Launch Your Group Practice: Free Webinars!

Productivity: The Future of Time Management with New York Times bestselling author Kendra Adachi | POP 1219

Why is ditching perfection for contentment the real time management revolution? Is there such a thing as compassionate time management in our fast-paced society? Can we redefine success and productivity in our lives by changing how we manage our time? 

In this podcast episode, Joe Sanok speaks about productivity and the future of time management with New York Times bestselling author Kendra Adachi. 

Podcast Sponsor: Therapy Notes

An image of Therapy Notes is captured as the sponsor on the Practice of the Practice Podcast, a therapist podcast. Therapy Notes is the most trusted EHR for Behavioral Health.

As a therapist, I can tell you from experience that having the right EHR is an absolute lifeline. I recommend using TherapyNotes. They make billing, scheduling, notetaking, telehealth, and E-prescribing incredibly easy. Best of all, they offer live telephone support that’s available 7 days a week.

You don’t have to take my word for it – Do your own research and see for yourself – TherapyNotes is the #1 highest-rated EHR system available today, with 4.9 out of 5 stars on Trustpilot.com and on Google.

All you have to do is click the link below, or type promo code JOE on their website www.therapynotes.com, and receive a special 2-month trial, absolutely free.

If you’re coming from another EHR, TherapyNotes will import your demographic data quickly and easily at no cost, so you can get started right away.

Trust me, don’t waste any more of your time, and try TherapyNotes.

Meet Kendra Adachi

A photo of Kendra Adachi is captured. She is a New York Times bestselling author, creator of The Lazy Genius Way, and host of The Lazy Genius Podcast. Kendra is featured on the Practice of the Practice, a therapist podcast.

Kendra Adachi is a New York Times bestselling author, creator of The Lazy Genius Way, and host of The Lazy Genius Podcast. She helps people simplify life with the motto: “be a genius about what matters and lazy about what doesn’t.” Through her books, podcast, and resources, Kendra offers practical tools and compassionate advice for managing home, work, and personal life with less overwhelm and more intention. Her relatable style encourages people to let go of perfectionism and focus on what truly matters.

Visit The Lazy Genius and connect on Instagram.

In This Podcast

  • The birth of the Lazy Genius Approach 
  • The problem with greatness and optimization 
  • A new lens: contentment over optimization 
  • Humanity and (versus?) capitalism 
  • Kendra’s advice to private practitioners 

The birth of the Lazy Genius Approach

When I hit that wall and realized, “This is unsustainable. I can’t be this way as a person”, I swung to the other side, to the lazy side of things, and said, “Screw it, I don’t care about anything”, and that was also equally unsustainable! As an intense and passionate person who cares deeply about many things, giving up on what I loved was [also] life-draining. (Kenda Adachi)

As Kendra explains, she swung through both extremes: caring too much and not caring at all. She found that both of these approaches left her feeling drained, exhausted, and unfulfilled, despite how much effort (or nonchalance) she would bring forth. 

So, she changed her mind and her approach. 

That’s where this approach for the Lazy Genius came from. Let’s be a genius about the things that matter to us personally, and we can be lazy about the things that don’t, because no one can be a genius about everything, and you don’t have to be lazy about it all. (Kendra Adachi)

The problem with greatness and optimization

Kendra explains that, as a woman, she wanted a time management system written from a woman’s perspective, since more than 90% of time management books (until 2022, at least) have been written by men. 

Even though there are, of course, commonalities between men and women about how they want to use their time, there are some important differences too. 

There is a nature of incompleteness to a lot of the time management resources that we have. I have realized that it set me on this course of thinking: “What else has the time management industry gotten wrong or maybe missed?” Maybe it’s not what it got wrong, but more about what it missed or what has been left out. (Kendra Adachi)

Most of our modern time management information has been built around the single priority of achieving some level of greatness, and that everything we do has to optimize something. 

A new lens: contentment over optimization

As Kendra goes on to explain, this is not wrong, because this system is how you achieve goals, which is a wonderful thing, but if that lens of greatness is how you look at every single day, and that every day has to be the best day, it creates a lot of tension. 

