Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hartunger. I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side. We are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun. From figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode two hundred and seventeen, which is first airing in late September of twenty twenty one. I'm going to be talking to Kendra Adaci about her book The Lazy Genius, some upcoming projects she has too. She has a great podcast as well that I know a lot of our listeners also listen to, or should if they don't. She's got a lot of great life hacks and tips that she's developed over the years on how to make light work. So, Sarah, what would you consider yourself to be a lazy genius about? I am a lazy genius about many things related to my home. I know that spending a lot of time on decor and updating does not spark any joy in me, so I've chosen just to be very, very lazy about it. That's why we still rent. That is why I'm more concerned with whether, you know, it's relatively organized than I am with you know, the state of any of our furniture. And it does make my life easier. So I think her tagline is like, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. And to me, it totally doesn't. And I love that permission. I love Kender by the way. I'm so excited for having her. See she also has one of her principles is to decide once, and we have certainly done that with meals, the whole meal planning thing. We get a meal kit that provides two dinners per week. We always do breakfast for dinner on Wednesday, and we do make your own pizza no on Friday, So that leaves a mere one night per week to figure out much of which we have you know, pre made costco meals and the freezer something like that. You know, kids could have girled cheese. It doesn't matter it's it's just very easy, and it limits the decision making if basically four of the week nights per week are already decided and we don't have to make those decisions. You know, we also made the decision decide once the kids buy the hot lunch or they don't buy because nobody has to pay for anything anymore in the police clothes. But they buy with in quotes, the hot lunch at the school, and so we decided to do that. Decide once don't have to worry about, you know, the men, you don't have to worry about buying lunch stuff for the kids. I'm not sure exactly what they're eating while they're there, but you know, I wouldn't know if they brown bagged it either, really, and no one's starved so far, So I guess we're a lazy genius about that. I love it. I kind of wish I could lazy genius that one our school does not have lunch right now, but I think I'm going to copy you when they do. So well cool, Well, let's go ahead and dive right into hearing from Kendra. All right, Well, Sarah and I are so excited to welcome Kendra to the program. So, Kendra, can you introduce yourself to our listeners. I can. I'm so happy to be here. So my name is Kendra Adachi. I am known on the Internet as the Lazy Genius, and I help people be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't to them because the things that matter to me are not going to matter to you, and so we need different approaches to things. So I have a podcast that talks about that, I have a book that talks about that. I talk about it a lot on Instagram. So if you google the Lazy Genius there, I am there. She is all over the place. And Kendra also has three kids and tell us their ages. Yeah. So my oldest is in sixth grade, he just started middle school, it's fine. And then my middle son is in fourth grade, and then my youngest, my daughter is ink in her garden. So this fall was like transition city. Yeah, exactly. Now you match up well with my three middle children pretty closely. So I always enjoy hearing about what you guys are up to. Yeah. So you define a lazy genius as being a genius about what matters and then lazy about everything that doesn't matter to you. How did you come up with that phrase? Years of being a really intense perfectionist. Now, the phrase itself came from my friend Emily P. Freeman, who is an author herself, and she's just really good at naming things, and she is like my best friend. And when I was trying to think about how I wanted to give sort of permission to people to kind of make choices that made sense for them but in a smart, efficient way, she said, well, I like these two words together. What about the lazy genius? And then the tagline just like rolled off. It was like, that's right, because people can be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things don't. And then we were like high fiving all over the place. That's always great when you know you've got it and you're like, that's my personal brand forever. So let's talk about some of the lazy genius principles, because I think we have a lot of listeners who either are lazy geniuses or what aspire to be lazy geniuses. So one of your key principles is to decide once. So tell us what that means in some ways in your life that you decide once. I love this principle because it is such a quick win, Like it just gives you, like it gives you such an adrenaline rush because it helps. So deciding once is basically you make a decision about something one time, and then you don't make a decision again until it stops working. Once it stops working, you change your decision. And it can be literally anything. A couple of common choices are like what you eat for dinner on a certain night of the week, I'm going to eat this for lunch for the rest of the week. This is what I wear on a certain day. This is the only place that I buy birthday gifts for people, you know, like all of those kinds of things. So I decided once a long time ago that the only way that I would really bring color into my wardrobe was with my glasses and my lipstick everything else. It's like, let's just look like Steve Jobs and it'll be fine. So that sure makes it easy. When I'm at a store and they're like really colorful earrings, or there's a top that's in a bright color that I wouldn't normally wear, it's like, no, I've decided once, this is working for me. This is working. I'm not going to get this. It really helps. Yeah, and Kendra has some awesome pink glasses on right now, so she does have color in her wardrobe. It's just very limited to certain accessorizing spots exactly. Yeah. And another one you have is to start small. So tell us about that one and what you do, what you've started small with in your life. Yeah, I know you are an expert at this because we think about productivity in like these big bites, big chunks, big machines, and we spend more time maintaining the machine than we do actually getting anything done. And so it's such a simple concept of like, Okay, it's not just small, but it's starting small. Please don't start big, because it all falls apart. That's why we all hate like January fourth, because we build all these big things and then nothing happens. So starting small is not just helpful from like a mental and kind of emotional perspective, but also it is the very thing that gives us the momentum we're actually looking for, because if we make these big steps, they just are too hard to maintain. But small steps we actually keep taking. I have a story in my book The Lazy Genius Way, where I explain the thirteen Lazy Genius principles, and when I talk about starting small, I tell this story about I wanted to do yoga. I wanted to be that mattered to me, like I wanted to move my body in that way every single day. But committing to like twenty minutes of yoga or even ten minutes of yoga every day was ridiculous. It just wasn't working for me, and so I made the choice to do one down dog every day. That was it. And you might be like, Kindra, that is not yoga, that does not count, and you might be right, But guess what, I did it every day. I still do it every day. Now. I do like a little more. But the only way I got to a little more is by doing that, by starting small in that way. So I often say that starting small is the most annoying advice because it feels like it just doesn't doing anything. It's like a waste. But starting big doesn't get you anywhere. You don't move at all, So why not try it this way? Yeah, I'm in complete agreement. I do certain daily rituals every day, and among them, I do like one squat basically like any like one one weightlifting thing, right, like one resistance training thing, and if I do one, I'm good, it's good. You know, usually I do more. But if I've done the one, and there's absolutely no reason I couldn't do the one, like I would have to be like it completely lying to my life that there's no way this like two second phenomenon could fit into my life. Right. But you know if I if I said thirty minutes a day, it just absolutely wouldn't happen now. And then one of my personal favorites the magic question, just because it's such a uh you know, ooh, Tandra, what is the magic question? What is the magic question? So the magic question is what can I do now to make something easier later? And that's something