Work smarter, not harder—a concept as simple and elegant as e = mc². Einstein’s equation changed the world; our foolproof Womenomics formula will change your universe. What they have in common is a new understanding of energy. If you’re going to work less and still achieve, you need to understand where to direct your precious energy resources. Remember: your time and energy are finite commodities; you need to use them to maximum effect.

That’s where our fox comes in. Foxes are precise and cunning, a disposition we applaud. They know instinctively how to sniff out the best opportunities, a skill that allows them to hunt when and how they want, but with minimum effort. They aren’t given to wasting excess energy, but they do know when to put on a sudden spurt to maximize their chances of a kill, or an escape!

This is an overarching and intrinsic aspect of Womenomics: you need to develop ways to get greater returns on the investment of your time.

Or think about it this way: you’re shopping, and you have $300 to spend. Should you fritter it all away, as you roam around, on junky but captivating earrings and necklaces from street vendors, or should you focus on making that really big quality purchase of a knockout dress? That dress will get you more bang than the cheap but entertaining bling. It’s the same with your time. It’s a critical commodity.

The first major practical step to becoming smarter with your time is to rethink the relationship between time and productivity. Kathleen Christensen of the Sloan Foundation notes that the very idea of productivity measured by time on a clock is starting to look antiquated. “For a very long time the notion was that, the longer the hours you work, the more productive you are. And I think that there is an increasing awareness that it’s not necessarily how long you work, but how smart you work. I have certainly seen cases where people have reduced their hours and stayed as productive.”

Kathleen is exactly right in this respect, but even she could go one step further. It’s not just possible to reduce raw hours and maintain (or even increase) your productivity—it’s absolutely necessary. As you work smarter not harder, you’ll see that your whole life will begin to improve. Reduced stress, a greater sense of fulfillment, fewer distractions, and less worry will continue to improve your productivity at work, and your improved results-oriented performance will, in turn, free up yet more time. Over the next three chapters, we’ll show you exactly how to work smarter on the small stuff, the big stuff, and even on a newly negotiated flexible deal.

Chandra Dhandapani, our vice president at the financial giant Capital One, says her smart-time approach has won her enough time to relax with her husband and young son. “It’s set off a positive cycle,” she says. “I feel I’m a better person, and so I’m actually more engaged and productive at work, and then easier to work with!”

Smart time can even alleviate the need for part time. We know that the appeal of part-time work tempts all women, and it may sound like the natural solution to our “work less” quest. There’s a romantic notion of the perfect three-day week, with time at home baking bread or constructing 3-D volcanoes or doing yoga. But remember, that formalized three-day week comes with a formalized three-day salary and three-day benefits. It’s a big cut in your income. And all too often, as we all know, you find yourself doing the same work for less money. It might be right for you—and we have negotiating tips in chapter 7 that will help you should you go this route—but before you storm into your boss’s office demanding fewer hours for less pay, why not try carving out time in your week by working smarter but for the same full-time salary?

This chapter is about how to start down the Womenomics path in easy, accessible ways. There are things you can do today, with no formal arragements, to win yourself more time. And you can change not only the quantity of time you have in your day but also the quality of your time. At home, at work, in the car—we’re going to show you how to save time, to discover new reservoirs of untapped time, and most importantly, how to start living better, right now.

The 80–20 Rule

Keen business managers and analysts alike notice a strange but ultimately unsurprising trend—80 percent of useful output in business comes from about 20 percent of effort input. This rule, which is called the 80–20 Rule or, even more descriptively, the Law of the Vital Few, means that the average employee wastes almost 80 percent of her time in unproductive tasks or, just as likely, in trying to appear productive.

What this means for you is that on the one hand there are tasks that really change the bottom line, and on the other, tasks that basically do very little for you or for your company but that are extremly time-consuming. In all likelihood, you have already developed a built-in efficacy meter that allows you to gauge whether something will have a useful payoff or be a useless energy waster.

The trick, of course, is not just distinguishing between the useful and the useless but actually putting this knowledge to work. And you’ll see throughout the next few chapters what this means in concrete terms, as you make judgments about which meetings, technology, and projects deserve your valuable time. More importantly, you’ll come to see that it’s your duty to yourself and your company to do things that will further your company’s business in meaningful ways and not waste your time jumping through hoops just because the hoops are there.

