When Your People Don’t Follow the Plan

The Lazy Genius Podcast

Host Kendra Adachi addresses the common frustration of being the primary planner in a household when family members consistently fail to follow established systems

Key takeaways

• Kendra Adachi shares her personal marriage dynamic with husband Kaz regarding different paces for completing chores like cleaning the kitchen after dinner
• References parenting expert Destiny Ann's empowering phrase 'what's your plan?' to shift nagging into collaborative problem-solving with kids

Main topics

• Home management & routine implementation
• Marital communication & expectation alignment

Notable quotes

"You cannot begin with someone else's behavior because you can't change someone else's behavior."

Conclusion

Listeners gain actionable communication frameworks and mindset shifts

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Welcome to the Lazy Genius Podcast, where we all get to be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Every Monday, you'll learn to compassionately manage your time, wisely solve problems, and kindly live in your season. I'm your host, Kendra Adachi, and I am so glad you are here. Today is episode 489, When Your People Don't Follow the Plan. If you're listening to a time management self-help podcast like this one, You're probably like the captain of your home. You know, you're the showrunner, the juggler, the one who keeps things in a flow. You also probably care about that the most. I've spoken about that in a newsletter before, how it can be really hard to be the one who cares. It's a gift and also kind of annoying because you only have so many hours in a day and so much emotional tolerance of like holding the load of making home and life easier and better for everyone. Even creating a better division of labor between you and your spouse or helping your kids not just do stuff, but notice and do the phrase that Sam Kelly has taught us is still your initial. effort. You're the one reading the books and listening to the podcasts and reading sub stacks and trying to find ways to make life work better. Eventually those efforts will hopefully pay off and you'll experience a tangible shift where you're not the only one who participates in the home, but ultimately so much of the vision of how your home works, feels and flows is yours to steward. This isn't just a gendered thing either. I personally know several men who fill this role in their own homes and marriages who are married to women. My point is, if you're the one listening to this podcast, you're also probably the one who desires a functioning home and you're willing to make changes to make that happen. You're the one with the ideas and that is wonderful, but it's also tiring, right? So what happens is that when you are the person who shows a lot of effort and care, and you desire to bring new ideas into your home, things like systems and routines and dirty dishes zones and permission to repeat meals and different ways to do laundry, you want the person or people that you share life with to be on board. Which is why I get so many questions and have for years about how to get your partner to be a lazy genius. That's real. It's genuinely hard when your people, especially the adult people, don't get on board or follow the plan. Now, don't get feisty with me on this one, but if you feel like your home would work better if your spouse or kids would just get on board, this episode is for you. Not because I'm going to teach you how to get them on board, but because that's not actually where to begin. You cannot begin with someone else's behavior because you can't change someone else's behavior. You'll run yourself into the ground trying and resentment will always be around for both you and probably your people. I don't want to spend the next half hour putting your people on blast for not following the new rule to put shoes in the closet rather than by the door. I don't want to talk about how to change their behavior, mostly because that is not the answer. What I want us to do instead is talk about how people like you and me, the ones who do the majority of the caring and the show running, how we can respond both internally and externally when our people don't follow the plan. How can we encourage our spouses to take part in our efforts without belittling them? How can we empower our kids to be part of life at home without being taskmasters? How can we stay kind and content at home and in our marriages and relationships, even when the circumstances don't go the way that we intended? How can we approach what methods we use and how often we even make these plans that our people need to follow in the first place? Let's focus on what we can control, our own behaviors and mindset. We're not framing this as how to create a good partner, but how to be one. Not how to create good kids, but how to be a good parent. I believe in my bones that when we focus on our own stuff, on our perspective, our heart posture and behaviors, rather than on the behaviors of our people, the tangible practical results that we're hoping for anyway, they will come more easily. The culture of your home, it does not come from systems. It comes from people. It comes from you. Start with yourself. And I think the end results will be what you're hoping for, which is ultimately a warm, loving, reliable home that flows and works well for everybody most of the time. So to that end, I have some principles. for us to all hang on to when we enter a situation where the people did not follow the plan. Your husband comes home from work and plops all his stuff