can be anything you want to put in there. So a very common one that I use every single day is what can I do now to make dinner easier later? Because that's like the thing that we all struggle with, especially parents. If you've got kids and you have to feed them all and you're all tired, and you're you know, the schedule is conflating into this like really stressful time, and so anything that I can do, like putting wheat pasta a lot, because I have picky children. And one of the things that I do all the time as an answer to the magic question is put a pot of water on the stove at like noon. But then all I have to do is turn on the stove when it's time, and it makes it easier. Like it's so small, but it makes it easier. So what can you do now to make Christmas shopping easier later? If that is something that you do, is you can decide, like you can go ahead and make a list of who you're going to get gifts for and be done. Like that's what you can do now. What can you do now to make let's see, like taking care of your yard easier later? It can be that you like have boots by the door. It could be that you have the number of a landscape person who does it for you because you don't like to do yard work at all. Like it's just these little tiny things where you think ahead. It's that phrase of doing your future self a favor. Just what can I do now to make something easier later? And again it's such a quick win. Yeah, well we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back with Kendra talking about how we can all be lazy genius. Well, I am back with Kendra Adati talking about how we can all be lazy geniuses, making sure that we are geniuses about the things that matter and that we are being lazy about the things that don't. So I just have one quibble with the magic question, and maybe you can explain to me how this, you know, isn't an issue so excited. Well, it's just that sometimes we go a little bit overboard. I'm thinking about how we can make things easier for our future selves, to the point that we eat up our current leisure time with you in the course of doing it. So one thing I always caution our busy listeners against doing is, say, spending your whole Sunday cooking for the week ahead. Yes, agreed that we have a number of people who've learned that you know, I don't know their mother's knee, that this is what you know, a working mom is supposed to do for making the week runs smoothly and inevitably. What happens is that it still takes some time during the week to make dinners. So you haven't completely gotten rid of that but you've also lost your whole Sunday in the process of you know, making five meals for the week or whatever. So where is our balance between doing things to make it easier for our future selves, but not you know, completely forgetting our current selves and our enjoyment. This is such a good question, And would you believe no one has ever had this quibble? No one has ever asked it. And I have the same quibble with it, because that is absolutely what a lot of people do. Is they, especially highly productive people or highly busy people. Is they cannibalize their free time with trying to prepare. But you're just still always tired, You're still always chasing the thing. So I one hundred percent agree with that. And I would say, like it's combining start small and the magic question, Like just answer it one time, Just do one thing, set yourself a limit. You could even decide once to be like I'm only going to answer the magic question three times. I'm only going to spend ten minus min it's doing something for later, I'm not going to spend longer. Like giving yourself sort of boundaries so that you can enjoy that time. I also think that one of the hang ups that a lot of people have. A lot of women have. I think a lot of working women have, at least in my anecdotal experience and talking to them, is that there is like too much guilt in enjoying free time, Like you're not allowed to just read a book. I remember reading in a productivity book that someone used reading a novel as a reward for getting everything done, and I was livid because I was like, oh, girl, that makes me sad. I know. I was like, I'm going to read my book when the house is dirty, because this brings me joy. Like why would you know? Like taking care of yourself, enjoying your own time should not be a reward. It's part of existing as a human. So that like really frustrates me. And so that is something that I feel like is very important. That's like the air around the magic question is you are not trying to prove that you're like top of everything, or that you have to sacrifice in some way your free time, that your free time is less important than the productivity. They have to hold hands equally. I think they have to have equal priority or you're not going to be productive at all from a logistical standpoint, because like you said, you eat up the time. But even from a mental standpoint, as you continue to prioritize productivity and efficiency and optimization in your brain and turn into a robot instead of stay a person. Yeah, okay, to put your shoes by the door, not you know, don't need to lay out outfits for the next two weeks. You don't have to do that. It's so funny because I actually am a victim of this, Like I do this myself, and I put this in the book. I am pretty sure is that I love my morning coffee obviously, like a lot of us do. And I would run the bean grinder in the in the evening because it would wake up the kids in the morning. Well then I was like, well, let me get my my mug out here, and let me put the spoon down and let me open the sugar. And I was like it was two weeks into that. I'm like, kinder, you passed the drawer with a spoon getting the cream, Like, is it really that hard to get a spoon? Like the beans make sense, the other stuff does not make sense. And so I get that, Like we can over magic question really fast, But at what cost, you, guys, what cost? We have to remember, our future selves also won't be incompetent, So like we're gonna let her do a few things. Yeah, she can take care of a few things. You have said some great things in your books on your show, just as a person that might be my favorite's not incompetent. Well that's good. I'm glad we've established that so well, speaking of future selves, future Kindra is going to have a book out called The Lazy Genius Kitchen. Right, I'm coming out, we hope this spring. So why don't you tell us a little bit about that. I mean, so you've taken your principles and applied them to the food. Yeah, right, Oh my gosh, I'm so excited about this book. I cannot even stand it. So I have wanted this book to exist for fifteen years, like just being a human adult trying to run things, and it just hasn't been because we think that we need another cookbook, that we need recipes, that like not having enough recipes, or not having the right recipes, or not even having a system for like looking at our recipes is the problem. And I think that what we forget is there are so many elements to existing in a kitchen, like choosing what you're going to eat, the tools that you're going to have, how you organize your space, how you're going to make a plan, even how. I have this thing in the book that I call a prep flow. Every meal, you have to choose what you're going to eat. You need to have the food to eat it. You got to prep it, make it, eat it, clean it up, and then you do that again for every meal. And so you're always like when those prep flows kind of like bump into each other, that's when you cry because there are too many dirty dishes in the sink. Or that's when you're like, I can't eat and focus on dinner because breakfast is still here from yesterday or whatever it is. Because there's so many components in a kitchen, and I cannot begin to tell you what should be in yours based on what is in mind, because we have different priorities. Like, that's just not fair for me to give you a list of essentials. Essentials are only essentials if you use them. If you don't use them, they're they're just a waste, They're just noise. So this book, The Lazy Genius Kitchen is helping you have what you need, use what you have and then enjoy your kitchen. So there is a five step process that's based on the lazy genius principles that you can you can apply to any area of your kitchen. But I do that for you and with you. In the book over six areas your space, your meals, your food, your plan, your prep, and your table. And then there's this like beefy appendix basically that is full of like all of these like tips and orders of how to do things. And I mean it's just it's illustrated. It is the prettiest. I just finished looking at the last page proofs with like all of the illustrations and stuff, and I wept over a drawing of a blueberry so embarrassed, like it was just a funny thing. But this is the book that I have wanted to exist. This is if anybody listening is familiar with the book Salt Fat, Acid Heat. It is a beautiful book. It is unlike any other book because it teaches you kind of the mechanics