If you only read one happiness book, let this be the one. Written by a serious psychological researcher, “The How of Happiness” eschews the usual laundry list of quick fixes and instead offers a unified theory of sustainable happiness, backed by empirical evidence and sound reasoning.
Beyond the research, Lyubomirsky offers important reassurance that working to increase one’s happiness is a vital, momentous endeavor. Happiness, as she defines it, is no shallow pursuit. Rather, it’s the intentional construction of “the experience of joy, contentment or positive well-being, combined with a sense that one’s life is good, meaningful and worthwhile.” And its benefits are many. Happy people are more energetic, sociable, charitable and healthy. They live longer, work smarter and lead better.
We should scarcely need to be reminded of joy’s virtues when hopelessness and despondency are so prevalent in our society. Major depression is the leading cause of disability for 15- to 44-year-olds in this country, according to the CDC. And many more people who aren’t clinically depressed fall short of experiencing the happiness in life that’s available to them, hurt by unrealistic personal expectations, weighty feelings of self-blame and diminished social support.
Openly advocating for happiness–our own and others’–is important work. And Lyubormirsky compiles extensive research to show that increasing feelings of well-being is within our grasp. Intentional daily activity–happiness work, if you will–can make a difference. “If we observe genuinely happy people, we shall find that they do not just sit around being contented,” she writes. “They make things happen. They pursue new understandings, seek new achievements, and control their thoughts and feelings.”
A Customized Approach
The book’s conscientious scientific perspective and straightforward advice can feel a bit too tidy and clinical in places, but what it lacks in emotional power and messy personal narrative, it makes up for in practicality and effectiveness. It offers powerful assessment tools: happiness scale, person-activity fit diagnostics and happiness questionnaire. Together, they help readers assess their current happiness level and fashion individualized happiness programs. Thus equipped, committed glee seekers can animate the science and create their own personal stories of joyful living.
This customization is key. While most self-help books throw out a slew of one-size-fits-all suggestions, Lyubomirsky cites research revealing that individuals benefit from some strategies more than others based on their own unique needs, interests, values, resources and inclinations. Moreover, the book includes a self-diagnostic test that systematically determines which of 12 “happiness activities” would be most valuable for the reader.
Fit is key: “…if there’s any ‘secret’ to becoming happier, the secret is in establishing which happiness strategies suit you best,” she writes. “One of the chief reasons that many of us fail in our efforts to become happier is unfortunate choosing, picking a strategy or approach that is either inherently fruitless (like pursuing wealth, approval, or beauty…) or not well suited to us.”
Circumstance changes don’t boost happiness long term because humans adapt to the improvements so quickly, she explains. The raise, the bigger house, the new car quickly become a new normal and no longer boost happiness. Moreover, such changes can’t create sustained happiness for many people because they are impractical — impossible often — to obtain in the first place. “Does everyone have the money, resources, or time to change her living situation, her job, her spouse, her physical appearance?” she asks.
Click to Tweet: “…if there’s any ‘secret’ to becoming happier, the secret is in establishing which happiness strategies suit you best.”
Takeaways
I loved the person-activity fit diagnostic because it helped me break out of the shoulds and ought-tos to discern what’s actually likely to help me increase happiness. Happiness, I learned, is (like everything else in life) built on selectivity. As Arthur Ashe wrote, “Don’t try to do everything. Choose carefully, and then give your all to what you choose.” In essence, the results gave me permission to do more of what I love–getting into a state of flow through engaging activities like reading and writing–and less of activities that don’t come as naturally to me. Choosing the wrong “happiness activity” or implementing the right one the wrong way can doom the whole enterprise.
“The How of Happiness” offers 12 of these happiness activities, none of which is earth shattering on its surface. But the book stands out for its systematic process to select which will work for you, explanation of why they work and nitty gritty descriptions of exactly how (and how often) to implement the practices. For example, she explains that expressing gratitude boosts happiness by promoting the savoring of positive life experiences, building self-worth and self-esteem, helping people cope with stress, encouraging moral behavior, building social bonds and more. Then she offers several ideas for practicing gratitude and urges readers who resonate with the practice to select just one — say, writing in a gratitude journal — and then vary how they implement it. So, rather than journaling daily about what you are grateful for, which could become a chore and minimize the benefits, she suggests expressing gratitude after particular triggers, such as enduring a hardship. This call to variety is grounded in research, as are the strategies and supporting practices, which bolsters confidence that it will actually work.
