#453 - 12 Ways to Be a Better Problem Solver, Part 2

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Hi there, you're listening to the Lazy Genius Podcast. I'm Kendra Adachi. This podcast is not about hacking the system to find more time. or hacking your energy to get more done. hustling to be the best or to make the most out of every opportunity is exhausting and unsustainable. So here we do things differently. On this show we value contentment, compassion,

And living in our season. We favor small steps over big systems. Here we are lazy geniuses, being a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. And I am so glad you're here. Today is episode four hundred and fifty three, twelve ways to be a better problem solver part two. Last week we covered the first five of the twelve ways, so if you didn't catch that episode yet, give it a listen before this one.

There aren't any secrets embedded in either one. You'll just get a more comprehensive take on solving problems if you listen to both. Life has many problems and learning to navigate them with kindness. while practically solving them is a valuable skill to learn. It's kind of the whole vibe of what we do here. We're learning to be better problem solvers in all kinds of situations. And these 12 tools are essential. to solving problems like a lazy genius.

After that, we'll have a little extra something where I'll share about this music project challenge that I'm doing in 2026. I'm really excited about it. And in case you are too, I will share the details so you can follow along. As always, we will celebrate the lazy genius of the week, which is a fantastic example of being a better problem solver, having to do with school backpacks, you guys. Then we'll close with a mini pep talk for when the season in front of you feels too long.

Before we do that, a little story about the show and a recent episode uh that did not perform so well and something I learned that I wanted to share with you guys. So a couple of weeks ago, during the first week of January, I released an episode called Permission to Not Be Great.

We all know that January has a lot of energy around goals and greatness and changing your life and all the things. And that is totally fine. Some people love it. Some people thrive in the nuance that they create around it. And others just ignore it. All are allowed. So first a little insider baseball. This podcast performs well and I'm really proud of that. And thank you for listening so that that is true. Apple Podcast rankings are they're not clean cut.

There's certainly not the top metric for us on how the show resonates. But I do look to see how each episode is ranking every week to see how things might be shifting around us. What are other people talking about? What episodes outside of us are resonating? What are we? saying that's resonating above the fray. So most weeks in the education category, which is where we are, Monday's episode is number four, sometimes even three, during the first like 24 hours of release.

It'll hang in the top five for a couple of days and usually stay in the top ten for at least four or five days. I'm extremely proud of that. super humbled by that. In fact, if we weren't in the same category as a particular juggernaut self-help show, we would have the number one episode most weeks for at least a day or two, which is cuckoo pain. So back to the first week of January. The episode Permission to Not Be Great did not do as well compared to other shows.

The download numbers themselves were not that different, but compared to the other episodes around it, it just didn't hang. It never got past the sixth spot and slowly kept dropping in lieu of the other episode. Some of the names of those episodes are round it. 2026 Body Reset: How to Get Stronger, Lose Fat, and Take Control of Your Health. Change your life this year. How to get from where you are to where you want to be. The science of losing weight.

Vanity goals, self sabotage, and how to actually change your life, and nine habits that will change your life. Wow, that's a lot of life-changing and also a lot of weight loss. Now, those episodes can exist, and you and anyone else can listen to them. It's not about that. But it was fascinating to me to notice that how the siren song of life change and weight loss and how to get to where you wanna be, we're calling the people, man.

it is hard to resist that messaging when it's everywhere, especially at this time of year. And maybe when it's something that you do value. There are so many people who want their lives to look different, who want their bodies to look different, who want their habits and current situation to change. That's a personal decision. And I'm glad there are tools out there. For everyone based on what they need. The change itself is not the issue.

The problem I see is the neon time square energy of it all calling us loudly this time of year. All within a culture that values improvement and potential and dream chasing and power, that noise easily drowns out any deep breaths and natural desires we might have to like not be great. Frankly, greatness has a louder voice than contentment does. And I cannot tell you how glad I was to see the title, Permission to Not Be Great.

amidst all those other titles, even if it was lower than usual. It makes me grateful for the work we do here. I'm glad to be a voice that is not part of the fray, that's honoring where you are and not assuming you have somewhere great and better to go. Sometimes life just stays here. There's not a lot of change. There's not a lot to change. You're trying to be kind to yourself and see good where you are and honor it.

While that is a noble and kind approach, it doesn't always get a lot of praise and traction in your regular life and relationships, much like it doesn't get a lot of praise or traction on a podcast ranking list. But that doesn't mean that we abandon ship and join the fray. This is a good message. Learning to solve problems with kind, compassionate, realistic eyes is sustainable, good, loving work. And sometimes that work isn't rewarded in the ways that you or I might want.

