The other day, I was sitting in a corner of my local community center’s lounge, trying to finish writing an article on deadline while my daughter was in her gymnastics class.

A mom and her daughter came in a few minutes after I’d settled myself into my work. She must have a child in the same gymnastics class as my daughter, because they’re there at the same time I am every week. And, every week, the same thing happens: She starts talking loudly, either to her older daughter or on her cell phone, while moving furniture around to create a space in which her daughter can do her homework. If there are books on the small table in the lounge, she dumps them on the floor with an exaggerated sigh, and then (loudly) tells her older daughter to start her homework. She glares at the two or three other people in the room if we look up from our books or our laptops. She goes through her daughter’s folder, reading comments from the teacher out loud and announcing each grade on each test.

Which made me think: There should really be a set of rules posted somewhere, for people who have to work in public.
Read the rest of this entry

Hi, my name is Lylah. And, in addition to being the Queen of Procrastination and the Empress of Clutter, I am a Control Freak.

This will come as no surprise to anyone who has spent more than an hour in my company.

It’s not that I need people to do exactly what I say when I say it (though, honestly? That’s kind of nice). It’s that I feel more secure when I know what’s going on, and I’m more likely to know what’s going on if I’m the one holding all (or most) of the cards.

Not realistic. Or healthy. And it only gets worse around the holidays.

Read the rest of this entry

There are times when you’re juggling work and parenthood and housework and home work and you drop the ball. Or a few balls, or– as happened with me last week–pretty much all the balls.

Usually, I know that if work is taking up a lot of my time on any given day, I can tilt the scales in the other direction and pick up the parental slack. But other times, the dropped balls seem so… numerous. And I feel so… singular. And I need more motivation in order to start juggling it all again.

Here’s what I do:
Read the rest of this entry

Chris Brogan recently featured a brilliant post written by online marketing strategist Tommy Walker about the 106 excuses that prevent you from ever becoming great. It’s an eye-opening read, because I’ve heard myself say some of them time and again, but hadn’t really thought of the way I was undermining myself with my own words. Words like these:
Read the rest of this entry

My current job takes me away from home about once a month, sometimes twice. It’s always to one of the same two places—to meet with the rest of my team in New York, or to political events in Washington, D.C.—so my youngest kids can easily understand where I am when I’m away, and why.

That doesn’t mean that they like my absences, though. My husband holds down the fort without a hitch (though more pizzas are ordered when I’m gone than when I’m home, oddly enough), but he has his own career, complete with a long commute, to juggle. So I find myself trying to minimize my trip, squeezing two days worth of work into a single day in order to avoid being away overnight.
Read the rest of this entry

We talk a lot about reining in our “to-do” lists. And one of my best motivation-boosters is my “have done” list. But while readjusting my cyber security levels on Facebook and elsewhere, I was struck by the idea of an “ignore” list. I use the option for trolls and unwelcome contacts online all the time. Why don’t I have one in real life?
Read the rest of this entry

It happens to most professionals, regardless of their line of work: People want you to weigh in with your opinion, but they don’t want to pay you for your time because it’s “just a little question” or “it’ll only take a second” or “we’re family, after all.” But when those request pile up, it goes from a minute or two here and there to actual, billable hours for which you’re not getting paid—a sure sign that it’s time to say no.

But saying no feels… wrong, sometimes. You don’t want to leave a friend in the lurch, and how do you tell a relative that you usually get a-certain-dollar-amount-per-fraction-of-an-hour when the “quick question” is coming from a client rather than a cousin? And what if the request is coming from someone with whom you want to build a bridge, not burn one?

I’ve written in the past about whether it’s ever OK to work for free (and whether it’s worth it to keep working when a job stops paying you), but the real tough part for me—and for many people—is saying no gracefully. Here are four tips on how to do it:

Read the rest of this entry

Last month, Manhattan district court judge Loretta Preska threw out a class-action lawsuit by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against Bloomberg L.P., the financial and media services company founded by New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. The defendants insisted that the company ,had routinely discriminated against pregnant women and employees who were returning from maternity leave by reducing their pay and their work responsibilities. But the judge disagreed.

Though there was proof of “several isolated instances of individual discrimination,” she noted, there wasn’t enough evidence to show that the discrimination was “Bloomberg’s standard operating procedure.”

“The law does not mandate ‘work-life balance’,” she wrote. “In a company like Bloomberg, which explicitly makes all-out dedication its expectation, making a decision that preferences family over work comes with consequences.”

I want to say she’s wrong, but she’s absolutely right. The law does not mandate work-life balance, and employers are well within their rights to demand what they want from their employees.
Read the rest of this entry

“I Don’t Know How She Does It,” the movie based on the best-selling book about working moms and the juggle they face, hits theaters tomorrow. And while I identify with the character and disagree with the ending (of the book, at least), I don’t really feel like seeing the movie. I’m kind of tired of the whole premise: Woman determined to “have it all” faces burn-out or failure until she chooses one part of her life over the other.

People routinely ask me how I do it. “How do you work full-time with so many kids?” “How do you get back to work once the kids are in bed?” “How do you keep it all together?” I have a few answers:
Read the rest of this entry

Scrolling through my Facebook feed, chatting with my local friends via text, talking to family members on the phone, I’m a bit surprised by the number of people I know who are planning or taking vacations right now. I hate to admit it, but I have to admit it: I’m a little jealous. Or, possibly, a lot. Where do so many people find the time and the money for a proper vacation?

Read the rest of this entry