It’s too soon for me to know if the happiness boosts I’ve experienced from reading the book and implementing its tailored suggestions will last long-term. But consider this review to be my heartfelt expression of gratitude to Lyubormirsky for providing much-needed perspective on the whys–and hows–of happiness. The revelation that we’re conditioned to believe the wrong things (money, recognition, appearance, etc.) will make us lastingly happy was alone worth the jacket price.
Part-memoir, part-playbook, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s “Off the Sidelines: Raise Your Voice, Change the World” is a refreshingly practical addition to the women’s empowerment shelf, especially for women who aspire to public service. True to mission, the book even ends with a note that the women’s congressional softball team could use another starting pitcher. She’s talking to you, dear reader. Get in the game!
The book chronicles the life of an extraordinarily accomplished woman leader, but studiously conveys warmth and accessibility with folksy “Hey, I have fat jeans, too!” anecdotes. (Yes, the senator actually uses those exact words in the book.) But don’t mistake the tone for a lack of seriousness about the mission. It’s part of her strategy for convincing readers that leadership isn’t reserved for “special” people.
She issues us all an invitation to get off the sidelines and take seriously our moral obligation to participate in the political conversations surrounding issues that we care deeply about. Yes, even you. She argues that voting, advocacy, and even candidacy are powerful paths to progress. If we–the people affected most by issues–don’t act, who will? “We need a Rosie the Riveter for this generation–not to draw women into professional life, because they are already there, but to elevate women’s voices in the public sphere and bring women more fully into making the decisions that shape our country,” she writes.
And when she speaks of women, she’s speaking of all women, not just a privileged subset. “I’m angry and I’m depressed, and I’m scared that the women’s movement is dead, or at least on life support,” she writes. “Women talk a lot these days about shattering the glass ceiling, but we also need to focus on cleaning the so-called sticky floor, making sure all women have a chance to rise.”
(The book doesn’t delve into policy details, but the accompanying website offthesidelines.org sets out her opportunity plan for empowering women and families to rise in the 21st-century economy. It centers on paid family and medical leave, raising the minimum wage, quality affordable childcare, universal pre-k and equal pay for equal work.)
Click to Tweet: “We need to focus on cleaning the so-called sticky floor, making sure all women have a chance to rise.” @SenGillibrand
Whatever your policy positions, the book presents a warmer and fuzzier view of politics than typical media accounts. In Gillibrand land, leadership isn’t so much about savvy political and workplace maneuvering, but about the much more appealing work of listening to people, caring about them, and marshalling your unique, personal resources to respond.
She uses examples from her legislative work on the 9/11 healthcare bill and seeking justice for survivors of sexual assault in the military to emphasize storytelling as a legitimate and powerful tool of persuasion. “You can drop a dozen binders full of white papers on my desk, and the stack won’t be as effective as a single human being willing to speak honestly about her life,” she writes.
In the spirit of truth-telling, Gillibrand’s call to leadership isn’t all smiles and roses. She allows that political candidacy and service are a grind, requiring straight-up hard work and persistence despite the odds, which range from personal foibles to nasty political opposition.
She recounts her successes but doesn’t skip over the failures and foundering that preceded and, in some cases, facilitated later wins. It wasn’t so long ago, readers learn, that she couldn’t get hired at the U.S. Attorney’s office or a full-time job on Hillary Clinton’s campaign. And even as a rookie congresswoman she was prone to embarrassing missteps, like crashing one of Senator Patrick Leahy’s fundraisers to hand him a draft of her bill. But she persevered and, she contends, you can too.
Beyond the politics, one of the best aspects of the book is her transparency about how she spends her time. She is open about how hard it has been to learn to embrace her limits and schedule time for food, bathroom breaks and traffic delays, let alone friendship, relaxation and fun.
Where other high-profile women leaders have been purposely vague on their daily schedules and child care habits, Gillibrand puts it all out there. She recounts what time she rises, when she goes to sleep, how much time she spends with her sons (2-3 hours/day, if you’re wondering), and how much she’s in the office. She tells the costs of trading the congressional cocktail-party circuit for a bath-books-bed routine with her sons. Moreover, she shares some of the ways staff, sitters, friends, family and even parents of her kids’ friends help her meld public service and the “absurdist sitcom” of her family life. It takes a village, apparently.
