The Lazy Genius Guide to Mindful Productivity | Kendra Adachi

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Episode Transcript:

Kendra Adachi: [00:00:00] It’s just this constant cycle of thinking that we’re one planner away, one course away, one system away, one change away, one hack away from finally getting it, and the machine of our life running in the direction that we want it to run. And again, that’s just not the reality. Nor is it, I think, the desire for most people.

Jonathan Fields: [00:00:22] Hey, so have you ever felt like you’re caught in a sort of a never ending cycle of striving and hustle, chasing an idealized future state that always seems just kind of out of reach. You make plans, you set goals, you follow all the productivity advice. But at the end of the day, you’re left feeling pretty unfulfilled. Like you’re not only not getting things done or getting ahead, you’re also missing out on just truly living your life and being in the present moment. If this resonates, then you’re going to want to listen closely to our guest today, Kendra Adachi, aka the Lazy Genius who is here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don’t. Kendra is a two-time New York Times best-selling author, the creator of the Lazy Genius podcast, and an expert on compassionate time management. Her latest book, The Plan Manage Your Time Like a Lazy Genius, it offers a refreshing and much-needed perspective on how to approach productivity in a way that honors your humanity and allows you to live a genuinely good life right here, right now. So imagine if you could just let go of the relentless pursuit of mastery and instead learn to embrace the pivots and adjustments and messy realities of being a person in this world? What if you could find a way to get things done without sacrificing your wellbeing, or disconnecting from what truly matters to you? Kendra’s insights just might be the key to unlocking that balance you’ve been craving. As Kendra shows us, living a truly good life means being radically present to where you are right now and showering yourself with the self-compassion that you deserve. So stop chasing an impossible ideal and start embracing the wholeness and integration that’s available in this very moment. So excited to share this conversation with you. I’m Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project.

Jonathan Fields: [00:02:11] You and I have been in the podcast space for more than a minute now. I love that you bring this real-world vibe to this whole world of productivity and getting things done. And instead of saying, let’s look at what works in a lab or in a vacuum, or in the perfect world in which none of us live.

Kendra Adachi: [00:02:28] None of us do.

Jonathan Fields: [00:02:29] You’re kind of like, how do we actually figure out how to get interesting good things that matter done, and live our lives and take care of ourselves? Kind of puts you in a different grouping of people, because there aren’t that many people that say, let’s take a real world, look at this. I’m always curious a little bit on the backstory when somebody starts something. Yeah. Was this sort of like a personal pain point that then you looked out into the world and you’re like, nobody’s doing this in a way that I can actually integrate in my life.

Kendra Adachi: [00:02:59] That’s exactly what happened. I grew up thinking that everything had to be just so. Part of that, I think, is my natural makeup. Some of us love things just so. We like lists. We we resonate with those kinds of things. But I also grew up in a household of a lot of trauma and abuse. And so the just so-ness was beneficial to me because it allowed me to create barriers and protections for myself in a, in a really important way. And but I also didn’t recognize that once I was out of that unsafe place that I, I could relax those barriers and boundaries, and instead I stayed in like big-time genius energy. I think about lazy and genius as this spectrum almost, and we think that we’re one side or the other, that we have to be all, you know, a genius about everything. Or we’re just going to swing to the other side and just give up. You know, especially women, I think that’s that’s a tendency for a lot of women. And so I lived in that genius space for a long time. And and it was also affirmed in me, you know, being good at things, being excellent all the time, being I was voted most dependable by my high school class, you know, I was I was an old soul. People, you’re so mature for your age. I was always the student who was asked to meet the new teacher on staff to give them, like a a good sense of the student body.

Kendra Adachi: [00:04:32] And I was an example and and inside I’m thinking, well, this is the most exhausting thing there is. Like living this way and checking everything off, doing everything exactly the way that it is expected of me, aligning my own priorities with what I think everyone else thinks my priorities should be. And this again, is all in the mind of like a teenager or early 20s human being who has not been to therapy and processed her own life. I, uh, yeah, I just, I thought, this can’t be the only way. But also, everyone’s telling me that what I’m doing is great. So I’m not I’m not quite sure what to do with that. And so my my response when I couldn’t hold it together anymore was to go to the other extreme where I just thought, well, I’m not going to care about anything. I’m not going to be good in anything. I’m not going to be dependable anymore. I’m going to give up this, um, messy hair, don’t care vibe that exists in a lot of like, motherhood circles. I was a new mom at the time as well, and so it was in the process of recognizing that neither of those approaches to my time and my place in the world, my place in my day, neither of those approaches made any sense.

Kendra Adachi: [00:05:46] Neither of them were sustainable, neither were fulfilling. And so with that realization, coupled with therapy and realizing some things about my own story, I just started to recognize that there was a wider way. There was a this wide space between being a lazy person and being a genius person, being so great at everything and so organized and giving it up. But as I started to spend time writing on the internet about completely different things, I noticed I was not the only one who was swinging back and forth in that spectrum. And there was such a there was such a vacuum of language. You know, this was over ten years ago. There was such a vacuum of of language around what it would mean to be an integrated person, what it means to. Yeah, just like live your life. Like, how can we just have a real sense of who we are and where we are and honor that place and still get our stuff done? Can we do both? And no one was really talking about that, and at least that I could find. And so I started talking about it and it definitely resonated because it was a it’s a relief. I think that this way of seeing productivity is a relief, and people are eager for that relief.

