Monday Motivation with Kendra Adachi
2024-02-05 00:42:02
The Office co-stars and best friends, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey, are doing the ultimate The Office re-watch podcast for you. Each week Jenna and Angela will break down an episode of The Office and give exclusive behind the scene stories that only two people who were there, can tell you.
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I'm Jenna Fisher.
And I'm Angela Kinsey.
We were on the office together.
And we're best friends and now we're doing.
The ultimate office rewatch podcast just for you.
Each week, we will break down an episode of The Office and give exclusive behind-the-scenes stories that only two people who were there can tell you.
We're the office ladies.
Hello, hi there.
Oh, this is an exciting day.
We are so pumped, Jenna and I are smiling ear to ear.
This is a special episode of Office Ladies. It's a Monday motivation and we have a very exciting announcement, which is why we're smiling so big. Do it, do it.
Say it, lady.
Okay, we are growing our company and we are now the office ladies network, we're a network.
Yes.
It's so wild even to hear you say it.
Okay, here's the thing you guys know years ago when we started this rewatch podcast.
Jenna, We didn't know.
We knew we were gonna watch an episode of The Office every week, right? Yeah, yeah, we didn't even know if we'd make it through them all.
We didn't know.
But we are doing it and you guys have been with us every step of the way and we so appreciate it. And you know, we just love doing this podcast. And we started thinking about what's in the future for office ladies?
And well, we were like, maybe we can help our listeners find people that we also love Who podcast.
That's right. We want to stay in this business of podcasting, we want to expand our company. And so we have started the Office Ladies Network. And the first podcast that we are adding to our network is called The Lazy Genius.
I know a lot of you already know about the Lazy Genius, especially if you follow me or Angela on Instagram. I found The Lazy Genius podcast about four years ago and I was immediately hooked. And, as Angela can tell you, I wouldn't shut up about it.
That's true.
And so when we were talking about expanding into a network, it just made so much sense. To reach out to Kendra and ask if she would like to join us in this adventure.
You know, Jenna, you always say that Kendra would be like, if you and I had a best friendship, baby, I don't know. Yes, we say, she's like, the missing link.
Between the two of us, she's all the fun of Angela, mixed with all the spreadsheets that you get with me. You know? She wants to help you organize your life in the way that works best for you, but she also wants you to have fun and be relaxed while doing it.
But the best person to tell you about the lazy genius is the lazy genius herself. Kendra Adachi and we're gonna talk with her about some of our favorite lazy genius principles. And Kendra is gonna tell us where the office characters fall on her scale of lazy to genius. I cannot wait, I really need to hear her thoughts on Phyllis and the rest of the office gang.
I mean, can you imagine Kendra on the party planning committee, Jenna?
She's the thing we've needed.
I know.
Well, let's take a quick break and when we come back, Kendra Adachi, the lazy genius herself, is gonna be with us, giving us some Monday motivation. You don't wanna miss it.
Yeah, you're gonna love it.
Kendra Hello.
Welcome to office ladies.
What a treat. Oh my goodness, this is so exciting. Oh my God, I'm so excited.
We are such big fans of yours and we can't believe we get to have you all to ourselves today.
Oh, I could say the literal same thing. This is amazing, this is so much fun. Thank you for having me.
You know what I've realized as I say this, I'm gonna sound like such a cheese ball. But when you've heard someone in your head, like on your AirPods or just in your car for so long, and then you're sitting there looking at the person.
I realized, Jen and I do this too.
But I'm just looking at you and I'm like, that's her voice.
Then that's her, and she's here, I can see the mouth that's coming out of.
I know I do the same thing. Audio is like such a. it's such a sweet thing to be able to, like, listen to someone. I just, it's. You've become friends with people so quickly and so I feel the same. I'm like, Look, it's your, it's your faces, saying the words.
Like right now.
That I hear, Yeah, I know.
It's so fun.
Well, you know, Kendra, we love your podcast, The Lazy Genius, and we would love for you to tell our audience what is a lazy genius.
A lazy genius is someone who is a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. So the thing that the problem is that there are a lot of voices that are telling us all the different things. That should matter. And we want to be like good rule followers and like decent people, and we're like, Okay, well, this should matter. I'll work hard on this.
I'll do this thing and then we just like, end up with adrenal fatigue, it's like a whole thing. So I want to give people permission to choose what matters to them, based on their own lives and their own seasons of life. And their personalities and their families. And all of that. And then put energy into things that matter to them.
