The Lazy Genius Way: Embrace What Matters, Ditch What Doesn't, and Get Stuff Done

by Kendra Adachi, Emily P. Freeman (Foreword by)

Overview

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Being a Lazy Genius isn't about doing more or doing less. It’s about doing what matters to you.
 
“I could not be more excited about this book.”—Jenna Fischer, actor and cohost of the Office Ladies podcast
 
The chorus of “shoulds” is loud. You should enjoy the moment, dream big, have it all, get up before the sun, track your water consumption, go on date nights, and be the best. Or maybe you should ignore what people think, live on dry shampoo, be a negligent PTA mom, have a dirty house, and claim your hot mess like a badge of honor.
 
It’s so easy to feel overwhelmed by the mixed messages of what it means to live well. 
 
Kendra Adachi, the creator of the Lazy Genius movement, invites you to live well by your own definition and equips you to be a genius about what matters and lazy about what doesn’t. Everything from your morning routine to napping without guilt falls into place with Kendra’s thirteen Lazy Genius principles, including: 
 
• Decide once
• Start small
• Ask the Magic Question
• Go in the right order
• Schedule rest
 
Discover a better way to approach your relationships, work, and piles of mail. Be who you are without the complication of everyone else’s “shoulds.” Do what matters, skip the rest, and be a person again.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780525653929
Publisher:	Harmony/Rodale/Convergent
Publication date:	08/11/2020
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Kendra Adachi went to college to become a high school English teacher but instead became the Lazy Genius, passionately and candidly sharing how to stop doing it all for the sake of doing what matters. Her work includes hosting The Lazy Genius Podcast, cooking dinner on Instagram, and convincing her three young kids that talking into the phone is Mommy’s job. She and her husband love raising their family in the same North Carolina city they both grew up in.

Read an Excerpt

An Introduction I’m Afraid to Call an Introduction

(Because I Don’t Want You to Skip It)

I’m not a mom who plays. I mean, I will, but I personally don’t like knocking down a stack of blocks twenty thousand times in a row, no matter how much joy it brings my kids.

Thankfully, my husband is a dad who plays. A few summers ago, he came up big while we were vacationing at the beach. He dug an impressive hole in the sand, a hole so deep you had to lean over the edge to see the bottom. Then, with the enthusiasm of a carnival showman, he got all three kids to race back and forth from the ocean, carrying buckets of water to fill the hole as quickly as they could.

Over and over again, they hauled and poured, hauled and poured.

But that hole would not fill up.

Every single drop soaked back into the sand, taunting them in their efforts. Because my kids are adorable little weirdos, they thought it was fun and played the game for a long while—that is, until a flock of aggressive seagulls became more interesting.

As they ran off to chase birds, I saw the discarded buckets surrounding an empty hole and realized I was looking at a metaphor of my life. Maybe it’s one for yours too.

Here’s what we do as women. We pick our spot in the sand to dig a hole, checking to see if the women around us are choosing similar (or, gulp, better) spots, trying not to be distracted by their motherly patience and bikini bodies. We start digging, hoping the hole is deep enough and headed in the right direction. Where is it going? No idea, but who cares. Everyone else is digging, so we dig too.

Eventually it’s time to start hauling buckets to fill the hole. We carry load after load of “water”—color-coded calendars, room-mom responsibilities, meal plans, and work-life balance. We haul. We try. We sweat. And we watch that hole stay empty.

Now we’re confused.

Does everyone else have this figured out? Is my hole too deep? And where is all the water going?

We pause to catch our breath, wondering if everyone else feels like an epic failure too. One person can’t possibly keep up with a clean house, a fulfilling job, a well-adjusted family, an active social life, and a running regimen of fifteen miles a week, right?

With silence our only answer, we decide, No, it’s just me. I need to get it together. What follows is a flurry of habit trackers, calendar overhauls, and internet rabbit holes to figure out how to be better, until we pass out from emotional exhaustion or actual adrenal fatigue or we give up completely and head back to the beach house for a shame-filled margarita.

