The PLAN: Manage Your Time Like a Lazy Genius

I loved this book. I have read some of the other reviews giving this 2 stars and saying they were not the target audience and I completely disagree with those reviews. I am a almost 50 year old woman with one child in college and the other in high school. My evenings are quiet and my at home child requires very little of me. I have a husband that is a full participant in household chores and we have a pretty equal division of labor. I still found this book extremely valuable.

1. I loved the feminist / patriarchal talk. We all know that we live in a patriarchal society but not once have a read a time management book that addresses the elephant in the room. This books gives us a time management book through the FEMALE gaze instead of the MALE gaze. Even other books written by women still look at the process through the male gaze. Also, a bonus is that this was the post election book I needed that I didn't know I needed.

2. This books does lead with kindness. Just because she points out that we have been trying to manage our time based on principles that only really work for one gender doesn't make it unkind. She is giving the women reading this book kindness - telling us we don't have to be perfect, we don't have to do everything, we don't have to hustle to be valuable. We are more that! One of the most important things she says is that we are more than the plan we have and more than our to do list.

3. Yeah for bringing in the menstrual cycle and how that affects the energy you have. I follow a nutritionist that also talks about that and it's sad to say that, as a 49 year old woman, I had never heard that men are on a 24 hour energy cycle and women are on a 28 day energy cycle. I obviously knew about the menstrual cycle but never connected it to how much energy I have at a given time (again, it addresses the elephant in the room that men can't even begin to understand)

4. Some reviews said there are a lot of acronyms and it gets confusing. I disagree. Acronyms are helpful for some to remember key points but if that doesn't help you then throw out the acronym and just use key points. At the end of the book she clearly says to start small and don't try to incorporate everything at once and that the most important thing is getting into a rhythm of preparing, adjusting and noticing. Do this daily at first and then look to expand to weekly, monthly, seasonally. My plan going into this book was to read this slowly and finish right before Christmas so I could take everything I learned and start fresh in January. After I closed the book I have a completely different outlook - I'm going to start small. Every year I do the whole “This year is going to be different” and it lasts two weeks and I feel like a failure. If nothing else this book is a big permission slip that says you are not a failure. Life happens, plans change and learning to pivot is much more important than learning to plan.

5. There are chapters that help you build a better To Do List, help you learn how to plan based on different time frames (day, week, month). Understanding that you don't treat each of these the same is valuable.

6. Some of the other negative reviews are that she doesn't focus enough and tries to make it for everyone. I think one of the biggest lies of all other time management books is that there is one way to manage your time and if you use that system you will succeed. If you don't, it's on you. This book follows the key Lazy Genius Principle which is that how you implement anything is unique to you. And it changes as you change. This book is a framework. We have to do the work of figuring our how it works in our life.

7. This isn't just for a woman who manages her home and/or children. These principles can be used with work as well. Preparing your day, adjusting your day and noticing how that day goes at work is also super helpful. Also, looking at the energy required at home or work in different seasons is vital to creating YOUR Plan. Woman often think that we have to do it all and give 100% at work and at home no matter what. That is not possible and this book highlights that and gives you a framework to adjust how you look at things.

Overall, this is about prioritizing what is most important to you, not what should be most important. In putting this rhythm into practice you will be able to see what is most important while getting a handle on your to do's. This book will not fix everything for you but it gives you a compassionate guide live your days instead of just getting through them.