That’s why I think we need a new lens. I think, for me, the future of time management is that we organize our lives for a time around contentment. That we start with contentment. That we start with being a whole person, being who we are, where we are, today. That we honor today first. (Kendra Adachi)

It doesn’t mean that we do not honor the future and the goals we want to achieve, but that we also enjoy and live the day we are in. 

Humanity and (versus?) capitalism

Kendra recognizes that her new approach of centering contentment more challenges the capitalistic hustle culture.

I realize that this is a big paradigm shift. We can start to move in this direction of recognizing that we are finite people, that we are not able to bring 100% every single day, and the days that we can’t, it doesn’t mean that we are undisciplined or unmotivated or that we have failed in some way. I want us to live in a world where we do not sacrifice humanity on the altar of productivity. (Kendra Adachi)

We, unfortunately, see this all too often. People work so hard and for so long that we miss out on the humanity of their lives, on the purpose and joy of living, because our capitalist society only rewards achievements, success, money, and progress. 

Stagnation is deemed a failure, but being content is not being stagnant. 

People are working so much longer, even though they are burning out. The number of burnouts is so much higher than they have ever been, and we have more than we have ever had before, yet we are less content with what we have.
There is this constant motion in this striving of trying to level up and be great and we don’t know that is the water we’re swimming in. (Kendra Adachi)

Kendra’s advice to private practitioners

Experiment with living in your seasons. Remember also that the good is here with you, right now. 

Books mentioned in this episode:

Kendra Adachi – The PLAN: Manage Your Time Like a Lazy Genius

Kendra Adachi – The Lazy Genius Way: Embrace What Matters, Ditch What Doesn’t, and Get Stuff Done

Kendra Adachi – The Lazy Genius Kitchen: Have What You Need, Use What You Have, and Enjoy It Like Never Before

Joe Sanok – Thursday is the New Friday: How to Work Fewer Hours, Make More Money, and Spend Time Doing What We Want

Sponsors Mentioned in this episode:

Useful links mentioned in this episode:

Check out these additional resources:

How Does Nervous System Regulation Heal Our Relationships? With Sarah Baldwin | POP 1218

Events – click on the event’s dropdown

Sign up to join the free webinars and events here

Podcast Launch School

Practice of the Practice Podcast Network

Free resources to help you start, grow, and scale

Apply to work with us — a decision-making matrix for your next steps

Meet Joe Sanok

A photo of Joe Sanok is displayed. Joe, private practice consultant, offers helpful advice for group practice owners to grow their private practice. His therapist podcast, Practice of the Practice, offers this advice.

Joe Sanok helps counselors to create thriving practices that are the envy of other counselors. He has helped counselors to grow their businesses by 50-500% and is proud of all the private practice owners who are growing their income, influence, and impact on the world. Click here to explore consulting with Joe.

Thanks For Listening!

 

Feel free to leave a comment below or share the social media below!

Podcast Transcription

Joe Sanok 00:00:00  You're someone with a vision for your practice, for your side hustle, and for your personal journey. But when it comes to establishing your path and how to get to where you want to be with your practice, things get a little messy. You're also someone who'd prefer to go in person instead of to groups and listening to everyone else's story. To me, it sounds like you could benefit from one on one consulting with our experienced practice of the practice consultants from 595 a month and up. You can work with a consultant that will give you more direction and practical, tried and tested tips matched to you and your goals. For more information, visit practice of the practice. Com forward slash apply. Again, that's practice of the practice. Com forward slash apply. This is the practice of the practice podcast with Joe. Session number 1219. I'm Joe, your host, and welcome to the practice of the Practice podcast. I hope that you are doing awesome. If you have been following our future of series and you know the future now, we talked about the future of dying with a hospice doctor that's been doing tons of research around dying and death and dignity.

Joe Sanok 00:01:23  We talked about the future of listening with Greg McEwen, the author of Minimal of Essentialism, and we also talked with Kobe Bryant's performance coach, Todd Herman. So, so many awesome people as a part of this series. definitely go back and check them all out. this is going to be a really awesome different kind of discussion today. we're talking with Kendra Adachi. Kendra is the New York Times bestselling author of The Lazy Genius Way, The Lazy Genius Kitchen, and the Plan, and the host of the nationally ranked The Lazy Genius podcast. As an expert in compassionate time management, Kendra helps others stop doing it all for the sake of doing what matters. She lives in North Carolina with her husband and three kids. Kendra, welcome to the practice of the Practice podcast.

