When Your People Don’t Follow the Plan

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'll learn to compassionately manage your time, wisely solve problems and kindly live in your season. I'm your host, Kendra Adachi, and I am so glad you are here. Today is episode 489, When Your People Don't Follow the Plan. If you're listening to a time management self-help podcast like this one, you're probably like the captain of your home, you know? You're the show runner, the juggler, the one who keeps things in a flow. You also probably care about that the most. I've spoken about that in a newsletter before, how it can be really hard to be the one who cares. It's a gift and also kind of annoying, because you only have so many hours in a day, and so much emotional tolerance of like holding the load, of making home and life easier and better for everyone. Even creating a better division of labor between you and your spouse, or helping your kids not just do stuff, but notice and do the phrase that Sam Kelly has taught us, is still your initial effort. You're the one reading the books and listening to the podcasts and reading sub stacks and trying to find ways to make life work better. Eventually, those efforts will hopefully pay off and you'll experience a tangible shift where you're not the only one who participates in the home, but ultimately so much of the vision of how your home works, feels and flows is yours to steward. This isn't just a gendered thing either. I personally know several men who fill this role in their own homes and marriages who are married to women. My point is if you're the one listening to this podcast, you're also probably the one who desires a functioning home and you're willing to make changes to make that happen. You're the one with the ideas and that was wonderful, but it's also tiring, right? So what happens is that when you are the person who shows a lot of effort and care and you desire to bring new ideas into your home, things like systems and routines and dirty dishes zones and permission to repeat meals and different ways to do laundry, you want the person or people that you share life with to be on board, which is why I get so many questions and have for years about how to get your partner to be a lazy genius. That's real. It's genuinely hard when your people, especially the adult people, don't get on board or follow the plan. Now, don't get feisty with me on this one, but if you feel like your home would work better, if your spouse or kids would just get on board, this episode is for you. Not because I'm going to teach you how to get them on board, but because that's not actually where to begin. You cannot begin with someone else's behavior because you can't change someone else's behavior. You'll run yourself into the ground trying and resentment will always be around for both you and probably your people.

I don't want to spend the next half hour putting your people on blast for not following the new rule to put shoes in the closet rather than by the door. I don't want to talk about how to change their behavior, mostly because that is not the answer. What I want us to do instead is talk about how people like you and me, the ones who do the majority of the caring and the show running, how we can respond both internally and externally when our people don't follow the plan. How can we encourage our spouses to take part in our efforts without belittling them? How can we empower our kids to be part of life at home without being task masters? How can we stay kind and content at home and in our marriages and relationships, even when the circumstances don't go the way that we intended? How can we approach what methods we use and how often we even make these plans that our people need to follow in the first place? Let's focus on what we can control, our own behaviors and mindset. We're not framing this as how to create a good partner, but how to be one, not how to create good kids, but how to be a good parent. I believe in my bones that when we focus on our own stuff, on our perspective, our heart posture and behaviors, rather than on the behaviors of our people, the tangible practical results that we're hoping for anyway, they will come more easily.