It's not that you have to like messy hair, don't care your entire life away.
You can care about stuff.
You can be good at stuff.
I think that's a wonderful thing.
You want to be a genius at certain things in your life, but in order to do that, you also got to let some other stuff go. You got to be lazy about some stuff and I just give people principles to help do that in their own way. And then also I have this podcast that kind of breaks it down topically to kind of help you be a lazy genius about whatever the thing is.
And so it's I've been doing that for I've been teaching people how to be a lazy genius since 2016.
Well, Kendra, the very first podcast I heard of yours was called something like How to Organize paper in your home.
Oh, she talked about that so much, Kendra.
All the paper that comes in your home, and this was my introduction to you. I didn't really know what a lazy genius was yet. And so when I clicked on that podcast, I thought you were going to literally prescribe to me what to do with. All the papers that come into my house, all of my kids artwork, all of the school forms, all of the insurance. Follow-up from when you go to the doctor, all the things that accumulate in a pile or multiple piles. And, to my surprise, you did not tell me what to do with the paper.
You asked me what mattered to me about these piles of paper, and it was such this light bulb for me, because you're right. I watch Instagram and there's all these videos of like, special frames that I can put my kids artwork in. And I'm like, should I be doing that, should I be buying the frames where I cycle the different paintings in and out? I tried it.
I never cycled a single thing, and what I learned from your podcast, Kendra, was that a lot of that paper didn't matter to me and I could let it go. It was okay if we looked at a piece of the artwork and we appreciated it and then we let it go and it was great. It was very freeing because you helped me name what did matter to me about it.
And then you helped me allow myself to be lazy about the other parts, and it was transformative it really was, and it was so simple. But you do that on your podcast all the time.
You did one about packing school lunches. That changed my life.
I'm so glad and here's the thing that I think is so vital to this is your decision to go. We're gonna look at this paper and go, yes, this was so lovely. Into the recycling, it goes, you are just as because we're talking about, like, in that context, kids artwork, like, you're just as good of a mother as someone who cycles through the artwork.
Like, we have this sort of, it's almost like a gas gauge, you know of, like we have to be all things. It's like a full tank in order to be a full tank of this kind of person. You have to care this way and that's just not the way it goes. And so I just love that you're like, we're going to look at this and go remember this. This was so fun, but we don't have to keep it in order for that experience to matter.
So I'm so glad you're right, and that's what the entire show, all 300 something episodes at this point, it really does. I really wanna help you see more than help you figure out what to do. You have to see it your way first before you can do anything anyway.
So just try to set you up with, like, the right pair of glasses, you know?
What I like about it, too, is that you let everyone approach it their way. It's not, there's no one path to like. How do we save art? how do we appreciate our kids art in that pile of paper? And I never feel like.
Whatever choice I make is less than because it's my choice. And it's what makes us happy as a family, what makes us work. And I just love that. Cause, you know, sometimes people will tell you how to do something and there's this implied thing of like, and this is how it's done.
But that's not the case at all. I just love it. We love you, we're your fan club, lady, we are your fan club.
It's so nice.
It's so nice you guys, Angela just called me lady.
You've been ladyed.
She's been ladyed. It's like Paul's handshake on bank off. It's like, I just got ladyed, you got the Paul Hollywood.
Kendra, We're really curious, how did you become the lazy genius?
Oh yeah, what's your origin story?
My origin story? Well, it was been by a radioactive spider. No, I actually, I have always been a very responsible old soul. Like my friends in middle school and high school called me mom, I was voted most dependable by my senior class.
Like, I was not fun at parties, but I was like, really, I could really help you figure out a homework strategy that would get you through school. So I've always really loved finding ways to do things, I love finding systems for things and making things kind of efficient. But I had not yet gone to therapy. And so I really started out just being a natural, trying to be a genius at everything. And what that meant was that I didn't try anything new.
I just was like, if I can't be awesome at this, I'm not gonna do it. And so I swung this one direction of, like, I'm gonna be amazing at everything. And then I had my first kid and I realized, like, Oh, wow, trying to be good at everything. When you have a human baby that you have to tend to. This is tough, this is a tough look, but I tried real hard.
I had a y'all, I had a calendar on my fridge. That was a year, it was a full annual January to December, and I made a cleaning schedule for an entire year. On a year that I had a baby.
