I love lists, planning, Kendra Adachi, and "The Lazy Genius Way"! So while I was very much looking forward to this book, I'm sad to say that I didn't end up loving it. For a book that was supposed to simplify planning, it felt very, very, confusing to me. It was acronyms within acronyms. It reminded me of taking notes in college when each bullet point had a set of bullet points and those bullet points had bullet points, and on and on. Usually when consuming content by The Lazy Genius, I'm left with a clear action plan and steps to take. I unfortunately didn't feel that way after reading this book.

Author Kendra Adachi doesn’t know this but she has been added to my personal wellness team, along with my therapist, primary doctor, and best friends. Her book “The PLAN: Manage Your Time Like a Lazy Genius” has already pulled me out of several spirals over the past several weeks.

Kendra details a female-empowered approach to time management and productivity one that is realistic and accessible. Her approach addresses factors that relate to women’s bodies, like menstrual cycles and hormones, and how that impacts women differently than men. But her book is not only for women, it’s for everyone starting wherever you’re at right this moment and acknowledging the factors that impact your life.

And if you can't handle periods, grow up. It's time to openly talk about periods, women's health, human intricacies, how our bodies work, mention it all.

The PLAN mindset entails the following: Prepare, adjust, and notice are equal sides of a triangle with the POINT being to LIVE. One more time, the main objective of the PLAN mindset is to LIVE and enjoy life. What a novel idea!!!! I write that sarcastically but truly, it is so rare that living be so prominently at the forefront as a main purpose driving our decisions.

The base of this triangle is what matters most in this current season of your life—not necessarily by climate conditions (although could be that too)—but is where you are today.

For example, my current season is “Income hunt in a harsh job market with funds dwindling and depression setting in” season. What matters most in my current season is my mental health as this will impact everything else. If I’m struggling with depression and anxiety then I will not be able to find a job or generate income which is my biggest need right now.

So everything I do is based on monitoring my mental health in order to make gainful efforts toward finding a stable income. Those out there seeking employment, I feel you, we know that it is absolute savagery out there.

It’s been a difficult battle ever since I was laid off earlier this year but Kendra’s PLAN has given me the tools to ease my anxiety and redirect my focus. I have been following the PLAN for two weeks now, specifically utilizing “The Lighten the Load Framework” which helps me visualize, prioritize, shrink it down to smaller actions and decisions, and execute.

In testing out the principles and frameworks, I’ve discovered I am extremely guilty of spending all of my energy on overplanning and creating a new system that I have nothing left for the execution which causes me to internalize as a failure. I scrap it all and start over with a brand-new system. Repeat.

It’s an overplanner's rehab if you will. My name is Tyler and I am an overplanner.

But this isn’t a whole new system. The PLAN is a simple set of principles and frameworks meeting you where you are today, freeing you of the shackles of the current productivity and time management industry we’ve been gobbled up by.

With “The PLAN” I have been able to be more productive with less energy/time spent on planning all while feeling better about myself in the season I’m in.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg and what I was able to extract from the book and put into practice but there is so much more. And you don’t need to do everything all at once—take what you can handle and come back later if you want or need more. I’ve re-read and re-listened to this book several times, taking on only what I can manage and listening intently as Kendra reminds me to be kind to myself.

Last but certainly not least, I love an analogy and Kendra provides my new favorite one: live life as if it’s a painting rather than a puzzle. A puzzle is preset with each piece having a place and a home to form an existing picture but if we’re painting, then we decide how it looks and how it’s created. That’s how I will be living my life moving forward—I’m in charge of how it looks.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Thank you to NetGalley and Convergent Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This isn't just a time management book; it's a cheerleader for people who worry that they can't achieve their goals and dreams. The advice is practical and simply explained, and tasks are broken down to make them manageable. I liked how the author acknowledged that we need to look back before we can look forward, and how we should schedule regular check-in points to take stock.
Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this

I enjoyed this book and will re read it in the future. Kendra’s words offer both kindness and practical principles to help with all that comes at us in life. I raced through it a bit so will certainly come back to this book as a guide and to try new ideas out and just to enjoy the pep talk. As someone who often feels overwhelmed this book was soothing.

I have been a long time fan of Kendra Adachi's work and her Lazy Genius Podcast (5+ years), so I had high expectations and excitement for her newest book, The PLAN. Unfortunately, the book was a bit of a disappointment to me but there are some good takeaways.

First, the good. Kendra's exuberant, cheerful, kind, encouraging big-sister-energy voice comes out strong in this book. It was very easy to read and feel supported and loved. The book had a good blend of Kendra's original thoughts, ideas, and practices so there are many easy takeaways/wins in this book. The emphasis of this book, beyond managing time like a lazy genius is about how women specifically can manage their time, was to pick and choose various time management and organizational strategies work for you, in your current season (of which there are many!) and apply them to your life. I think there was a lot of good intention in this approach. However, this also leads me to the bad part of my review.

There was so much content. So, so much. It was hard to sort through it all and hard to remember it. I think a hard copy of the book, as opposed to an eBook, may have been better - easier to scan through and flip between sections. But for me, reading this book in one go was overwhelming and too much. For many folks who have listened to her podcast and participated in her community over the years, some of this content is recycled from previous podcasts and/or newsletters (or even her first book!). Good marketing strategy of course, but this meant it was not always fresh and new. I also was annoyed at times by all the "let's take down the patriarchy" vibes and allllll the feminist content. I get it. It was too much.