Like in conversations with friends who don't quite get that you're not chasing a promotion that would give you more money, but less time. Or for me, a higher ranking on Apple Podcasts. But if we are not participating in the currency of productivity culture, we don't need to expect to meet the measurements of that culture either.

I'm glad the show does well. I'm kind of blown away by the reach of this message, but the minute I or any of us expect our contented, compassionate lives To measure up the same way as the optimized productive ones, we've lost the plot. So this is a reminder that we measure differently, kind of not at all. Life is too varied and beautiful and rich to measure it in rankings and approval and even understanding from people around you who don't get.

that you're not hustling to the top. The top is a lot of work with rules that don't apply to people who are looking to steward their small, kind, contented lives right where we are. That encourages me in a very upside down, backwards sort of way. And I hope it does you too. All right, before we get into the next seven ways to be a better problem solver, let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsors, which make the show free for you to listen to, which is amazing.

And also here is your quick reminder about the podcast recap email we send out every other Friday. It is called Latest Lazy Listens and it summarizes the episode. shares the Lazy Genius of the Week as well as other segments we have on the show, and has a little extra note from me to help encourage you through the weekend. So if you would like to get that recap, you can head to the LazyGenius Collective dot com slash listens.

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All right, let's get into our next seven ways uh to be a better problem solver. Like I said, the first five of the twelve were in the episode from last week in part one. So let's do the next seven now. Uh for a quick recap of part one, the first five ways are To one, make the problem smaller, which is the focus of the whole thing really. Two, remember your season of life. Three, name what matters early and often.

Four, listen for invisible problems. And five, notice catastrophic language. Now, let's continue with the rest of our list. Number six, you will become a better problem solver by starting smaller than you want to. This is different than making the problem smaller. Yes, you still definitely want to do that.

But you will get better at solving problems more comprehensively and and over the long term when you start smaller than you want to. Even small problems might make you want to throw a bunch of solutions at it all at once. And you don't need to do that. Start smaller than you want to.

Something I've been paying attention to lately are my joints and my bones and just like general stiffness that I feel h for longer than I used to and more often than I used to. Like I I kind of grunt when I have to get out of a chair. I sometimes have to shuffle for a minute and walk like an old man before my hips settle back to normal.

Uh I've always had problems with my hips. It's I'm used to it. But the overall health of my joints is important to me. It's also smaller, a smaller problem than the overall health of my whole body. But it's still pretty big. So I made the problem smaller by deciding that I wanted to tend to my joints first thing in the morning, right when I got out of bed.

rather than figuring out like how to make my joints stronger or more mobile or figure out more weightlifting stuff to support those joints, I made the problem smaller and just decided to do some stretching of some sort like right away when I get out of bed in the morning. All right. But even with a smaller problem and a smaller like general solution, stretch in the morning.

I started bigger than I needed to. I went looking for the best stretches for hip mobility. I hit a rabbit trail of Tai Chi and was like, should I take Tai Chi? Eventually, my start small list. was of seven stretches for a minute each That I would do before I left my room. Y'all, seven minutes first thing in the morning is a really long time.

I mean it's not, but it is. Like if you're running late or a kid is already up and they can't find their favorite pants before school or you remember that the trash didn't get rolled down to the street and you hear the trash coming. I don't know. It this whole like seven minutes first thing in the morning nonsense, it was already in the way. Plus several mornings as I did my seven minutes of stretches in the dark, I like fumbled with my phone to find a timer to keep resetting the minute.

That cause was like still asleep. And so the timer, you know, would wake him up when it kept going off. It just all became like more complicated than it needed to. And while you listening, like some of you might not have a hard time with seven minutes of stretching every morning, first thing I did. It was just too big. It was too big of a start.

So I started smaller than I wanted to. I now start my morning by getting out of bed and just doing like hip circles for as long as I can on my walk out of the room. And then I like lean over and stretch my back. That's it. It's just that. It's like fifteen seconds maybe. And it's helping. Like it really is. It's helping me start the day like a little looser, a little better. And if anything, it's helping me notice my body in a kind way and tend to it, even if it's super short.

And that small start is easy to build on over time. Like it's everything's in abundance after a few seconds of hip circles, you know? That's easier to me mentally than having to like scale back from something that was too big and feeling like this is never gonna work. Bringing in that catastrophic language again. This is never gonna work, right? So start smaller than you want to. You will become a better problem solver when you trust the power of small steps.

Number seven, take your time even though you think you don't have any. Take your time, even though you think you don't have any. This is a tool super helpful in the heat of the moment of a problem. Like when you're hit with something that needs your attention right away, like a sick kid, an emergency phone call, your new teen driver running into the trash can, or even something as normal as dinner like sort of burning on the stove. Maybe while you tend to the sick kid or emergency phone call.