So get out that pen and paper. It’s list time again. Now we’re tackling to-dos. And the first thing to remember—never ever ever do something simply because it’s randomly placed on the top of a to-do list. Or because it seems the easiest to tackle. Your lists must reflect priorities.

First. Make a list of all of the things you are trying to accomplish in the next few days or weeks. Look at it. Accept that you cannot do everything. If the list has twenty things on it, circle those five that will have the highest impact. Remember to pick things that play to your strengths. If you know you won’t do it well, don’t take it on. And circle the few that are important for your professional satisfaction. Be realistic; there may be a few low-impact but necessary chores that have to stay on the list. If so, squeeze them in among the critical items. But cross the rest off.

Second. Write down your big-picture goal for the month—this is a concrete definition of something important you want to achieve this month, something that goes beyond your day-to-day tasks. Then write down ten things it will take to help you get there. Then pretend somebody is pointing a gun at you and you have to pick the top two actions. Focus on those two and those two alone.

Third. Write down your big-picture goal for the year. (This one is good for those of us who get lost in the trees.) And then break it down by month, by week, even by day. If your goal, for example, is to have ten new clients by the end of the year, break it down, each time listing the actions you can take to get there. Then simply make sure you are spending substantial time on those actions each month, each week, each day.

As you do this, remember that as overwhelming as it might seem, you have to think BIG as you make these priority lists. Remember to get out of the weeds. Otherwise, you’ll be left juggling what other people hand to you, or tackling things on your list that seem “easy.” While you might feel as if you are getting things done, in reality these small tasks simply eat up all of your time and potentially sabotage your career.

Linda Brooks, our New York lawyer, observes this tendency in women every day:

“I see a lot of women being what we call ‘detail-oriented’ and making sure that all the words on the paper are right, when a guy of similar seniority will not focus so much on the words but sit around thinking about bigger issues in a deal and trying to think outside the box, and doing all of that creative stuff. Guys step up to it much earlier and sometimes, frankly, too soon, and you have to smack them down and say ‘Get the f***ing papers right, and then we can start talking about how to solve Exxon’s balance sheet problem,’” she laughs. “It’s funny, you’ll see a guy who has been a lawyer for exactly three days really stepping up. And then you will see a woman who’s been doing this for three years, and she’s redoing the junior associate’s paperwork because he didn’t get it right. It happens all the time, it’s so frustrating.”

Robin Ehlers from General Mills thinks working according to smart priorities allows her a full-time job and plenty of freedom and time with her family

“Occasionally,” she says, “I see that other people are working more ‘frantically’ than I am, but frankly, I think I just work smarter. I don’t spend time on phone calls worrying about office politics, I don’t waste time on meetings or hanging out at the office. I’m extremely bottom-line focused, and I think the company appreciates that. I really focus on the things that have to get done to move the business forward—and I don’t really worry about a lot of the stuff that isn’t value added.”

Time-Trap Busters

Even once you’ve followed our advice and set your own priorities clearly, every day at the office, or even every day working at home, is a time-trap minefield. We all waste far too much time. So here are strategies that will keep you in full work-smarter mode. You might get the impression that we are awfully organized, with all this talk of lists and schedules and efficiency. Hardly. In fact we both naturally rebel against being scheduled or organized much at all. But we’ve come to realize that knowing how our day might run more effectively is critical to getting what we all want—more time at home.

1. Assume control of your schedule. This is an essential philosophical change. On every front and in every instance, you must take charge. If you leave it to other people to schedule meetings, phone calls, and work assignments, the chances are you’ll end up working at times that suit them and not you. If you want to work on your schedule, take control of your timetable. And by the way, you have to take control of yourself as well. It’s not just others mucking up your efficiency. Limit checking your e-mail and returning phone message to a few times a day. Schedule yourself big “think time” to get through the most important tasks.

2. Be the first to offer a deadline for work. As often as possible (and it probably is a lot more often than you think) you should dictate the timetable for an assignment deadline. Tell your boss early on when you will have your work completed. This lets you choose the schedule that will work best for you. But be realistic and don’t promise the moon when you can’t deliver it.