Kendra Adachi 00:02:11  Thanks for having me, Joe. I love being part of that list. I love Greg McKeown, so this is really exciting for me.

Joe Sanok 00:02:17  I think on several of the episodes I've said that I because I only look at my calendar like the day of to see who's on it, and I saw it on there.

Joe Sanok 00:02:25  I'm like like the Greg McEwen like like literally my team, like talked to him, got him booked. I didn't even know. They didn't know that he was just like a superstar in my mind. And I'm just like, what? I can't believe that's cool, I love it. No. Yeah. I mean, so many just awesome people. And, and I feel like that's what discussions about the future deserve. They deserve to have authorities not just framing someone that way. And that's why I'm so excited to talk about time management with you today. tell me your time management story. How'd you get into time management?

Kendra Adachi 00:02:54  Oh my gosh. So I am an oldest daughter and I.

Joe Sanok 00:02:58  Oldest son.

Kendra Adachi 00:02:59  Here. Oh my gosh. So I it's like and I'm from North Carolina. And so I kind of have like a southern, polite upbringing in that. So I'm like a southern oldest daughter and was very much it was embedded in me from an early age that what I, what I did really mattered to my value.

Kendra Adachi 00:03:20  Now, that was an incorrect, lesson. That was an incorrect message because my my home was an abusive home, but I internalized that is like, well, I gotta I gotta do things right so that everybody sticks around. I gotta do things right so that I am important. I got to do things right, you know? And so that just became this, kind of mantra for me, like, get it right, be perfect, get it right, and what's, what's tough. I think for people who are perhaps naturally gifted at organization and linear thinking and time management like I am. Like, I think I'm naturally gifted at that. We are, we're praised for our behaviors. We're we're praised for being organized. And, you know, I was voted most dependable by my high school senior class, you.

Speaker 3 00:04:09  Know, like.

Kendra Adachi 00:04:10  And and but inside, inside, I'm like, oh, please don't make me be the greatest of everything. Like, I hope nobody finds out that I actually am a fraud.

Kendra Adachi 00:04:19  I hope that nobody finds out how hard this is. I hope nobody finds out that I really wish that it was easier than this. That this wasn't the way. So, I, I kind of carried this mantle of, well, I've got to be a genius at everything. And and once I had my first kid, and I tried to be a genius mother, and that did not that did not go so well, because that's just not a thing. It's doing everything perfectly and right, in any in any field.

Joe Sanok 00:04:49  But what did that look like? when you're going to be a genius mother.

Kendra Adachi 00:04:53  A genius mother means that my kid never, never went outside of the schedule that I made for him. I made all of his food. We did enriching things, you know, on a regular rotation. I never lost my cool. Like, I, I was taking care of myself and him. You know, it was just sort of this, this picture that I know a lot of mothers because I've talked to hundreds, if not thousands of them over the years of doing this work, specifically about motherhood, that feel this same pressure of wanting to be a certain type of mom.

Kendra Adachi 00:05:30  And it's just really hard because your kid won't eat the food that you made, and they don't sleep when they say, and you don't sleep when you try, and you can't keep up with the keeping the house clean and the, you know, the bottles washed. And like when you get to the library and you can't even get out of the car because the kid pooped his pants and it's up the, you know, the car seat. And I have to go back home and like, it's just it's sort of controlled chaos all the time. And for me, anything that was outside of the most cleanly organized. Planned approach to life was a failure. Like, if it didn't work in every way, then it was a failure and you might as well give up. And so when I, when I kind of hit that wall of like, this is unsustainable, I can't be this way. As a person, I swung to the other side. I swung to the lazy side of things where I was like, well, screw it, I don't care.

Kendra Adachi 00:06:25  I don't care about anything. And that was also unsustainable. That was also equally unsustainable because I'm a I'm an intense, passionate person that cares about a lot of things. And so giving up on what I loved and what I loved spending time on and what I wanted to organize and prioritize and make part of my life. That also was life draining. Both things drained me. Both attempts drained me. And so that's where this lazy genius approach came from is like, let's be a genius about the things that matter to us personally, and we can be lazy about the things that don't, because no one can be a genius about everything. And also, you don't have to be lazy about it all because you're allowed to care. You're allowed to put effort into the parts of your life that you want to.

