This episode is sponsored by Wayfair.
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Hi there. You're listening to the Lazy Genius podcast. I'm Kendra Adachi and I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't.
Today's episode 381, the real reason planning is hard. It's not what you think and I'm really excited to bring you into the light of the productivity industrial complex that we are all under.
I do promise it's more exciting than that just sounded.
The best way for me to explain the real reason planning's hard is using words that I already wrote that were edited many times over and are currently being printed into my new book The Plan, Manage Your Time Like a Lazy Genius.
We are into compassionate time management around here.
But it's not just pep talks and high fives.
We love those things too.
We are practical and kind, but we're also educated.
We are trying to understand why we struggle with time management, why we own so many planners, why we never feel like we're doing enough.
And even if we finally have let that go, we still struggle against the tide of everyone else making us feel bad for our choices.
Basically. The problem is not you.
And today I'm going show you why by reading you the first chapter in my new book out October 8th called The Plan.
Here it is. I grew up going to the mall.
If you're of an age where you're not sure what a mall is, now is a good time to tell you that I am in perimenopause.
I've never downloaded Tik Tok and I didn't have a cell phone until I was 17.
Not because my parents were strict, but because people didn't have them yet.
Consider yourself generationally warned back to the mall I loved spending time there as a kid the mall is where I got my ears pierced where I awkwardly hung out with a boy I liked where I ate a truckload of cinnabons where I learned to confidently walk past Victoria's secret without looking or breaking stride.
Say you grew up in purity culture without saying you grew up in purity culture but my favorite thing about the mall was the you are here map.
Holy moly I still love that thing not only do you You have the stores organized by category on a giant screen, but you also have a beautiful red dot that tells you exactly where you are.
Say you're an Enneagram one without saying you're an Enneagram one, you can see everything and you can see yourself.
Chances are you would like that for your life too.
Wouldn't it be amazing to see everything at a glance, so you can quickly chart a route to an imagined future where life is beautiful and under control that's probably why you keep buying planners.
A planner is the closest thing we have to a you are here map to that bird's eye view.
You want your day, week, month, quarter, year to -do lists, tracking bubbles, words of gratitude, meal plans and five -year goals all available at a glance.
You get your next new planner and you spend hours setting it up, answering questions about what you want to accomplish and what habits you want to begin and maybe even trying your hand at a doodle or two.
Once you're done, you let out a deep, gratified sigh.
There it is. There's everything at once.
Life is going to be better now.
But then, much to your sugar in, life happens again.
And you can't keep up with your plan.
You manage what you can for as long as you can, biding your time until the next opportunity to reset and see everything at once, the beginning of summer, the school year, January, and you repeat.
I bet you've been repeating for a long time, yet you're still drowning.
Why? Everything at once is the problem, not the solution.
Everything at once is why you push your palms against your eyeballs multiple times a day.
Everything at once is why you doom scroll in the bathroom, hoping no one notices you're gone.
They will. Everything at once is why you listen to an audio book while cooking dinner, while helping somebody with their homework while wearing microfiber socks because somebody on the internet said it was like sweeping.
Everything at once is not how we're meant to live.
Before you lose hope, let me be the Robin Williams to your Matt Damon and tell you that it's not your fault.
It's not your fault.
It's not your fault.
You are not the reason you're drowning.
You are not the reason everything at once doesn't work.
You are not the reason time management principles aren't sticking.
The reason is far beyond you.
This episode is sponsored by Ritual.
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This episode is sponsored by Quince.
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Let's sit crisscross applesauce and do a little history corner okay.
Remember the Industrial Revolution?
America quickly went from whoa coal to OMG gas is amazing to have you heard about this electricity thing the west got bigger and better and consequently went cuckoo for productivity.
This guy's factory had to beat that guy's factory and he did that by making stuff faster than the other guy did.
When the digital revolution happened it gave us more the computers and AOL instant messenger we were given the promise of more Time.
Technology would create efficient production for us, freeing us to do other presumably more enjoyable things.
Amazing. However, that digital revolution happened so fast that we never disentangled ourselves from the industrial revolution's culture of productivity.
Unfortunately for us.
That same technology incidentally made the productivity obsession worse.
It makes me think of that scene in Sabrina when Harrison Ford, Linus, and Julia Ormond, Sabrina, take a helicopter to board a private jet to fly to Martha's Vineyard for the day.
Once they're buckled into their plush seats, Linus immediately begins working, looking at nothing but the reports in front of him.
Sabrina, frustrated by his indifference to the present moment, asks, don't you have a look out the window?
I don't have time. What about all the time we've saved taking the helicopter?
He awkwardly pauses, I'm storing it up.
No, you're not she replies.
And y 'all we're not either.
In fact, the obsession with productivity is so deeply woven into our culture that we live in a productivity industrial complex. Even though I did not thrive in any form of social studies class, allow me to explain what that means.
An industrial complex is essentially when an industry is in a feedback loop with some element in society.
The public and private sectors become so intertwined that separating them is almost impossible.
And that connection is often at odds with what is best for society itself.
Let's take weddings as an example.
The US wedding industry was worth over 70 billion dollars in 2023 with the average wedding costing just shy of 30 grand.
I'm not knocking anyone's choices and if you want an all -out wedding enjoy it.
But what if the wedding industry began pushing the idea that smaller, simpler, less expensive weddings were great, that you didn't need to follow the trends.