3. Be thorough—check out projects as if you are buying a used car:

• Don’t be rushed into giving a timeline immediately. It is totally acceptable to reply by saying something like: “I’ll look this project over and get back to you in the morning with a firm deadline.”
• Evaluate how long the work will take: how many hours a day can you realistically give it?
• Do you have any other commitments that might create a conflict?
• How much extra time should you schedule as “budget padding” to deal with a mishap, lost document, sick team member, or other inevitable project hiccup?

4. Become an opportunistic workaholic. Whenever you see a window of opportunity—the kids are away, you have to travel anyway, your partner or parents don’t need your help—go postal on work! Think of it as a chance to use foxlike cunning. These are golden opportunities to relive your old workaholic days but at very little cost.

“Exactly,” agrees Robin Ehlers. “And you know what else I do? When I travel for work I take my office with me and I work the whole time I’m gone. I’ll stay up really late, and I enjoy it. I feel like I’m caught up for the week, and then I can come back and have freedom.”

5. Put limits on your schedule. Let people know when you’ll be in the office, and be realistic and crisply assertive about it. If you’ve been traveling and want a few hours home in the morning the day after you get back, tell people, “I’ll be in at midday.” You need the time with family, and the world won’t end because you are in a few hours late.

And start to make it plain to others in the office that when you are there, you are busy. Announce your “think time.” Let everyone know when you’ll be available to return calls or e-mails. You might even broadcast a rule that unless it’s urgent, you’ll be answering e-mails in the mornings and late evenings only. Such restrictions will simply make you seem organized and reinforce the message that your time is important.

Avoid the temptation to be the Hermione Granger–style star pupil and be constantly available. All too often we make promises in advance, reveling in the glow of our bosses’ appreciation, and then wish, when the time comes, that we hadn’t offered to be there for that early morning/late evening/weekend stint. And then we’re not good employees.

 

CLAIRE I used to avoid telling people when I’d be out of the office, even though my absence was sanctioned. I thought somehow it would draw attention to the fact I was not there. But I’ve come to realize it’s much better for the people I work with to know my plans for the day, whether they want to be grumpy about them or not! I don’t always say “I’ll be sitting home in my sweats at the computer, then picking up my daughter after school, and then logging back in.” They don’t need that sort of detail. But I do now let people know “I won’t be in tomorrow, I’ll be on my cell phone, but I can have that script to you by 2 P.M.” Or “I’m working from home—let me know if anything comes up, I’ll be on my BlackBerry. This is the only time I can’t be reached.” It avoids tension and the sorts of situations where frustrated coworkers might say, “We had no idea where she was!”

 

6. Mind your meetings. What is it about these gatherings of office peers that suddenly give people the license to feel they can blather on endlessly and waste everybody’s day? We’re sure you’ve all sat through them. Those often totally unproductive meetings in an airless, windowless conference room where some office blowhard feels they can drone on and keep us stuck in the building when we’re longing to get out the door.

Meetings are big time wasters. Here are a few tips for tweaking them.

Ask Yourself: Is It Necessary?

First and foremost, if it’s not essential, don’t go. Most of the time, you’ll find, meetings will fall into that 80 percent category. They are useless. It’s amazing how many meetings you can miss without it making any difference to how you do your job. It’s equally amazing how quickly people get used to you NOT attending meetings and soon assume you won’t.

 

KATTY Every day we have a 10 A.M. and a 3 P.M. editorial meeting. When I took up my current job, my editor said it would be great if I could come along to them a few times a week. I said I’d probably try to call in. I’m afraid I lied. I’ve never attended any of those meetings either in person or by phone. And it really doesn’t affect how I do my job. In fact my time is better spent reading reports and talking to contacts. And here’s the real bonus: not going saves me at least an hour every day. If I have something to discuss that affects my reporting, I call or e-mail the editor directly. That takes five minutes instead of fifty.

 

CLAIRE Ditto. We have hours of meetings and conferences at Good Morning America. Over time, I’ve realized it’s more efficient for me, in my role as a reporter, not to participate all of the time. I now jump in when I’ve got something important I’m working on; otherwise, I get a synopsis at the end and use that extra time to actually report stories or do research or write.