One other related issue was that the book stated (at least once if not more) that the audience, in general, was women. That's great. I am in a similar demographic to Kendra - a white, middle to upper middle class working married mom. Our values and faith align, and from what she's said on her podcast we want similar things in life. Our vocations are different - I work in higher ed and she's in the internet entrepreneurial/influencer space, and she's a bit older, but still... overall, similar demographics. I related to SO MANY of her examples in the book which kept me engaged. I don't see how this book could easily translate to women in other life stages (grandmas, single women, etc.) despite her best intentions. I wish she'd just owned that - it could have made the book better. Alas, just my two cents.

I think this book could be a good fit for some audiences - new followers, people who prefer books over podcasts but still want Kendra's content, people who want a mega-reference guide to Kendra's time management related theories and ideas... but for me, the book was all in all too much. Will I return to it in the future? Probably. She had some good list making strategies and other things I could apply to my life. The problem is though, despite reading this book carefully, I can't remember much of it because there were too many strategies and acronyms and mnemonics. 2.5 stars

Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for this eARC. All opinions are my own.

Everyone needs to read this book! Kendra Adachi can do anything because she has a plan, and so can you!

As a long time lazy genius fan I really loved Kendra’s compassionate approach to managing our time with alllllllll the things in life. It felt like a really thoughtful and kind older sister offering advice and encouragement. Heavy on the encouragement

THE HOOK/APPEAL: A "real" person's plan to help you manage your time.

THE REVIEW: Like many have mentioned, she's writing from the perspective of being the big sister that we all wish we had (as opposed to the myriad of books that are a stuffy professor's perspective. Who wants that??). It made the content accessible and relatable in ways that others in the genre have failed at.

THE RATING: For that reason, solid, 4.5!

Love this book. Contains manageable steps and ideas but also a pep talk that we all need to hear. I have been referencing this book repeatedly since I started reading it.

Kendra Adachi has done it again. If I can't talk her into being on speed dial, I'm grateful she's sharing her ideas in this way. Her writing is accessible and funny and her ideas are brilliant. I love the way her mind works and I'm a fan for life. Thanks Kendra!

I wasn’t familiar with Kendra Adachi before reading this essay of hers, and I found it well-constructed. "The PLAN" is a highly helpful book for readers who truly give it a try. It’s a refreshing guide on womanhood and offers some great advice. I think the language is sometimes a bit over the top, making it complex to fully grasp, and some information was slightly repetitive at times.

Ultimately, what really drives this text is the fact that, at last, this type of book is written by a woman. The ability to be empathetic while also providing valuable information makes "The PLAN" a read worth considering.

Thank you to the publisher for an early release copy of this book. Let me preface this to say I love Adachi's first 2 books - really really loved. I follow her newsletter and listen to her podcast but I didn't love this book. I grabbed a few nuggets which really is all I hope for in self improvement books such as these. If you haven't read Adachi before - pick up The Lazy Genius or The Lazy Genius Kitchen first.

One of my favorite podcasters with a really interesting take on time management that really made me think about my own systems and how I function. Will definitely implement some of these tools!

I know this book is for women, but I do believe that there is something g for men to take from this read.

So let me first say that I love a book about how to plan to get my life in order. Am I that successful in implementing the plans? Probably not. In the past I had been and so I keep trying. This book opened up an idea for why other ‘plan books’ hadn’t worked for me previously and honestly the idea was so simple that I was annoyed at myself for never having considered it, i.e. that the other time management books were not geared specifically for women, but rather for men, and that women may be affected by other factors which made the previous attempts at planning less effective.

Now, while this idea is a good one, I did feel like some parts were a bit too ‘down with the patriarchy’ for me, and so parts of it I felt like it was disjointed from the purpose of the book but that is my opinion, and you may not agree when reading the book.

I did not check into any of the expert opinion, references or findings in the book.

I also want to say that I have not read any previous book or listened to the author’s podcast.

I appreciate when a self-help book’s chapters are clear and you don’t have to read the entire book to access information, i.e. you can skip to a chapter for the information you are seeking. The information is easy to understand, and I found some useful strategies which I have managed to implement and that work well for me so far. Is the information new? Probably not, but I think the draw to these books is that you find one that has strategies you can adopt, and for that, this book was good for me.

The Plan is the first of its kind in what the author is calling compassionate time management and it couldn’t have come at a better time in our society. The amount of care that is taken to encourage kindness to ourselves and our people is a message that has not existed in the productivity space. The best part is that there’s plenty of light heartedness, humor, and Spoiler alert: PLAN is an acronym! A great read for anyone who wants to improve their productivity and humanity at the same time.

I found parts of this book very useful, but parts also felt unnecessary. Maybe they were aiming for a certain page length and had to add extra. In any case, I like Adachi's work and will read her next book for sure. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

First of all I need to say that if you’re buying this book you will want a paper copy. I am usually an ebook or audiobook girl but I knew a couple of chapters in that this would be much like The Lazy Genius Kitchen with references I would want to go back to in it.

Overall I really liked the book and the advice but I didn’t like the part where she went off about periods. It felt like chapters worth of something that could have been said pretty quick with a lot less discomfort. As a 42 yr old I feel like I spend most of my time trying to forget my period not lean into it.

I did still really like the book though, maybe just skip that chapter?

This was EXACTLY the book that I needed to read at this time in my life. The compassionate approach to time management was something that I didn't know my heart longed for as much as it did. Incredibly helpful, uplifting, and empowering!

Kendra does it again! Making things approachable for all! Easy to read and lots of great ideas! Definitely one to add to the Lazy Genius Collection.