Joe Sanok 00:07:09  Well, I want to get into being a lazy genius. But first what do we have to dismantle in regards to time management. Like what are the things that society, the news, what we're taught that we get wrong, that we have to like tear down before we build up what's right.

Kendra Adachi 00:07:23  So you don't have to agree with me on this. But here's what I say that. So not everyone resonates with this, but, 93% of time management books are written by men. That's the first thing that is important to note. at least that was the number in 2022. And, and men have a lot of amazing things to say. And it's not that the information that is in most of those books that we have all consumed for years and years are bad. It's just that there isn't a nature of incompleteness to a lot of the time management resources that we have. And when I realized that, it kind of set me on this course of, well, what else has the time management industry maybe gotten wrong or maybe just missed? Maybe it's less about what's been wrong, but what has been missed? What's been left out? And I think that one of the primary things that's been so life giving to me and to thousands and thousands of readers, is that time management, traditionally and productivity, are built around the single priority of some level of greatness.

Kendra Adachi 00:08:29  That everything that we do is meant to optimize. Level up. Every day is building on itself to this invisible future that we're trying to reverse engineer. You know, we.

Speaker 3 00:08:42  Have.

Kendra Adachi 00:08:42  This this vision of what we want our lives to be and five, ten, 20, 30 years. And then we reverse engineer that, and we we create a plan. We break it down into small steps and we create a plan and we work the plan. Now that is in fact how you reach goals. It is, it is. And that's a wonderful thing. But if that is, if that lens of greatness is how you look through every single day, that it has to be the best day. You know, I hear I hear myself say this to my kids sometimes, like, have the best day. That's a lot of pressure. You know, like to see every day as the best that you can make it. Optimize it the best that you can. That everything is about tensing. You can even hear it in my voice.

Kendra Adachi 00:09:31  Like it makes my body kind of rise up in this, like, really stressed out way. There's not a groundedness. It almost unmoored me because it's so much to rise to.

Joe Sanok 00:09:42  Yeah, I feel like it's just one of those things where you hear all this, like, wake up every morning and do your gratitude journal, and then drink your matcha tea, and then have your green smoothie and then go cold plunge. And then do this, and then you're going to be a millionaire. And it's all these, like, I just want you. Yeah, it's like, I just want to puke. I'm like, it seems like it's coming out of a place of. The world is against you, and you have to do all these life hacks instead of just accepting that there's beauty in the mundane.

Kendra Adachi 00:10:13  Yeah, there is. And and that's why I think we need a new lens. I think for me, the future of time management is that we organize our lives and our time around contentment, that we start with contentment, that we start with being a whole person, being who we are, where we are today, that we honor today.

Kendra Adachi 00:10:40  First, it doesn't mean that we ignore the future. It doesn't mean that we don't set goals, that we don't work a plan, but the lens that we look through our lives is contentment. It is that good is here now that sometimes enough is enough. You know that we can just be here, in this, in this, in this mess that we didn't check off all of our things, that perhaps this day we can't, like, you know, I feel like there's this expectation that each day, if it's not building on the next one and the one before it, then it doesn't count somehow, you know that it's a waste if a day, if you didn't check off all the boxes, if you didn't do your gratitude journal and your green tea and your, you know, whatever your list is, whatever your list of like, these are the things that a person does when they are moving towards this plan that if you go through a day that those things don't happen, that somehow it's a waste of a day.

Kendra Adachi 00:11:34  And that's also a lot, so much pressure to hold. It's so much pressure to hold. And in particular, I believe it is a lot of pressure for men and women to hold, but women feel it, I think, in a different level of with a different level of acuteness because of the expectations that women have to kind of hold a lot of the invisible structure of, of a home, you know, of the domestic life, like there's a the mental load. There's a lot of talk right now about the mental load that women carry in, in a lot of homes. But but ultimately the tools. This is a fascinating statistic to me. 93% of time management books are written by men, but 70 some of the numbers are as high as 90% of those books are read by women. And so I think the future of time management is we need to include the female experience and what we are doing so that we have a more complete view that we can learn from each other's experiences. We have a more complete view of what time management can look like, and also that perhaps we have a different goal and we start from a different place.