Set and Control the Schedule

Sometimes you do just have to get people together in one place. When that is the case, try to take control of the meeting schedule. You be the one to announce the start time—and the stop time. If it’s in a conference room that needs booking, you make the reservation and then keep the time short and meeting focused. Clarify goals with a written list in advance, to keep things on track. Even if you aren’t in charge, jump in if you need to help keep things moving. “That’s interesting—and what about our next question?” It will make you look smart and engaged, and serve your purpose.

Suggest a Conference Call Instead

For every busy woman, the conference call is a thing of beauty. Instead of allowing rogue minutes to escape as you travel to work, get to the meeting room, go through the chitchat rigma-role, and hang around for the postmeeting meeting, you can simply dial in from wherever you are and get going. Best of all is that you don’t have to be present to be present: have a bite to eat, browse a document, or simply admire the view—and no one’s the wiser. You may be able to talk from home so you don’t have to waste time getting “office ready” (you know—hair, makeup, pressed jacket—all time-consuming stuff).

Over at Marriott the executive vice president of human resources is David Rodriguez. David has seen his company’s business change dramatically. Unfortunately not all of his managers, the older ones in particular, are changing at the same warp speed. They cling to the 1980s way of doing business—meetings in meeting rooms, people sitting around a shiny conference table, minions to watch over. But in today’s world that means they are missing an important skill.

“In the United States our lodging business is segmented into three large divisions: West, Central, East. Those regional teams are somewhere between twelve to fifteen people, and they rarely see one another. They’re on teleconferences and constantly traveling,” David explains. “If we had a senior manager who was uncomfortable with that, to me that would tell me he or she is not suitable to lead one of those teams, because you know some people have that attitude of ‘I want all my staff surrounding me physically.’ But that wouldn’t meet the actual needs of the business. Because we need our people distributed.”

So flexibility—the ability to teleconference and build and maintain relationships with virtual not-in-person communication—is, for David Rodriguez, a positive asset. This is good news for anyone wanting to detach themselves from their desk. Your ability to be flexible, to function away from the office, is a business asset, and a time-saving gift.

The Two Faces of Technology

Technology truly is the leading enabler of today’s increasingly flexible lifestyle. We professional women all know that without it, any flexibility we have would be almost impossible.

Conference calling from home means you don’t have to be in the office at the crack of dawn to speak to London or stay there late at night to speak to LA. You can send e-mails as you wait in the carpool line. Your laptop allows you to have as much direct access to your work files as if you were sitting at your desk.

Kimberly Archer discovered the ultimate value of the Webcam when her third pregnancy threw her into enforced bed rest. At twenty-seven weeks’ gestation, Kimberly, pregnant with twins, found she was at risk of premature labor. Her doctors sent her to bed, but Kimberly, who works for a professional recruitment firm, was determined to carry on her job. Technology was her savior. She knew she could e-mail, call, conference call, and tap into company files all from her laptop—but, stuck in her bed, she also discovered she could “meet” prospective candidates and employers just by dressing from the waist up and firing up her Webcam. They didn’t see the crumbs and crumpled sheets—they just saw a professional woman in a smart jacket.

For Jennifer Dickey, the mechanical engineer in Detroit, technology allows precious time at home when there’s an unexpected family call. “I can log on to my work computer from my home computer and it’s just as if I was at work. The desktop looks the same, I have the same access to the same programs that I would have in the office. It helps greatly. For example, my daughter, who’s three years old, is not one of those children who is excited about going to school every day. She still has rough days. So today I was an hour late to work. But I can make up that time one night this week by logging on to the computer after the kids have gone to bed and getting an hour’s worth of work done then.”

But these miraculous flexibility-enhancing gadgets can also sneak in and steal time away from us. So much of this techy stuff is self-service—and if you’re like us, you can wind up in the middle of extremely frustrating evenings, trying to figure out how to get critical files off of a server. These gizmos need proper discipline or else they invade our personal lives with a vengeance.

“My son Jasper called my BlackBerry my new best friend once. That’s when I realized I was really in trouble,” Sarah Slusser confesses.

“I hear that checking your e-mails at night is an addiction. I know it was for me. If I had to get up at 3 A.M. to get a glass of water, I’d check my BlackBerry,” Chandra at Capital One admits.

“On my day off I only check my BlackBerry four times a day,” Stephanie at Marriott proclaims proudly—until she thinks for a minute and realizes she’s talking about her day off!

