Forget greatness. Manage your time like a lazy genius

Kendra Adachi is the host of The Lazy Genius Podcast and the New York Times bestselling author of two books, The Lazy Genius Way and The Lazy Genius Kitchen.

The goal of excellent time management shouldn’t be to achieve maximum productivity and perfection. That approach is a recipe for fleeting satisfaction amid anxiety and shame. To manage time without being at its mercy, learn to plan in a way that fills you with contentedness and confidence every single day. Learn to plan not for a good life someday but for good living today.

Below, Adachi shares five key insights from her new book, The PLAN: Manage Your Time Like a Lazy Genius. Listen to the audio version—read by Adachi herself—in the Next Big Idea App.

1. A good life doesn’t have to be great to matter.

In America, greatness, hustle, opportunity, and potential are in the fabric of our national identity. The American dream tells us to chase after and fight for what we want as we constantly seek to grow in greatness and prosperity. We should all be masters of our craft and our lives. There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, some personalities are suited for the pursuit of greatness, some jobs require it, and some people genuinely love it. Trying to master something is a beautiful thing, and we all benefit from the mastery of others. But there is an expectation that if you’re not always trying to be great, you’re wasting your life. I disagree.

The reality is that most of us live fairly average lives, but rather than celebrating and cultivating contentment and valuing beauty in the ordinary, we’re told to keep hustling. Make every minute of every day count toward an invisible future that you have reverse-engineered and are constantly striving to bring to fruition. If you can’t do it, you’re considered not disciplined or motivated enough.

That’s a dangerous paradigm to live under. The future is beautiful. Mastery is, too, but I don’t think that is where we can begin.

2. You’re allowed to start with who and where you are today.

I have read many time management books over the years. I have bought many planners. I have gone into so many Januarys fiercely optimistic about what I would make better and accomplish because the future felt bright. But just like we can have an unbalanced obsession with mastery, we can have an unbalanced obsession with the future.

It is good and honorable to care about your future, plan for it, and take steps now to ensure it looks a certain way later. But you’re allowed to start with who and where you are today. You’re allowed to focus only on today without any consideration of the future. You can make decisions today that only serve today, and not later. Not every choice, task, or habit has to be in service to future dreams. They can, but they don’t have to.

I remember feeling the difficulty of this in my early 30s when I had two tiny kids. I was in my peak time management era, trying to get every bit of information I could on how to be the architect of my future. That message communicates a false sense of security that I am in full control of my life. I don’t know if you’ve ever spent an entire day with tiny children and then another day after that and then many, many more. You have very little control over what is going to happen. If the purpose of each day is to build on itself to serve an ideal, invisible future, those ordinary days that many people (especially women) have for months or years at a time feel like they are not enough. If that’s you, you might experience a deep sense of loss, resentment, and insufficiency when you look at your life.

In this pursuit of greatness and an invisible future, we often leave behind our humanity. We ignore the needs of our bodies, families, mental health, and peace. We don’t prioritize rest and play. We call ourselves lazy when we aren’t optimizing every moment. There is this undercurrent that the best version of us is in the future, and we should focus on that person rather than who we are right now.

In the current productivity paradigm, a contented life full of kindness, patience, and reasonable choices that honor who and where you are today is looked upon as an exception—as settling, as giving up. It’s a stopgap until you have enough energy, resources, discipline, and motivation to pursue greatness once again.

I believe you are allowed to start with who and where you are today, not as a second measure, excuse, or necessity before real work begins, but as the foundation for everything. When you start with who and where you are today, it invites a new goal.

3. The goal is not greatness. It’s integration.

Instead of greatness being the ultimate goal, what if it’s integration? What if it’s personal wholeness, groundedness, a steady stance in the face of any circumstance? Instead of reflecting on what happened during the day, what if you reflected on how you experienced it?

One of the most pivotal moments for me in this paradigm shift was about ten years ago when I was home with two small children. I was reading a time management book geared towards mothers, and the author described two separate days. The first was a day of chaos. Her girls didn’t nap; they threw their food; the errands were a bust; and the mom didn’t get a chance to sit down, let alone shower. It was the quintessential image of being a hot mess mom. Then she described the next day when her children napped simultaneously. She completed all the errands, looked put together while doing it, and made dinner ahead of time. When her husband came home, surprisingly, with some clients from out of town to join their family for dinner, she was ready. I remember reading the account of these two days and anticipating that her next line would be something like, “And both of those days matter.” But that’s not what she said. She said, “And that day [the second one] was the proudest I ever felt as a mother and wife.” I remember reading that like it happened yesterday. My heart sank. My confidence plummeted. I wanted permission to be myself, content with and proud of just getting through a hard day. That is when I realized I had a different goal. That author’s goal was greatness. Mine is integration.

When your entire life is oriented around being the truest version of yourself, no matter what happens, you are a lighthouse in the storm. You are an oak in the wind. You are the stubborn will of a toddler refusing to eat their peas. The strength that comes from the goal of personal integration is markedly different than the strength that comes from the goal of greatness. One is lifelong. The other is fickle. As my friend and poet David Gate wrote, “Hustle makes for a terrible compass.”

4. Your season of life matters.

We often see life as one long line from A to B. Ideally, there should be no speedbumps, detours, or changed minds during the journey. There always will be, but our intent is to avoid them at all costs. Stay the course.

My life is not at all like that.

Your season of life matters. If you are caring for an aging parent, adding a new baby to your family, changing jobs or homes, dealing with a chronic health condition, or struggling through a particularly tough season of mental illness, the way you manage your time and live your life must change. It’s not laziness or plugging a leak. Honoring your seasons of life matters. It’s critical to living a life of kindness and contentment.

You no longer have to put your head down and fight through a difficult time to maintain the priorities other people have placed on you, particularly the priority of greatness. When integration is the goal, you see your season of life not with resentment but with compassion. You can be who and where you are today because you recognize that it is a season—it is not forever, and you will honor it now.

5. It’s more valuable to learn how to pivot than how to plan.

The name of my book is The PLAN, so yes, I’m aware of the irony of this last insight. I love planning, and plans are valuable. However, we are far more likely to require skills of pivoting than those of planning.

Daily life is full of obstacles. We create a plan to get through the day, but when circumstances thwart those plans, we stand our ground, force rigidity (sometimes calling it discipline), and don’t respond kindly to whatever is happening. That posture is harmful and unnecessary.

Pivoting is a required skill, and we need to learn how to do it better. Rather than seeking out new and better ways to plan, prepare for the day, and create systems that succeed and routines that never break down, try putting some of that energy into learning to pivot. Be resilient and flexible when plans fall apart. Be nimble and compassionate. When you no longer pursue greatness first but instead honor integration and who you are today, your access to a skillset of pivoting is a beautifully wide door.

This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.