of flavor, right. It gives you tools of how to make food taste good. I wanted to write the Salt Fat Acid Heat for everything else in the kitchen, and I think that's what I've done. So I'm just like, I couldn't be more excited. I know a lot of authors are like, ooh, launch, I don't like this, and I'm like, get me to March now. I'm so excited because it's so good. It's gonna just like transform people's kitchens. I know it will. I just love it so much. Well, I'm excited too. If nothing else else, I'm gonna have to like cut out that blueberry and frame it. So we have very ever, no, well, our listeners will have to check that out. I mean they probably want the blueberry up on their walls too. So you've been recently looking at your walls a lot because, as listeners of Kendro's podcast or followers per on Instagram, dough her family recently went through a rather long quarantine doing to all have COVID, but not even at the same time you had it. Sequentially, there was a domino infection. It was very sad. Yeah, So, first of all, I mean, is everyone doing all right? Now? Everyone's doing fine. I still have the tiniest bit of congestion chess congestion, so does my husband. His is worse than mine, and we're like like ninety five percent taste, ninety percent breathing, like, we're almost there. The kids are great. The kids were covered really quickly, which is good. So we're almost back to normal. But normal enough. Yeah, yeah, that's good. Well, wonderful, good to hear it. So obviously, you know, great, that health was okay. But but boy, being stuck in your house for multiple weeks with everyone, how did that go for you? It was fine? You know. It's funny because I realized that it is ridiculous of me to expect that my way of moving through quarantine, especially right now, it is ridiculous for me to expect that it's going to look the same, not even every day, but every hour. And I think the difference because in the beginning, in the beginning, when we started, when we found out our oldest was positive from a school exposure. My husband and I are vaccinated, but we had it was a strong man, and we were just all in the house and there we go. It happened and we all got sick. And I think I thought on the first day that what we've done this before. We did this last spring when everybody was in lockdown and everybody was quarantine. We know how to do this, but I did not realize the difference when you're the only ones doing it, and that solid that we sort of experienced as like a culture and a country at least in the US, like last spring, that was really valuable. And I didn't realize how valuable that was in kind of the booying of the process, like kind of booing my spirits, where it's like we're all in this together, and then it's like, no, we're not anymore, just your family. Hell yeah. Oh, and you know, then you knew you weren't missing out on it. I think if nothing was happening, but now you knew exactly what you're missing out on because life is just continuing. Yeah, and school had just started, Like we had been two weeks in school, so my daughter had gone to kindergarten for two weeks and then missed three. And it was really devastating because she had just started getting to the rhythm. She was nervous about going to school. You know, my kids, my boys had started soccer. They missed their first two practices in their first game because they're on the same team. And yeah, it was really a lot to kind of navigate in the missing out not to mention feeling sick, and because of the domino fact of the infections, my oldest was isolated for a stretch. We were all masking in the house for a stretch to try to keep the youngest from getting sick. Like it was just trying to make decisions that we believe were best for our family, and doing that to a point publicly because I did announce, like I feel everybody can make different decisions. That's the whole thing about the Lacey Genius way is that you have to decide what matters to you. It mattered to me to share that we were in quarantine, to share that we had positive tests, simply because I have seen enough kind of assumptions and stigma around people who do get COVID that I wanted to just kind of like be a voice a little bit against that, as small as it is to go like, yeah, we we we were vaccinated, we got sick, we did all the right things. You get sick, like, it's going to happen sometimes, and that doesn't mean that you did anything wrong or you're a bad person or any of that. And so, but even in sharing that publicly, the well meaning words from people about what we should be doing or not doing. It's a lot to carry, and we all have that in our lives, you know, we all have that from our families and our neighbors and our friends and whoever telling us like, well, you should be doing this when you have made a decision that you feel is best for your family, and kind of having to carry the emotional burden of other people's expectations too. So it was ridiculous of me to expect that every day would feel the same, and to also expect that it would just be entertaining quarantine kids, Like, there were just so many layers of things to deal with and it was really challenging, and also it reminded me at the same time I can experience the challenge of that and being sad. And I had to cancel a work trip, I had to cut another one short. We missed out on a lot of things. I definitely cried because I didn't get to go to my massage, Like I was very sad because I wanted to go ahead. I get it, Yeah, the massage. You look forward to these things for weeks, and so it would be dishonest of me and unkind to myself, Like there's no self compassion there for me to be like, no, get over it. I can hold that disappointment at the same time that I can hold the recognition that our family was really lucky. We are very privileged, we have resources, we have a community, we have support. My husband and I, both of our jobs were not impacted in a devastating way, but us having to be home for two three weeks, like, we really were in a great position compared to a lot of people, and we can be grateful for that and acknowledge that at the same time that we can be disappointed about the experience. And so it's just very complicated and nuanced, and I just don't think that we as people are super good at holding complication and nuance, especially when we are tired from being in a pandemic this long. So it was something and I'm glad we're out of it. But also we did it. We made it, you know, it was okay. So yeah, And one of the things said your podcast that was helpful for you, I mean you in a recent episode and listeners might want to go check this out. She talked about the things she learned through the experience, but one of them is that it helps to name how you are weak under stress. Yeah. Now, we all have our things, like when we are stressed, certain things happen to us. And acknowledging that that is the specific thing that you are going to do when you are stressed can be helpful, right, Yeah, yeah, I realized. So I have a what I affectionately call I have a caffeinated squirrel brain. It's just going greatly fast all the time, little legs, and when I'm stressed out, like that gets me a lot done, that brain does. But when I'm stressed out, it goes even faster, and it gets really neurotic and judgmental and kind of grippy, like white knuckly, you know, like we've got to make those work. We need a plan for everything. Like that's the energy that's like I'm laying out my outfits for two weeks because you want control over something thing, And so knowing that that's my pattern, knowing that that's not the easiest energy to live with, and also knowing that that does not last for very long. Like that's me for the first like four to five hours after big news, after stressful news, I'm a maniac. And so I just said to my husband, I acknowledge like, hey, babe, so I'm really stressed out right now. I need to make a lot of lists. I need you to listen to me verbally process all the things that we're missing out on, and we're going to make a plan that we're probably not going to follow, but it really is going to help my brain calm down. And he, because he's a lovely person, was like sure, and he went in the living room and like, let me verbally go crazy on all of these things that we didn't end up doing, but it helped me calm down and naming that rather than believing that that way was healthy, we're helpful, but also not like stomping it down because you know it's not healthy or helpful. It's like sometimes you just need to do the thing, but you can bring it into the life with people in a way, like that's another relazy genius principles to let people in. You can bring that insecurity, let someone into that and go, hey, I know you love me even though I'm doing this, but I need I need to do this. Can you do this with me? And it's connective as opposed to protective. You know, it just made us more on the same team. But it sure was helpful to say that out loud. Yeah, Now, I think it would help all of us to have a good name for how