Jonathan Fields: [00:07:03] Now, that makes so much sense to me. It’s interesting, as you’re describing sort of the Kendra in a prior season of life, the phrase popped into my mind that so many people have heard and probably uttered, which is if you want something done, give it to a busy person. And and it’s like, but what about all the busy people, you know, it’s like you’re that you’re that kid. You’re the perfect student. You’re the one who’s getting everything done. You’re checking all the boxes. You’re like the most productive, the most effective, and everyone’s like, oh, like, they can take more, they can take more, they can take more. And so that person gets piled on and piled on and piled on until almost invariably, at some point they break. And we don’t think, I mean, that phrase is just I first heard it so long ago, and now I look at it almost like as a phrase of abuse.

Kendra Adachi: [00:07:48] Mhm. Yeah, it’s definitely not as, uh, as honoring as we think it is. That’s why I felt internally quite fragmented when that way of living was so affirmed. Because I thought, can no one see this? Can the people in my life not see that I can’t? I would like to not do another thing. I would like to not be depended on for one more thing, because I’m already holding more than I feel capable of holding. But we live in a culture that we live in, a country that really loves fulfilled potential and hustle and greatness, and none of those things are bad. But I think that the problem has sort of arisen in that that’s where we start. You know, we think that that’s our foundation. Every single person’s baseline is to be the greatest you can be. And I don’t think that is the life I want to lead. And I think I want to be the most integrated I can be. I want to be the the most whole I can be, wherever I am. But to make everything about how much I can accomplish and how much I can master is exhausting. But it’s kind of all we hear. You know, there’s not there aren’t a lot of other messages that we hear. We have to look pretty hard to find them in, in shows like yours, you know, it’s not as marketable. Contentment is not as marketable as mastery, the steps to mastery. And that’s tough.

Jonathan Fields: [00:09:17] It’s so interesting, right? And I’ve actually had this conversation with friends who have been in the podcast space for as long as I am. And, you know, like, why did you call it the Good Life Project and not the Great Life Project or the Awesome Life Project? And I thought about that, and it’s a lot of what you’re talking about. Also, it’s like once you get into life a bit, you’ve been knocked around a little bit. That’s right. And you’ve been brought to your knees and like, you’ve changed a whole bunch of things and you bought into a lot of different dogma. I feel like you kind of reach a moment where you’re like, you know, what good is a really comfortable. It’s good. Feels good to me.

Kendra Adachi: [00:09:55] It feels good.

Jonathan Fields: [00:09:56] I don’t need to be the best in the world at X, Y, and Z. Maybe if I just do this thing that I love doing it, and I pursue it in a way, like maybe someday that happens and I don’t reject that, that’s awesome. But, you know, I don’t need my life aspiration to be the best, the greatest at all. These different things that everything that I do, I just at the end of the day and, you know, like I really just said to myself, I’m like, I just want to live a good life. Yeah. You know, and I feel like that is a much more resonant aspiration for the vast majority of people, especially because I think a lot of people don’t feel like they’re doing that. You know, they feel like they’re just really caught in the slipstream of all the stuff of struggle rather than, you know, being able to pop their head above that and be like, oh, I can breathe today.

Kendra Adachi: [00:10:42] It’s interesting too, because the pursuit of a good life is a different energy and pace than the pursuit of a great one, and they kind of like choke each other out. And so if you’re trying for one, let’s say you’re trying for a life of greatness because that’s just all you know to pursue and it’s not what you resonate with. You don’t get either, you know, you don’t get a great life or a good life. And so I think that I just love I love that that picture that you just painted of even just the name of the show, like where is the space or the spaces for people who just long to be happy with where they are right now? Not in a complacent way, not even in a lazy way, you know, like we can care deeply. We can care deeply about the things in our lives and want to do things well and with excellence and even have ambition in certain areas, like you said, like if I really care about this, let’s pursue it. That’s why the tagline of my my podcast and my business is be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don’t.

Kendra Adachi: [00:11:54] And as your season of life changes, as you live more as you. Yeah, like clock more years and have different perspectives, what matters will also change. And that’s just a part of being human. But I think that we have been sold a yeah, like a bad deal that we imagine what we want our life to look like far down the road, you know, and 20 years or whatever. And we spend our entire lives reverse engineering our lives to meet that goal without any space for adjustment or change or consideration of where we are. And that just leaves people feeling like they’re always behind. And that’s a kind of a defeating, paralyzing place to be, you know? So either you. So either you try harder or you give up. If that’s the goal, there’s really not a lot of other options other than try hard or give up, because we’re chasing something that I think is a finish line that keeps moving, number one. But it’s also a finish line that I don’t think most of us, like you said, actually want.

Jonathan Fields: [00:12:59] Yeah. It’s interesting. I remember, um, years in. Mel Robbins is an old friend of mine. I remember years ago we were talking about sort of like these dreams that we had. And one of the things that she often says is, whatever that thing is, reverse engineer all of the different steps that you would need to take to get there, and all the things you need to sacrifice and say no to in your life and your relationships and all these things. Do you want that?

Kendra Adachi: [00:13:24] Right, right.