I appreciated her candor and gleaned some lessons from her day-to-day life management techniques. She exercises first thing after taking the kids to school and trains her staff to protect that personal time. She consumes 1,200 calories a day–fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean meats and fish. She tracks constituent issues on index cards and uses 10-point lists for everything from planning a wedding to passing a bill.
The particulars are unlikely to work for any of us, but it’s reassuring to see that even U.S. senators make it through the day with an idiosyncratic mix of habits and routines. She’s got a big title, a huge constituency, and a staff, but her biggest challenge is managing herself–keeping the big-picture goals alive amid the minutiae of daily life. How human!
A quick read, “#GIRLBOSS” aims to inspire by sharing lessons of Sophia Amoruso’s meteoric rise from anarchist “freegan” wanderer to founding CEO of the Nasty Gal clothing company. “In the same way that for the past seven years people have projected themselves into the looks I’ve sold through Nasty Gal, I want you to be able to use #GIRLBOSS to project yourself into an awesome life where you can do whatever you want,” she writes.
This leap from identifying with an outfit to creating a life is not as ridiculous as it sounds. Amoruso built a multimillion-dollar retail company from a humble Ebay store, so she’s likely to have a helpful tip or two for would-be moguls. In fact, for its target reader (who I imagine is a 20-something woman with a penchant for Nasty Gal vegan leather turbans) the anyone-can-do-it tone may have as much motivational impact as the details of her counsel. I’m sure her calls to “race balls-out toward the extraordinary life that you’ve always dreamed of” will resonate with some millennials. Moreover, the substance of her story gives women of all ages a window into the incredible power of self-confidence, customer focus and hard work.
For the degreed and pedigreed who often accumulate credentials at the expense of down-in-the-trenches experience, it’s illuminating to see how far straight-up work ethic can get you. With no college degree or extensive work experience, Amoruso cut her teeth at home in a ratty pink bathrobe coordinating models, “friending” people, editing photos, uploading files, writing sales copy and primitive HTML, and packing and shipping boxes, only breaking to hunt vintage store racks for merchandise to resell.
From the outset, Amoruso focused her company on giving a particular demographic of women the waist and hip accentuating styles they desired. She filled her fledgling company with the independent spirit of Betty Davis’s Nasty-Gal ‘70s funk album, which exudes sexuality. The original Nasty-Gal rocked platform heels, fishnets and lingerie, long before Beyonce spawned Bejeweled Leotard Feminism.
But make no mistake, any hints of feminism are beside the point in Amoruso’s account. As she puts it, “#GIRLBOSS is a feminist book, and Nasty Gal is a feminist company in the sense that I encourage you, as a girl, to be who you want and do what you want. But I’m not here calling us ‘womyn’ and blaming men for any of my struggles… I believe that the best way to honor the past and future of women’s rights is by getting shit done.” Um. Okay.
Deconstructing that statement would require another 1,000 words, so let me say just this: Feminist or not, the book offers a compelling example of a woman who forged her own path without getting sidetracked by paralyzing ambivalence, second guesses or unrealistic expectations of “having it all.” Rather, she made her own choices and lived with them–unapologetically.
She may have hit the big-time, but Amoruso still obsesses over giving women the profile they covet. In the book, she describes the photo editing process she’s used since launching the company in 2006. To this day she shrinks photos down to thumbnail size, crosses her eyes, and then flags images that stand out through the blur. “This allows me to edit quickly without getting distracted by the details–if the composition or silhouette sucks, it doesn’t matter what the model’s face says,” she writes. “The DNA of a successful image, and brand, must be encrypted into its tiniest representation while gracefully telling the same story in its largest incarnation. My thumbnail photos were the postage stamps to Nasty Gal’s success.”
Talk about projecting yourself into a look and into a life. Her Photoshop revelation is impressive in two respects. One, Amoruso’s still editing photos for the site after all these years, to stay in touch with what sells. And, secondly, it clearly illustrates how the fundamentals don’t change. No matter how big your business gets, success requires staying focused and consistently delivering what the customer wants. It seems that a successful brand, like a successful life, is in the little things.