we are weak under stress. And I've been pondering that. I mean, I know exactly, but anyway, we don't need to go into that. So Kender, we always end with a love of the week. I can go first, because you know, it would give you a minute to think about it. Yeah, but hearing you talk about, yeah, the quarantine experience, and one of the things that I am loving is the fact that we have rapid testing. Now, I mean that was I mean, I'm sure you guys had to do multiple rounds of testing with this, but just you know, back in the first early days of the pandemic first that there weren't any tests or you had to go, like you know, wait in long with other Joermany people to go get tested in various places. And of course now I mean they just swab your nose, do it in twenty minutes. If that, you know, just really helps. Yeah, that you don't have that uncertainty hanging over you for nearly as long. Yeah, So how about you, what's working for you right now? Mine's very different than that. But one thing that is I'm really loving right now is vintage ribbon, like thrifted ribbonka And Okay, so it's one of those things that when you go to a thrift store or like we have the store where I live called Reconsidered Goods, and people it is a thrift store, but it's like a lot of art supplies and you just make beautiful things out of things that people think are trash and it's so much fun. Well, anyway, a lot of places have ribbon, have like just like a few feet of ribbon cut from a school and for some reason, it's like fabricy, it's got it's just got a lot of texture and life to it. And I have been collecting it as a kind of like a fun almost like little magic question for holiday gift wrapping. Whenever I go to a throught store, I'm like, I'm go see if we can find some ribbon, and it brings me so much joy. Now would that bring everybody joy? No? It would not. But like I'm a pretty simple person in a lot of ways from a style perspective, and so, like I said, with my color in my wardrobe is glasses and lipstick. My excitement in gift wrapping isn't ben to driven because it's just like it's brown paper or white paper. But finding all these ribbons and I match them to the personality of the person giving it to. It's like so silly but so much fun. But it's an unusual thing that has really only been happening for this past year where I've started to gather up the ribbon. So that's what's making me. I'm staring at a stack next to me right now. It's just been to driven. I love that idea. Yeah, I know, wrap something very simple, but have the cool ribbon and you know, if you can explain how it matches the person's personality, that's a pretty cool part of a gift as well. It's really fun. Yeah, well, thank you so much for joining us, Ken, But why don't you just, you know, quick, tell our listeners again where they can find you. Yes, everything is the Lazy Genius. So the podcast is the Lazy Genius Podcast. I'm on Instagram at the Lazy Genius. The book is The Lazy Genius Way, and the website where everything is is the Lazygenius Collective dot com. Awesome, Well, please go check that out. And Kendra, thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me, Laura. All right, we are back with a question from a listener who is feeling a bit overwhelmed. She writes, I am feeling very overwhelmed. I'm in medical training with two young kids. Please some solutions to help me cope. Yeah, well, it sounds like it's gonna be a tough time. I don't know there's a good way to sugarcoat this. And it's funny because I've heard, you know, people sort of say, like, particularly if they are married to men going through medical training, that they must do everything because of course their spouse is going through medical training. Clearly they can't do anything else while going through medical training. That's completely ridiculous. You can, in fact do other things, and many people have, as we've discovered as a higher proportion of physicians are now female. Turns out they could always do more. It's just maybe men allowed themselves to believe they couldn't. But anyway, you know, anytime we're going through a tough time and have little kids, you have to have some fundamental rules for yourself of what makes life sustainable. For many people, it's aiming to get the sleep you can. Now I understand you're on twenty four hour call or whatever. You're not getting enough sleep that night. But maybe you know you have to block out the time the next day not let stuff get into it, that it has to be sacred. You know. Maybe it's that you are going to move for fifteen minutes in the day, that having some sort of physical activity makes it better, so you'll look at your schedule or you seize an opportunity whenever that might be go walk around outside for fifteen minutes and come back and deal with your the rest of your training stuff after that. Maybe it's that you put one fun thing per week. Right, It's probably not gonna be a full day at the spa, but it could be, you know, a coffee with a friend, or it could be a book you're reading that you just you know you're gonna make time to read through that book in the course of the week, or you know, watching a favorite movie or something like that. But one fun thing in the course of the week can really give you something to look forward to. But you know, having those fundamental rules that are just you know, little things but make life feel doable for the time being can really help. And then to know that this is at least somewhat temporary. It's not that, you know, medicine is an easy career by any means, but it does get better once you are out of the training program. And also your kids will grow up too. I mean, you're just combining two really tough things at the same time. Both of those are highly likely to get easier as life goes on. So you know you are paying in now for stuff that your future self will enjoy, and so because you are thinking of it that way, feel free to do things to make life okay in the current model, knowing that you will pay it back later. So again, if there's you need to spend more on extra help, for instance, I know, you know while you're in medical training you're probably not earning all that much, but you will right Like, the reason you're doing this is that you're going to get a higher paying job. So it's okay to you know, not save much now and know that that will come in time. Sarah, what do you have to say about this? Yeah, we saved, like before we had kids, we could save, but once we had Annabelle, there was no savings. It was definitely a net negative that we had kind of planned for. And I think you kind of have to allow for that. Definitely maximize those days off. You know, the one benefit of being in residency training is that you're you know, way your schedule may not be, you know, a cookie cutter. You may work some weekends, which means your partner or somebody else is going to help have to help out. Then you might end up with a random Wednesday off because as you know, you need to have four days off per month, and so those might not always be on weekend days. If you have a random Wednesday off, you should feel zero guilt about sending your children to childcare and enjoying some time for yourself, whether that's time to rest or if you feel like you must kind of split it, then you can always pick them up a little bit early and have kind of some time to yourself and some time with them. Do not tell yourself a story about you're a bad parent or something if you don't spend the entire day with your young kids. Because if you're in medical training and have young kids, I'm sure your personal rejuvenation time is extremely scarce. I totally agree with like less as you know, less can be really meaningful, especially when it comes to things like exercise, figure out kind of what your minimum effective dose is and see how you can fit that in. Maybe it's a hard fifteen to twenty minute high intensity interval workout like three times a week and that makes you feel human, but it really doesn't take that much away from your busy schedules. So things like that, and you know, true to this episode, figure out what you can lazy genius. You're not going to be able to do everything. You're not going to be able to, you know, have a picture perfect tablescape for every holiday and also be working in the ICU. So you're going to have to decide ruthlessly on what matters to you and try to plan in some fun and positivity because you know it is not that short that you could just defer gratification entirely. Sounds good, Well, hopefully this is helpful. I mean not just people going through medical training, but anyone who has intense period of their job and has small children. You have to narrow the horizon a little bit and see what will make each day sustainable and then probably tomorrow we'll deal with itself too. All right, Well, we have been talking with Kendra Adachi about being a lazy genius. We will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscores shoe Box on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.

Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hartunger. I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side. We are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun. From figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode two hundred and seventeen, which is first airing in late September of twenty twenty one. I'm going to be talking to Kendra Adaci about her book The Lazy Genius, some upcoming projects she has too. She has a great podcast as well that I know a lot of our listeners also listen to, or should if they don't. She's got a lot of great life hacks and tips that she's developed over the years on how to make light work. So, Sarah, what would you consider yourself to be a lazy genius about? I am a lazy genius about many things related to my home. I know that spending a lot of time on decor and updating does not spark any joy in me, so I've chosen just to be very, very lazy about it. That's why we still rent. That is why I'm more concerned with whether, you know, it's relatively organized than I am with you know, the state of any of our furniture. And it does make my life easier. So I think her tagline is like, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. And to me, it totally doesn't. And I love that permission. I love Kender by the way. I'm so excited for having her. See she also has one of her principles is to decide once, and we have certainly done that with meals, the whole meal planning thing. We get a meal kit that provides two dinners per week. We always do breakfast for dinner on Wednesday, and we do make your own pizza no on Friday, So that leaves a mere one night per week to figure out much of which we have you know, pre made costco meals and the freezer something like that. You know, kids could have girled cheese. It doesn't matter it's it's just very easy, and it limits the decision making if basically four of the week nights per week are already decided and we don't have to make those decisions. You know, we also made the decision decide once the kids buy the hot lunch or they don't buy because nobody has to pay for anything anymore in the police clothes. But they buy with in quotes, the hot lunch at the school, and so we decided to do that. Decide once don't have to worry about, you know, the men, you don't have to worry about buying lunch stuff for the kids. I'm not sure exactly what they're eating while they're there, but you know, I wouldn't know if they brown bagged it either, really, and no one's starved so far, So I guess we're a lazy genius about that. I love it. I kind of wish I could lazy genius that one our school does not have lunch right now, but I think I'm going to copy you when they do. So well cool, Well, let's go ahead and dive right into hearing from Kendra. All right, Well, Sarah and I are so excited to welcome Kendra to the program. So, Kendra, can you introduce yourself to our listeners. I can. I'm so happy to be here. So my name is Kendra Adachi. I am known on the Internet as the Lazy Genius, and I help people be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't to them because the things that matter to me are not going to matter to you, and so we need different approaches to things. So I have a podcast that talks about that, I have a book that talks about that. I talk about it a lot on Instagram. So if you google the Lazy Genius there, I am there. She is all over the place. And Kendra also has three kids and tell us their ages. Yeah. So my oldest is in sixth grade, he just started middle school, it's fine. And then my middle son is in fourth grade, and then my youngest, my daughter is ink in her garden. So this fall was like transition city. Yeah, exactly. Now you match up well with my three middle children pretty closely. So I always enjoy hearing about what you guys are up to. Yeah. So you define a lazy genius as being a genius about what matters and then lazy about everything that doesn't matter to you. How did you come up with that phrase? Years of being a really intense perfectionist. Now, the phrase itself came from my friend Emily P. Freeman, who is an author herself, and she's just really good at naming things, and she is like my best friend. And when I was trying to think about how I wanted to give sort of permission to people to kind of make choices that made sense for them but in a smart, efficient way, she said, well, I like these two words together. What about the lazy genius? And then the tagline just like rolled off. It was like, that's right, because people can be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things don't. And then we were like high fiving all over the place. That's always great when you know you've got it and you're like, that's my personal brand forever. So let's talk about some of the lazy genius principles, because I think we have a lot of listeners who either are lazy geniuses or what aspire to be lazy geniuses. So one of your key principles is to decide once. So tell us what that means in some ways in your life that you decide once. I love this principle because it is such a quick win, Like it just gives you, like it gives you such an adrenaline rush because it helps. So deciding once is basically you make a decision about something one time, and then you don't make a decision again until it stops working. Once it stops working, you change your decision. And it can be literally anything. A couple of common choices are like what you eat for dinner on a certain night of the week, I'm going to eat this for lunch for the rest of the week. This is what I wear on a certain day. This is the only place that I buy birthday gifts for people, you know, like all of those kinds of things. So I decided once a long time ago that the only way that I would really bring color into my wardrobe was with my glasses and my lipstick everything else. It's like, let's just look like Steve Jobs and it'll be fine. So that sure makes it easy. When I'm at a store and they're like really colorful earrings, or there's a top that's in a bright color that I wouldn't normally wear, it's like, no, I've decided once, this is working for me. This is working. I'm not going to get this. It really helps. Yeah, and Kendra has some awesome pink glasses on right now, so she does have color in her wardrobe. It's just very limited to certain accessorizing spots exactly. Yeah. And another one you have is to start small. So tell us about that one and what you do, what you've started small with in your life. Yeah, I know you are an expert at this because we think about productivity in like these big bites, big chunks, big machines, and we spend more time maintaining the machine than we do actually getting anything done. And so it's such a simple concept of like, Okay, it's not just small, but it's starting small. Please don't start big, because it all falls apart. That's why we all hate like January fourth, because we build all these big things and then nothing happens. So starting small is not just helpful from like a mental and kind of emotional perspective, but also it is the very thing that gives us the momentum we're actually looking for, because if we make these big steps, they just are too hard to maintain. But small steps we actually keep taking. I have a story in my book The Lazy Genius Way, where I explain the thirteen Lazy Genius principles, and when I talk about starting small, I tell this story about I wanted to do yoga. I wanted to be that mattered to me, like I wanted to move my body in that way every single day. But committing to like twenty minutes of yoga or even ten minutes of yoga every day was ridiculous. It just wasn't working for me, and so I made the choice to do one down dog every day. That was it. And you might be like, Kindra, that is not yoga, that does not count, and you might be right, But guess what, I did it every day. I still do it every day. Now. I do like a little more. But the only way I got to a little more is by doing that, by starting small in that way. So I often say that starting small is the most annoying advice because it feels like it just doesn't doing anything. It's like a waste. But starting big doesn't get you anywhere. You don't move at all, So why not try it this way? Yeah, I'm in complete agreement. I do certain daily rituals every day, and among them, I do like one squat basically like any like one one weightlifting thing, right, like one resistance training thing, and if I do one, I'm good, it's good. You know, usually I do more. But if I've done the one, and there's absolutely no reason I couldn't do the one, like I would have to be like it completely lying to my life that there's no way this like two second phenomenon could fit into my life. Right. But you know if I if I said thirty minutes a day, it just absolutely wouldn't happen now. And then one of my personal favorites the magic question, just because it's such a uh you know, ooh, Tandra, what is the magic question? What is the magic question? So the magic question is what can I do now to make something easier later? And that's something