Cheers?

The Real Reason You’re Tired

You’re not tired because laundry takes up more space on your couch than humans do, no one in your house seems to care about your work deadline, or your kid’s school lunch rule is “grapes must be quartered.” The tasks are plentiful, but you know your to-do list isn’t solely to blame.

You’re “on” all the time, trying to be present with your people, managing the emotions of everyone around you, carrying the invisible needs of strangers in line at the post office, and figuring out how to meet your own needs with whatever you have left over—assuming you know what your needs are in the first place.

It’s too much. Or maybe it feels like too much because you haven’t read the right book, listened to the right podcast, or found the right system.

I know that feeling. I’ve spent an embarrassing number of hours searching for the right tools to make my life feel under control, and I have the abandoned stack of planners and highlighted self-help books to prove it. Unnecessary spoiler alert: they didn’t help.

On one side, I felt like I had to create a carbon copy of the author’s life, even though I dislike going to bed early and don’t travel to twenty cities a year speaking at events.

On the other side? Follow your dreams, girl. Apparently, my to-do list isn’t the problem; my small-time thinking is.

Still, I highlighted dozens of passages, trying to MacGyver together some kind of plan that made sense for me. Maybe the right combination of life hacks and inspirational quotes would keep me from lying awake in the middle of the night with worry. Yet despite book after book, quote after quote, and plan after plan, I stayed tired. Maybe you’re reading this book because you feel it too.

I have good news. You don’t need a new list of things to do; you need a new way to see.

Why Simplifying Doesn’t Work

It’s the most common solution to feeling overwhelmed: simplify. Do less, have less, get on Instagram less. Cut down on commitments, outsource, and say no. But also give back to the community, join a book club, and grow heirloom tomatoes. Make your own baby food, run an impressive side hustle, and go on a regular date night with your spouse if you expect your marriage to survive. How is that simple? In my experience, marriage, entrepreneurship, and gardening are all super complicated.

For Christians, the concept of a simple life can feel even more muddled. Jesus was homeless, had twelve friends, and depended on the kindness of others for a meal and a bed. His life focused on a singular goal, and everything else was straightforward. But a little further back in the Bible, we find the (very misunderstood) Proverbs 31 woman who gets up before the sun, sews bed linens for her family, plants vineyards, and has strong arms.

Will someone please tell me what I’m supposed to care about so I can just live my life?

And that’s why simplification is anything but simple. No single voice can tell us how to live. Even within the biblical message of “love God and love people” lie a million possibilities of how that could look practically.

We need a filter that allows us to craft a life focusing only on what matters to us, not on what everyone else saysshould matter.

My friend, welcome to the Lazy Genius Way.

How to Read This Book

Here’s your new mantra: be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don’t…to you.

As life circumstances change, needs and priorities follow suit. This book is designed to be a helpful reference through all those transitions, giving you language and tools to make room for what matters.

Each chapter highlights a Lazy Genius principle, with ideas to implement it immediately. One principle on its own will have a tangible impact, but as you apply each to your daily life, you’ll see how the thirteen principles can harmoniously create personalized solutions to your problems and illuminate the ones that don’t matter so much.

You can quickly scan these pages for concrete steps and helpful lists and, when you have time, read more deeply as you create space to become your truest self. I encourage you to grab this book whenever you hit a wall in your routine, when a transition is looming, or when you feel the weight of busyness.

You’ll learn better ways to do laundry, finish projects, and get dinner on the table. Praise! But beyond the practical, you’ll learn to embrace a life that offers space for success and struggle, energy and exhaustion, clean houses and crappy meals. It all counts because it’s all yours.

Whether you’re home with tiny humans, pursuing the corner office, lonely, busy, or bored, this book will help you name what matters, ditch what doesn’t, and Lazy Genius a life full of both productivity and peace.

Let’s get started.