If this review resonates with you, I bet you’ll enjoy my newsletter. I regularly send bookish news and notes out to more than 1,000 readers. Sign up here.
I am honored to serve as the 2014 Christmas Mother and to rally our community around this year’s effort to fund holiday meals, gifts, transportation, school supplies, and special events for 80 local organizations.
To donate by mail, send a check made payable to Richmond Christmas Mother to:
Christmas Mother
300 East Franklin Street
Richmond, VA 23219
Last year I went big with my New Year’s Resolutions. I had a slew of self-improvement projects on the docket, including the infamous “This Year I Learn to Cook” intention. Guess what? I didn’t. I got busy doing more important things, and I learned to order groceries and prepared foods online instead.
This year I’m getting a late start on annual planning and I’m feeling a lot less resolute. In a complete reversal from past practice, I’ve canceled my gym membership, quit running and given up on all goals that require an excess of outside accountability to pursue. But that doesn’t mean I’m going inactive. I’m just ramping things down to a comfortable pace and shrugging off external pressure to go hard.
Continue reading “5 Micro-Resolutions for a Healthy New Year”The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl is a romp of self-deprecating wit relating the anxiety-ridden life experiences of a trilingual, fashion-deficient, Stanford-educated, Halfrican millennial. The mix is fresh, funny and necessary.
In her debut essay collection, Rae mines her life’s most embarrassing episodes for our amusement—and entertain they do. Her inventory of humiliations spans the merely amusing—piano fails and dancing disability—to the downright dangerous—wearing head-to-toe red in a Crip neighborhood and harboring a cockroach in her jumpsuit on an international flight. She seems to alternately invite the reader to laugh with her or at her. We oblige, because we don’t have the moxie to give our own foibles a book’s worth of scrutiny.
We need authentic representations of black women, and there is something both satisfying and subversive about Rae’s book. She gives us a portrait of a well-educated, creative, entrepreneurial woman. Yet she sidesteps the damaging pitfall of presenting a flawless front to bolster respectability and approval. Instead, she jokes about experiences most would edit out of their public profiles, such as catfishing (AKA lying online) at eleven and getting blocked on Twitter by a disabled stripper years later. She’s giving us her humanity, warts and all.
Anecdotes like these are more than entertaining. They are unexpected and lovable–and give old folk a glimpse into the mix of technology, media and public exposure shaping the YouTube generation. “At the time I came up with the concept for ABG I was just a clumsy, frustrated, socially inept, recently graduated adult, looking for confirmation that I wasn’t alone…” she writes. “But at some level, as each new model for social media strives to connect us in new, paradoxically estranged ways, there exists a consistent core, the human desire to feel included.”
At its heart, this book is a chronicle of how little Jo-Issa Rae Diop (rhymes with hope) grew into her alter ego Issa Rae. It’s a book about the fits and starts of forging an identity that’s both truthful and expansive enough to propel one’s dreams into reality. (It joins Gail Simmon’s underrated “Talking with my Mouth Full” on my list of graduation gifts for girls, because it exemplifies the wisdom of allowing ourselves to love what we love, instead of blindly following traditional career paths.)
Part of her coming-of-age story deals with learning to navigate inter- and intraracial relationships. In one of my favorite chapters, she offers a guide for awkward blacks to connect with other blacks. By outlining 14 distinct types of black people and acknowledging hybrids among them, she strikes another blow against monolithic representations. Refreshingly, the categories aren’t defined by the extent to which individuals dial “blackness” up or down in response to the whims and prejudices of white people. (Think: Justin Simien’s One Hun-ned, Nose Job and OOFTA categories in “Dear White People.”) She gives us The 10% Black, The Basic Black, The Know-It-All About Blacks Black, The LGBT Black and many more, and they all ring true.
At the same time, she reveals her personal ambivalence about and fatigue with talking (and writing) about race, particularly with blacker-than-thou people–white and black–who embrace narrow pop culture stereotypes as the epitome of blackness. It’s much more fun–and funny–to explore people’s individual eccentricities. Take schoolmate Remington, the “8th-grade-looking 6th-grader” who “frequently expressed his sexual desires in a way that hinted at experience.” And Grandpa, who counters kids’ fast-food requests with “we gon’ make our own MackDonald’s.” (Think: Nasty homemade patty accented with green pepper and onion.) Rae excels at quippy characterization of the supporting actors in her embarrassments.