can be anything you want to put in there. So a very common one that I use every single day is what can I do now to make dinner easier later? Because that's like the thing that we all struggle with, especially parents. If you've got kids and you have to feed them all and you're all tired, and you're you know, the schedule is conflating into this like really stressful time, and so anything that I can do, like putting wheat pasta a lot, because I have picky children. And one of the things that I do all the time as an answer to the magic question is put a pot of water on the stove at like noon. But then all I have to do is turn on the stove when it's time, and it makes it easier. Like it's so small, but it makes it easier. So what can you do now to make Christmas shopping easier later? If that is something that you do, is you can decide, like you can go ahead and make a list of who you're going to get gifts for and be done. Like that's what you can do now. What can you do now to make let's see, like taking care of your yard easier later? It can be that you like have boots by the door. It could be that you have the number of a landscape person who does it for you because you don't like to do yard work at all. Like it's just these little tiny things where you think ahead. It's that phrase of doing your future self a favor. Just what can I do now to make something easier later? And again it's such a quick win. Yeah, well we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back with Kendra talking about how we can all be lazy genius. Well, I am back with Kendra Adati talking about how we can all be lazy geniuses, making sure that we are geniuses about the things that matter and that we are being lazy about the things that don't. So I just have one quibble with the magic question, and maybe you can explain to me how this, you know, isn't an issue so excited. Well, it's just that sometimes we go a little bit overboard. I'm thinking about how we can make things easier for our future selves, to the point that we eat up our current leisure time with you in the course of doing it. So one thing I always caution our busy listeners against doing is, say, spending your whole Sunday cooking for the week ahead. Yes, agreed that we have a number of people who've learned that you know, I don't know their mother's knee, that this is what you know, a working mom is supposed to do for making the week runs smoothly and inevitably. What happens is that it still takes some time during the week to make dinners. So you haven't completely gotten rid of that but you've also lost your whole Sunday in the process of you know, making five meals for the week or whatever. So where is our balance between doing things to make it easier for our future selves, but not you know, completely forgetting our current selves and our enjoyment. This is such a good question, And would you believe no one has ever had this quibble? No one has ever asked it. And I have the same quibble with it, because that is absolutely what a lot of people do. Is they, especially highly productive people or highly busy people. Is they cannibalize their free time with trying to prepare. But you're just still always tired, You're still always chasing the thing. So I one hundred percent agree with that. And I would say, like it's combining start small and the magic question, Like just answer it one time, Just do one thing, set yourself a limit. You could even decide once to be like I'm only going to answer the magic question three times. I'm only going to spend ten minus min it's doing something for later, I'm not going to spend longer. Like giving yourself sort of boundaries so that you can enjoy that time. I also think that one of the hang ups that a lot of people have. A lot of women have. I think a lot of working women have, at least in my anecdotal experience and talking to them, is that there is like too much guilt in enjoying free time, Like you're not allowed to just read a book. I remember reading in a productivity book that someone used reading a novel as a reward for getting everything done, and I was livid because I was like, oh, girl, that makes me sad. I know. I was like, I'm going to read my book when the house is dirty, because this brings me joy. Like why would you know? Like taking care of yourself, enjoying your own time should not be a reward. It's part of existing as a human. So that like really frustrates me. And so that is something that I feel like is very important. That's like the air around the magic question is you are not trying to prove that you're like top of everything, or that you have to sacrifice in some way your free time, that your free time is less important than the productivity. They have to hold hands equally. I think they have to have equal priority or you're not going to be productive at all from a logistical standpoint, because like you said, you eat up the time. But even from a mental standpoint, as you continue to prioritize productivity and efficiency and optimization in your brain and turn into a robot instead of stay a person. Yeah, okay, to put your shoes by the door, not you know, don't need to lay out outfits for the next two weeks. You don't have to do that. It's so funny because I actually am a victim of this, Like I do this myself, and I put this in the book. I am pretty sure is that I love my morning coffee obviously, like a lot of us do. And I would run the bean grinder in the in the evening because it would wake up the kids in the morning. Well then I was like, well, let me get my my mug out here, and let me put the spoon down and let me open the sugar. And I was like it was two weeks into that. I'm like, kinder, you passed the drawer with a spoon getting the cream, Like, is it really that hard to get a spoon? Like the beans make sense, the other stuff does not make sense. And so I get that, Like we can over magic question really fast, But at what cost, you, guys, what cost? We have to remember, our future selves also won't be incompetent, So like we're gonna let her do a few things. Yeah, she can take care of a few things. You have said some great things in your books on your show, just as a person that might be my favorite's not incompetent. Well that's good. I'm glad we've established that so well, speaking of future selves, future Kindra is going to have a book out called The Lazy Genius Kitchen. Right, I'm coming out, we hope this spring. So why don't you tell us a little bit about that. I mean, so you've taken your principles and applied them to the food. Yeah, right, Oh my gosh, I'm so excited about this book. I cannot even stand it. So I have wanted this book to exist for fifteen years, like just being a human adult trying to run things, and it just hasn't been because we think that we need another cookbook, that we need recipes, that like not having enough recipes, or not having the right recipes, or not even having a system for like looking at our recipes is the problem. And I think that what we forget is there are so many elements to existing in a kitchen, like choosing what you're going to eat, the tools that you're going to have, how you organize your space, how you're going to make a plan, even how. I have this thing in the book that I call a prep flow. Every meal, you have to choose what you're going to eat. You need to have the food to eat it. You got to prep it, make it, eat it, clean it up, and then you do that again for every meal. And so you're always like when those prep flows kind of like bump into each other, that's when you cry because there are too many dirty dishes in the sink. Or that's when you're like, I can't eat and focus on dinner because breakfast is still here from yesterday or whatever it is. Because there's so many components in a kitchen, and I cannot begin to tell you what should be in yours based on what is in mind, because we have different priorities. Like, that's just not fair for me to give you a list of essentials. Essentials are only essentials if you use them. If you don't use them, they're they're just a waste, They're just noise. So this book, The Lazy Genius Kitchen is helping you have what you need, use what you have and then enjoy your kitchen. So there is a five step process that's based on the lazy genius principles that you can you can apply to any area of your kitchen. But I do that for you and with you. In the book over six areas your space, your meals, your food, your plan, your prep, and your table. And then there's this like beefy appendix basically that is full of like all of these like tips and orders of how to do things. And I mean it's just it's illustrated. It is the prettiest. I just finished looking at the last page proofs with like all of the illustrations and stuff, and I wept over a drawing of a blueberry so embarrassed, like it was just a funny thing. But this is the book that I have wanted to exist. This is if anybody listening is familiar with the book Salt Fat, Acid Heat. It is a beautiful book. It is unlike any other book because it teaches you kind of the