Jonathan Fields: [00:13:26] You know, not just the end state, but like, are you are you a yes to all of that, to like the giving up of all these different things to the impact on your relationships and your health and your mental and physical well-being on the years of saying no, no, no, no, no. And for some people that the answer is yes. Some people are like, oh hell yeah. Yeah. It means that much to me. Yes, I’m down with that. Absolutely. But for a lot of people, when you actually start to look at it that way, you’re like, oh no, I really want that end thing. Like, I want the silver ring, but all this stuff along the way. No. Can’t I just leapfrog that?

Kendra Adachi: [00:14:00] Right. Right.

Jonathan Fields: [00:14:01] It’s like not really.

Kendra Adachi: [00:14:03] Not really. I often say, do your expectations match the energy you’re willing to give? We have to match those things. And sometimes not even willing. Sometimes it’s able. Sometimes it’s the energy we’re able to give. We might have a dream or an expectation of what we can do, how we might spend our time, what we can accomplish. And we actually have the willingness, you know, we have the drive, so to speak. But if you’re caring for a parent, if you have children, if you’re a single parent, if you have a job that doesn’t have any ability for growth, and you don’t even have the time to try to find one that does. To support the things you like. There are a lot of limitations that, frankly, authors of productivity books don’t have because they’re mostly men who are working for themselves and have probably a wife running their home and also don’t have hormones going all over the place all the time. And so there there are a lot of limitations that so many people have. And rather than naming those as just a normal part of being human and honoring our times when our abilities and our willingness don’t quite sync up because of our season of life. And that’s normal and okay. Rather than naming it that way, we think that we’re the problem and tried to build a bigger system to make it happen. And then when we don’t, we beat ourselves up about it. It’s just this constant cycle of thinking that we’re one planner away, one course away one system away, one change away, one hack away from finally getting it, and the machine of our life running in the direction that we want it to run. And again, that’s just not the reality. Nor is it, I think the desire for most people.

Jonathan Fields: [00:15:52] Yeah, it’s a really good distinction. I’m glad you made it between what are you willing to do and what are you capable of doing? Right. You know, because it’s you may be willing to do it, but the reality of your life, when you look at the facts of it, you’re like, you know what? Maybe it’s a not now thing. Maybe it’s a never thing, right? Sometimes this goes back to, you know, one of the sort of like the two beliefs that you throw out early in the new book, one of them being you really start where you are, not where you think you should be. Like, let’s actually look at the state of your life because that matters. You know, it helps set you up, not in some sort of delusional state where you’re destined then not get what you want, and then probably pile on shame and blame on top of it, but say like, okay, so what’s real here?

Kendra Adachi: [00:16:34] Right.

Jonathan Fields: [00:16:35] You know, what can we really say yes to?

Kendra Adachi: [00:16:36] That’s right. I don’t know where we lost the thread on today. I don’t know when our present just kind of, like, just got lost in the shuffle. But the striving and the hustle and the the forward motion that so many of us are surrounded by and have been taught to value again, has its place. Like it’s not inherently bad. But when we begin with the end that we can’t even really see or have a lot of control over, and we don’t examine really all of the things that are required to get us there, but also are reasonable about, you know, our willingness and able ability to get there. We just lose sight on where we are today. And and I something that I say often in my work is good is here right now because I don’t ever want to make anyone feel as though their current circumstances that they might be really unhappy with or discontent in. It’s not what they imagine their life to look like. You know, a lot of us are in those places where it’s like, this is not what I expected. This is not where I thought I would be at this time in my life. And so when I say that good is here right now, I don’t mean it in like a hallmark card sort of way, or like a motivational cat poster way, you know, like, just look for the good, you know, gratitude is important.

Kendra Adachi: [00:17:55] It has its place, but so is grief. So is honesty about where you are. And today holds all of those things. It holds all of them at once. And I think that our lack of, I don’t know, honoring that every day, it actually prevents us from building up the muscle memory of seeing the good more often. You know, it’s sort of it’s this it’s this skill that we can learn to go, okay, even if the good right now is that I am genuinely being kind to myself as my circumstances are not what I thought they were, that I’m not shaming myself. That’s good. That’s goodness right now. Or that, you know, I could have just lost someone that I love desperately, and I don’t even know how to go on and finding good. Don’t ask me to find good. That’s also a reality for a lot of people. And I think the good of that honesty and boundary like that’s good. Saying, don’t force me, let me grieve. That’s good. That’s goodness. That is here right now. But it’s so nuanced. You know, again, it’s like there’s no seven steps to mastery of grief or a life that throws you obstacles. And I’m talking, yes, the obstacle of grief is a huge deal. But I had this happened to me just the other day.

Kendra Adachi: [00:19:07] I went into I went into the kitchen after a long day of work. It was before my kids went to school, back to school. So everyone was home. And I was so excited to eat the leftover Indian food for lunch, and my kid was eating it. There was just enough for one person and he was eating it. And I was so sad. I was I had like made this plan right. Like, we do that, we make plans over things like what we’re going to eat for lunch, and then someone eats our lunch and we’re like, we just fall apart, you know? And so I think our ability to prioritize and honor pivoting just as much as we honor planning, if not more, because life is probably full of more pivots than it is actionable plans that fall into place. Exactly. Being aware of those things every day. It’s part of how we become integrated, where we are that we see our lives and we go, good is good. This is good. Right now. You might not have everything that you ever want, but like, who does? And if you stay focused on the like I said, the invisible future, you just lose track of where you are. And it’s hard to enjoy your good life when that happens, you know?

