I Shouldn't Be Telling You This: Success Secrets Every Gutsy Girl Should Know (31 page)

Start before you’re ready.
One of my weaknesses in terms of time management is that I need to get “all ready” for a task. Before I write in the morning, for instance, I like to have my tea prepared, my desk nicely organized, and even a few news stories skimmed. There’s nothing wrong with morning rituals or feeling organized before you begin, but this kind of fluffing can suck away both time and even mental energy. The next thing you know, it’s nine o’clock, not eight, when you planned to start, and you’re less raring to go than you were an hour ago. Here’s a trick someone taught me: jump into the task for a few minutes, and then take care of getting organized. Before I even sit down with my tea, I turn on my laptop and reread the last page I’ve written. That way I’m already engaged and excited, and it’s easier to come back and officially begin.

Pick a number.
When I tackle fiction on weekend mornings, I have a specific goal: five pages. Having a set goal in mind—no matter what your task—helps drive you to the finish line and prevents you from becoming distracted by another project.

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How to Handle an Insane Day
 
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I
’m sure you’ve had more than a few insane workdays. Me, too. One of the worst for me may have been when I had to moderate a panel at a management conference several days after my father died. No one in my company would have minded if I’d bailed, but I didn’t feel comfortable leaving the organizers and panelists hanging. So I sucked it up—but I felt as though I were in some horrible altered state.

Though I haven’t seen the last of insane days, they have at least decreased in number over the years. That’s partly due to the fact that I don’t have young children right now. When your kids are little, you not only have more demands on your time and energy, but you’re less resilient because you’re so freaking tired. But I also have grown better at managing stress and general craziness.

Step one: I do my best to spot when an insane day is headed my way and then, if possible, shift what I can. Former
Working Mother
editor in chief Judsen Culbreth likes to point out that stress is caused not by doing too many things but by doing too many things you don’t like. For me, at least, insane days definitely involve an overload of unpleasant activities. So if I see that there are lots of ugly meetings on the same day I’m supposed to go to the dentist and call my accountant, I try to rearrange some. If a potentially insane day is looming for you, move things around if possible. If it means canceling on someone, don’t go into a long explanation. Describing how badly your day is going to be will only make you feel more worked up. And the other person won’t have any sympathy anyway.

If, despite your best efforts, your day begins to turn into a nightmare—your sitter was late, making
you
late, you spilled coffee all over your new pants, and the job candidate you just hired backed out—try to grab a few minutes by yourself in a quiet space (away from the craziness if possible) and then just breathe. And relax. I’ll never forget something Dr. Ruth Westheimer did when I brought her in to speak to a group of editors and advertisers at
Mademoiselle.
She asked if she could spend a couple of minutes in my office beforehand, and then she sat quietly by herself, eating a sandwich. It made me see the value of a few key moments alone to center yourself—away from the hurly-burly.

This is especially true if your insane day involves giving any kind of presentation or speech. People, I’ve found, love to try to grab your attention right before you have to speak publicly. Don’t hesitate to say nicely that you need a few moments to yourself.

Once you’ve chilled a little, consider what’s still on your plate and how you’re going to tackle it. This is a time for triage. What seriously needs your attention right now and can’t be ignored? What can be put off? What could someone else help you with, including on the home front? When I was first married with young kids, I stupidly didn’t ask for help on many occasions when my husband would have been happy to give it. When you ask for assistance, there’s no need to sound freaked or frantic so that you guarantee the other person will
get
it. In fact, this can be off-putting. Just say something such as “I need to sort out a problem here at work, and I’m going to be an hour late. Can you stick the pork chops in the freezer and order takeout instead? Get whatever sounds good to you.” Then
let go
of any aspect of what you’ve delegated.

When you’re feeling superstressed, pick your food and drink wisely. This is not the moment for a king-size pack of peanut butter cups or a bag of potato chips from the office vending machine. Sugars and starches (which turn into sugar) will only heighten your manic feeling. Instead go for cheese, nuts, or a piece of chicken or turkey. These all contain tryptophan, an amino acid that helps your brain produce serotonin, a feel-good chemical known to reduce anxiety. And be careful about your caffeine intake. It can add to your jitters.