mechanics of flavor, right. It gives you tools of how to make food taste good. I wanted to write the Salt Fat Acid Heat for everything else in the kitchen, and I think that's what I've done. So I'm just like, I couldn't be more excited. I know a lot of authors are like, ooh, launch, I don't like this, and I'm like, get me to March now. I'm so excited because it's so good. It's gonna just like transform people's kitchens. I know it will. I just love it so much. Well, I'm excited too. If nothing else else, I'm gonna have to like cut out that blueberry and frame it. So we have very ever, no, well, our listeners will have to check that out. I mean they probably want the blueberry up on their walls too. So you've been recently looking at your walls a lot because, as listeners of Kendro's podcast or followers per on Instagram, dough her family recently went through a rather long quarantine doing to all have COVID, but not even at the same time you had it. Sequentially, there was a domino infection. It was very sad. Yeah, So, first of all, I mean, is everyone doing all right? Now? Everyone's doing fine. I still have the tiniest bit of congestion chess congestion, so does my husband. His is worse than mine, and we're like like ninety five percent taste, ninety percent breathing, like, we're almost there. The kids are great. The kids were covered really quickly, which is good. So we're almost back to normal. But normal enough. Yeah, yeah, that's good. Well, wonderful, good to hear it. So obviously, you know, great, that health was okay. But but boy, being stuck in your house for multiple weeks with everyone, how did that go for you? It was fine? You know. It's funny because I realized that it is ridiculous of me to expect that my way of moving through quarantine, especially right now, it is ridiculous for me to expect that it's going to look the same, not even every day, but every hour. And I think the difference because in the beginning, in the beginning, when we started, when we found out our oldest was positive from a school exposure. My husband and I are vaccinated, but we had it was a strong man, and we were just all in the house and there we go. It happened and we all got sick. And I think I thought on the first day that what we've done this before. We did this last spring when everybody was in lockdown and everybody was quarantine. We know how to do this, but I did not realize the difference when you're the only ones doing it, and that solid that we sort of experienced as like a culture and a country at least in the US, like last spring, that was really valuable. And I didn't realize how valuable that was in kind of the booying of the process, like kind of booing my spirits, where it's like we're all in this together, and then it's like, no, we're not anymore, just your family. Hell yeah. Oh, and you know, then you knew you weren't missing out on it. I think if nothing was happening, but now you knew exactly what you're missing out on because life is just continuing. Yeah, and school had just started, Like we had been two weeks in school, so my daughter had gone to kindergarten for two weeks and then missed three. And it was really devastating because she had just started getting to the rhythm. She was nervous about going to school. You know, my kids, my boys had started soccer. They missed their first two practices in their first game because they're on the same team. And yeah, it was really a lot to kind of navigate in the missing out not to mention feeling sick, and because of the domino fact of the infections, my oldest was isolated for a stretch. We were all masking in the house for a stretch to try to keep the youngest from getting sick. Like it was just trying to make decisions that we believe were best for our family, and doing that to a point publicly because I did announce, like I feel everybody can make different decisions. That's the whole thing about the Lacey Genius way is that you have to decide what matters to you. It mattered to me to share that we were in quarantine, to share that we had positive tests, simply because I have seen enough kind of assumptions and stigma around people who do get COVID that I wanted to just kind of like be a voice a little bit against that, as small as it is to go like, yeah, we we we were vaccinated, we got sick, we did all the right things. You get sick, like, it's going to happen sometimes, and that doesn't mean that you did anything wrong or you're a bad person or any of that. And so, but even in sharing that publicly, the well meaning words from people about what we should be doing or not doing. It's a lot to carry, and we all have that in our lives, you know, we all have that from our families and our neighbors and our friends and whoever telling us like, well, you should be doing this when you have made a decision that you feel is best for your family, and kind of having to carry the emotional burden of other people's expectations too. So it was ridiculous of me to expect that every day would feel the same, and to also expect that it would just be entertaining quarantine kids, Like, there were just so many layers of things to deal with and it was really challenging, and also it reminded me at the same time I can experience the challenge of that and being sad. And I had to cancel a work trip, I had to cut another one short. We missed out on a lot of things. I definitely cried because I didn't get to go to my massage, Like I was very sad because I wanted to go ahead. I get it, Yeah, the massage. You look forward to these things for weeks, and so it would be dishonest of me and unkind to myself, Like there's no self compassion there for me to be like, no, get over it. I can hold that disappointment at the same time that I can hold the recognition that our family was really lucky. We are very privileged, we have resources, we have a community, we have support. My husband and I, both of our jobs were not impacted in a devastating way, but us having to be home for two three weeks, like, we really were in a great position compared to a lot of people, and we can be grateful for that and acknowledge that at the same time that we can be disappointed about the experience. And so it's just very complicated and nuanced, and I just don't think that we as people are super good at holding complication and nuance, especially when we are tired from being in a pandemic this long. So it was something and I'm glad we're out of it. But also we did it. We made it, you know, it was okay. So yeah, And one of the things said your podcast that was helpful for you, I mean you in a recent episode and listeners might want to go check this out. She talked about the things she learned through the experience, but one of them is that it helps to name how you are weak under stress. Yeah. Now, we all have our things, like when we are stressed, certain things happen to us. And acknowledging that that is the specific thing that you are going to do when you are stressed can be helpful, right, Yeah, yeah, I realized. So I have a what I affectionately call I have a caffeinated squirrel brain. It's just going greatly fast all the time, little legs, and when I'm stressed out, like that gets me a lot done, that brain does. But when I'm stressed out, it goes even faster, and it gets really neurotic and judgmental and kind of grippy, like white knuckly, you know, like we've got to make those work. We need a plan for everything. Like that's the energy that's like I'm laying out my outfits for two weeks because you want control over something thing, And so knowing that that's my pattern, knowing that that's not the easiest energy to live with, and also knowing that that does not last for very long. Like that's me for the first like four to five hours after big news, after stressful news, I'm a maniac. And so I just said to my husband, I acknowledge like, hey, babe, so I'm really stressed out right now. I need to make a lot of lists. I need you to listen to me verbally process all the things that we're missing out on, and we're going to make a plan that we're probably not going to follow, but it really is going to help my brain calm down. And he, because he's a lovely person, was like sure, and he went in the living room and like, let me verbally go crazy on all of these things that we didn't end up doing, but it helped me calm down and naming that rather than believing that that way was healthy, we're helpful, but also not like stomping it down because you know it's not healthy or helpful. It's like sometimes you just need to do the thing, but you can bring it into the life with people in a way, like that's another relazy genius principles to let people in. You can bring that insecurity, let someone into that and go, hey, I know you love me even though I'm doing this, but I need I need to do this. Can you do this with me? And it's connective as opposed to protective. You know, it just made us more on the same team. But it sure was helpful to say that out loud. Yeah, Now, I think it would help all of us to have a good name for