What on that? Is genius energy going in the wrong direction? That's genius energy without any sort of tempering. That's like, Wow, girlfriend, you need to calm down, you need to go take a nap. Well, then I had a second kid two years later, and I swung the other direction, where I was like, Well, I don't care about anything.
If I can't make any of this work, I'm not gonna care about any of it. And then I was also kind of sad because, like, I care about things. I wanna do good work and things I wanna like, put time and energy into stuff that matters to me. But I didn't have the language for that difference yet.
So I was just, I was just like swinging.
Like this Rolf caffeinated pendulum of like, genius, lazy, genius, lazy, like. It was really intense. And then I had a third kid. And I guess I have like these big life realizations when I have children and thought, there's gotta be a better way. Like, I don't have to keep going to these extremes. What if I was a genius about the things that I care about, but I could let the other stuff go? And I was doing some work on the internet already, just in a different category, and just pivoted the business to this. Where I started to talk about this because this was such a common problem among women, especially because we're told to care, you do it all.
You have it all, you be it all, you know, and we can't, we literally can't. But the alternative is not to just give up, it's not try harder, give up. Those are not your two options, your option is you can be a lazy genius.
So that's where the actual kind of business started, as I wanted to create a language for people and permission for people to not do what I did. Which is lose their minds, trying to create an annual cleaning schedule or never cleaning their house at all. You know, it's like, huh? I feel like there's a third, there's a third path here, let's find it.
And who knows what will happen if you have a fourth baby?
Listen after I know After this podcast set in, I was like, Okay, babe, I think snip, snip, no more babies.
I think we're set we did it.
We did it, we found that middle ground. Okay, so, Kendra, we're very excited to ask you about the office characters and where they would fall on your scale of lazy to genius.
So I think a great way to kind of humanize this idea is I wanna actually talk about Angela.
Angela Martin.
Angela Martin Yes.
Okay.
Because, listen, Angela is all genius, no lazy, like we all know this, like, she's just this is how it's done. This is what you should care about.
And no one else is going to tell her otherwise, right? Like, is Angela lazy about anything? like? I don't know, and maybe fun, Maybe she's lazy about fun.
Maybe she's lazy at fun? No, I think she's all genius. Except when she moved, she had that patch where her and the senator broke up and she wasn't sure where she was gonna live. And she came into the office. All disheveled her hair everywhere with like a giant, like one of those like big 7-eleven Slurpee cup things. Do you remember it?
I never loved Angela more than in that moment because it was like, Oh, she's breaking.
She's doing it.
She's breaking the facade.
And I will tell you that screen grab image of how she walks into the office that day. People send it to me, like how I'm feeling right now, and I'm like, Oh, okay, I guess I'm a meme, but yeah, I think she-.
That was Kendra after her second child.
Yeah, I would say, I think when I was.-.
That meme sums it up.
And then when she broke, she went hard the other way.
100 Okay, Jenna, where do you think Pam is on the lazy genius scale? What would you say?
You know, I think she is a pretty good, lazy genius. I'll be curious what your assessment is, but I feel like she has a pretty good balance and she's also relatively flexible.
Yeah, I think the same, I think. She's, like, if you're looking at it, sort of like a gas gauge. With genius on one side and lazy on the other, I think she skews more genius than lazy, but she's a lot closer to the middle. And I think one of the biggest reasons is that I think she actually really wants to be a lazy genius. It's more that she really cares what other people think a lot. And when we think we care, it's totally normal to care what other people think. And wanna adjust and respond to that.
But if you're doing that over and over again at the expense of what matters to you. That's why we all love. When she walked across the coals. Because it was like, I'm doing this for me, no one's telling me that I'm gonna do this for me. And then coming alive in that moment was such a lovely thing. But yeah, I think Pam's actually, she's not, in my opinion, the most lazy, genius person in the office, but she's pretty close, she's actually pretty close.
I actually said out loud, one time when I was watching the office, I said, Man, I wish Pam would read my book. I think PaM would really benefit from that.
Who do you think is the most lazy genius because you said you had one?
I do, I think it's phyllis.
Really.
I do.
Oh, I'm seeing it.
I think it's phyllis.
It's coming into focus for me, yes.