Kendra Adachi 00:12:46  We don't have a goal of greatness, and we start from an invisible future that we cannot see, and that we honestly have very little control over. Then instead, we look through a lens of there is good here. Now let's be content with today and we're going to start with who we are and where we are today.

Joe Sanok 00:13:04  I read a stat recently and I didn't memorize it. Had I looked ahead and saw you on my calendar, I would have, but it was. It was something about how, like the top 5 or 10 books on time management were all written by men and like something like nine out of ten of them had stay at home wives. Yeah. And just like, you know, these stories that it's like, okay, like, this guy can do it all, but it's like there's this, you know, woman behind him that's like, also like keeping the house together. And that's one of these unpaid labors that helps him do these things. and I love that you're pointing out that stat because, you know, being a single dad that has sole physical custody of my kids, having two daughters, like, wanting them to grow up in a world where their voice is heard and that like, they don't have to read a bunch of men's books to learn time management for them.

Joe Sanok 00:13:54  you know, they're ten and 13. I know you have younger kids also. like, what do you hope is the, is the time management of the future that not only brings in kind of male and female voices, but also minority groups, underserved populations.

Speaker 3 00:14:11  Like, right.

Joe Sanok 00:14:12  When we don't when we don't have voices from a lot of different places, it just becomes this capitalistic, patriarchal, just like way of thinking that is one monotone voice. Like, what do you think would happen if we expanded? Who was talking about time management?

Kendra Adachi 00:14:29  Oh my goodness. Well, the first thing that comes to mind is that it I really I recognize that my approach is not very friendly with like, with capitalism.

Speaker 3 00:14:42  Because that's It's okay because.

Kendra Adachi 00:14:44  It's contentment does not drive economic activity. You know, contentment does not always make us trying to hustle for the next biggest, best job. You know, the next promotion. Like it takes contentment, takes kind of the hustle out of things. And we do live in a in a pretty hustle culture.

Kendra Adachi 00:15:07  And, and so I realized that this is kind of a, it's kind of a big paradigm shift. You know, it's a big ask. But I do think that if we start to move in this direction of recognizing that we are finite people, that we are not able to bring 100% every single day and the days that we can't. It doesn't mean that we are undisciplined or unmotivated or that we have failed in some way. I want us to live in a world where we do not sacrifice humanity on the altar of productivity.

Speaker 3 00:15:43  I want again.

Kendra Adachi 00:15:44  I want us to live in a world where we do not sacrifice humanity on the altar of productivity. And we see that everywhere, don't we? We see humanity being sacrificed on that altar all the time. You know that people are working so much longer, even though they're burning out. Like the numbers of burnout are so much higher than they ever have been that we have more than we've ever had before in many ways, and yet we're less content with what we have.

Kendra Adachi 00:16:11  You know, there's just this constant motion in this striving of trying to level up and be great. And I don't think we know that that is the water we're swimming in. I don't think we see it. It's like the, you know, the fish is looking around like, what is water? It's just everywhere. And the more once you see it, you see it. You do see it everywhere. It's like, oh, this is a lens of greatness. This is greatness. Looking at me every like there's a, there's this vitamin commercial that's on right now. A lot. And it's a it's a mother. And she's like just so dreary, you know, she's just plodding through her life in such a dreary way. And this ad is saying, like, we'll take this vitamin and now everything is Technicolor and you have energy and you're bopping along with all your errands. And I think that that is just a that's selling a lie. You know, everything is sort of set up that if we do this one magic thing right, then we will be great all the time.

Kendra Adachi 00:17:11  We won't have these tired days, we won't have these days where we're like, man, I really don't like my job today. This is a really tough day. It's like, we don't have a place to put the difficult, hard, challenging parts of life because those don't fit on a plan of greatness. Those don't fit in a life optimization plan. They're in the way I want us to live. I want us to just be people where we are and sit with the tension of like, man, this life is hard today. And that we can go to bed. Though not discounting that day is valuable because we did live it. We were a person today. We interacted with people. We sort of did the best we could, but we get to start tomorrow. And it's not that we this is this day is against us because we didn't check off all those boxes. There's just such a there's just too much pressure. I think we live under too much pressure. And I want us to start relieving some of it so that we can be people together again.