What happens, most of us tend to just like jump right into the problem, right? We jump in, we don't think, and we feel like time is slipping away. That's why we're like jumping in so fast. It's like, oh, I have to solve this immediately. Using the burning dinner as the example, you grab the skillet that's clearly like burning on the bottom.

It's not on the top, but you can smell it on the bottom. And you immediately stick it under the faucet, or you just like scoop everything into the trash can. You don't assess. If everything is ruined, you don't take a minute to see if something is salvageable. You don't just pull the pan off the heat. You just chuck it in the sink immediately without thinking. Because emergencies, big and small, they sometimes make us do that. That's normal.

Do you remember the b guy from uh bake off a few years ago? It was Ian from Ireland. He threw his cake in the bin, as they say, and he didn't present anything. He just when the cake wasn't right, he just threw it immediately threw it in the trap. And in a master class of television production, when it was his turn to present his showstopper, they had the trash can positioned in front of the table instead of his.

diabolical. Ian did not think he had any time. So he acted like he didn't. He threw the keg away. He reacted immediately Rather than taking a minute, taking a deep breath, and then he created more problems for himself. He became a meme on bake off. So take your time even when you think you don't have any. Now clearly, I'm not talking about like if your house is on actual fire. We can all agree there are problems that have no recourse but an immediate response. But for the most part,

You have more time to solve a problem than you think. And going slower allows you the space to choose a potentially better solution. Just yesterday. I was making I was making two dinners actually, one for us and one for some friends who just had a baby.

And I was on a timeline. Now I'd been on a timeline the whole day trying to get so many things done to create space for other things that needed to get done that mattered also later in the week. It's just been a crazy week. That in the middle of cooking those two dinners, I went to check on one of my kids who'd had a hard day at school and this kid really needed me. My kid needed my attention and my presence.

and to not feel rushed and processing what was going on. I didn't know that immediately when I went to check on this kid. But as I started to hold them and like let them feel and share. I did think about dinner. as I was like laying there with my arms around my kid. I thought about

The expected delivery window of my friends with tiny kids who were waiting for their meal. I thought about our dinner that was gonna be much later because I probably wouldn't get more of it done before I had to leave to deliver the other one. And I'm so grateful that I remembered to slow down. I thought there's time. You have time. And this kid needs your time. So just slow down. So in that moment when the quick check-in with my kid became like a 20-plus minute needed conversation and love fest.

Throwing off my plans and taking away valuable time, I didn't panic. I didn't worry. I remembered that I can take my time. Even when I think I don't have time. When we solve problems and focus only on the time we're wasting or the time we're losing or the time that we said we would be somewhere, or the time we set in our plan. Obstacles are not welcome.

Crying kids are not welcome. Chatty neighbors are not welcome. Anything that gets in the way of our time is not welcome. And yet those obstacles are everywhere. Needs are everywhere. Things that need your time and attention, even within your set plan, they're everywhere. And if you believe that you do not have time, you won't. But I think you do. You have time, even when you think you don't.

And assuming no one is on fire, take a minute to breathe and access kindness within yourself. Remember, those are the first two steps in the episode about navigating around any obstacle. Breathe, access kindness. Those things take just a tiny bit of time, but it's worth it. You have it. You have more time, even in like a little C crisis, than you think.

You will be a better problem solver when you take your time, even if you think you don't have any. All right, number eight. You will grow to be a better problem solver the more you let people in.

And this happens in a few ways. First, let people in when they offer to help. Like obviously not every person or problem is the same. You can certainly decline someone's help. if that's a better situation for you. But when a friend listens to you describe your crazy Tuesday with all of its mini moving carpool practice, work meeting part,

and offers to drop off some soup or pizza for your dinner, like let them in and say yes. Like accept that help. You just had a problem solved because someone offered to do it for you. That's beautiful. You can also become a better problem solver when you let people into your challenges. Like share what's going on.

Share the problem. Share the solutions you've tried. Sometimes just saying it out loud and having someone hear you or even offer solidarity because they're going through it too, it gets you closer to a solved problem than you realize. We see this all the time in the Lazy Genius Facebook group. All the time. Sometimes you just need other people to hear you. Like maybe there's not a specific problem that needs solving even.

You might just be in a tough season of life and your problem is a natural part of that season. So hearing encouragement and solidarity from someone else And just knowing like, man, we're in this together and this is tough. And I'm glad that I'm not doing this by myself. I'm not the only one who's going through this. That in itself is its own kind of solution. Like solidarity is the solution.

Not always, but sometimes. So let people in. And you might be surprised at how just the sharing of the thing makes it easier. If you have a partner. Particularly if you are a woman and partnered with a man, you might assume that you are the default problem solver, especially if the problem is domestic in nature. Generally speaking, women run the show, they run the home, they hold all the invisible strings that keep life together, and therefore when those strings are pulled tight together.

