Even CEO’s only have 24 Hours in a Day

Photo credit for woman sitting in front of Macbook: Energepic.com

“Could Arianna Huffington have built her media empire without exhausting herself?” That is the question I asked an executive coach several years ago, when I was deep in a work/life balance struggle and shouldering more than my fair share of stress. In response, my coach gave me an assignment to do some research and find out. What followed was a reading quest via my local library, where I came across a great book that helped me to identify some concrete strategies for almost having it all, I Know How She Does It, by Laura Vanderkam.

In her book, Vanderkam addresses the real concern that women are limiting their earnings and career potential by refusing to go for the big jobs, because they assume they can not do them and have a family at the same time. Few resources exist for women to learn real world strategies for doing so. This is one such resource.

This book reports on the results of the Mosaic Project, which tracked the time logs of 143 working moms earning more than $100,000 a year. Here is what the project found:

Work: Most people work less than 55 hours a week. CEO’s work between 44 and 59 hours a week. Entrepreneurs tend to work more. Most of the respondents worked remotely 1 to 2 days a week and focused on being strategically seen.

Most experts report diminishing returns after 50 hours of work in a week. If you are a manager, consider instituting a flex time policy that includes some core hours, when everyone is in the office. If the covid crisis has taught us anything, it is that most of us can work from anywhere.

Sleep: Most respondents slept 7 hours a night during the week and 8 hours a night on weekends. Only 17% slept less than 7 hours a night.

Exercise: The vast majority of respondents did some exercise, with the average exercising 3.3 hours a week. Respondents reported that exercise made them perform and sleep better, and a number focused on functional fitness, like biking to work, or they exercised first thing in the morning.

So now we know that 50 hours of work each week is enough to get the job done. If not, and you’re not dealing with a temporary emergency, your organization is either under-resourced or poorly managed. That, plus 7 hours of sleep a night and 30 minutes of exercise is doable, especially with the flexibility to work remotely 1–2 days a week.

For me, the limiting factor was all of the other things that needed to get done beyond work, sleep and exercise. I mean, people have to eat, kids have activities, and a house can only collect so much dirt. Right?

This is where the book really comes in handy. Vanderkam reports on the strategies these women use to be mom and a boss, and to stay sane in the process.

1. Reduce your commute time. A number of CEO’s report the benefits of living near where they work. Unfortunately, that is not an option for me right now, so, instead, I use my commute time on a train to work, to rest, to meditate, or to phone a friend.
2. Split the morning and evening childcare routines. One spouse goes in early, and the other stays late. Of course, if you’re a single mom, I pray that God at least blessed you with magical children who slept through the night as babies.
3. Do walking meetings. I haven’t tried this yet, but I plan to this year.
4. Hire people who can perform multiple tasks for you at home. The best thing I ever did was hire a cleaning company that also did laundry and small home repairs. Not having to coordinate with extra people was worth its weight in gold.
5. Delegate age appropriate chores to your children. The book is about strategies for high earning women, but this strategy applies to us all. I am getting better at this every day. Teaching my son to make his own lunch this past summer was a game changer.
6. Use cooking hacks. Stock up on frozen, pre-chopped, and/or microwavable items. Think frozen vegetables; microwavable rice, soup and mashed potatoes; canned beans; baby carrots and zucchini; chopped onions and celery; grapes, mandarin oranges, and apples as quick fruits; and, bananas to freeze. Pick up a rotisserie chicken and a salad kit from the grocery store on the way home. Keep standard online orders for healthy take-out at the ready.
7. Put the kids to bed earlier. This one is my favorite. Don’t feel bad. All the experts say children need a lot of sleep.
8. Find a cadre of babysitters. When you don’t have trusted family members nearby, this is easier said than done. Fortunately, I have found that once children reach the age of 10, they prefer to spend time at a friend’s house, so rotating the children amongst my parent friends has become a great option. It really does take a village.

If you’ve read the book, let us know your favorite takeaways and what #timemanagement strategies work best for you.

Originally published at https://www.planning-u.com on December 24, 2020.