Sound uncomfortably familiar? Ah, that shiny little handheld box—five inches long, half an inch thick. It is both the keeper and taker of our freedom. Our perfect personal assistant; our incessant, portable, professional conscience.

 

KATTY I was years behind on the BlackBerry curve. I watched the “crackberry” addicts tapping over dinner and was appalled. I couldn’t understand what could possibly be so urgent that they had to interrupt their salad to press send. I was pretty smug about my low-tech status and my self-imposed discipline. But sometime during the 2008 campaign the BBC decided enough was enough and they needed to be able to contact me while I was on the road. One Monday morning my producer handed me a BlackBerry. It sat in its packet for a week. But when I finally got round to using it I really was like an addict trying meth for the first time. I couldn’t put it down. I checked my e-mails every ten minutes and soon was checking them evenings and weekends as well. I didn’t “need” to for work, but somehow the fact that they were there, accessible in my purse, made me feel I had to. Soon my work was eating into my free time in a way it hadn’t pre-BlackBerry.

 

CLAIRE My BlackBerry is the key to being out of the office and with my kids when I need to be. I adore it. But between the hours of five and eight in the evening I’ve come to loathe it. I’ve noticed that I have a hard time putting it down during that critical dinner/bedtime hour, and that somehow when I get an e-mail from work—and they come fast and furious—I feel I need to respond instantly. Beyond that, those little messages almost act as tension transmitters. As I start to see what someone is asking me to do, my shoulders hunch, my mind gets into work-mode, and I’m suddenly ten times grumpier with my kids. Lately I’ve been simply putting it aside until after everyone is tucked into bed—and you can’t imagine how much more relaxed I feel!

 

The perils of e-mail addiction are enormous. It can easily become a time abyss that kills your personal productivity, distracts you from your work, and even hampers creativity. You’re not imagining this—there’s research to prove it.

Consider the findings from the following three studies:

But once you recognize that it’s you who should control your technology rather than the other way around, the process of asserting yourself can be remarkably easy and the benefits amazingly broad. When you pull the plug on your PDAs, the results are instant. You will immediately gain more time. This is just as critical at the office by the way. You’ll find you can focus on the big picture again. Most of the time spent on e-mails should be relegated to the unnecessary 80 percent.

And controlling your use of PDAs off the job will help you create a healthy separation from your workplace. Physically and psychologically, you will be more relaxed and able to live in the present. You will focus better—on your family, on your kids. Even your friends will appreciate it. All those real people in your life will no longer be competing for attention with your unreal best friend, your BlackBerry. At the risk of sounding a bit New Age about this, we think you will be a better wife/daughter/mom/friend because you won’t be distracted.

So, here are our simple ways to cut the addiction:

1. Turn off incoming e-mail alerts on your PDA and your computer’s e-mail client. Don’t think about doing this or consider doing this or ponder doing it—just do it. You’ll find that not having a neurotic “ping” every few minutes will keep you from wasting time checking an e-mail whenever it shows up.
2. Do the 11/4 experiment. Studies have found that people are more productive, less stressed, and generally happier if they limit e-mail checking to twice a day—once at 11 A.M. and once at 4 P.M. You’re probably thinking “Sounds great, but it’ll never work for me.” Try this once, for one day, and then get back to us on that (preferably not by e-mail).
3. If you’re nervous that people will wonder where you are or what’s going on, make the technology work for you by writing an autoresponder to the effect of: “Hi. I got your e-mail and will respond to you shortly during my e-mail checking hours which are 11 A.M. and 4 P.M.”
4. Separate your technology. Keep your cell phone and your mobile e-mail device separate. Then you can take breaks, leave your PDA and e-mails behind but still be able to call friends and family.
5. Leave the BlackBerry behind. Going out for dinner, a date, a movie? Remind yourself you can check it when you get back. Even an important meeting with a client or a brainstorming session will benefit from your full attention.
6. If you can’t trust yourself not to check your PDA when it’s in your purse or next to your bed, put it somewhere else. Literally leave that PDA at the other end of the house, move it up a flight of stairs. During the time it takes you to walk over and get it you have time to consider—why am I checking this? Do I really need to? The physical distance can help you unplug.
7. Set clear technology limits. Don’t check your e-mails after 7 P.M. Don’t check them during mealtimes. Don’t check them more than once a day on weekends. Once you’ve decided you’re not checking e-mails or taking work calls, simply turn off the phone, BlackBerry, or computer.