Joe Sanok 00:18:18  As a therapist, I can tell you from experience that having the right ear is an absolute lifeline. I recommend using therapy notes. They make billing, scheduling, note taking, telehealth, and e-prescribing incredibly easy. Best of all, they offer live telephone support. It's available seven days a week. You don't have to take my word for it. Do your own research and see for yourself. Therapy notes is the number one highest rated EHR system available today, with a 4.9 out of five stars on Trustpilot and on Google. All you have to do is click the link below or type promo code Joe on their website over at Therapy Notes. Com and receive a special two month trial. Absolutely free. Again that's therapy notes. Com and use promo code Joe on the website. If you're coming from another EHR therapy notes will also import your demographic data quick and easy at no cost, so you can get started right away. Trust me. Don't waste any more of your time and try therapy notes. Just use promo code Joe at checkout.

Joe Sanok 00:19:25  A lot of what I'm hearing is moving away from the industrialist way of thinking. I talked a lot about this in Thursday's The New Friday, about how, you know, when Henry Ford gave us the 40 hour workweek in 1926. You know, that was 40 years after the the protests in 1886, in Chicago around workers rights. And, you know, you know, we're just a couple generations into this 40 hour workweek on this experiment. And the idea that we're just, you know, plug it in, a model T kicks out on the other side. Everything's the same. We can have it be predictable, have KPIs that the post-industrial way is instead of seeing a prescription, seeing a menu and saying, okay, this doesn't this used to work for me, but today it doesn't work. You know, doing a plank used to make me feel good when I did that today. Like, that's not shaking me out of feeling sad. Yeah, okay. Maybe I need to fix it, maybe I don't.

Joe Sanok 00:20:18  Maybe I need to learn to sit with those emotions that that it's this menu based approach of how do I build up things that I can put into my life that, you know, help me feel the way I want to feel that I can take out, and to also learn that there's just times when things are rough. And being able to have that contentment you're talking about. To me, it is challenging that industrialist way of thinking that that like we're machines that, you know, if you do X, Y, and Z, then this is what's going to happen. I'm wondering how you see this mindset affecting practice owners. So a lot of these counselors, you know, they have busy days where they're seeing a lot of clients. They've often have, you know, admin staff or they have other clinicians that are coming to them. they have big goals, but maybe they're not making time for those big goals. how do you think through time management when it comes to a counseling private practice?

Kendra Adachi 00:21:10  so my husband is a counselor, he's a school counselor.

Kendra Adachi 00:21:14  And, and so many of my friends are in private practice counseling, and I am a, I'm a a client of it myself, so I, I love, people who are dedicating their lives to this. And I wonder, this is this is my own anecdotal experience, but it's really hard to sit with with people in difficult spaces all day long, and then to kind of come out of that and still feel like yourself, you know, still feel like you have like a connection to yourself and to your day because there is a, you know, there are obviously different types of, approaches. And I'm not an expert in the different, a clinical approaches to, to counseling. But I again, anecdotally, I know that there is a lot of, just holding space for people and listening and kind of removing yourself. And I think that when no matter the the job, no matter the role, so many of us, do that like if you let's say you have, you are running a practice and maybe you're not seeing as many clients.

Kendra Adachi 00:22:29  And so there's a lot more hustle for you. You know, there's a lot of admin things. There's a lot of like, well, we've got to grow. Are we going to? Are we going to partner with these people and open this business? I just had a friend who just opened her own private practice, and it was so much more administrative work than she bargained for, than she expected. And so it felt like there was a lot of this hustling. So it could be that there are times where there's like a lot of hustle, and it's easy for us to lose ourselves in hustle. When you're sitting with clients, it's in some ways necessary to lose yourself because you don't really bring a lot of yourself to it, to that kind of role, because you're there for the client and that the, the there is beautiful, important work. And coming back to who you are right now that is in conflict sometimes with this hustle culture, this productivity culture, this. Well, let's let's see how this let's what's the ROI here.