When you’re having a bad day, you may yearn to reach home and vent to your partner or your friends. Here’s a crazy strategy that’s going to go against what you’ve probably heard but I firmly believe in: resist the urge to vent. We’re encouraged, especially as women, to share all that’s bothering us, to let it out, unload. From my first days at
Cosmo
, I began to learn how different men and women were in this regard. You practically have to use the Jaws of Life to extract anything from a man. Over time at
Cosmo
I became intrigued by the guy approach and wondered if there was any merit to it. And then I began hearing research that stressed the value of
not
getting it all off your chest.

One study, from the University of Toronto Scarborough, found that people who avoided thinking about their work problems at home and distracted themselves with something else—books or music, for instance—experienced less conflict overall than those who tried to find solutions or vented to pals.

When a workday is tumultuous or ugly, try leaving it at the door when you come home. Some studies don’t support this, but I think it works. Instead of talking and possibly churning everything up, read, watch a movie you’ve been dying to download, play Scrabble, or take a walk after dinner. When you’re feeling calmer, you may want to ask for advice on how to handle a specific issue, but chances are you will arrive there on your own.

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Setting Boundaries
 
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O
rdinarily I wouldn’t think I had anything in common with a rich European banker, but recently, for just a moment, I did. It was reported that the chief executive of Lloyds bank in London had returned from a leave of absence he’d taken to deal with exhaustion. According to his boss, the banker had been suffering from “a failure to switch off,” and the situation became so bad that during one stretch he wasn’t able to fall asleep for five nights in a row. The irony: I was reading the story online as I periodically glanced at incoming texts and flipped through
House Beautiful.
Suddenly I paused and wondered: Did
I
have a problem switching off? Was I too tethered to work and to all things digital and no longer good about giving myself time to chill and enjoy? In other words, had my BlackBerry made me its bitch?

Maybe. According to the productivity expert Julie Morgenstern, many women are suffering from a failure to switch off. And in some instances, she says, we have become addicted to our handheld devices. Sure, iPhones and BlackBerrys are fantastic in many ways. They provide tons of information and make life easier, but they can also create problems if we’re not careful.

For one thing, Morgenstern says, any kind of digital devices can interfere with sleep. That’s because they tend to energize us, and you don’t really want that at 11
P
.
M
.—unless you’re planning on going clubbing. “It’s a little like drinking a can of Diet Pepsi just as you’re getting ready for bed,” she says.

We also need screen breaks to help us think. “In order to synthesize and retain info, you have to give your brain a chance to disconnect for a while,” Morgenstern notes. “Otherwise, your brain can’t learn.” Try sometimes banishing your smartphone to the zippered compartment of your purse, and use the time to fully engage in the book you’re reading, the art show you’re seeing, or the conversation you’re having.

Not only is it relaxing and restorative when you do that but also interesting thoughts come and ideas flow. Paperless Post cofounder Alexa Hirschfeld says she disconnects not because she feels frazzled by the barrage of e-mails and texts but because a break—for instance, leaving her phone off while she’s going through an art gallery—makes her more creative. “Diversity of experience contributes to a fertilized mind,” she says. “I don’t want to be a successful career person; I want to be a successful
person.”

Last, constantly checking e-mail and texts can be a giant time suck. Each time you glance away from what you’re doing to check and then go back to your activity, you’re using up seconds—and those seconds add up to minutes and hours.

You can’t ignore messages, especially where work is concerned, so what do you do? Morgenstern recommends getting into the habit of looking at your e-mail only about five times a day, for around twenty to thirty minutes each time. This not only allows you to switch off but makes your e-mailing much more efficient. You’re not glancing away from other activities, and since you’ve arranged a solid block of time to address your e-mails one by one, you won’t have to come back to some later.

Morgenstern also recommends not checking e-mail around the “edges of the day.” Reserve that time for bubble baths, chick lit, and the cute person sharing your bed.