Or there's some sort of problem that needs attention, this string is about about to break. It's easy to assume that you have to be the one to solve that problem. It's up to you. Alone. My guess is that your husband does not have a stack of like partially used planners. Or a graveyard of productivity apps or guilt about all the management of all the things, like you're holding that on your own, is my guess.

But you do not have to be the sole problem solver in your home. Let your partner in or say, like, dude, this is stressing me out. Can you take this off my plate? Can you solve this? Like that's the solution. Give it to the partner. Probably you're already holding way more than your fair share in your partnership. So I'm just gonna say that tipping the scale a little is not gonna cause the imbalance that you think.

And also that's what partners are for. Is we're supposed to help support each other. When things are hard. And listen, if this doesn't feel like it's going to work Remember what we said last week about invisible problems. Maybe there's an invisible problem in your marriage or partnership. Where your expectations of each other are incongruent about who is supposed to do what and what the value of that partnership is.

Like a lot of guys I don't think they realize how much imbalance they unintentionally condone and participate in. Not all guys and not always, obviously, but it does happen. They're sorta complicit. They just don't know. They don't know how much you're doing. So maybe your energy go in the direction of that more invisible problem more than the visible one. And you won't really know how deep that invisible problem might be without letting your partner in, without letting people in.

Letting people into life, whether it's a partner or friends or coworkers or whoever, and sharing your problems. Could lead to a solution. Just because someone gives you a solution and they're like less emotionally connected to the situation than you are. Like it's hard to properly assess our own lives sometimes because we're just too close to them, right? Friends who know and love you but don't live your actual life, they might see things differently than you do. And they can offer

a perspective that might lead to a really great solution. Or they just might be like, What if you tried this? And you're like, What? Why didn't I not think of that before? So in summary of number eight, like I just don't think that problem solving needs to always be a solo endeavor. You become a better problem solver when you let people in. All right, number nine, go for good, not great.

Your solutions do not have to be great. Good is fine. Good can pile on good and eventually become great over time, really working well for you, but rarely do solutions start out that way. So please change your expectations and you will become a better problem. Back to the taking dinner to friends example. I had planned to bake cookies to include in this meal that I was taking to the friends who just had a baby.

I usually have frozen cookie dough available four times, such as these, but the relational pivot that I needed to take as a mom, it changed that. I didn't have time to get the cookies in the oven and cooled enough to take with me because I was tending to a kid. I didn't have time. One might argue that homemade cookies are great. Cool. That is morally neutral. But for the sake of this argument, homemade chocolate chip cookies.

Especially the ones that I tinkered with for years to create my favorite recipe that is actually available on the website if you are so interested. Those cookies are great. Those cookies are great. That being hit with the sudden problem of not having dessert for this family, it didn't need another great solution. A good one was perfectly fine.

So I grabbed a box of chocolate covered peppermint jojo's from the pantry, one of our hoarded boxes because Trader Joe's only carries them for a couple of months a year, and I threw that box of cookies in the bag. Now, if I had stayed in the headspace of expecting a great dessert on par with the homemade chocolate chip cookies, I would not have found a good solution.

I would have been like super bummed that the homemade weren't there and feel like anything else was deficient because I wasn't going I was only going for great. Good was not good enough. So I'm just telling you, man, go for good, not great. Most of the time it's fine. Another example. So we have five people in our family. We have many shoes.

We also stick to my ch my husband's Japanese heritage and we do not wear our shoes in the house. That's how he grew up and that's just how our house operates. Now it's fine if you've ever been to my house. It's fine when other people wear their shoes. Frankly, it's fine for us to wear our shoes in the house. Sometimes we do. But our tendency, the point is, our tendency is to take our shoes off when we come in the house. Okay. We have a bench by the back door.

That has like a shelf underneath, right? It's like seat, bench, floor. And most of our shoes go under the bench, either on the shelf or on the floor underneath the shelf, right? But it's like messy, you know. It's just it's k a chaos of shiz. It's a cacophony of shiz all the time. Now, a great solution to the shoe situation, okay? A great solution would be limiting the number of shoes.

Having the kids neatly line up their shoes when they take them off so that everything fits well and looks more neat. That is a great Solution. I don't have time for that. I don't have time for that. Good is fine. Good is like using my foot to cram any visible shoes under the shelf so I don't have to look at them or trip over them as much. But are they lined up? No, not at all. Are there shoes underneath that shelf? That are not worn right now, maybe even don't fit anymore. Probably.

The shoe shelf has not been essentialized in a while. We have not getting rid of what's in the way. And it would be great if we did. It'd be great. But it's okay to go for good and not great. You can't be great at everything. You can't have a great solution to every problem and sustain it for eternity. Good is fine. Go for good, not great. Especially about things that don't matter.