Kendra Adachi 00:23:29  You know, how does this how does this match up with all of all these other things that I've been putting together. And so I think that there's a very unique challenge for your listeners and sort of coming back to themselves today. But I also think it's one of the, there's also a, there's like a what's the word? There's a natural, there's a natural skill set for people who go into this field for them to recenter and come back to themselves and go, you know what? Today is valuable because today was today was a was a quote unquote good day, because today was because I was here and I was doing my work and I was with these people, and I can't always measure it. You know, like, I think that this field is one that's very hard to measure. And we're taught to measure everything.

Speaker 3 00:24:20  You know.

Kendra Adachi 00:24:21  Measure it, then what's the point? And so perhaps even just taking away the pressure of, of measuring can offer a little bit of lightness in life in in the work of.

Kendra Adachi 00:24:35  Yeah. Trying to trying to do. Excellent. Trying to be excellent at your job and maybe trying to, grow your practice and expand and all these different things. But to come back to the contentment and the wholeness of who you are right now. It's kind of like it's kind of like we we, in my own counseling experience, in my own therapy journey, so much of what I'm, I'm taught when I'm invited to do is to be who I am, no matter my circumstances. Right. It's to it's to we're not impacted by I mean, we are impacted by our circumstances. But like the the work, the good soul level work is in being who we are, where we are with feet planted on the ground, no matter what's happening around us, that there's a resiliency there. And I feel like that Is something that is valuable and needs to be expanded throughout all kinds of industries and personalities, and we need to bring that more into our time management conversations to be a person, rather than trying to manage your tasks and your time and your things and your circumstances.

Kendra Adachi 00:25:52  Can we be a whole grounded person no matter what is happening? What if that's where we begin? And I feel like people who are in this industry actually have a leg up on understanding the value of that.

Speaker 3 00:26:05  Yeah.

Joe Sanok 00:26:07  When when you think about your own life and what this looks like, when you think about time management for yourself, like how do you enact and live out the future of time management for yourself?

Kendra Adachi 00:26:18  So I have a my first book was called The Lazy Genius Way, and it's 13 principles rather than like tasks and how to's. It's just principles that can work for any person in any season. And you could just use one, you know, and just like, see how it how it helps something that's been challenging. Some of them are very practical and then some of them are less so. And one of the less practical but most important, principles is to live in your season, because that, setup that we've been given of, you know, kind of imagine what you want your life to look like down the road in the future.

Kendra Adachi 00:26:56  It doesn't take seasons into account. It doesn't take loss and health problems. And just like when you're, you know, my own life, I have I have three kids that are in three different schools, you know, got one in high school, one in middle and one in elementary. And so we are in a season of life right now where our I mean, this is very, very small and basic, but I think that's where a lot of the life lives. It's really hard for us to have dinner together because of when everybody's getting home from the different things and when they need to leave again to go to the next thing you know, they're their age, that they're starting to do more. And if I try to force an old way of approaching dinnertime together into this new season, I will remain discontent. I will be so frustrated. I'll be like, oh, why can't we just have dinner together? Why is this so hard? Well, it is hard, but it's because I'm not paying attention to the season we're in.

Kendra Adachi 00:28:01  The season we're in is that we eat later. If we want to eat together, then we have to eat later than we used to, which does impact some rhythms and routines for the afternoon. You know, it does change things, but I for me, one of the greatest gifts that I can give myself in managing my time is to organize everything based on the season I'm in. I make priorities based on the season I'm in. I'm a genius about the things that matter to me in this season. I am lazy about the things that do not matter in this season because it makes your choices feel smaller. You know, you talk about a menu and I really do. I like that. I like that analogy. And, you know, think about if you go to a restaurant and they're like, we do three things really well. Which one do you want? And then you go to a cheese factory and you need an hour to read the whole menu because there's so many choices. You know, we we are impacted greatly by decision fatigue.

Kendra Adachi 00:29:03  You know, that is an overwhelm that is real for so many of us. And I think that when we when we organize our time around the season we're in, we're making it smaller. We're making our choices more limited. We see that as kind of a negative thing because, again, the productivity industry is more about like bigger, better techniques. Everything is building on this invisible future way, way, way in the future.

