn't even gotten to the end yet and I was just loving it so much. So this novel is my favorite in the same way that, like Knives out is my favorite movie. It's just a perfectly fantastic time. So the story centers around Tori Van Dyne and and her cousin Nick. So Tori restores books, she lives above a library, and Nick is an actress trying to get her big break. Of course, I cast the story. So Tori is Phoebe Waller Bridge, the sassy creator of Fleabag. And Nick is Brittany Snow, the ditzy blonde slash redhead from Pitch Perfect. So one day, Tori Phoebe walks into the library's exact replica of Agatha Christie's study because they have this in the library to find a woman who claims to be actual Agatha Christie, played of course by Helen Mirren in my head. So Torey is obviously confused by this, but she like humors the woman, you know. So while ghost Mrs. Christie or whatever is there, Nick, cousin Nick slash Britney Snow comes in crying and upset to Tori because she just witnessed a crime and needs help. So in just a few pages, we get this little crime solving crew of Tori, Phoebe, Nick, Brittany, Mrs. Christie, Helen Mirren, and we're like, what's her deal? There's a brooding detective with like terrible style played by Adam Driver. In my head, there's Torey's dapper best friend Adrian, played by Jay Ellis. And then there's a little Irish girl who, whose mom just died and whose fascination with mysteries and Agatha Christie. It makes her like an unusual but necessary part of this like accidental crime solving team. The story is so great, the dialogue is so fun. The settings are really easy to imagine. The New York of it all is super clear. The group of characters and how they interact. It's just so fun and it sticks the landing. It's just such a good time. I could not put it down. I was sad whenever I was forced to. It's so good. I have never read Thursday Murder Club, but I did see it on Netflix and it feels a little bit like that, but just like a little shinier. It's like a band of unusual folks trying to solve a mystery together. Very saturated storytelling, which is. That's my favorite kind of. I. I just loved it. Favorite novel of the year. Not the best. Like this isn't going to win any literary awards, but literary novels are never my favorites anyway, personally. Like books that are fun and surprising and just keep me wanting to go back for more. Those always get my top spot. And this One was just the right book at the right time, and I need it to be a limited series on Netflix immediately. Thank you. If anybody knows anybody, please make that happen. That would be great. So again, the book is called Mrs. Christie and the Mystery Guild Library by Amanda Chapman. It got a starred review in Publishers Weekly, which is super hard to do. And I just found out that the second book is coming out this October. I cannot explain how excited about this I am, you guys. It's just the most fun. It's the most fun. So if you love rompy detective stories, you will devour this. You will devour this. And that is today's a little extra something. All right, now for the lazy genius of the week. This week we have Jameson from Baltimore, Maryland. Jameson writes, my husband and I love freezer meals because they make coming home from travel or a busy weekend feel manageable instead of overwhelming. But our small fridge freezer meant we could only store a couple at a time. We upgraded to a small chest freezer in our basement, and immediately I worried it would become a black hole of forgotten food real. So we named the problem out of sight, out of mind. Our solution was a shared photo album on our phones. Every time something goes into the basement freezer, we snap a photo and add it to the album. Now, our freezer is visually cataloged by date because that's what happens when you take a photo, you guys, by date within that album without any extra effort. Once a month, I have a reminder set to review the album, plan which meals we'll use next, and delete photos that we may have missed removing once the food was used. As a bonus, we can check the album from anywhere. So even while we're out of town, we know exactly what's waiting for us at home. Wow. Like, this is legit brilliant. I love this idea so much. An out of sight, out of mind is absolutely the way that chest freezers turn into black holes of forgotten food. I just love this. Snapping a photo is easy. You don't even have to file it into the album right away in order to still snap the photo. You know that any frozen meal photo, it belongs in that album, you know, and you can just move it over later that night or in a couple of days or whatever. So the urgency of all the steps happening at once is not essential. It is not essential for the entire process to watch work. I love everything about this Jameson. Great job, and congratulations on being the lazy genius of the week. All right, let's close with a mini pep talk for when you're Tired of pivoting? Full disclosure, I'm kind of making this pep talk for myself. Man, the last few months have felt like nothing but pivots. Like life already has plenty. We know this. Small ones happen every single day. But there are certain seasons where the seemingly constant change in direction, it can give a person whiplash. Pivoting is a wonderful skill. It is a gift to embrace. But when it's all you feel like you're doing, when what is normal and predictable feels so far away, pivoting can honestly get really annoying. Really annoying. As with any pep talk on the show, we start by being kind to ourselves and remembering that that feeling is okay. It's okay to be annoyed by change, pivoting, adjustments, lack of normalcy. If we ignore those frustrations and we push them down or we make ourselves feel badly for feeling them, we're not going to end up anywhere good. So be honest with the frustration from the start. Don't belittle it. Honor the feelings, no matter what they are, they're trying to tell you something. I think after that, I personally want to remember that this is a season. You know, times of pivoting usually right themselves and a season of predictability is probably on the way. I think that believing that something isn't going to last forever, it can help it feel easier to navigate. And if it does last forever, you and I as people will change and adjust within that hard season, becoming different people who can navigate constant pivoting with more kindness and maybe even skill. Remember, we're not the same man stepping into the same river. So no matter what this particular season of feeling thrown off by pivoting, it will not last forever. Either the circumstances will eventually change or. Or you will. And that's really comforting. It might be slow going comfort, but it's comfort all the same. So if that is your season, don't get too mad at the pivoting. I mean, you can get mad, but maybe don't stay mad. You know, honor the mad and then try to move past it. It'll be helpful for the rest of your life to continue to learn how to pivot, even though it feels really annoying right now. And for now in this season, be in it. Be kind there and be patient as you find your way to the other side, becoming more of who you already are. And that is a mini pep talk for when you're tired of pivoting. If this episode was helpful to you, or if you have been looking for a way to support the show, please share this episode with someone you know you can leave a kind review on Apple Podcasts. Like I said at the top, every mention, every share, it makes a difference and turning more people into a lazy genius. So thank you so much for being part of that with us. This podcast is part of the Odyssey Family and the Office Ladies Network. This episode is hosted by me, Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fisher and Angela Kinsey. Special thanks to Leah Jarvis for weekly production. If you would like a podcast recap, email every other week. Be sure to sign up for for latest Lazy Listens 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 Ello. You're probably not drinking enough water. I'm probably not either. We all mean to and then we don't. That's where Ello comes in. They make the viral water bottles and tumblers you've seen all over Instagram and TikTok. But they're not just cute, they're designed to make daily routines easier. Their Oasis tumbler has a lid that twists to tuck the straw away so it stays clean and totally leak proof. And the pop and fill bottle has a push button lid so you can refill it without unscrewing the top. If you're into meal prepping or love leftovers, their leak proof glass containers are made for life on the go, not leaks in your bag. Ello's mission is replacing single use plastics with reusable products that look good, work well and last. Plus they're backed by a limited lifetime warranty. Visit elloproducts.com and use code TRYLO20 for 20 off your first purchase. 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