Changes on the Home Front

If you are going to work and have a family and have a life, then something has to give in every area of your existence, not just at work. It doesn’t make sense to cut back your work to 60 percent and still try to manage your home life at 100 percent. The whole point of Womenomics is to get everything integrated, in balance, to be free not just from the tyranny of professional perfection but from the tyranny of domestic perfection as well.

Again, this book is not a parenting guide; if you’re like us you’ve got too many of those already. But there are certain areas of your home life where you can apply the rules of Womenomics in order to win more time and freedom. Much of the mental and practical legwork that goes into redefining success at work needs to happen here too.

First off, you do not need to be supermom to be a super mom.

 

KATTY I’m afraid I never go to PTA meetings. I confess I don’t always make back-to-school night. I’m famous for forgetting half days and I have never been a room parent. The only Halloween costumes I have ever made by hand were so embarrassingly bad my kids refused to wear them. But I do make it a priority to have time at home so that I can be with my children when they need me. I’m not great at school events but I do make as much time as I can for homework, chatting about their days, negotiating tricky friendships and, recently, dispensing unwanted, and probably rather hopeless, advice on dating.

 

CLAIRE I’ve spent two years in a row devoting long December evenings and generating bloody fingers to prove to my son (or myself, or somebody) that I could sew our Christmas stockings. When Hugo noted this year, as he struggled to pull his goodies from Santa out of my bizarre creation with an impossibly narrow top, that the shape might be a “little off,” I realized I should stick to my strengths. Sewing? Maybe not so much. Build a cardboard house—I’m there. I’ve made a conscious effort to participate in the school activities that will mean something to my son and daughter. A chance to come read to a class, or go on a field trip, I adore that, and they get a kick out of it. But running a parent group or an auction or helping in the library—I have to rule those out—without guilt.

 

Whether it’s in your social life, your kid’s life, your extracurricular life, or any other bit of your life, set limits. We are big advocates of free time—literally lay-about time. Time with nothing scheduled. If you manage to tone down your work life only to clog up the time you gained with other things, you’ve missed the point. A few thoughts on managing the home front:

Our dos…

• Do schedule time just to hang out at weekends. Try to get through half a day without attending an organized activity. Remember that in a busy, fast-paced family, doing nothing is actually doing something. Give it a try and watch as the family does something rare and strange—relax.
• Do feel free to cancel evening engagements. It’s fine to say, “I’m sorry I can’t make it after all.”
• Do feel free to say “I have ‘plans,’” when plans are a movie with the kids or a family spaghetti dinner. We mentioned this in chapter 4, and it’s critical. Not only are those the best sorts of “plans,” but your family also deserves a firm commitment.
• Do be there for the big things at school—the graduations, the holiday play, the parent-teacher conferences—but don’t beat yourself up about missing the others.
• Do delegate family events—your husband can do parent-teacher by himself if you can’t make it. Dads often benefit from Mom not being there.

And our don’ts…

• Don’t try to see too many friends on weekends—you’ll end up not concentrating on the ones you do see.
• Don’t sign your kids up for more activities than all of you can comfortably handle—it’s one more schedule to organize, and you and your spouse will spend your weekends playing chauffeur, separately.
• Don’t let your job bleed into your free time because you’ve scheduled too many pseudosocial events. Whether it’s benefits, office drinks, fund-raisers, or book parties, be very strict about how you use your time.

Vacations—Take Them

438 million. No, that’s not the number of stars in the universe or sand dunes in the Sahara. 438 million is the estimated number of vacation days Americans failed to take in 2007. We were speechless, horrified, depressed just to learn it. How hard do we have to beg—TAKE A HOLIDAY!

Every year the travel gurus at Expedia.com conduct a survey on the benefits of vacation time (and yes, we get it, they have a dog in this fight—but even so, their findings are pretty compelling). Expedia cites both a peculiarly American puritanical work ethic—the fear of being seen as slackers—and the more prosaic tendency to horde vacation days for an unexpected emergency, as the main reasons behind this terrifying inability to take time off.