Speaker 3 00:29:25  Feature.

Kendra Adachi 00:29:26  But instead it's like, where are you right now? What season are we in right now? There are beautiful limitations that allow us to live there with greater contentment, with, almost more ease in choosing those priorities because we have less to pull from. You know, we have it's like, well, this is just not the season for us eating all at the table at the same time at 6:00 every night. That's just not the season anymore. It was when they were little. It's not anymore. And that's okay. That's what life is. So that's what it that is a very practical principle that I pay attention to every single day.

Kendra Adachi 00:30:02  Live in your season.

Joe Sanok 00:30:03  I love it, Kendra. The last question I always ask is if every private practitioner in the world were listening right now, what would you want them to.

Speaker 3 00:30:10  Know.

Kendra Adachi 00:30:11  That good is here right now. I think that we, that is a beautiful way to cultivate contentment is to recognize that even in difficult seasons, even when we're stressed out and things are chaotic and we just. Life is just life. You know, there's just a lot happening when we feel upside down or too busy or stretched too thin. It's really easy for us to look at the negative things, to feel that discontentment with our lives. And so this this is a personal mantra of mine, is that God is here right now. It is not a toxic positivity good thing like that. There's nothing bad. It's more, just kind of like a counterbalance to the chaos. To go there is real good, even if the good is that I didn't beat myself up because I didn't drink my matcha this morning or whatever.

Speaker 3 00:31:04  You know, like.

Kendra Adachi 00:31:06  There's there's kindness in that, but that there's good and that the that you're, you know, that your daughters are like, laughing together. You know, you just look across the living room and they're together and they're laughing together like that. Those kinds of moments, if we have eyes to see them and we pay attention to them and we give them their due value. They are such a boy for us. They're. They just make us feel lighter in the sea of all that's kind of churning around us. And so that to me, is something that everyone can find deeply valuable every single day. Good is here right now.

Joe Sanok 00:31:43  Love it. If people want to get your books, if they want to read more, learn more. Where can we send them?

Kendra Adachi 00:31:50  Everything is at the Lazy Genius collective.com.

Joe Sanok 00:31:55  So awesome. Thank you for being on the practice of the Practice podcast.

Kendra Adachi 00:31:58  Thanks for having me, Joe.

Joe Sanok 00:32:07  So don't sacrifice humanity for productivity, and good is here right now.

Joe Sanok 00:32:15  you know, this is stuff that it's, you know, as I was thinking about, how Kendra was pushing back on a lot of this capitalism and, you know, just, you know, just having all male voices, around productivity. To me, you think about the great philosophers, the great spiritual teachers, like they're saying the same thing as what we just talked about. It's like, be here now. I mean, that's literally what Ram Dass taught throughout his whole spiritual career. That the present has beauty in it, and it's so easy to lose that. And I love that. As we talk about the future of time management, we're moving away from just that. We have to get things done and have, you know, that's where our worth comes from, what we're doing. I've heard many people say that I don't know who first said it, but we're human beings, not human doings. I wish I could cite who first said it, but probably people figured that out a long time ago.

Joe Sanok 00:33:08  So, thank you so much for hanging out with us during this series. We have some exciting guests coming up, and then when the series is done, we have some really, amazing things coming up in the next hundred episodes. we also couldn't do the show without therapy, notes our sponsor for today's show. If you need a better EHR, a better electronic health records for your practice so that you don't have to have time management worries when it comes to where you're doing your client notes, how you're doing the billing or your HIPAA compliant video. You know, you got to use therapy notes. Therapy notes. Com use promo code Joe at checkout. That gives you a couple months for free. It also helps them know that this podcast sponsorship is working. And that's how we pay for this sponsor or for this podcast is through those sponsorships. Thank you so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have a great day. We'll talk to you soon. Special thanks to the band. Silence is sexy for that intro music, and this podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered.

Joe Sanok 00:34:06  It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the producers, the publishers or guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical or other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.
Share this content
Ready to Make Your First Hire and Scale Up?

Reserve your spot for Group Practice Launch Week (Sept 14–23) and unlock the blueprint for expanding your practice.