You will absolutely grow into a better, calmer problem solver when you're like, yeah, that's fine, and you leave it alone.

Number 10. In order to be a better problem solver, you need to expect to tinker. Problems are rarely solved immediately. Whatever solution, like even the smallest, kindest one that you can apply, it might not be the best fit over time. You've got to expect to tinker. Stop starting over when something doesn't work perfectly right away. Tinkering is just part of it. It's part of problem solving. It's like a required course, right? It's honestly what makes solutions work and stick is the tinkering.

It makes me think of cooking. You know, recipes are great. We need them to like give us a place to begin. But not every person has the same taste. Not every person buys the same brand of canned tomatoes, which might impart different Levels of acidity and sweetness. In order to be a better cook and make things taste great, it is kind of problem solving. You gotta learn to tinker.

You taste and season and taste again. You add a squeeze of lemon because it's feeling a little muddy and then it needs to be a little brighter. You add a sprinkle of salt to make everything taste more like itself.

Maybe the curry recipe that you made, you followed the recipe, but it's spicier than expected and you know your kids are gonna have a hard time with it. So you're gonna tinker and you're gonna add a little cream or coconut milk a little at a time, keep tasting it until you get to a place that works.

That's problem solving. Problem solving is like that. It requires tinkering. It requires trying and seeing how something works and then making a tiny change and trying again. Y'all, you guys start over way too much. We all do. And it puts us behind in actually solving the problem. Not ahead. It does not put us ahead. It puts us behind. You think that starting from scratch is going to fix everything. Hello, big black trash bag energy. But it just doesn't.

Expect to tinker. Take time. Try something and then try another small something to see if it can work better, especially in places that matter the most. Go for good, not great. But if you'd like something to eventually be great for you and your own life and your own family and your own priorities, you must expect to tinker.

And once you accept that as part of the process and you leave behind these expectations that something's gotta work immediately, you'll continue to become a better problem solver. Expect to tinker. All right, we got two more. Number 11, be patient.

with inconsistency, yours and theirs. So a lot of our problems, they require human solutions, right? The the people are involved in the thing. Your kids start doing their own laundry. There is a lot of potential for human error, especially as those kids are learning something new, right? So they'll forget to put the soap.

in the thing or like throw in the those dishwasher um not dishwasher detergent sheets. We love the detergent sheets'cause you don't have to measure and pour. But like they forget to put the soap in the washer and then they wash their clothes but with no soap. They have their headphones in. And so when the when the washer timer dings. And they don't hear it for four hours.

So the what clothes stay in there before anyone notices, you know, that happens. They set the timer on the dryer, but they don't check to see if the clothes are actually dry when the timer goes off. And it turns out the clothes are not dry, and now they're just like sitting in a

pile of dampness for a long time. There are a lot of places where things can go wrong and there are a lot of places where people, ourselves included, are inconsistent in the solutions that we have chosen. So be patient with inconsistency. In this example it's theirs, their inconsistency. You know, they're learning, they're gonna forget set step.

You don't want to nag or immediately grow impatient because they forgot the soap again. Instead, be patient. Everyone will be a better problem solver when patience is involved. Because guess what? You are inconsistent too. So am I. How many systems have you built and started and then stopped? Very many, I am sure. I think inconsistency is

I'm gonna go on a little soapbox here. I think inconsistency gets kind of a bad rap. Like I hear a lot of productivity experts, men and women, talk about consistency and its importance. Now if you're not consistent, you won't go anywhere. I remember one particular female self help author saying and s she still still says this, saying that being ins con inconsistent is letting yourself down. It's like it's breaking a promise to yourself.

And I just feel like that's shaming and like no thanks. I I don't want to participate in that. I don't want to live that way. Like I'm gonna be inconsistent. I'm gonna have hormones and children whose mental health needs. Need my attention more than the thing that I committed to do. Or a neighbor wants to tell me about his trip. And that's gonna keep me from doing the going on ticking as long on my walk because my neighbor wants to chat with me.

Or like I don't go on my walk because I have a sore knee, you know, that I'm gonna pay attention to rather than force force myself to do it because like you gotta still do things, be consistent even when things are hard. Like I just I just don't I just don't think that that's the way I want to live. And you can. I'm not saying it's the only way to live or that what I'm saying is the only way to live. That I think inconsistency gets a bad rap.

Especially when you're starting something new, when you're starting a new solution, be patient with your own cons inconsistency because it's going to happen. You're still learning. You're still tinkering. You still have pivots you have to deal with in your life. You're going to be inconsistent. Your kids are going to be inconsistent. Your partner and coworkers and boss and mother and everybody will be inconsistent at something. So be patient with them and yourself in that.

