Planners, get your highlighters ready, because The Plan: Manage Your Time like a Lazy Genius is a book that's dying to be highlighted. Kendra Adachi regularly speaks and writes about what it means to be a "lazy genius." Her podcast and first two books encourage readers to be "a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't." In The Plan, Adachi applies this approach to time management, offering a refreshing take on productivity culture that is "drenched in humanity and compassion"--a welcome divergence from the "traditional white-male experience" she notes is too often centered in time-management books. To that end, The Plan is organized into three parts: principles (exploring "why before you learn how"), strategies that Adachi promises are "practical, tangible, and without an ounce of bootstrap energy," and pep talks to reference when efforts go awry. Because, as Adachi drives home again and again, time-management efforts will go awry. That's life!
While some of the method and approaches suggested here will be familiar to many, Adachi's framing feels novel. This ultimately makes The Plan a welcome addition to an already crowded genre. Adachi is not urging readers to get more done, to "hack" their days, or to perfect a rigid routine to maximize output. Instead, she is inviting them to embrace a new way of thinking about time and time management. The Plan is sure to spark inspiration not just for the type A planners of the world but also for anyone trying to figure out how to stop drowning under calendar alerts and to-do lists and find presence in the moments that really matter. --Kerry McHugh, freelance writer