You get vacation for a reason. You need it. Take it. All of it. Then, if at all possible, take more. We don’t need Expedia to tell us workers perform better if they’ve had a rest.

As you can see, we have pretty strong views on vacation. Everybody knows that Americans take a lot less vacation every year than the rest of the industrialized world, but did you know how much less?

Americans work two weeks longer than the work-till-you-drop Japanese and several weeks longer than most Europeans, where employees sometimes receive fifteen weeks of paid holiday per year. The United States is one of the very few industrialized nations where the government doesn’t mandate any paid vacation days at all. And only Mexicans receive less paid vacation time than Americans—a pathetic six days a year. So just in case you were feeling guilty about booking your vacation time, don’t. You probably aren’t taking enough anyway.

You really do need it to recharge those flagging batteries. If it helps, see it like this: you are a more effective employee if you take your holiday, and since you get so little of it to start with, you better take it all to maximize your productivity when you are at work. But the reality is that in addition to working better, you will also think better and feel better. You will be a better mom, a better wife, and a better daughter and friend. And you will have the mental energy to really focus on something profound like Womenomics.

 

KATTY A few years ago as I was set to go visit my family in Europe, an American colleague gasped: “You’re really going for four weeks—wow, you Europeans take so much time off!” She’s right, we are very lucky compared to most Americans. We can still, just, get away with taking month-long vacations. My colleague hadn’t had more than a week’s holiday in years—could never remember taking two weeks, let alone four. Suddenly, I felt like a slacker. My God—what would she make of my four-day workweek, my mental thirty-hour clock or my determination to be at home on the weekends? So I found myself slipping into the classic career machismo of pretending I was never off. Then it dawned on me—what I had done—which was basically achieve the same career status as that colleague but with far more time at home—was actually pretty impressive. I had managed professional satisfaction and perfectly respectable seniority without being wedded to my job. Surely—in today’s crazy work-obsessed world—that was quite an accomplishment. It suggested that I had efficiently managed my time, performed well on the job, and knew my priorities, even though they went against the work-addicted norm. I never hide my holidays anymore, and in fact I get a certain pleasure from shocking people and telling them I’m off—yes, for a month.

 

We don’t really understand why anyone needs help taking vacation time; neither of us ever seems to have enough. Whatever the reason, and we suspect some of it is that old office machismo we want you to get over right now, it is clear that some people never manage to use up their allotted days. So to make sure you don’t sail into December with two weeks of unused leave in your pocket, here are a few tips on how to chill like a European.

• Plan your vacation early. We usually plan our next vacation the day after we return from vacation. If nothing else, it boosts morale!
• Put your vacation time in the office schedule months, not weeks, in advance. That way you’re more likely to get the dates you want and everyone has plenty of warning time.
• If you’re going away book your flights early; they cost less, and once you’ve paid for them you are less tempted to cancel the holiday.
• If you’re not going away don’t be tempted to offer to go into the office if they need you. This is still your vacation time, and even though you are at home you need to relax as much as possible. Remember those batteries!
• If you are staying home on holiday, unplug from technology as much as you would at the beach. If you have to check your e-mail account, leave the work ones unread. Turn off your cell phone. Cancel the newspapers. Take day trips to the countryside, where you’ll be less tempted to waste time in front of the computer.
• Try taking a big chunk of time at once; if you usually take only one week, book two together. If you’ve already progressed to two, try three. You will be amazed at the difference. The more time you take at once, the more you really relax.
• Use a downturn to win more vacation time. If your company wants to reward you but can’t give you a bonus, pay raise, or promotion because of falling profits, why not suggest an extra week’s vacation as an alternative?

The time you can find by mining the concepts in this chapter, by herding those extra minutes and hours and days, will astound you. It’s unclaimed and freely available—yours for the taking with a few smarter, not harder, tweaks to your system. And there’s even more to reap, as you’ll see in chapter 6, as you employ Womenomics wisdom toward some key strategic and psychological shifts that will put you firmly in control of your work life.

 

news you can use

1. Work smarter, and wield the 80–20 yardstick. Put out if it pays off.
2. Set meetings, deadlines, schedules early—and on your terms.
3. Exploit—but tame—your technology.
4. Take—and relish—all of your time off.