I’ve been wanting to have Kendra Adachi on BLP for quite some time! She is coming out with a book in under a month called The Plan: Manage Your Time Like a Lazy Genius, which made me even MORE excited to chat with her for this episode! It’s very exciting to have another female voice in the productivity canon — Kendra researched this and found authors of these kinds of books to be 93% male!
We had a really fun (and sometimes kind of deep!) conversation about all things planning and The Plan. Her book comes out October 8, and I highly suggest preordering if you can — it helps her out AND you get some great bonuses in the form of an exclusive audio series. You can learn more of the details here.
5 Comments
I’ve already pre-ordered :). I thought of you and Josh and all the work you do to plan your call schedules yesterday because when we were at church, a dad – whose wife was out of town – had to leave his 4(!!!) small (K and younger!!!) children there with another family because he forgot he was on call. Oops. The mom from the other family who agreed to watch the kids also had meetings, so the dad from the other family was stuck on the playground with 7 kids 1st grade and younger. OMG. Hopefully someone learned an important lesson about keeping a calendar after that…
I am SO EXCITED about this book specifically because I am hoping it will be more realistic for the average woman’s life! I like Cal Newport and have gleaned helpful things from him, but I always wonder who is watching his kids and who is doing the things he deems as ‘shallow work,’ as a lot of it is actually kind of important when you get down to it. It’s the background stuff that makes lives run smoothly, aka the invisible labor often done by women. The books by women are often written by high-earning women or women in high-earning power couple situations whose advice often boils down to ‘hire out everything.’ I can’t hire a house manager and assistant and housekeeper and au pair. I can’t wait to see what Kendra says in her book. Her Lazy Genius Podcast and book changed my life.
I listened to a Cal Newport interview where he was asked explicitly about managing his home life and his response was that it was a huge struggle for him personally and that he didn’t have it figured out. I found that very interesting – that his silence on the topic is due to his inadequacies and the fact that he doesn’t have answers. And given that he’s in the business of selling productivity solutions, it isn’t in his interest to share his struggles broadly.
That response rings true to me. My husband is actively involved in our home life, and he’s the primary parent. I don’t shoulder a disproportionate and unfair burden of home related responsibilities. And yet the outcome isn’t that I don’t struggle to juggle work and home; the outcome is that my husband also struggles to do both. A grad school professor wrapped up a class by saying the middle age years where we have significant demands at home and significant, and perhaps increasing, responsibility and demands at work is a really friggin’ hard period of life. He was coming out of this phase with his kids in college and he wanted us to know that life got better. His pep talk was so odd given that we were in our early to mid 20s and nowhere near this phase of life, but because it was odd it was so memorable. And now that I’m in this phase of life, 13 years later, his words are comforting. To know that this thing we’re trying to do – being two working parents with greedy jobs – it’s really hard, and there’s no productivity hack (except maybe doing less?) that can change that.
Loved the conversation between you and Kendra! Two of my favorite podcasters team up– it’s like the planning Avengers!! I enjoyed her perspective even though I do tend to fall into a more checklist/productivity/nesting goals focused approach. I can’t wait to read her book!
I loved this. I think of Kendra’s work complimenting your and Laura’s work very well. You and Laura inspire me to think bigger about my life, and Kendra inspires me to be happy as I am.
This book feels like a counter (or maybe, supplment) to deep productivity / Cal Newport, and I’m so hear for it. I have 2 small kids and a big career- and I don’t see the “shallow work” going anywhere soon. And frankly, I don’t want it to go anywhere! The day to day- the crazy mornings and activities and multiple target trips and school forms – are all what make up life. I just want to enjoy it more – which all three of you help me do!