Table of Contents

Foreword Emily P. Freeman ix

Introduction (Please Don't Skip It) 3

How to Think Like a Lazy Genius 9

Decide Once 20

Lazy Genius Principle #1

Start Small 36

Lazy Genius Principle #2

Ask the Magic Question 47

Lazy Genius Principle #3

Live in the Season 59

Lazy Genius Principle #4

Build the Right Routines 72

Lazy Genius Principle #5

Set House Rules 87

Lazy Genius Principle #6

Put Everything in its Place 100

Lazy Genius Principle #7

Let People in 111

Lazy Genius Principle #8

Batch It 127

Lazy Genius Principle #9

Essentialize 145

Lazy Genius Principle #10

Go in the Right Order 157

Lazy Genius Principle #11

Schedule Rest 171

Lazy Genius Principle #12

Be Kind to Yourself 185

Lazy Genius Principle #13

How to Live Like a Lazy Genius 199

Acknowledgments 213

Notes 219

Editorial Reviews

07/20/2020

In this pragmatic debut, Adachi, host of the Lazy Genius podcast, explains strategies for changing one’s mindset in order to live a more balanced life. Adachi proposes readers first identify what matters most to them personally; to this end, the author offers 13 “Lazy Genius” principles: remembering where you’re headed and why, considering how to make every task easier, and taking doable steps to get one unstuck, among others. While some real-life situations provide concrete examples of Adachi’s principles—such as Adachi concentrating on her children’s creativity when the house becomes messy with markers or crafts, then focusing on her own priorities when cleaning up—her focus remains more relational than organizational, reminding readers that relationships are what matter most. Though the book’s spiritual content is minimal, the author’s affirming message about being kind to yourself and true to who God created you to be provide gentle nudges toward spiritual, as well as personal, growth. Adachi’s pleasing principles for balanced living will appeal to fans of Jen Hatmaker. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

As a longtime fan of The Lazy Genius Podcast, I could not be more excited about this book. Kendra has a gift for asking questions that helps you prioritize the parts of your life that really matter and let go of the parts that don’t. She doesn’t preach or pressure; she inquires and encourages. As she admits, it’s not easy to manage the seemingly constant demands of running a house, planning meals, hosting relatives, and creating and maintaining holiday traditions, all while finding time for your own work and self-care. But Kendra makes it all a lot easier!”—Jenna Fischer, actor, author of The Actor’s Life, and cohost of the Office Ladies podcast

“Kendra has a heart for infusing the mundane and practical with a profound sacredness. Frankly, it’s infuriating how she manages to be effortlessly instructional, inspirational, and hilarious all at the same time, but the world is such a better place for it. I’ve never been more thankful for someone’s voice.”—Knox McCoy, author of All Things Reconsidered

“If you’ve been taught that nothing good comes from being lazy, get ready to let Kendra change your mind and life forever. Spoiler: laziness is the powerful tool that frees you to be a genius where it really matters. I wish I had this eye-opening book twenty years ago.”—Myquillyn Smith, Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Cozy Minimalist Home

“The Lazy Genius Way is a recipe for creating a generous, less stressed domestic life. Kendra’s suggestions for thoughtful routines in place of rigid rules will leave the reader feeling settled and prepared for the changing rhythms of both family life and personal growth. Also, she is what experts refer to as a hoot.”—Gina Smith and S. D. Smith, author of The Green Ember series

“I always followed the lazy path when it came to my home. The results of that approach were not surprising—trash bins stuffed with take-out boxes, moldy laundry in the washer, and so much chaos. But Kendra Adachi offers a better way. The Lazy Genius Way doesn’t mean you have to become a gourmet chef or start cleaning the baseboards with a toothbrush. Kendra will meet you in the middle. She offers easy steps that will have you marking off your list in record time without sacrificing every free moment you have. Kendra helps us make space for tasks and television. She finds time for us to solve problems and scroll Instagram. The Lazy Genius Way is the perfect way.”—Jamie Golden, cohost of The Popcast with Knox and Jamie

From the Publisher