Jonathan Fields: [00:20:20] No. So great. And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. When you then decide to sit down and write a book called The Plan. Given everything that you’ve said, and also given everything that you’ve been talking about and writing about for years now, and knowing that there are so many books out there already, so many people offering their version of the plan and you’re like, okay, I have something to say here. What goes through your mind about what’s really important, about what to step into and what to definitely not step into or avoid red flags.

Kendra Adachi: [00:21:02] I’ve never done more research for a book than I did for this one, because I. I didn’t want my perspective to be purely anecdotal, you know? I really wanted to examine, like, what’s going on in this industry and why does it continue to make so much money? And we keep buying things from people who promised three books ago that this book would fix it. And again, that’s a that’s a generalization. Realization. I’m friends with a lot of people who write productivity books, so I think it’s less about the individual authors or even the books as it is the system that we’re in. And that’s what my exploration led me to, which is the system is broken. Like I believe that the productivity system for just the average person who’s just trying to live their lives and do their job and eat their meals and be connected to their people and, you know, just play and have fun and look around and just have experiences, productivity for those people that the system is broken for those people, because the system says that greatness and mastery is the goal, that that is what we’re after. And contentment and self-compassion are, again, less marketable concepts. But as I started to explore what this book could be, the analogy that came to mind. I thought about like the matrix pills and the red pill. Blue pill. And like the Barbie heel and the Birkenstock from the Barbie movie, you know, it just felt kind of like, oh, there is something hidden behind this facade of we got it, guys.

Kendra Adachi: [00:22:40] Let’s hustle. Keep going. Don’t give up. Don’t break promises to yourself. Meet those goals. And you know, if you do these three things, then you’re going to be happy with your life. The system is if you. It keeps promising you. Yeah. If you do this, it will work and it won’t because that’s not how life is. So we just keep looking and we keep trying and we keep blaming ourselves because the goal is flawed. And the way to get there for most people is unsustainable and doesn’t even make any sense. And so this book, it is an interesting choice to name it the plan, because it does seem very like resolute. It’s like, I mean, in the words on the book are like very large. It’s, you know, the plan, But I really love the idea of going, okay, we’ve got a new plan here. We’re building a new house. This is a new way to see that we can have time management that is oriented around compassion and contentment and being a person exactly where you are. And it does not mean you are sacrificing, getting your things done, sacrificing your dreams that you are ambitious or any of that. It simply means that we have been told to start with the future, and that everything needs to be mastered as we move in that direction. And that is a broken system, because the more that we keep looking for the answer, the more we buy the books and the courses and the, you know, we keep consuming and consuming and consuming looking for the answer.

Kendra Adachi: [00:24:10] And that’s the glitch. That’s the glitch in the matrix, is that we think that we’re one discovery away from being able to create a life where we set everything up and we press a big red start button. And then there we go and our life is off. And there is no humanity to that. There is no fluidity to that. There’s no pivoting to that. There’s no adjustment to that. And our life is full of pivots and adjustments. It needs to be fluid. It needs to be human and present where we are. We kept waiting for years. I kept waiting for somebody to write time management this way that it was both. And it was you can be a person where you are and you are not a robot, and you can honor your good life and you can also get your stuff done. Like there’s a whole chapter in this book about to do lists, like I listen, I love getting stuff done, I love lists, I love being productive, but what I love is the purpose of that. Productivity is to support what matters most to me, or to get things that have to be done, done more quickly, with a little less effort, so that there is more space for things that matter, Not so that there’s more space for us to get more done, that we can just live our lives. That’s the whole point, is that we get to live. What a beautiful thing.

Jonathan Fields: [00:25:31] Yeah, the whole notion of sort of like building, starting around, really focusing on like what actually matters, what’s doable, what matters, and also entering it with a sense of agility and adaptability and self-compassion, I think is just is so important. And often it’s not the starting point. You know, everything is rigid and brittle and often built around an aspiration that just not only does it not matter to us, but it’s just not like it’s actually not doable in in our lives, in the way we live. And by the way, if anyone’s curious, listening to this, we were talking just before we started recording about Kendra, recorded not Too long Ago, an episode for her podcast with the behind the scenes story of how the book came to life. And it’s a really interesting example of holding things lightly and adapting and changing as you go and saying like, this is. I thought it was this, but as it revealed itself, okay, like now I understand it’s. Actually, no, this other thing and holding tightly to wanting to get it done, but also at the same time to letting it be what it needs to be, you know, is something that is so important. It’s so built into your work, you end up effectively with them. An acronym for a plan or for a framework for a plan, which is literally the word plan, which is, you know, the four letter shorthanded P for prepare, L for live, A for adjust and for notice. Let’s dip into each of these a bit, because I think it gives a really good sort of macro frame for how to think about if you’re listening in and you’re like you’re thinking about planning something, how to do it in a way that feels both doable and humane.

Kendra Adachi: [00:27:08] Yeah, because the focus in general, from most of the productivity tips that we get, which many of them are really, really excellent, they are like heavily inflated in the preparation side of things. You know, it’s all about how do you prepare? And there is too much life that happens for us to depend solely on our preparation. And we we need to get just as good at adjusting and noticing what’s going on so that we can live the acronym. So I have an English degree. So the fact that it’s an acronym makes me so happy. Um, because that’s like what I live for is this acronyms and like alliteration. So I really love that. But also it’s a pyramid as well. It’s an acronym and a pyramid that the the base of this pyramid is what matters in your season of life, that if you do not pay attention to where you are to the season of life like we already talked about, you know, where you might have the willingness to do something, but your ability is just not there right now. Often, because of your season of life, we need to name what matters in our season of life. And then the three sides of the pyramid are okay in equal measure. We prepare, we adjust, and we notice there is a fluidity. And if any of those become out of balance with another, it really does topple the whole thing. And then the point of that pyramid is to live. That part of the acronym is to live, because again, that is the point. So when when I talk about in the book, I have three principles that align with each letter, because I think we need reminders of how to do this.