on the kitchen table instead of putting it away like you've asked him to many times. Your daughter leaves toothpaste in the sink. Again, your mom who just moved in has put the coffee somewhere you can't find and now you can't make your coffee. The chore chart lies ignored on the fridge. The homework routine requires daily reminders still. The shoes are on the floor instead of in the closet. The kitchen is still messy from dinner even after you asked the family to clean it up while you went for a walk. Whatever the scene, you're in the moment of an unfollowed plan. Assuming you want a home and relationships that are kind. warm and loving instead of rigid and stressful, here are some things to remember. Number one, assume the best. This is a pretty standard approach to relationships. We hear it all the time. Not everyone loves it though. Not everyone loves a pie to my this because not everyone means the best. But when you're talking about home systems and new ideas and unfollowed plans with the people you will live with, I don't think it's ever a bad idea to begin by assuming the best. It's a foundation that makes you softer and kinder. Because even if the person does not mean the best or was actively being a little doo-doo head because they're mad at you about something, it still does not hurt things to begin by assuming good intent. It sets a kinder stage. This is definitely like a hard one for me to learn and I'm still learning it. My default is to judge. And if I'm irritated because someone did not follow the plan that I laid out, I can swing pretty far into judgment, judging not only their effort, but their intent. Like many times early in our marriage, Kaz would say he was going to do something like, you know, he's going to clean the kitchen or fold some laundry and he wouldn't do it as quickly as I expected him to. Or I would share something important with him about how I needed him to handle something and he would forget. Or he just didn't get the importance of what I said and didn't realize what it meant to me. In early on. when those types of things happened, I assumed not the best, but the actual worst. I assumed he was super mad at me or that he didn't respect me at all, or that he was actively ignoring me, or he's taking advantage of all that I was doing around the house. And, you know, he knew I would come back around and do the chore anyway. Like Speaker 2 (7:42) none of those things Speaker 1 (7:44) were true at all. I mean, like maybe once or twice. He might have been a little, you know, a little doo-doo head because he's human, just like we all are. And we can all act out when we're upset. But like the vast, the vastest, a vast majority of the time, my assumptions were dead wrong. He was just moving at a different pace than I would. That's it. That's still true now of us. Kaz moves at a different pace than I do. I'm a clean up the kitchen right after dinner person. Kaz does it in fits and starts over several hours. I now assume the best. In fact, I know the truth. I know that we're just different in how we operate. He likes a break. He gets distracted. He likes a long runway. All of those things are great. And they're just as great as me wanting to get it done quickly so that I can go sit down and call it done. It doesn't mean that he's like got it in for me or doesn't appreciate me or whatever. The more you assume the best, the more you can see it. The more you assume it, the more you see it. With kids, partners, with anyone who does not follow the plan, assume the best. Begin there. Number two, stick to the facts. If you're about to talk to your husband about the stuff he left on the table or your daughter about the toothpaste she left in the sink, stick to the facts. You can do that by avoiding extreme language, words like never and always. So avoid reactions like, Annie, you never clean the toothpaste up out of the sink. Or, babe, you always leave your stuff on the table when you get home. First of all, neither of those statements are facts. Annie does sometimes clean up the toothpaste and Kaz does sometimes put his stuff away when he gets home. I'm just frustrated and using extreme language to vent, which is not helpful. And it doesn't make either of them more interested in doing something helpful. It just makes them feel ashamed or annoyed. stick to the facts by avoiding extreme language, like never and always. Another way you can stick to the facts is to like suck the emotion out of it. Let's say it's late and Sam, my oldest, still has not taken out the trash, which I asked him to do a while ago. I could respond with, uh, Sam, dude, the trash is still here. Go take it out, man. There's emotion in that, which adds drama and unnecessary conflict to a situation that does not really need it. I don't need to get on them like that. Instead, I can suck the emotion out of it and stick to the facts. Hey, Sam, looks like you didn't take the trash out yet. What's your plan for that? I heard the phrase, what's your plan years ago from Destiny Ann, a parenting expert I love on Instagram. And it was like, it is the most helpful little tool. Hey Speaker 2 (10:36) man, Speaker 1 (10:36) what's your plan? What's your plan for that? Trash is still here. What's your plan? Stick to the facts. People forget things. It's okay. And asking what's your plan empowers them to find the solution. Because you don't have to be the one to do that. So avoid extreme language, avoid overly emotional pleas, avoid subtext and shame. Just stick to the facts when your people don't follow the plan. You stay calm and it's much easier to eventually get your people on board