Because she's so confident in what she wants to do and how she does it. I actually think this is kind of a strange thing. I think Phyllis is the most lazy genius, because, yeah, she cares where she needs to care. She doesn't mind letting things go when she wants to. Like, she's gonna pick her fights with Angela in whatever way.
She's like, I don't have time for this, whatever, like, just leaving. But I also think someone who else is kind of a lazy genius. But who doesn't have, like a Bob Vance to love him into confidence is Toby. I think Toby, if loved, well, I think Toby would be such a great lazy genius. You know, who is, like, almost doesn't fit?
There are three people who almost don't fit on the scale at all, and it's Michael, Ryan and Kelly, because they all three of them in my assessment. And I'm curious what you think about this? They wanna be geniuses about the things that matter to them, but those things matter to literally no one else.
And so they're just like bulldozing through the room and you're like, what do we? Even no one else cares about this right now. Michael, What are we doing?
What's happening?
It's so like, it's so unsettling, which is what made a great TV. But yeah, I had a hard time characterizing the three of them. They're like, all through below the scale, they're like in their own.
Their own world subset.
Yes, they are.
Well, I think they definitely wanna be geniuses about things they think are important, but, like you said, aren't. And then they have no follow through, so that's the problem. They're not gonna do any work to get to that genius place.
Yeah, that's pretty great.
I think two geniuses that end up together are Dwight and Angela. Yes, and I'm always curious when people say, Do you think Dwight and Angela are still together? how do you think that's going? I'm like, they either, like, had a war of the roses moment, or they are running the country.
You know what I mean like?
That's right, that's right, there's not a lot of middle ground there. No, it's they're taking over everything, or they're no longer together.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Well, Kendra, you have done this amazing thing where you have created for us a visual scale of where all of the office characters fall on the lazy to genius spectrum. And that is over. On your website, thelazygeniuscollective..com, everyone should go check it out. Angela, you're going to put it in our Instagram stories.
I am and shout out to Ileana who helped us with the artwork for that. But it's great. Office fans, you need to see it.
It's pretty fun.
Well, why don't we take a break? And when we come back, we are super excited to share about a particular lazy, genius episode. That changed our work life, me and Angela, and it also deepened our friendship. And we want to talk to you about it.
We'll be right back.
We are back.
And Kendra, we're super excited to share about how one particular episode of The Lazy Genius transformed our work life. Angela tell Kendra what it was.
Okay, well, it was episode 297 titled Five Things for More Ease at work. And it really, really changed how I approach emails, which was a stumbling block for me for a long, long time. KENDRA So long, I'm sad I hadn't listened to this episode years ago.
But I'm so thankful I'm sad she hadn't listened to it years ago.
Just wait, Jen was gonna let you know. But it really changed how I approach emails so much, and it was so obvious once I listened how I was looking at it wrong. Anyway, I just want to share with you about how that affected our work life.
Yeah, so what was cause? I have no idea what I did not know about this, so this is a surprise to me, so I'm so excited. So what was your relationship with your inbox like before the episode?
And maybe how that was in work, like, what did it look like before and what does it look like after?
Okay, well, this is like, show me the scary nook in your closet, but okay, here's the thing. Right now, it says, I have 2,333 emails.
I'm not gonna cry about that.
It's all fine, it gives me heart palpitations.
That's a big red number, Angela.
Okay, it's a big number, but it was like 7,000.
So there are a lot of like backlog emails now that are just spam and crap that are taking me forever to get rid of. But whenever I have like a long flight or something like that, I'm going through and I'm unsubscribing from things and stuff. Just the clutter. But where it really helped me was with my day in, day out work emails. Jenna and I, at any time have multiple projects going on.
And the toughest thing for me wasn't just so much how much. I hate email because I hate email. But trying to understand what was a priority. When you have multiple projects and multiple things, because I'm much better at school, emails. They sort of make sense to me because they have a real timely manner to them. And it's very easy for me to understand what's a priority and what's not. But with our work emails, that was a struggle for me.
And you talk about five top things for more ease at work, and the first one is prioritize, then it's essentialize, organize, personalize and systemize. But because I couldn't prioritize my work emails, I couldn't get to any of the other steps, and I was drowning in them.
And it was affecting my work life and Jenna's work life when she needed something. That was a timely answer for her, but I didn't understand it was timely. And that really was something that she shared with me, that finally, she hit her breaking point. It was like, Ange, I spent all this time on this email, you haven't checked it for like four days.