You're gonna be a better problem solver when you do because guess what you're doing? You're putting people ahead of productivity. And that's always gonna put you in a favorable place based on what I think the general lazy genius listener values. It's like what I said at the top, how you might not thrive in like traditionally productive spaces.

with this mentality of people over productivity. But in the places where you do choose people over productivity, or you have the freedom to do that in places that matter to you, like that the kind of thriving I'm totally into. I wanna thrive that way. I wanna be consistent that way where I'm putting people over productivity. I feel like that is an integrated whole person. That's not like a get better faster person. So I just want us to be patient. With inconsistency.

And finally, number twelve. Stop trying to solve everything at once. You will absolutely become a better problem solver when you stop trying to solve everything right now. You do not have the capacity for that. The creativity for that? You're incredibly smart. But that's just not how the brain and life are gonna work. Also, your solutions, even the small ones, they will not stick if you're trying to apply and maintain multiple solutions, especially new ones, in multiple places all at once.

If you have to write it down to remember, like, oh, what were the what were the solutions that I created in these twelve places? No. This too stop it. It's too much. It's too much. Stop trying to do it all right now. Be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Choose what matters most right now, this season, this month, just today. And put your energy into that and be lazy about the rest.

Remember, go for good, not great. Good enough is fine. Done for now. You don't have to finish everything. Just be done for now. That's amazing. Stop trying to solve everything at once. It is exhausting you. And it's not making you a better problem solver. It's just making you like Stressed out and tired.

So let's finish up by just seeing how these tools kind of play into each other. Let's go back to the kid learning to do their own laundry and this smaller problem of forgetting the soap of being inconsistent and remembering to put the soap in. So first, like we already said, be patient with that inconsistency. You'll be in a better emotional place together.

when you're being patient. You know, you're like, hey, you're learning, man. It's no big deal. Let's just figure out how to solve this problem a little better together. Like it's okay. Right. So you tinker. You let people in and you tinker. You say to your kid, Okay, what do you think we can change about your laundry process that might help you remember the soap more often? You're letting them in.

to the to the problem and the solution. Not just trying to solve the problem yourself. Because you don't have to be the sole problem solver. You're also teaching your kid how to solve a problem, which is great. You are already tinkering by changing this one thing about the existing laundry process. You know, you're not trying to create a whole new laundry system, right? Because the problem is a small one. It's forgetting the soap. It's not doing the laundry.

So you've already made the problem smaller, which is great. Now start smaller than you think. If that kid says Maybe if the detergent bottle was on the washer instead of in the cabinet above the washer, I would see it and remember the soap. Okay, that's very small the placement of a detergent bottle, but I want you to start smaller than you think. That alone could be the necessary tinker is just a big

Move the bottle down. Don't like reorganize everything. You don't have to put a sign on it. Just be like, cool. Move it from the shelf to the washer. Done. And then you can tinker, right? I also want you to remember to live in your season of life. That's another tool to be a b better problem solver. This season, it sounds like, involves your kid, maybe your teenager, learning some adult skills. That kid might feel a little overwhelmed by all of that. It is a lot to learn how to be a person.

Annie helped me pay the bills the other day. She's like really into math, is super interested in saving money. She was asking about investing and the difference between a credit card and a debit card. It was like we had a whole conversation.

But she was like typing in the bill amounts for our our bills, like online or whatever. And then like ten minutes later we were done with the thing and she said, Man, being a grown up is boring I was like, Yeah, it can be And there is there is a decent chance that in your season of life, let's say with your kid being confronted. With a ton of boring stuff they have to learn, all mixed in with excitement and fear about leaving home. Like

You guys, let's be patient with their inconsistency. Let's live in the season. Let's spot invisible problems. Right? Watch for when your kid says, like, I'm never gonna remember to do this. notice that catastrophic language and encourage the truth and be like, hey, you're gonna get it. Remembering stuff, especially new things, is hard and you're really doing great. Like let's tell yourself the truth. You're doing great.

You get to model to your teenager that they can go for good, not great. They don't have to fold their laundry perfectly. Like it's fine. They'll it's fine. And in some of their problem solving in that tinkering of like figuring out how it's going to work and they're going through that process themselves, they will eventually land with a solution that works and then not only that, build really great problem solving skills.

As far as I'm concerned, becoming a better problem solver is really less about the problem. And more about the person. Like you'll be a better problem solver when you keep your humanity and the humanity of other people included. Like so so much of so many of these tools are are rooted in that. They're about people. Like smallness is valuable and very human. Seasons are valuable. Taking time to breathe and access kindness before dealing with a problem is valuable and human.