On the book’s cover, Rae strikes a Wonder Woman pose under an awkward girl banner, looking anything but. In truth, she’s becoming less and less awkward all the time. By some magic, she’s transformed social ineptitude into a web series, a book, a livelihood. Awkward and all, she’s a new-look leading lady.
Quibbles: The stories are well-chosen and Rae’s humor is refreshing, but the writing itself does get awkward in unwelcome ways. She’s “hot with regret” when an attempt to nickname herself Sloppy Jo flops. Later she’s “hot with embarrassment and shame” when her grandfather calls her fat. Labeling emotions instead of trusting us to feel them is a rookie move. No need to name what the scene evokes and the reader intuits. As Roy Peter Clark puts it, “subtlety is a writer’s virtue.” Still, her foibles are forgivable, easily remedied and take nothing away from my eagerness to see what (mis)adventures she chronicles next. Issa Rae’s The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl is the first selection of the Inkwell Book Club, an online national book club designed to promote good books, wield marketplace influence, and help black writers earn a living wage. Amen.
“Queen Sugar” offers a fresh perspective on the New South, a landscape marred by inequity yet rich in complexity and perseverance. In it, debut novelist Natalie Baszile gives us that elusive treat — an appropriately complex black woman protagonist.
Told through the eyes of a down-but-not-out Los Angeles art teacher, Charley Bordelan, the novel chronicles her attempt to make a life and build a business on sugarcane land in Louisiana. The “gift” of 800 acres from her recently deceased father gives the young widow and her 11-year-old daughter a fresh start, if not an easy one.
The tale of the locals and migrants who step up to help her (and those who don’t) is told with insight and restraint. It takes a parish, a faith healer and prayer to contend in a back-breaking industry where both treacherous competitors and natural disaster reign. But Charley persists, moved by the notion that “the one thing, perhaps the only thing, she could now give her daughter [was] the chance to see that even a woman in desperate straits could pull her own survival out of the ruddy earth.”
At its core, this is a story of inheritance—not money, but character, ingenuity and focus. There are lessons here about generosity and authority, about family and fortitude, but above all about sense and survival. I was intrigued by this lovely novel’s quiet insistence that the most influential gifts we give children are our examples, including the hours we spend toiling out of their sights providing for futures they cannot yet imagine and we can scarcely control. “Queen Sugar” reminds us that our best isn’t always sufficient, but it is always required. OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network announced that Winfrey and “Selma” filmmaker Ava DuVernay have joined together to create a new original drama series inspired by “Queen Sugar.” DuVernay is set to write, direct and produce the project and Winfrey will co-produce and act in multiple episodes. Production is scheduled to begin in 2015. Details here.
Every now and then a crazy idea captures my imagination and won’t let go. In 2013, it was to sell 1,000 short-sleeved t-shirts in the dead of winter to raise money for a local nonprofit with deep roots but little name-recognition. In 2014, it was to transform a Richmond trolley into a Brooklyn cityscape inspired by Ezra Jack Keats’s classic children’s book “The Snowy Day.”
I thought the story’s urban landscape and celebration of childhood made it perfect for the Richmond Christmas Parade. The story about the innocence of play and the comfort of home stars Peter, a black boy. When it was published in 1962, it was considered a “pioneering portrayal.” Sadly, all these years later, it’s still noteworthy to see a black child in a storybook. In 2013, 3,200 children’s books were published, and fewer than 100 of them featured black children.
Continue reading “In Praise of Diverse Books for Children”A defining moment in Elizabeth Warren’s life was watching her 50-year-old mother wrestle herself into a worn black dress typically reserved for funerals and head out for her first job interview. The family was in dire financial straits after Warren’s father suffered a debilitating heart attack and her mom wasn’t going to lose their house without a fight.
“The dress was too tight—way too tight,” Warren writes in “A Fighting Chance.” “It pulled and puckered. I thought it might explode if she moved. But I knew there wasn’t another nice dress in the closet. And that was the moment I crossed the threshold. I wasn’t a little girl anymore. I stood there, as tall as she was. I looked her right in the eye and said: ‘You look great. Really.’”