Kendra Adachi: [00:28:45] And no one’s really taught me how to do this. It’s come from life experience, and being able to observe and make complicated things feel a little simpler. And so rather than sharing like all three points, maybe for all of them is to just give like one. When I think about preparation, if you need permission to make a plan to prepare something, you also need to know that a plan is not pass fail, that it is an intention, right? So we prepare with that in mind, when you prepare like a lazy genius, which is what everything is called when you prepare that way, where you are being a genius about what matters and lazy about what doesn’t in the season of life that you’re in. You also recognize that that plan is not a moral failing. You know, if something doesn’t go according to your plan, whether it is your plan for the day or the plan for your life, you know it’s not a pass fail. We simply intend to do something. And sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn’t. And so that permission to see it as an intention, it just takes the. It loosens the grip. It loosens the reins. You know, it just feels better. It feels like okay. That’s right. It didn’t go that way that I thought, but hey, we’re okay. My kid ate my lunch. That’s all right. It’s not a pass fail on either of us. I can just pivot and pick something else, you know? So for preparation, that feels like a really important reminder. A principle to remember. I think that.

Jonathan Fields: [00:30:16] Also you’re building forgiveness into this. Also, I often look at things that I commit to as experiments or projects. I mean, literally, the name of our podcast for 13 years now is Good Life Project, and there’s a reason for that. You know, because when you name it as an experiment or project, whether it hits some sort of big or external success metric or not becomes less relevant. It’s more about like, am I doing this thing? And maybe it does something big, maybe it doesn’t, but am I fully in it? And am I learning something from it? And whether it then hits the is it a top podcast? Is it, you know, have you run the 10-K? Like whatever it is, you hold it so much more lightly and it just makes the whole thing just a much more forgiving experience. And it feels like that’s part of what you’re talking about here. It is permission to be human. Yes.

Kendra Adachi: [00:31:09] I love that you phrased it that way. Yeah. I don’t know that I’ve ever used that particular word that it’s forgiving or it has forgiveness in it. You know, I do talk about kindness and compassion and but yes, there’s just a fluidity to you don’t have to get everything right all the time for it to count and like, what is right even mean, you know? What does that even mean? That’s a good segue, actually, into the next letter of the acronym of plan, which is live. And one of the principles that I share in the book to help support that is, do not judge every day against your best day. And we do that so, so much from, you know, like, how productive was I at work? And I need to replicate all of those things so that I’m that productive again. Or if you’re at home, anybody who has had a child who was not napping and then finally did, and then you’re like, what did we do? We have to do all of that exactly the same again, because that was amazing. I remember I’ve told this story multiple times because it was just I would say it’s one of the most resonant, integral parts of my realization of what I want life to be. I was reading a productivity book, a time management book, and this one was written by a woman woman because not many of them are. But this one was. And she talked about how she was a stay at home mom at the time.

Kendra Adachi: [00:32:26] She had two little girls, and this one day the kids didn’t nap and the errands didn’t work out. She forgot the things that she actually needed. It was just sort of a list of things that didn’t go according to plan. And then she listed out the following day where the kids napped at the same time, and they didn’t even really fight. And she got dinner going early and they got their errands run, and her house was sort of tidy. And, and her husband brought home like somebody from work for dinner or something, like there was a surprise guest for dinner. And when they got home, she was at the table of a clean house reading a magazine, and dinner was already on the table, and I was waiting for her to say. I was hoping the next line was and both of those days count. But her next line was. And that day I never felt more fulfilled as a wife and mother. And I was like, oh no, that’s too much pressure. Like, I was looking to this person, this, you know, sort of expert to help me feel okay about the fact that my life at that time often did not go according to plan. I was living a life that was difficult and chaotic and quite unruly, and I wanted someone to tell me that that was not just like normal, but it was good, you know that. That life is good, that I don’t want to measure every day against my best day.

Kendra Adachi: [00:33:47] And even in that example, I don’t know that I want that day where everything goes according to plan to be the measurement of what is best. I think I want my best day if we’re going to use that word to be was I kind to myself today? Was I kind to my people today? And if I wasn’t, did I repair? Did I apologize to them? Did I ask for forgiveness for losing my temper because I was overwhelmed? That is like deep in my marrow. That’s the kind of day I want to pursue. That’s the kind of person I want to be that I’m honest with myself and kind, and the radar is not always turned at the towards the circumstances, because I can’t control those. I can’t control those. That’s what I mean when I talk about the glitch in the matrix, it’s like, can we actually not make our best day be when everything goes well or goes according to plan? I mean, that’s kind of a wild concept, but it’s more forgiving. Like you said, it feels better to me. That’s what a good life is, is sitting down at the end of the day and going, well, either I was kind here or I shamed myself hard here, but now I’m actually seeing it and naming it and I don’t want to do that again. You know, it’s a different sort of awareness. And I think that’s how we live in a way that’s fulfilling.

