I am writing this on the plane, on my way back from a week-long business trip. I’m exhausted and it’s been a long week. I hate being away for this long and I also hate coming back feeling down and grumpy from all the travel/work stuff. My fam is psyched to see me and I’m dying to see them (and it’s movie night - no one should be grumpy on movie night!) So I’m determined to do something about this, to lift the business trip exhaustion fog and feel happier — and do it in a very short amount of time I have before I see my crew.

I’ve been studying happiness for a few years now, reading every book and article and study I can find. I am really interested in what we know about our own happiness (not a lot, according to one of my favorite happiness experts, Daniel Gilbert) and what we can do to feel happier (if you read one book about it, read Flourish). Time to put all this reading to work: Here are some quick small things you can do to feel happier, right now:

• Think of something good about your day today. It can be the smallest tiniest thing. Or it can be big. But it doesn’t have to be. Here’s mine: I got a kale, broccoli, apple and celery juice at the airport and it was great. Also, it was a lot healthier than what I’ve been eating this week, so I feel like I’m changing directions for the better.
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I don’t make a lot of New Year’s resolutions. I used to and I learned my lesson. The routine went something like this: Make too many resolutions. Set expectations too high. A few months later realize I’m failing. Feel bad. This was not productive so I stopped vowing to do things like lose weight or eat more broccoli or try to be better about remembering friends’ birthdays. (If you’ve been in a similar boat, don’t feel bad, it’s completely normal. Americans constantly overstimate how well they will stick to their New Year’s resolutions.)

No more big resolutions lists for me, thank you. But I do like the idea of having one theme for the year, one thing I’ll try to focus on. I guess you can call that a resolution but one is better than ten, right? So here’s my big theme for 2012:

Appreciate the good stuff more.

Yep, that simple. There is a lot of science that shows when you focus on the good things you have and are grateful for them, you are happier.
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The holidays are stressful.

However you slice it, there is too much to do in a short period of time (unless you’re a super-planner and got it all done in October), you’re running from one family gathering to another work function, and not seeing much of that me-time for a few weeks in a row. But this year I am determined to stop looking at the holidays as a series of to-dos and actually chillax and enjoy some of them. It won’t work 100% (I know already because I am stressing over this pile of cards I need to send out) but I think I can tame the holiday anxiety monster a bit.

Here are 5 things I’m going to try to do:

• Walk or do yoga every day. I’m going to be really stubborn about this. These are two things I do that calm my nerves and energize me to deal with whatever stress ball is aiming at me that day. So even though routine flies out the window in a few days, I’m going to figure out how to do some yoga or take a walk every day between now and New Years. Determination!

• Accept the fact that late is better than never. There is no way these holidays cards are going out on time. They are New Year’s cards, something we do every year because (1) New Year is great to celebrate and (2) this gives me extra time to send them out. But I am going to accept the fact that some won’t get to our friends or family until well after the New Year and that’s OK. Look at it this way: They will stand out from the plethora of other cards they’ve gotten… on time.
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This has been a nutty year on all fronts but one of the things I’m pretty proud of is that I’ve not thrown out taking care of myself out the window. That had been my usual pattern when things got stressful and as I’ve shared here before, to not great outcomes. Taking a morning walk, yoga at least two or three times a week, generally clean eating (which for me means less sugar, white stuff and serious daily doses of veggies, fruit, nuts and fish) — I’ve kept up with these habits (not perfectly, but that would be a silly goal) and they’ve helped me maintain some degree of sanity and dare I say, well-being!, during this year. I so so highly recommend you do one of them if you don’t already.

But there has been one thing which I KNOW is important for health and sanity that I’ve continued to struggle with: sleep. I just don’t get enough of it.
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Procrastination gets a bad rep and I can see why. I had a difficult work email to write earlier and I spent a half hour procrastinating — reading Huff Post entertainment articles, cleaning up the kitchen, staring at my computer screen and wishing it would write itself. I wasted a bunch of time, during which the email was weighing on my mind, and I wasn’t the better for it.

But I don’t think all procrastination is bad. Or rather, I think it’s impossible to avoid completely. Sometimes you have a task to get done that you completely loathe to start or are intimidated to begin. There are mornings when I come to work, for example, and feel so overwhelmed with what’s on my plate that I need some kind of a a warm-up to roll up my sleeves and get into the working mode. So my new motto is that if I’m going to procrastinate, I’m going to try and be productive about it. Here are my three favorite ways:

• Read an article online, but just one, and hopefully not one related to the task I’m procrastinating to do. I often top to the New York Times health, technology, or style and fashion sections to find something interesting. But here’s the deal: Don’t click on any of the links in or around the article. The rule is just one article, then back to the task at hand.
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Our very good friends just had a baby, four weeks ago, to be precise. She is precious and amazing and they are tired and excited and overwhelmed. All par for the course. As we sat there, the little one napping on me an causing all sorts of nostalgia, my-friend-the-new-mom and I got into a bit of mom talk. Lack of sleep (sleep when the baby sleeps makes total sense), the reality of breastfeeding (much more painful and idyllic than she imagined), and trying to figure out how work and her other creative projects fit in now that she is a MOM and is completely in love with being one.

