Hi there! You are listening to the Lazy Genius Podcast. I am Kendra Adachi and I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't.

Today is a very exciting episode. The first of its kind and hopefully not the last. One of my favorite things about this job is helping you all lazy genius your problems.

I do it sometimes on Instagram in various membership communities over the years in real life at events and it is always the most fun. The most gratifying, the most connected thing.

So we're going to bring that to the podcast in our first Lazy Genius Office Hours episode. Okay so a week or so ago I asked you all on Instagram what your problem was and what mattered most about that problem so that we could lazy genius that thing.

There were so many great questions. A lot of good solutions offered in the comments themselves but in this episode I'm going to lazy genius a few of those specific problems from the comments partially so the problem can get a solution but more so to show multiple examples of the process of how to lazy genius something.

There are some fantastic specific problems that I can't wait to answer but before we get to those I want to address two categories of problems I saw in the comments one is problems that are too big which is understandable we we easily feel the weight of big things right big systemic challenges in our homes or our schedules questions about how to keep your house clean.

Or how to limit clutter or how to find time to exercise those are all really relevant questions but they're too big to solve they're too big to solve.

In fact I think about 70% of the problems in the comments were too big and if I responded to all of them the first step would be to make the problem much smaller.

So I want you to pay attention to that in your own life it's not as fun or flashy to make a problem super small and then do the smallest step to help solve it but I will say it until the day I die big problems require big solutions and big solutions do not work.

The smallest of steps for the smallest of problems is the way to go.

You might even think that your question what's the smallest you can make it you're like my question was small but seasonal problems system problems routine problems relational problems transitional problems like new jobs and new schools and stuff like that all of those are going to be too big always always that's why they're overwhelming.

In fact I think that can be a guide for you if the problem is overwhelming when you think about it it's too big small problems are more annoying than overwhelming so take that overwhelming problem and try to find the most granular annoying aspect to it that might be the first problem you can solve as you work your way into a place where the larger problem feels more addressed over time.

Another type of problem that I noticed were problems that are just naturally challenging but there's some kind of expectation that it shouldn't be that somehow there's a way to eliminate the stress of a problem that in reality will be stressful no matter what you do some things are just hard.

So remember that we lazy genius our problems not to eliminate what is hard from them or to make them so seamless we don't even think about them or that we become a problem solving robot unaffected by naturally challenging things some problems are just going to be hard instead you can focus on what matters and try and make the problem a little bit easier based on how you approach it.

I mentioned both of these as a reminder to you when you're trying to figure something out in your own life are you starting too big do you have an unrealistic goal of removing every barrier from the situation those are two helpful questions to helpful categories helpful markers to know if you're going to waste your time trying to solve something that can't be solved in the way that you're trying to.

Okay so that said now let's get into some specific questions now the main process of lazy geniusing most in the situation is with these five steps prioritize or name what matters essential eyes or get rid of what's in the way.

Organize or put everything in its place personalize or feel like yourself and then systemize or stay in the flow these five steps are explained and applied in my book the lazy genius kitchen and they are an excellent way to approach a lot of challenges and they are the right order.

And then also sometimes you don't need those five steps you just need one or two of those steps to find a solution you'll do one and then the next one you're like oh this one isn't is important let's move on to the next one.

Or you need to apply just one lazy principle to actually make more headway than you thought and whatever problem you have so we'll use kind of a combination of those things as we go through these questions okay.

Alright our first question is from Anna Hammond Anna wrote how to lazy genius objects waiting to leave looking at the cabinet by the door I spy number one among my husband wants to take to his office to part of a toy that lives at grandma's three a book I need to get back to a friend for a shirt to return to target five a pie plate the belongs to my mother-in-law six a letter I need to give to my sister what matters most visual clutter.

The sweet spot between out of sight out of mind and if I look at that heat much I will lose my mind.

Okay I don't know many people who do not have objects waiting to leave like it doesn't matter who lives in your house what your job is what your personality is you have objects waiting to leave your place of residence so let's lazy genius this I think there are two aspects to this particular issue.

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