Her mother got the job answering calls at Sears, and Warren got an education in walking straight ahead, no matter how tough the going (or wobbly the heels).
Personal stories like this make Massachusetts Senator Warren a compelling character in her political narrative. Ultimately, though, the family dramas she recounts are mere asides. The memoir’s primary concern is combatting the big corporations, lobbyists and billion-dollar tax loopholes that she believes rig the game against working families.
“It’s not meant to be a definitive account of any historical event—it’s just what I saw and what I lived,” she writes of her book. “It’s also a story about losing, learning, and getting stronger along the way. It’s a story about what’s worth fighting for, and how sometimes, even when we fight against very powerful opponents, we can win.”
I would expect nothing less from the former Harvard Law professor and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau visionary. But more than her policy prescriptions and political rhetoric, the book struck me with her enviable courage, consistency and fight. Here are a few unexpected takeaways from the senior Senator from Massachusetts.
Bloom where you’re planted. Career “experts” encouraged my generation to seek “dream jobs” at the intersection of our unique talents, passions and skills. Problem is: Most of us need real jobs, the kind where pay stubs meet living expenses, and those are often less than dreamy.
Warren’s expectations were much lower as a young professional. For her, working — period — was a triumph, because married women were expected to stay home with kids. She got one job offer after law school, and part-time at that, but she accepted and relished it, striving to make it meaningful. She taught legal writing with gusto, and when her husband’s job transferred, she cold-called a law school to win her next gig—a real professorship. In short, she sought “better,” not “perfect,” and kept taking the next step.
The long arc of Warren’s career is instructive. When she had small children, her teaching, writing and research hours were limited, but she never abandoned them altogether. By putting one foot in front of the other day after day, cranky toddlers and all, she laid a strong foundation of expertise—and indignation—that propelled her all the way to the Senate, where she arrived at 62.
Outrage can drive a career. Notably, her rise from legal writing instructor to bankruptcy law expert to the U.S. Senate wasn’t fueled by a love of the law. Rather, a deep disdain for the injustice of some laws and a commitment to fighting for change spurred her on. This notion that pain points, not warm fuzzies, are worthy motivators is powerful.
Warren’s book is filled with her visceral reactions to injustice. When a world-famous law professor couldn’t support his negative claims about people in bankruptcy with data, her teeth hurt. National Bankruptcy Review Commission hearings made her gag. Politics felt dirty, and the cynicism of banks who preyed on vulnerable families infuriated—and motivated–her.
In each instance, she adopted a fighter’s stance and hustled to learn enough about the problems to propose and advocate for effective solutions. She took it all very personally. “My daddy and I were both afraid of being poor, really poor,” she writes. “His response was never to talk about money or what might happen if it ran out—never ever ever. My response was to study contracts, finance, and, most of all, economic failure, to learn everything I could. My daddy stayed away from big sores that hurt. I poked at them.”
Never be afraid to pick a fight. Throughout the book, Warren uses the language of direct confrontation to describe her work. She chooses battles, wrangles with opponents, and punches back—all to give working people a fighting chance. Whether snatching a microphone from a bankruptcy judge on a panel or railing against industry-backed bills, her message is consistently loud and clear.
Amid the pitched battle for a consumer protection agency, she refused to see it gutted. “My first choice is a strong consumer agency,” she said. “My second choice is no agency at all and plenty of blood and teeth left on the floor….My 99th choice is some mouthful of mush that doesn’t get the job done.”
Love her or hate her, you always know where she stands. May we each learn to fight our own good fights with such urgency and resolve.
I was reading Laura Vanderkam’s “I Know How She Does It” when news broke of the racist killing of nine churchgoers in South Carolina. At first, it felt meaningless to be mining the book for time-saving strategies and productivity tips as the nation (or some of it anyway) went into mourning. It felt absurd to read a self-help book when I could be toppling confederate monuments or lobbying for gun control.
Yet I kept turning the pages. And I realized that in the face of senseless violence, I was comforted by Vanderkam’s assertion that we have plenty of time to do the things that matter to us. Even toppling monuments to oppression or lobbying for change.
