What Is and Isn’t Working for Me This Fall

Kendra Adachi (0:00)

Welcome to The Lazy Genius Podcast, where we all get to be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Every Monday, you will learn to compassionately manage your time, wisely solve problems and kindly live in your season. I'm your host, Kendra Adachi, and I'm so glad you're here. Today's episode 491, what is and isn't working for me this fall. Because I am a natural problem solver, I usually notice things that aren't working and tend to them very quickly. Things that don't work, like don't last long in this house, because I tinker and adjust all the time to make things work better. It's like just in my nature. Or a new development is I simply let them go. Now, that is not in my nature, is letting things go. That is something I've had to learn and trust through practice. But no matter your personality, taking small steps to make something work better or just letting it go are two tremendously impactful skills to learn and develop. You don't have to start over, and you also don't have to give up on things that matter. Tinker, adjust, try things out. And if something just doesn't work as well as you would like, you are allowed to let the ideal optimization of that thing go.

It's actually fine if something doesn't work well. Like, not everything has to. So I have a few things to share that are and are not working for me this fall. Fall is our busiest time of year, which is true for a lot of people and families. And sometimes it's helpful to hear another person's experience. Maybe something that's working for me could be a solution for you. Or you could start to notice that problems in your own life and schedule, they aren't as massive as they seem and you can actually let them go. So this list is not prescriptive, but I hope it gets your wheels turning on how to make your own fall a little easier. So this is an ironic place to begin, especially considering how last week's episode was about how to make laundry easier.

But I would say that laundry is not working right now. Like it's not not working, but it's not in like an excellent rhythm. Everybody in the house washes their own clothes, but the kids especially are coming to the very end of their laundry line before starting a new load. I mean, they are pushing their luck on when it's time to wash their clothes. And because of things like late marching band practice, like the boys don't get home till 730 some nights during the week. Annie loves to play with her friends in the neighborhood right after school, like right until dinner. Laundry memories are short basically. The kids are like, wait, I don't have any underwear for tomorrow. And then they start a load at like 9 o'clock. Now, that's not awful, you know, it's fine. And everyone is getting their clothes all right. But it does not feel terribly efficient. It's definitely not optimized.

It's not performing in the best way they could. But guess what? I'm gonna say that's okay.

It's fine. Like this first entry in our list, let this be proof that not everything has to work.

Like you don't have to change everything to make it work better. Laundry feels a little clunky right now, and that's okay. Some things at home will stay clunky, especially in certain seasons. And as long as you accept the clunkiness and you let the need for optimization go, it's gonna be fine. You'll be fine. The stuff will get done, even if it's done in a way that's like not ideal. But yeah, laundry is not working super well right now. And that's okay. And that's okay.

Another thing that is not working right now is my album project. So as a reminder, I decided at the start of the year that I wanted to listen to more complete albums, especially ones I've never listened to before. And the momentum for that has really died this fall. The way that my daily schedule seems to work and even like the things that I want to keep me company, those have shifted a little bit. Like, fall has not been a great place for adding new albums. I also think that because I got out of the rhythm of listening to albums most days on purpose, I've also gotten out of the rhythm of adding albums to my spreadsheet, of that I list of the things that I'm listening to. And so if I don't listen to the album, I'm not logging it. But if I'm going so long between listening to albums, I'm almost like, did I log that? That was like three weeks ago, which can then make the listening itself feel like it doesn't matter because it's not being tracked now.