Boy, did that last one sound familiar. I didn’t want to be all grim about it, but what I told her is that even though my daughter is seven (OMG!) I don’t think I’ve got the winning formula down or even close to it. It’s something I juggle on a daily basis and sometimes, I don’t feel like I’m doing it very successfully. (I’m crossing my fingers that she appreciated an honest answer.)

I did want to be constructive so I shared some advice with my friend. I’d love to know what advice you’d give to a new working mom so please sound off in the comments.

• Don’t be a martyr. I did this, it’s stupid and it is not good for anyone in the family. I didn’t leave my kiddo’s side for 3 months until I went to work, save for a few doctor’s appointments or late night walks after she was asleep. My husband and I didn’t go out without her until she was nine months old. After I went back to work I pumped for 45 minutes at a time, 4 times a day, because my milk was running out but I was determined that I needed to keep my kiddo breast milk-only for a certain number of months. I can keep going for pages.
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I’m a maniac when it comes to finding ways to save time, get more organized (so that I can find more time) or figure out how to do something (so I can have more time). I’ve stopped wishing for an extra hour in the day since no one seems to be listening and instead constantly look for ways to create more time.

So I thought I’d share some of my recent little time finders here. They might seem trivial but believe me, they are working mom lifesavers. I promise, double pinky swear.

• Pre-cut ingredients for cooking. I cook a lot. It’s one of the things I’ve not let go even with a crazy job and a hectic schedule at home. Maybe it’s how I release my working mom guilt or more importantly, I really like our family to eat well and healthy. Cooking involves a lot of cutting: onions, carrots, celery, broccoli, you name it. Onions are my absolute least favorite things to cut (I am sure I don’t have to tell you why) and yet many things I cook include them. So when I recently discovered that Trader Joe’s sells pre-chopped onions I squealed in excitement (yes, really, right there in the store) and they are now a regular staple on our shopping list (along with pre-cut carrots and celery mix I use for soup starters). I realize that I am paying more than if I buy regular onions and chop them. But the difference isn’t big enough to make up for the tons of time (and tears!) I save when I use pre-cut onions.
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All right, I’ve been a working mom long enough (7+ years) to know that the whole work-life balance thing is a silly idea and trying to do it all — work, family, life, me — is impossible. I know this for a fact because well, I tried the whole superwoman routine for a while, until it started to affect my well-being and my health to a degree I could not ignore.

But here’s a question: If you know you can’t do it all, what do you give up?

I’ve done an informal survey of my friends who are working moms, asking them what they’ve given up in their life because they just don’t have time to get it all done, and the popular answers seem to be:
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Mondays suck.

OK, maybe not all Mondays suck and maybe you’ve had a crazy hectic weekend and going to work on Monday is a relief. But for the most part, Monday is not most people’s favorite day. It’s definitely not mine.

So I decided to come up with some ideas for making it less unpleasant. Here’s what I’ve come up with:

• Plan something you’ll enjoy. I try to take a yoga class on Mondays after work. I look forward to it all day and it’s such a great way to end what is usually a hectic meeting-filled day. Find something you enjoy and plan some time to do it on Monday. It can be as simple as setting aside a half hour to read, go for a walk, catch up with a friend or anything else that makes you feel good.
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One of the most popular topics we talk about here at Work It, Mom! is the fact that work-life balance is a farce and it’s more like a work-life juggle, in which you have to accept that you’ll drop the balls more often than you’ll catch them all. I can’t count how many times I’ve talked to another working mom, listened to her tell me how stressed she is from everything she has to do, and gave her advice to let some things go and not beat herself up for doing 100% in all areas of her life.

And here’s a confession: I’ve often not followed that advice.

I’ve been a working mom for more than 7 years now. And while I know, with 100% certainty that it is absolutely positively impossible to do it all, I don’t think I’ve actually let go of trying to do it all until very recently (and probably not completely). “I can figure out a way to defy the odds,” I’d think, as I cooked at midnight so that my kiddo would have a freshly prepared dinner the next day, or got up at 5am to make it to a spin class at the gym, or worked 16 hour days… for weeks. It’s almost like I had this game I was playing: It was me against the reality that as a mom with a demanding career I was going to have to let some things go. I rarely felt like I was winning — although there are always those absolutely kick-ass days when you feel like a superwoman, you know? — but I kept playing.
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