Jonathan Fields: [00:35:06] Yeah, I so agree. You know it’s it’s being present to it all. You know our ability to actually be there like when it all unfolds rather than living in the past or the future or aspiring to some sort of utopian. Totally. This is the way that it should be. It’s like, you know what? I’m present to it all. I love Tara, Brach says. You know, she looks at each thing that happens, and she’s like this, too. You know, and that’s okay. That’s good.

Kendra Adachi: [00:35:31] That’s right.

Jonathan Fields: [00:35:32] And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. So living is a key part of your take on planning. Take me to the A adjusting.

Kendra Adachi: [00:35:44] So adjusting is everyone’s least favorite of the words in the acronym because guess what. Adjustment requires. Well, number one it requires forgiveness. I’m going to keep using that word because it was just it’s so well placed, but it also requires you to start small and make small adjustments. Because when we make big adjustments, nothing actually changes. I call it big black trash bag energy. I think we’ve all had that when we’re literally overwhelmed by our physical space and it’s just a massacre. We get a big black trash bag and we’re like, get your stuff. It’s going in the trash. You know, there’s this sort of like, start over, burn it down.

Jonathan Fields: [00:36:25] Tthat doesn’t resonate with any parent at all, by the way. It’s like,

Kendra Adachi: [00:36:29] of course not.

Jonathan Fields: [00:36:30] Off the floor. It’s going in the bag.

Kendra Adachi: [00:36:32] That’s right, that’s right. And we do that with our lives, with our systems, with our productivity systems, with how we we choose to spend our time when something doesn’t work, rather than making a small adjustment or recognizing, oh, this is because I didn’t get good sleep last night, or my partner, or my kid, or my boss didn’t get good sleep last night. And we need to be aware. We need to notice to the fourth one. We need to notice those things. Instead, we try to fix it with a big swing and those don’t work. They just do not work. But they’re more exciting to think about. And we think that they’re more likely to work because at least we’re doing a lot on the front end, and maybe we’ll see results quicker. You know, we want results. We want to see results and starting small and making small adjustments. It’s just not very sexy. You don’t see results very quickly and you also see small results. I think about something like we have a we call it a drink spinner on our kitchen counter. I was so tired of everybody’s water bottles and cups and all the things being all over the house, and nobody knew where they were, and then they’d get a new one. And then we just lived in like a cup house and it was so frustrating.

Kendra Adachi: [00:37:49] So I got like a lazy Susan, like a little wooden lazy Susan and put it on the counter. And I was like, this is a drink spinner. Unless you’re drinking this, this is our house rule. That’s a lazy genius principle to set house rules if there are things that will Stop the line of stressful dominoes from falling. You know, if you feel like you’re having the same problems over and over again, struggling with the same things, kind of back up a little and go, is there a place in this process where if we put just like a little stopgap measure, this tiny little house rule, it might actually keep those things from happening? And I was just getting so mad about cups all the time. And so which is on me, you know, I’ll give you that. That’s on me. But I also thought, well, this is a way to make it easier. And so we yeah, I got a lazy Susan and said, all right, house rule cups go in the drink spinner. And, you know, it took some time, but like when the kids come home from school, they take their water bottle, put it on there. And it is the smallest thing for me to say, you guys, my kitchen, my life feels so much better because of this drink spinner. It’s not that strong.

Kendra Adachi: [00:38:49] But when we have a collection of those small things, those small adjustments that we make because we’re noticing where we are, we’re not depending on heavy preparation for everything and big systems to solve our problems. When we’re willing to start small and realize that some of the adjustments we make will work now, but they might not work forever. That’s one of the adjust principles is now isn’t forever. You can choose something for right now, for this season that you’re in, and then you can change your mind when it doesn’t work anymore, like it’s serving you right now. And that’s good, because that’s antithetical to the reverse engineering what you want your life to look like in 30 years. Everything is supposed to be in service of that. It’s hard to adjust your life when that’s the focus. It’s just not as attractive. Small adjustments are not as attractive as big systems, but they sure do work. And the smaller you make your problem, the smaller the solution is, which means it’s more doable. And then you just kind of get into this rhythm of these tiny problems that you keep solving in small ways, and you’re able to adjust them more easily because there’s less it’s less complicated, and it just Feels better. I think I’ve ended every single thing I’ve said with that. It just feels better.

Jonathan Fields: [00:40:05] Yeah, and it also it changes the psychology of it. You know, it’s it’s not too dissimilar from Japanese management philosophy of kaizen. Kaizen, you know, where it’s just like, you know, this came out of Toyota from my understanding. And, you know, so this is massive manufacturing process where it’s like, we’re not going to break the line of manufacturing all these different cars. And it’s like tiny little optimizations, tiny little tweaks repeated over time lead to really profound differences in the end. But it doesn’t just change like the action, you know, and like one degree better and one degree better and one degree better. It changes the psychology because people are like, oh, like like, oh, I can do that. Yeah. Whereas if you’re like, oh, you’re going to need to make this big wholesale change. All of a sudden the spidey senses start triggering off. You’re like, oh, I can’t do that. I’m freaking out. So you were talking about it’s like, it’s nice because it’s practical, but it also it makes the psychology of it just more, more doable.