We have the time — we just don’t recognize or appreciate it, she argues. “The math is straightforward,” she writes to her audience of women juggling careers and families.
“There are 168 hours in a week. If you work 50, and sleep 8 per night (56 hours per week in total), that leaves 62 hours for other things. If you work 60 hours and sleep 8 hours per night, that leaves 52 hours for other things.”
And truly, very few people work more than 60 hours a week, according to Vanderkam’s research, despite the stories they tell.
She conducted a study, The Mosaic Project, that asked participants to: “Write down what you’re doing, as often as you remember, in as much detail as you wish to share.” Participants used spreadsheets broken into 15- or 30-minute increments or apps, like Toggl, to keep track.
Though time tracking isn’t perfect, it’s a vast improvement over just asking people how they spend their time, which is what much research does. People get this wrong in a variety of ways. Without conscientiously logging hours, they are just guessing. And they are guessing under the influence of systematic bias.
“If everyone in your industry talks about their eighty-hour workweeks, even if logs show they’re probably averaging fifty-five hours, you will talk about your eighty-hour workweeks too,” Vanderkam writes. “In a world where we complain about how busy we are, we’re not going to mention that five out of seven nights per week we sleep just fine. It’s the night that a kid woke up at two a.m. and you had to catch a seven a.m. flight that you talk about at parties or mention in your departure memo.”
Our challenge then is to “arrange the tiles” of our career, family and other interests into mosaics of activity that are uniquely our own, versus trying to wedge ourselves into tired narratives of what life should look like. Happy marriages, quality time with children, a social life and (gasp) sleep are all possible, Vanderkam asserts.
There’s time for reading, reflection and activism, too, I thought.
Each chapter of the book features spreadsheets showing how a real woman accounted for the 168 hours in her week. Often, the women found that they slept more and worked less than they thought. And, notably, they managed their lives not with dramatic sacrifices but with basic choice making.
Can’t make it home for dinner with the family every night? So what, make breakfast your time to bond. Want to make some big moves in your career? Take it easy on the housework. It’s not the decisions themselves so much as the grief we give ourselves about not meeting unrealistic standards in every area of our lives every day that gets us down, Vanderkam suggests.
Hearing the voices (and seeing the schedules) of numerous real women with real children working real jobs is instructive—and often humorous. The time logs contain gems like “Kids in bed w/o bath and only 1 brushed teeth as both were stoned on sugar.” We can see ourselves in each of the women and be reminded to take the good with the stressful and keep it moving.
One quibble with the book is that it wasn’t ambitious enough. It argues that we have time for work and family, but I wish it had gone a step further to describe the kind of impact our work can have when we commit to it. At times “I Know How She Does It” feels like a book about navigating snow days and flexible work schedules, when women are desperate for a book about thriving and making a difference. I found myself craving some anecdotes about the powerful organizations and life-saving technologies moms are developing while their kids sleep and play.
Still, Vanderkam brings a welcome pragmatism and optimism to discussions of work-family conflict. “If you believe, like I do, that the good life can be a full life—a level full life or even a heaping full life—then I invite you to study how you place the tiles of your time, energy, and attention,” she writes. “I invite you to think about the pattern with the goal, over time, of making an even more satisfying picture.”
“I Know How She Does It” arrived at the right time for me. I’ve recently relocated to a new city and, without a full schedule or longstanding commitments, I have great flexibility to shape my days. I’ve spent most of my time on unpacking and household concerns, but a more satisfying picture would show considerable time spent on the literacy and advocacy work I find meaningful.
Laura, thanks for the reminder that I’ve got 168 hours to invest this week. Plenty of time to get to work.
I recommend Lisa Bloom’s “Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-down World” as a complement to “I Know How She Does It.” In “Think,” Bloom makes a smart and forceful argument for women to get our heads out of the dust bins and into engaged citizenry.
“Our country, still the world’s only superpower, has the power to bomb or to heal,” she writes. “Which would you prefer? Will you participate in that decision? And politics aside, each of us is an individual superpower, blessed as we are with a first world education, the ability to pick up a book and read it, the freedom to click around for real news online, the means to write a $20 check that will send an Ethiopian girl to school for a year.”
Together the two books give you a reason to be bold about how you invest your time and the practical tools and examples to get on with it.
