I was chatting it up with my doctor the other day — my check-up was over and both of us miraculously didn’t have to run anywhere — when she mentioned a historical book she was reading. As she told me about it all I kept thinking was that I couldn’t believe she actually found time to read. She runs a successful medical practice, has three teenage kids, runs and exercises almost every day (yes, we’ve discussed this) and makes it a point to get seven or eight hours of sleep daily (yes, we’ve discussed this too, as part of a kind lecture she gave me to stop thinking that I can survive on five hours of sleep a night). I meant to ask her when she found time to read but the conversation turned to another topic and I didn’t think of it until I’d left.

She is not the first ultra-busy working mom who has surprised me with her ability to find time for books. A friend at work is a voracious reader, who always brings a book on her daily train commute. Another friend is always mentioning this or that book she has read and she has two kids and pretty hectic job. I have to confess that I feel like a total book failure because ever since I became a working mom, the number of books I’ve managed to read has shrunk significantly.
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My daughter has been on vacation this week so we had more than our usual share of playdates and generally spending time together with other kids and parents. Many of these get togethers have involved food and I quickly realized that we have more “eat healthy rules” than many other families. And since when it comes to the division of labor at home I am in charge of food and cooking, I guess the rules are mostly mine.

For the record, I am no food nazi. I think it’s good to eat a variety of everything, including dessert, and it’s really important to enjoy your food. But generally yes, I do try to keep our family healthy. We stay away from most processed and junk food and prioritize whole grains, veggies and fruits and lean meats and fish over simple starches, fried anything, and red meat. It takes some effort but I have to say, I’m pretty proud of the way we all eat, especially our kiddo.
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I was flipping through a magazine at the gym the other day and came across an article about the importance of friendships. The stair climber was kicking my butt at the time so I didn’t read the whole piece, but one paragraph got stuck in my mind. In it the author wrote about the way that our insanely hectic lifestyles have left little time or energy for maintaining strong friendships.

This got me thinking about the friends in my life and how we’re always struggling to find time to catch up. Between work, kids, kids’ activities, family stuff, and various home to-dos it’s never easy to set aside a chunk of time to spend together. One of my friends and I tried to establish a regular schedule at one point - every Monday night we’d meet up for however long we could manage.
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As someone who has been in the business world for most of my career, I am always interested in the topic of why there are so few women running companies or starting high-growth companies. So this article in Business Week, about the dearth of women entrepreneurs, caught my attention.

The author cites a few non-surprising statistics:

No woman has ever been CEO of a Wall Street firm.

Women were primary owners of only 19% of the 237,843 firms founded in 2004.

I say non-surprising because I am well aware of how few women hold top positions in business and finance. During my five years in venture capital, I ran across very few women who held senior positions in other firms and got used to scanning networking events for one or two women in the sea of make suits.

When people talk or write about why more women aren’t don’t hold top positions in business, there are common themes that emerge:
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