Think about Instagram worthy elements or be impressive in any way.
If that idea took root, people would spend less and the industry would suffer.
So even though it might be collectively better for folks to have whatever wedding they like, the wedding industry cannot encourage that.
Therefore we will continue to have magazines, blogs, and social media telling us what kind of wedding we should want.
That's the wedding industrial complex. Another example is the prison industrial complex. Many are championing reform in the judicial system, which would lead to fewer people in prisons.
However, the U .S. prison industry makes over 10 billion a year, and incarcerated individuals in the prison system generate revenue from goods and services on top of that.
So even though justice reform and prison reform would be beneficial for society, the prison industrial complex makes them extremely difficult because of how deeply entwined the justice system is with the industry.
The same has happened with productivity.
The current productivity paradigm of optimization, efficiency, and success is so pervasive productive, and so expected that it stands to reason we need resources and structures to uphold that paradigm.
The global productivity industry is projected to generate $79 billion in 2024.
That's a lot of billions.
As long as productivity matters, the marketplace will thrive.
And as long as the marketplace thrives, productivity will remain in the cultural conversation.
The snake just eats its tail while also becoming very rich. And that snake does not want you to be content with your life.
That snake wants you to keep trying and striving and planning and dreaming and wondering if any of it is working.
That snake wants you to, as the horrible saying goes, rest when you're dead.
Because when you keep going, you spend money and you keep the industry going too.
So is my friend and New York times, best -selling author Kelly Corrigan once said to me, contentment doesn't stimulate economic activity.
In short, your preoccupation with productivity to whatever level is not your fault.
It was built into the system.
Long before you were flipping through your first planner.
And that's not the only thing that's built into the system.
Now it's time for women's history corner.
white women couldn't vote until 1920 black women couldn't vote until 1965 women could legally be fired for being pregnant until 1978 women still get paid less than men for the same jobs Oh fun we can throw a little implicit patriarchy into the productivity industrial complex essentially women are in a white man -made world that's supported by white men's rules for the of white men and we haven't had a voice for long enough to see many tangible results of being heard. Now exceptions exist everywhere.
But generally speaking, men aren't expected to make every meal, do all the laundry, remember every birthday, get their body back, stay at home for the sake of the kids or have kids at all.
They're not shamed for being single.
They don't worry about going for a run at night, or automatically walk through a parking deck with their keys between their fingers.
Men don't daily exist with the weariness and injustice of not being listened to in a male -dominated field.
They aren't the ones to leave work to get a sick kid from school.
Men typically do not take it upon themselves to remember every detail of a home's invisible ecosystem.
Men aren't told to smile, calm down, clean up, or get in line.
Men don't bleed every 28 days.
Do you see the disparity here?
The productivity industry makes a ton of money teaching us to produce, all within a culture that holds us to a startlingly high standard of what a woman's production should be.
We have no choice but to live according to the rules and strategies written by and for men it's exhausting and it's time for another way and that completes the first chapter of the plan I didn't mean for this to be like so much of a tease you know like like a dramatic movie trailer that is the end of chapter one but the rest of the book completely lays out that other way it is full of helpful principles to change how you think, actionable strategies that you can use in your planning literally right now and then a whole section of labeled pep talks for when you need a reminder about what matters.
The real reason planning is hard, has nothing to do with you, y 'all.
So let's make it easier.
Let's make it about the right things.
Compassion, contentment, good practices we can use today, and kindness when our well delayed plans don't work out.
Plus, again, lots of actionable, real life help.
I cannot wait for you to read it.
Now, if you've already ordered the book, don't forget to register your pre -order with Team LG at thelazygeniuscollective .com slash the plan, when you do that you get access to a weekly PEP talk in both written and audio form delivered to you every single Monday for the rest of 2024.
I am writing them as life happens around us.
so hopefully all of them will feel wildly seasonal and relevant to whatever you're dealing with.
I can't wait for you to start experiencing them while you wait for the book to release, so register your pre -order at thelazygeniuscollective .com slash theplan.
Alright, there is no Lazy Genius of the Week today since all of you who pre -order are Lazy Geniuses of the Week.
Kidding. Kind of. However, if you would like to be considered for the Lazy Genius of the Week, email us your idea at hello at thelazygeniuscollective .com.
This episode is hosted by me, Kendra Adachi, an executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fisher and Angela Kinsey.
The Lazy Genius Podcast is enthusiastically part of the Office Ladies Network.
Special thanks to Leah Jarvis for weekly production.
Thanks y 'all for listening.
And until next time be a genius about the things that matter, and lazy about the things that don't.
I'm Kendra, and I'll see you next week.
This episode is sponsored by EarthBreeze.
This year I am being more intentional about what and how often we recycle things in our home, including really trying to reduce single -use plastics.
It's easy to think that small choices in your home won't make a big difference for the environment, but of course around here we value starting small.
One thing I'm always throwing in my recycling are those huge laundry detergent bottles, but did you know that 500 million of those bottles end up in landfills and oceans every single year?
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I'm Jordan Robinson, host of the new podcast, The Women's Hoops Show.
Each episode, I'll be joined by a rotating group of women's basketball experts to talk WNBA, college hoops, the new Unrivaled League, and the shifting landscape of the sport.
The game is growing, and so are we.
Listen to and follow the Women's Hoop Show and Odyssey Podcast available now for free on the Odyssey App, or wherever you get your podcasts.