Kendra Adachi: [00:41:02] Yeah, absolutely. I read I guess it’s the secrets of I don’t remember what the book was, but years ago I read that book and I thought, well, this is the greatest thing. And my father-in-law was actually in Japanese manufacturing. And so because he’s from Japan. And so it just felt like I was actually I think part of the reason I read it was to almost connect with him a little bit. And then I read this concept and thought, well, this is magical. Like, why are we not doing more of this? This is good stuff. But that’s why it is just a concept that we we don’t practice very often. And the more we do, the more we trust it.

Jonathan Fields: [00:41:38] No, that makes a lot of sense. And you’ve referenced a number of times now that last the n in the plan framework noticing. And so much of this is built on this foundation of like you can actually do anything that you’re not or you can’t respond to anything or like take an action if you’re not actually aware of something.

Kendra Adachi: [00:41:57] That’s why it’s so vital to me. I think that’s actually potentially the part of the acronym that is the most ignored in most productivity resources, and possibly even in Western culture. There’s not a lot of yeah, like awareness and noticing and valuing of that on a regular basis. You know, it’s you can rest when you’re dead energy. And I think that that does such a disservice to our spirits, to our the energy in our homes, to our to do lists themselves. You know, so one of the the mindsets I shared, one of them already, which is good, is here right now to notice notice that good is here right now. And it might not be the kind of good that is, um, stereotypically lauded or fits in the category of, you know, this is good. Kindness to yourself is generally not something that we would put in that category. You know, we would say, I checked off all my stuff, I got where I was, I wasn’t late to anything. I got affirmed for something at work. And those are all valuable and lovely, and I hope that people’s lives are filled with those things, too. But noticing that good is here right now, again, it sort of sets your awareness to a different frequency. Your radar is plugged in somewhere else that allows you to even receive those stereotypical good things in a different way, in a way that almost makes them go deeper because you’re not receiving them as a value judgment on you.

Kendra Adachi: [00:43:28] You know they’re not part of your identity. You don’t have to, like, know what file folder to put them in of, like, okay, well, this is this assessment for me now and I need to go in this direction. Like it doesn’t have to become part of the machine. It is just something you can receive. You know, when we’re our frequency is set more to the good that does exist in and around us. And, and I think that’s really valuable. But another aspect of noticing that I think is important, that’s also That also does. People do not like this one either, but it is that staying grounded is more important than staying on task. And that is not how most of our industries run, right? That is not how business tends to value people. You know, you stay on task at all costs, you get your stuff done. And I’m not saying you don’t get your stuff done. But if we shift, like you said, even the psychology, if we shift the psychology of how we see it, that being who I am, where I am, and staying grounded in that person no matter what’s happening around me, is more valuable in the in this moment and also long term. And so the more I notice that, the more I notice my groundedness and pursue it where I am, even if it means that the task in front of me waits just a beat.

Kendra Adachi: [00:44:48] I’m not saying you. It’s not like you need to be terrible at your job. You know, it’s again, it’s not all or nothing. There’s just a beautiful permission to respect and honor your humanity. And then I think, the humanity of other people, too. When we honor our own groundedness and we don’t stay so focused on the task, when we encounter someone else who is perhaps at that same intersection of task or groundedness, their own self, we have compassion for them. You know, we can see the difficulty of like, man, this is tough. This is a tough place to be. And we don’t resent them for this undone task that actually impacts us more. You know, I think that’s why this pyramid, you know, of these three things being leaning on each other in equal measure, you know, they’re all the same size. You don’t have a pyramid with like one of the sides completely, you know, way bigger than the others. And noticing is, I think, one of the things we’re just missing. And when we start to do it more in these small ways and these kind ways and these compassionate ways, and we also even notice how our plans are working. You know, just go like, hey, I set this thing up.

Kendra Adachi: [00:45:54] Did that work? I set this thing up. Nobody paid attention. I made this my kid the other day. My kid I was in I was in big black trash bag mode, because I do get in that mode and I was its chore chart time. I’m tired of the house being like this, you know? You know? And I started to write something up on a whiteboard and in the kitchen, and my kid comes in, he’s almost 15, and he came in and he said, what are you doing? So I’m making a chore chart. And he said, well, you know, you’re only going to do it for like a week, and then we’re not going to look at it again, right? I was like, you’re right, dude. You’re right, you know. So it’s even we’re noticing. It’s not just noticing like what we’re experiencing on the inside or seeing things with kinder eyes all the time. It is that. But it’s also paying attention to like, hey, am I am I trying to solve this problem the same way over and over and over again? And it’s not getting anywhere. Like, let’s pay attention to what’s working and what’s not and why. And taking the time to do that is just so valuable. And just like adjusting, the more we do it, the more we trust it.

Jonathan Fields: [00:46:58] Now that makes a lot of sense. You once you lay out, you know, the plan framework, you spend a chunk of time in the book also sort of like going in. I think all of part two is really its strategy, as you referenced earlier, making better to do lists. Let’s talk about a week, a month, a season, a project all really important and super great stuff. Like people should definitely dip into that. But you also wrap with a conversation about sort of what I would term mindset obstacles, sort of these, these internal demons that trip us up. And I remember reading research from Professor Gabrielle Oettingen, who developed this methodology called shorthanded as WOOP, another acronym to slide into your acronym. I love it, right. And it was it stood for wish outcome, obstacle plan. And what she found was that that second o when people actually try to, you know, anticipate potential obstacles in advance and then think about them and then sort of like noodle on like, well, how would I respond? Like, how would I respond if that happened? They were actually much more likely to have the thing that they were aspiring to make happen happen.