Become a better problem solver by embracing these tools that don't always like jive with a lot of what we hear. I am I am telling you, you don't have to believe me, you don't have to agree with me, but I'm an I I believe me. It's okay to be inconsistent. It's fine. That's not part of the productivity canon, but that's okay. Cause we do things differently here. The goal is not greatness, but

The goal is not fixing everything at once. The goal is not Being the most efficient or optimizing a day, being the best person you can be every single day, the goal is to be yourself, to listen to what your body and season of life are telling you. The goal is to be someone who values the person over the problem, the person over productivity, the person over perfection. Be that person and you will actually be a better problem solver.

You'll see your problems differently, you'll see them with ease and kindness, without the stress that can sometimes cloud good solutions. Like this is good work, you guys. Don't get distracted by the fray. Keep your problems small and solve them with people in mind. And it's gonna be alright. So make your problems smaller, live in your season, name what matters early and often, spot invisible problems, notice catastrophic language. Start smaller than you want to.

Take your time, even when you feel like you don't have any. Let people in. Go for good, not great. Expect to tinker. Be patient with inconsistency. And don't try and solve everything at the moment. And those are twelve ways to be a better problem solver. This episode is sponsored by Square. There's this coffee shop downtown that I love. It's called Northern Roots.

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All right, for today's a little extra something. I'm gonna tell you about this music listening project thing that I'm doing this year. I don't have like a cute name for it. Um But okay, so I shared a few weeks ago how my word of the year, something I've only done like once or twice in my whole life, so this is different for me, is flourish. My word of the year is flourish. I wanna flourish this year. I wanna put myself in positions

and make choices that contribute to my own flourishing, to my family's flourish, to the flourishing of my friends and the city and all of it. I don't wanna just survive. I feel like that's what twenty twenty five was. It was like pure survival. I wanna flourish. And I want to do it intentionally in places that matter. Okay, one thing that matters to me that I I like I know matters to me, but I kind of often pass over its power in my day-to-day life sometimes is music.

I love music, y'all know that. I love listening to it, discovering it, making it. It is rare that I listen to music and I don't feel bad. Like, music just makes me feel and it makes me It just makes me feel better. Like I never not feel better after I've listened to some. I just love it so much. Okay. But it's also something that can become for me accidental.

Or like kind of wrote. Like I just listen to the same playlist over and over again. Or I let my kids pick the music every single time we're in the car and I don't really expose them to new things or get to listen to what I want to. There are just like a lot of places where I could be more thoughtful about music. And create more flourishing of myself and my family because of it, because we all respond positively to music. We are a household of music loving people.

So I decided that in this year of 2026, I'm gonna listen to 150 albums that are brand new to me, and then 150 albums that are not. And I'm gonna try and like not have too many repeats in there. So that's like less than one album a day and most albums are maybe forty minutes long. Like this is it is not hard to listen to a whole album on purpose without stopping. Especially in my day, like with carpooling and what like oh my gosh, super easy. Plus I love discovering new music.

So over the first couple of days of January, I did some research. I like made a long list of albums that I have never listened to that I would love to listen to. When an album that I used to listen to and really love, but I haven't in a while, came to mind, I would write it down. I just have this like huge brain dump of albums.

But mostly there were so many things and I'm like, I've never listened to this. How have I never listened to this? Like I've never listened to Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys, a classic. Like, I know a couple of songs from that album. But I've never listened to the whole thing from start to finish. Like who listens to a Beach Boys album from start to finish? Y'all That album is spectacular. Like it is e it is spectacular. It is experimental and

quirky and thoughtful and joyful and beautiful. It's like no wonder Jacob Collier, who I love and is also all of those things, considers Brian Wilson to be one of his musical heroes. Like I heard it. I heard it. It's just... a masterpiece. And I never would have gotten to experience that album without this little project, you know? Like it's just been so fun listening to all of this new Music. I feel kind of like a plant.

that has suddenly been placed in like the right amount of sun and I'm getting the right amount of water. Like I feel myself flourishing because I'm giving music a primary seat at the table every day. And it's just the most fun. I the in the first ten days, I listened to fourteen albums. Seven new ones, three that I was like familiar ish.

with and then another four that I like love but I hadn't listened to in a while. Like for example Um, I mentioned on Instagram this was years ago, but I know some of you listened to this album because you told me it was so good is Sing to the Moon by Laura Mavula. That is I've I've recommended that before. I hadn't listened to it in so long. So I listened to that and I was like, this is so good. I listened to I've never listened to Alabama Shakes before, like ever. Uh

except for that one song that's at the end of season two of Flea Bag. But I listened to the sound, what's it called? The Sound and Sound and Color album. And I'm so obsessed now. Like it's so good. I'm kind of I mean, I listened to it a couple of times. I'm not like gonna be very, very vigilant about no repeats. But I wanted to listen to it several, several times. An excellent album for running, by the way, walking and running.