And that's not okay. I put a lot of work into that and I was gutted because I love her so much. And I take such pride in our business partnership and our friendship. And so for me, the idea that me not understanding that she needed an answer so quickly, and then me not being able to find it. Because now it had like fallen into the abyss of opened emails and I panicked. And I also felt horrible because I wouldn't ever want her to not feel valued in our relationship in any way. And me not checking that email. But it was a buffet.
It was years and months of me not being on top of this.
This is such a great example of something that happens in relationships all over the place, when you and someone that you love have different priorities about the same thing. And you haven't named that yet, it does. It can cause so much chaos and you're like, what just happened? It's just fill in the blank, it's just email.
It's just laundry, it's just pickup, it's just whatever. But that's why that first step is to prioritize. Because if you try to like, organize your inbox before you name what matters about it, and before you actually essentialize. And be like, what's in the way here? If you try to organize things you don't need, you're gonna crawl in a hole.
You're gonna go off the grid and you're never gonna be on email again. And it's so frustrating when, yeah, when we have a different priority than someone we love. But we just haven't said it out loud yet, so the saying it out loud, it sounds like that was like a huge thing. Is being able to name that together. I love that.
Well, for me, you know, the thing is is that I know in our business, from the moment we started the business, that we had the same interest in the business. We valued it the same. We have the same. Like work ethic, we put family first.
We have this creative energy, so all of our broad strokes are very aligned. But when we started to get into the nitty gritty of how we like to each work, how we're most effective doing the work, we're so different. And I know that Angela is best with text and audio message. I'm a dinosaur.
I just wanna talk to you.
Yes, this is the best way for her to process is to speak it. I love to type it and see it and read it over and get it perfect and then send it. And the problem was that, for the most part, I could adjust how I worked to this texting audio way of messaging. And we were making it work and we figured it out.
But from time to time, I needed it in an email. That was the best way for me to organize my thoughts. And for me to also, like, have it as a tangible thing that I could find later. Because my email system is very clear to me and I don't lose things in an abyss in the same way. But what was getting frustrating is if I sent Angela an email in order to get a response, like a few days later, I would have to text her that I sent her an email. And maybe resend the email. To put it at the top of the 7,000 messages.
And I eventually said, I don't think that's fair.
I don't think I should have to do that.
Remind you that I already emailed you.
Yes, because that's extra work for me.
And I really heard that, I really heard that, and I hadn't thought about it. Because we text so much, you know, and sometimes they'll be like, Oh, remember that thing we talked about last week or so-and-so emailed us, we haven't answered that. So, like, it was sort of jumbled and all that. But what I wasn't seeing was how it affected her on a regular basis, you know?
I knew that it wasn't because Angela didn't care, sure, it wasn't because she didn't value me or our work. I knew that this was in the nitty gritty, this was in the like. Emails don't work for her.
And so when she listened to your episode and figured out a way to make emails work for her, and now my emails like, get seen. It was so transformative and exciting. Because I told Angela it used to be like, if I wrote her an email, it could be similar to me. Typing it on a piece of paper, crumbling it up and throwing it out my window.
No, that's so bad, I'm so sorry.
Like, if I wrote her an email, I would need to print it out and, like, run it over to her house. You know what I mean, like, I'm exaggerating, obviously, but it's like, I knew that this was a system problem. This wasn't a caring problem, you know, and that's important, too, you know, when you're in a relationship with someone, if you're able to see, like, Oh, this doesn't mean this person doesn't care about me or doesn't value me. But our systems are not in sync. But we need to figure something out because we work together.
Right, yeah, and we work really well together and we are really great creative partners. So just some of the tidying of business, I don't know. I had to figure out for myself and here's what I did.
I had listened to a different episode of Yours a while back and it came back to me it was an episode. 254 chores I do every day and I am really good at zoning and batching, you know, like in my house, I'm very good with tangible clutter, you know? And so I had remembered that episode when I was listening to Five Things for more ease at work, and I thought, You know what?
There's gotta be a way that I can zone and batch my emails the way I do the clutter in my house. So I started watching YouTube videos on how to organize your email. And I forget the fella's name. You only saw his hands, I never really saw his face, but anyway, wherever you are, that guy that made an email video was really helpful.
It's just your hand.