Jonathan Fields: [00:48:09] And a lot of those obstacles, I bring it up now because a lot of those weren’t external things. They were the inner ones. They were like, you know, the what happens if I just am marred by guilt or I have boundary issues or the nature of, you know, like I’m stuck in a spin cycle and I can’t let go of things. And she showed, you know, that if you really think about these in advance and think about, well, okay, so this is probably likely to come up and how would I respond to it in just an intelligent, you know, like compassionate way that people are actually much more effective at not bailing when it happens. So that is really interesting that you literally spend, you know, pretty much an entire large section of the book dropping into all of these things and saying, can we talk about this? Because again, it goes back to earlier in our conversation. Let’s assume that our lives in the world isn’t perfect and these things are going to pop up. It’s important to figure out, you know, like, how do we handle these if and when they do?

Kendra Adachi: [00:49:05] I love that, I love that it’s WOOP. Like that’s just fun to say. It’s a WOOP acronym. The difference I think in naming your obstacles, it’s important to notice to use one of the words, I’m finding it in this moment. Important to notice that when we name our obstacles, if we do it through judgmental eyes, then it hits different than if we do it through compassionate ones. I think as we look at obstacles and sort of naming like, all right, when you when you don’t have any help, when you just have too much to do, when you, you have all of these, these things that we all have as part of our lives and our our rhythms. Right? Even the best planner and organizer and productivity expert has too much to do. That’s why it’s important to say that the goal again, the goal is not greatness. The goal here is not to move to a place of like, well, and your plans always work now. That’s not what it is. So when we look at our our obstacles, naming them almost removes their judgmental power. It makes it more normative that like, oh yeah, oh, so we all go through seasons where we just don’t feel like we have help or we just can’t do it anymore. It’s a kind invitation for us to enter into that space ourselves and show ourselves some some kindness and some grace. But again, it makes us people who are kinder in our relationships, because when we notice these obstacles and name them for what they are as opposed to something to conquer.

Kendra Adachi: [00:50:45] It makes us more human. It’s just like, I know this is a bummer part of being a person, you know? And you’re doing great. I say that a lot. I say there’s actually a nail polish called. You’re doing great. Like, that’s how much I say it. That I did a I had a nail polish brand name, a lazy genius color. You’re doing great. And I’ve had some pushback on that phrase over the years of you’re doing great because some people are like, but I’m not, though I’m not doing great. I forgot my kid at school. Like I went at the wrong time, or no one has eaten anything from the earth in three weeks in my house. You know, like there are all these things that we might have on our mental list of how we’re messing up and what I want to invite people into, alongside of strategies that do help you organize your time and get things done that matter to you and do them well, and all of that. You’re allowed to be a genius about the things that matter to you. If you are present with yourself, no matter how you’re doing or how well your circumstances are going. You are doing great because you are you where you are. And I understand the pushback because like some people are like, well, I’m not doing great because a spouse just died, or there are genuine things that are horrible and we don’t necessarily need anyone to tell us like, no, you’re doing great.

Kendra Adachi: [00:52:12] You’re just. But that’s not the tone of when I say you’re doing great. It’s more, hey, you’re a person on this planet with all these expectations, all these people around you, all of these dreams. Maybe there’s so many inputs. I mean, just an exhausting number of inputs. And you’re here and you’re listening to this podcast trying to figure out your to do list or your, you know, you’re listening to the Good Life Project. hearing someone talk about what it means for them to live a good life. Like, that’s a beautiful thing, too. Like, we just we’re just so hard on ourselves to the point that if I say to someone, you’re doing great, and they say, well, I’m not really, that’s telling on its own. And to your original question about the obstacles, it’s a different posture. We look at those obstacles again, not as something to conquer and overcome, but as something to notice and name and honor. And if they get in the way and cause our plan to go awry, a plan is not pass fail. It’s an intention, and it’s going to be okay. You know, everything’s just so tightly wound. We need to loosen it up a little bit.

Jonathan Fields: [00:53:30] And that actually feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation. So in this container of Good Life Project., if I offer up the phrase to live a good life. What comes up?

Kendra Adachi: [00:53:41] To live a good life, I think, means recognizing that good is here, right now. No matter what’s happening, there is always something good where you are because you are there.

Jonathan Fields: [00:53:52] Thank you.

Kendra Adachi: [00:53:53] Thanks for having me.

Jonathan Fields: [00:53:55] Hey, before you leave, if you love this conversation Safe bet, you’ll also love the conversation we had with Charlie Gilkey about finishing what matters. You’ll find a link to Charlie’s episode in the show notes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help by Alejandro Ramirez. Kristoffer Carter crafted our theme music and special thanks to Shelley Adelle for her research on this episode. And of course, if you haven’t already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project. in your favorite listening app. And if you found this conversation interesting or inspiring or valuable, and chances are you did. Since you’re still listening here, would you do me a personal favor? A seven second favor and share it, maybe on social or by text or by email. Even just with one person. Just copy the link from the app you’re using and tell those you know, those you love, those you want to help navigate this thing called life a little better so we can all do it better together with more ease and more joy. Tell them to listen, then even invite them to talk about what you’ve both discovered. Because when podcasts become conversations and conversations become action, that’s how we all come alive together. Until next time, I’m Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.