“But, but,
but
,” you may be saying, “I can’t.” “My boss won’t let me.” “Other people won’t let me.” To some degree that may be true, depending on your work and your field. Yet you may have become an enabler, allowing and even encouraging people to reach you—by phone or e-mail—because you always respond immediately. Experiment by not replying at certain times and see what happens. Your coworkers will begin to know your boundaries. Even some bosses can be trained.

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Drain the Swamp as You Slay the Alligators, 2
 
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E
arlier I talked about the importance of building time into your work schedule each week to step away from your usual day-to-day tasks and focus on the big picture for a while. During that hour or so, you need to ask yourself: What should I be paying more attention to? Have I let any important goals slip between the cracks? What should I be focusing on most while going forward? Then you must create pockets of time each week to implement your plans. From the moment I arrived at
Cosmo
, I initiated this strategy, and it played a key role in my success.

But over time I came to see how important this strategy can be for your personal life, as well. When you’re chugging away like crazy at your job and trying to handle a personal to-do list that might include caring for kids, it can be easy to lose sight of big-picture personal goals that are important but not urgent. All of a sudden a few months or even years have zipped by and you haven’t made a dent toward accomplishing what really matters to you.

That’s why you need to plan time every week to think about draining the swamp in terms of your personal life. You can do this at your kitchen table, at a sidewalk café, or sitting on the grass in the park. Experiment with different places until you find a spot that encourages you to get into the zone. And take notes. You can use the Notepad app on your iPhone or iPad, or a regular legal pad, which I tend to do because writing with a number two pencil helps my thoughts form better for some nutty reason.

Start, just as you would at work, with questions: What should I be paying more attention to? Have I let any important goals slip through the cracks? What should I be focusing on going forward? Am I happy right now? Is something missing? What could make my life easier, more rewarding? Then devise an action plan.

Why is it necessary to book the time to do this? Because no matter how well intentioned you are, you may find that it doesn’t happen automatically, especially when you are in a demanding career. I have a friend who worked for years as an agent in Hollywood and calls her thirties “the lost decade” because they went by so fast without her realizing that she hadn’t achieved what she wanted on the personal front. “I just woke up one day and saw that I didn’t have a husband and didn’t have kids—things I wanted—and it probably was too late to make that happen. I’d been so busy, I hadn’t really noticed that the time was slipping away.”

Even when I knew I had to think about the big picture in terms of my personal life, I found it hard to do when my kids were young. I barely had time to roll on deodorant each day, let alone drain the damn swamp. When my first child was born, my husband was anchoring three newscasts each night, so I was on my own after 5
P
.
M
. I’d rush home from work, take care of my son, and then, after he went to bed, I’d cook dinner for myself, handle household stuff, and tackle the work I’d brought home.

My husband still laughs when he recalls how one night he called to see how everything was going and I told him, “Good, good. Hudson and I went out for a walk and then we played for a while and then I read him a few books before his bath.” There was a long pause. “Is something the matter?” I asked. “Well, his name is
Hunter
,” he replied. At least I knew it started with an H!

But once my two kids were older and began sleeping longer on Saturday mornings, I set up a time each week for swamp draining. I’d take a mug of coffee and a notebook up to my little office in the barn at our weekend home and start jotting down questions: Could I be handling tasks better? Am I connecting with my kids after work as well as I can? Are there any changes I need to make? Is there something I still long to do? Whenever I found my way to the last question, one thing kept popping up: I wanted to write a murder mystery. It had been a dream of mine since I was twelve. At one of those Saturday-morning coffee klatches with myself, I started to toy with the idea of an editor in chief whose nanny dies, and I wrote down the following sentence: “Cat Jones was the kind of woman who not only got everything in the world that she wanted—in her case a fabulous job as editor in chief of one of the biggest women’s magazines, a gorgeous town house in Manhattan, a hot-looking husband with a big career of his own—but over the years also managed to get plenty of what other women wanted: like
their
fabulous jobs and
their
hot-looking husbands.”