But in Gmail, you can make labels and folders, and you can assign emails that all those email addresses will go into different labels and folders. And I know a lot of you out there listening already know this, and you're like, Yeah, duh. But I had never done that, so all of my general emails all went into one spot. And that is every project I'm working on Office Ladies, our live show, our book, plus anything I'm doing with baking with Josh and Ange, plus the school, three kids.
At one point, I had a kid in elementary, I had two in middle school, those are two different principals. And oh my gosh, so many emails, plus anything I'm doing outside of this, like if I was doing a TV show or I was auditioning for some commercial, all of those emails. And I took a day and I went through and I found all my contacts and I made all these labels and folders, so now I have one that is just office ladies.
And what's great is I can look at office ladies like today. I can check my office ladies folder. I have no unopened emails. Guys, wow, so I might have 2,333 in that big general craziness, but in my Office ladies folder, I have zero unopened emails.
And yesterday I only had 12, and 12 is a lot easier to find and tackle. And also what I learned is what my business partner needs. I don't need this, I can send you an email. And I know Jenna will have read it. And sometimes I don't need an answer. But I think one of the things that Jenna likes is that I read it. And I say, got it, let me look that up.
If I don't have an answer yet, cause I used to not answer an email until I had the answer. And sometimes that process takes a day or two. So then it's two days that Jenna hasn't even heard from me, that I've read it. So now I just, I'm very big now on. Confirmed received.
Well, look into it. I have to say, I don't know if you can hear it in Angela's voice. But she's super excited about her email and her batching and this enthusiasm. It's like, this is not something that was just for me, this is like a thing that she's excited about now. And so I think that's another reason why it's working, because you talk about your emails all the time.
Now it's really fun. I'm like, welcome to emails.
Welcome to emails.
I really hope someday I don't ever have to send another email, but I'm realizing now that's probably not going to happen.
Well, you have named this is a great avatar. It's such a great example of things that happen in our lives all the time. Like, it's not that you have to just be like, Well, oh well, I got 7,000 unread emails. This is just the way I am. Or that you have to commit to inbox zero at all times.
There is such a wide middle to most of the problems that we have. And it just comes down to naming Jenna. You said it so well, it's like, this is not a caring problem, this is a systems problem.
I would guess, Angela, that if you're naming what matters to you about email, actually, your partnership with Jenna matters more to you than your comfort around the email. Like, you're willing to have some discomfort and some like, Oh, I hate this, but I'm going to do it because Jenna matters to me more. Yes, that's exactly right, and so that's the thing, so if you name what really matters about something. And almost always, when we're in conflict with another person, what matters the most for the people both is connection with each other.
Like, there's very little that you're going to put over connection with that person. So it just opens the door to, like, okay, well, what matters the most to you about this? what matters the most to me about this? And we can find a way to make this work. You can take the skills that you have in batching and zoning with your clutter.
Like, you can do that to go like, Oh, that's a system that kind of works. Let's see if I can apply some of these same principles to this other thing. Rather than being like, this is the seven step program that I have to follow. That this random dude told me to do, you know, like, it's this is just. I love this so much, because this is what it's about. It's about naming what matters to you, it's acknowledging what matters to someone else that you care about, or you work with, or you live with, or whatever.
And then kind of slowly and kindly, finding a way that works for everyone. And now you're excited about email like, What a world, what a world this is.
I think it's a stretch to say I'm excited about email. But I am happy to have these folders because I like folders, I like putting things in their place.
It's like the baskets of the computer, yes, and you love a basket.
I do love a basket. Kendra, you know, when you talk about your papers and all the papers. So I had, you know, had in our friendship. I had a baby first, and then when it was Jenna's turn, I said, Listen, they're going to give you a lot of papers at the hospital, so many papers.
And you're not going to know where all to put all the papers, and then you're going to need them when you leave, and there's going to be stacks of papers. And I gave her a basket, it was a basket that someone had given me a baby gift in at the hospital. Like little wash rags and diapers, all rolled up in little bows. And I'd taken everything out of it and put all the hospital papers in it, and I walked out of the hospital with a basket of papers.
And I gave Jenna that same basket and I was like, Trust me, you're going to put papers in it. And Jenna, you were so cute, you were like, said to your husband, you're like.
Lee We have to have the basket for papers. I did.
Well, and you might not remember this. But when I broke my back in New York and they sent me home from the hospital, we got back to the hotel. And you were there. And people had sent, you know, fruit baskets and cupcake baskets. You dumped everything out of one of those baskets and you put all the hospital papers in it. You did you love a hospital paper basket?