Um, I have listened to Miles Davis and Amy Grant and John Coltrine and James Kay. I have a list of classics that I've never explored that I'm so excited to. Like I'm I'm almost embarrassed to admit this. But I've never in my life listened to Fleawood Macron. Like ever. Like outside of like a karaoke bar or the music playing over the speakers at a store and I don't even know that I could identify that it's Fleetwood Mac, I've never listened to Fleetwood Mac.

So of course I'm gonna listen to rumors. Like that's on the list. Like I have a whole list of those and I I like I just cannot wait. I have all year to listen to music and discover new things and remember old favorites and it has just been more fun than I could ever have hoped for. So I share that because it's like fun and it is indeed a little something extra. Um and I will probably share more as I go along in the monthly newsletter, in the in the latest lazy letter. So if you like music

You want to hear more about what I'm listening to, you can join the newsletter and just kind of get the rundown of how things are going. It's like it's it'll be a it'll be a really fun year uh for music for one kind of adaji. So I'm so excited.

All right, let's celebrate the lazy genius of the week. This week it's JC Werman. JC Wright. My lazy genius decide once the kitchen table will house backpacks and paper during the school year. I am acknowledging that this is my season right now, and I can embrace that and not feel bad. If Kendra can have her pool towels in her dining room for the summer, surely I can use the kitchen table for more than dinners.

I found that we rarely use our kitchen table to eat at. The kids eat at our island for breakfast, they're gone for lunch, and when we can all do dinner at the same time, we eat in the dining room. So the kitchen table mostly sits empty. I needed permission to use an unconventional space to hold what we needed for this season. I have I love this, you guys. I have three kids and six chairs. Each kid gets a chair for their backpack and a chair to do their homework at.

I'm not gonna stress because they didn't put their backpacks away in the mud room because it's going to live on the kitchen table for nine months. It feels so freeing. And if I need the kitchen table to actually eat, we'll just clean it off for that time. No big deal. This right here from JC is the perfect example of being a better problem solver. Good, not great. Live in your season, tinker and find something that works, solve smaller problems.

JC didn't renovate her mud room. She just decided to put the backpacks and chairs. This is so good, JC. It's so good. So thank you for sharing this with us and congratulations on being the lazy genius of the week. All right, let's close with a mini pep talk for when your season feels

Too long. Certain seasons feel like they will never end. Uh tiny kids caring for someone with a chronic illness, being the person who has a chronic illness. Sometimes seasons feel like they are just life and this is your lot for a long time. Here's what I would say to you: you might be right. You might be here in these circumstances for a really long time. But you as a person can allow those difficult circumstances, those long seasons to help you grow deeper in who you are. Long seasons.

Hard seasons are beautiful teachers. even when we are super reluctant to listen, I have been there. I've had mental health challenges that I thought would always just like be my life, be my normal. And they were for a very long time. And they no longer really are. Now part of the reason I can see it that way. is not just because like I went through therapy and all the different things. It's because I have also changed. I have been changing through that really hard season.

At some point I got softer and decided that I would let my hard season be a kind teacher. I'd learn more about myself. I'd be kinder to myself. I'd practice seeing good that's here right now. In some ways, long seasons f that feel like they will never end, they are a particular kind of gift. They do a lot of heavy lifting in helping a person become themselves more deeply, far more than people who kind of run a normative course of seasons of life. It sucks, but suffering is a really good teacher.

It's hard and sad and Sometimes like the worst thing to think about when you wake up in the morning, you think that, oh, I have to do all this again. But in that difficult repetition, you can cultivate a site that not a lot of people get to. Goodness and beauty and contentment, they grow the deepest roots in the darkest places. They just do.

And it's not a good time, but it's also like really, really beautiful. And sometimes just enough of a glimmer in your hard season to help you get through another day. So if you are in that place, in a place of just wishing this would all be over, be honest and kind in it. And also maybe flirt with this idea that you get to go deeper. Faster, you get to become more of yourself in this season. And your world, even one that feels stuck, is better when you are more yourself.

And that's a mini pep talk for when your season feels really long.

If this episode was helpful to you or if you've just been looking for a way to support the show, I would be so grateful if you would share this with a friend. Or if all of your friends are already Lazy Geniuses, you can leave a kind review on Apple Podcasts. Every mention matters, so thank you so much for supporting the show. Let's rise above the fray, right? This podcast is part of the Odyssey family and the Office Ladies Network.

This episode is hosted by me, Kendra Adachi, and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fisher, and Angela Kenzie. Special thanks to Leah Jarvis for weekly production. If you'd like a podcast recap every other week, be sure to sign up for the latest Lazy Listens email that goes out every other Friday. Head to the lazygeniuscollective.com slash listens to get it.

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, I'll see you next week.