how we are weak under stress. And I've been pondering that. I mean, I know exactly, but anyway, we don't need to go into that. So Kender, we always end with a love of the week. I can go first, because you know, it would give you a minute to think about it. Yeah, but hearing you talk about, yeah, the quarantine experience, and one of the things that I am loving is the fact that we have rapid testing. Now, I mean that was I mean, I'm sure you guys had to do multiple rounds of testing with this, but just you know, back in the first early days of the pandemic first that there weren't any tests or you had to go, like you know, wait in long with other Joermany people to go get tested in various places. And of course now I mean they just swab your nose, do it in twenty minutes. If that, you know, just really helps. Yeah, that you don't have that uncertainty hanging over you for nearly as long. Yeah, So how about you, what's working for you right now? Mine's very different than that. But one thing that is I'm really loving right now is vintage ribbon, like thrifted ribbonka And Okay, so it's one of those things that when you go to a thrift store or like we have the store where I live called Reconsidered Goods, and people it is a thrift store, but it's like a lot of art supplies and you just make beautiful things out of things that people think are trash and it's so much fun. Well, anyway, a lot of places have ribbon, have like just like a few feet of ribbon cut from a school and for some reason, it's like fabricy, it's got it's just got a lot of texture and life to it. And I have been collecting it as a kind of like a fun almost like little magic question for holiday gift wrapping. Whenever I go to a throught store, I'm like, I'm go see if we can find some ribbon, and it brings me so much joy. Now would that bring everybody joy? No? It would not. But like I'm a pretty simple person in a lot of ways from a style perspective, and so, like I said, with my color in my wardrobe is glasses and lipstick. My excitement in gift wrapping isn't ben to driven because it's just like it's brown paper or white paper. But finding all these ribbons and I match them to the personality of the person giving it to. It's like so silly but so much fun. But it's an unusual thing that has really only been happening for this past year where I've started to gather up the ribbon. So that's what's making me. I'm staring at a stack next to me right now. It's just been to driven. I love that idea. Yeah, I know, wrap something very simple, but have the cool ribbon and you know, if you can explain how it matches the person's personality, that's a pretty cool part of a gift as well. It's really fun. Yeah, well, thank you so much for joining us, Ken, But why don't you just, you know, quick, tell our listeners again where they can find you. Yes, everything is the Lazy Genius. So the podcast is the Lazy Genius Podcast. I'm on Instagram at the Lazy Genius. The book is The Lazy Genius Way, and the website where everything is is the Lazygenius Collective dot com. Awesome, Well, please go check that out. And Kendra, thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me, Laura. All right, we are back with a question from a listener who is feeling a bit overwhelmed. She writes, I am feeling very overwhelmed. I'm in medical training with two young kids. Please some solutions to help me cope. Yeah, well, it sounds like it's gonna be a tough time. I don't know there's a good way to sugarcoat this. And it's funny because I've heard, you know, people sort of say, like, particularly if they are married to men going through medical training, that they must do everything because of course their spouse is going through medical training. Clearly they can't do anything else while going through medical training. That's completely ridiculous. You can, in fact do other things, and many people have, as we've discovered as a higher proportion of physicians are now female. Turns out they could always do more. It's just maybe men allowed themselves to believe they couldn't. But anyway, you know, anytime we're going through a tough time and have little kids, you have to have some fundamental rules for yourself of what makes life sustainable. For many people, it's aiming to get the sleep you can. Now I understand you're on twenty four hour call or whatever. You're not getting enough sleep that night. But maybe you know you have to block out the time the next day not let stuff get into it, that it has to be sacred. You know. Maybe it's that you are going to move for fifteen minutes in the day, that having some sort of physical activity makes it better, so you'll look at your schedule or you seize an opportunity whenever that might be go walk around outside for fifteen minutes and come back and deal with your the rest of your training stuff after that. Maybe it's that you put one fun thing per week. Right, It's probably not gonna be a full day at the spa, but it could be, you know, a coffee with a friend, or it could be a book you're reading that you just you know you're gonna make time to read through that book in the course of the week, or you know, watching a favorite movie or something like that. But one fun thing in the course of the week can really give you something to look forward to. But you know, having those fundamental rules that are just you know, little things but make life feel doable for the time being can really help. And then to know that this is at least somewhat temporary. It's not that, you know, medicine is an easy career by any means, but it does get better once you are out of the training program. And also your kids will grow up too. I mean, you're just combining two really tough things at the same time. Both of those are highly likely to get easier as life goes on. So you know you are paying in now for stuff that your future self will enjoy, and so because you are thinking of it that way, feel free to do things to make life okay in the current model, knowing that you will pay it back later. So again, if there's you need to spend more on extra help, for instance, I know, you know while you're in medical training you're probably not earning all that much, but you will right Like, the reason you're doing this is that you're going to get a higher paying job. So it's okay to you know, not save much now and know that that will come in time. Sarah, what do you have to say about this? Yeah, we saved, like before we had kids, we could save, but once we had Annabelle, there was no savings. It was definitely a net negative that we had kind of planned for. And I think you kind of have to allow for that. Definitely maximize those days off. You know, the one benefit of being in residency training is that you're you know, way your schedule may not be, you know, a cookie cutter. You may work some weekends, which means your partner or somebody else is going to help have to help out. Then you might end up with a random Wednesday off because as you know, you need to have four days off per month, and so those might not always be on weekend days. If you have a random Wednesday off, you should feel zero guilt about sending your children to childcare and enjoying some time for yourself, whether that's time to rest or if you feel like you must kind of split it, then you can always pick them up a little bit early and have kind of some time to yourself and some time with them. Do not tell yourself a story about you're a bad parent or something if you don't spend the entire day with your young kids. Because if you're in medical training and have young kids, I'm sure your personal rejuvenation time is extremely scarce. I totally agree with like less as you know, less can be really meaningful, especially when it comes to things like exercise, figure out kind of what your minimum effective dose is and see how you can fit that in. Maybe it's a hard fifteen to twenty minute high intensity interval workout like three times a week and that makes you feel human, but it really doesn't take that much away from your busy schedules. So things like that, and you know, true to this episode, figure out what you can lazy genius. You're not going to be able to do everything. You're not going to be able to, you know, have a picture perfect tablescape for every holiday and also be working in the ICU. So you're going to have to decide ruthlessly on what matters to you and try to plan in some fun and positivity because you know it is not that short that you could just defer gratification entirely. Sounds good, Well, hopefully this is helpful. I mean not just people going through medical training, but anyone who has intense period of their job and has small children. You have to narrow the horizon a little bit and see what will make each day sustainable and then probably tomorrow we'll deal with itself too. All right, Well, we have been talking with Kendra Adachi about being a lazy genius. We will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscores shoe Box on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.