I just needed an email basket. that's what I needed. an email basket. now you have it. Now you have your email basket. I have it.
I have one question for you, Angela. Would it bring you great joy if the folders on an email looked like little baskets?
Oh, it could change the iconography I would like, that. Is that a thing?
Can someone do that for you? Imagine how excited you would be to put things in it.
I would be excited to put things in it, and then I'd also be excited. When it was empty. Like the trash basket on your desktop, I get very excited when I empty it. That would be a tangible gift to me.
I think that someone needs to make this because it might transform other people's lives as well. If you could pick what the thing is that you put stuff in?
Yes.
KENDRA Thank you so much for coming on this special Monday. Motivation of office ladies today everyone. You can find episode 297 five things for more ease at work and listen to it. Maybe it'll transform your life.
But, Kendra, you also have a new episode out today, it's episode 351, and it's called How to Lazy Genius Your Whole Life, which is kind of the perfect episode. If you're a new listener. Kendra you said it's kind of a beginner's guide to the lazy genius, but also a good reminder of the whole reason you're doing this. Which is, like you said earlier, you want to make this a lifestyle and a mindset, and not just a random choice that we make every once in a while.
You also had a great episode last week called Starting Fresh When You Can't Start Over. It's all about the January pressure to change everything. And your episode is so great because it really encourages people to start small.
And that's one of the there are 13 lazy genius principles that are in my first book, that are basically the foundation of everything I talk about. And one of the principles is to start small, and it's the most annoying of all the 13, it's so annoying. Nobody wants to start small, including myself.
You don't see any progress right away, it just feels like it's not really gonna do anything. But honestly, those small steps over, like even a long time. Those are the things that stick way more than these big systems that we build over three days in January that then fall apart. So I do love that. This is a good reminder of, like, Hey, we're gonna start small with this.
And that is actually gonna make it more doable and accessible, and probably even work in a way that you want it to work. Even though it's annoying, starting small is so annoying, but it really does help. So yeah, I'm excited for y'all to listen to that.
Kendra, I have your sticker that says, Start small on my computer.
That's so fun.
And it's crazy because I lost my computer on a flight. I got off the airplane once and I left my computer on the plane and I can't believe it. But Air Canada found it, it had flown to multiple other cities, but they managed to find it. And when they asked me, How can you identify your computer? and I said, it has a sticker on it that says, Start small.
And they said, We found it.
We found your computer.
Yeah.
Oh, that's incredible, that's so great.
And it was all because I was so committed to the lazy genius principle of starting small. Yeah, yeah, and I love it.
It's a good one for people who skew genius, who lean that way a lot and who are like, let's roll, let's go, let's get it all done right now. Because we can run that direction until we fall down sad and crying. And so start small kind of helps us temper that a little bit, it's like the kindest little break tap.
You know, it's like, Hey, let's.
We're all right, we're all right. Start Small, bringing you back to the podcast.
That's really why I love this work that I do, because the 13 principles and the way, the lazy genius method, all of these things are really versatile. No matter how you operate, no matter how you think, no matter what your life looks like, no matter what season you're in. Like, they really are tools for everyone because they're personal and versatile and they work. They are not like self-help steps that only work for a certain kind of person, they're much broader and kinder than that. So it's really fun work to do because it helps anybody who is interested in being helped and wanting to see their life this way.
It really does help, it really does work, so it's such a fun treat to be able to share that with the office. Ladies, listeners, this is so fun.
Well, you're so, so fantastic at it. We're so thrilled to have you on office, ladies, and we can't wait for people to hear your episodes.
Yeah, we are so excited for you to be joining the Office Ladies network.
Yeah, we're a network, we're a dang network y'all. Now we are, yes.
I love it.
Everybody, please go subscribe to the Lazy Genius and guess what? you will hear us on Lazy Genius next week.
That's right.
We're gonna be your guest.
I know.
Everybody's gonna lose their minds.
It's so fun, it's so fun.
Thank y'all so much for having me.
Thank you for listening to office ladies.
Office Ladies is produced by Earwolf, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey.
Our senior producer is Cassie Jerkins, our in-studio engineer is Sam Kiefer, our editing and mixing engineer is Jordan Duffy, and our associate producer is Ainsley Bubico.
Our theme song is Rubber Tree by Creed Bratton.
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