Review of "What the Most Successful People Do on the Weekend" by Laura Vanderkam

I've decided Laura Vanderkam's advice is just plain right. Full stop.

I'm a huge fan of her blog, and when I found out she has another time-management book coming out on December 31 called What the Most Successful People Do on the Weekend - I immediately knew I had to read it. She was kind enough to share it with me early, and I absolutely loved it. It was the perfect length, it took me under 30 minutes to devour, and I felt I didn't waste even a single moment of any of my own precious 36 waking weekend hours enjoying it.

So, what do "The Most Successful People" do on the weekend, you ask? Well, in general, they do two key things with their time:

1) They have a structure - choosing weekend labor of a different sort than the weekday labor they typically engage in, or to borrow from fitness parlance they "cross train," and --

2) They plan - by making written plans, particularly about how they'll use their weekend downtime, they take full advantage of the happiness-boosting benefits of anticipation.

There is so much great food for thought in Vanderkam's book, and I say this as someone who already makes extremely good use of her time and who totally lacks the procrastination gene. A few tidbits:

On how to plan a weekend: Plan a few "anchor events," such as 3 to 5 things you want to do, sketched in ahead of time. What's something new you've always wanted to do? Dream a little. Write your ideas down so you can finally make those happen.

On household chores: Do them on the weekdays. "You may just spend less time on chores because you have less time." Designate only a small chore time on the weekend if you must. Better yet, hire help.

On kids' activities: "Pare down to the activities they and you enjoy most" with the knowledge that "depth and focus tend to bring more happiness than a scattershot approach where you never get a chance to go all in towards mastery." (Yes, indeed, that sounds refreshingly familiar.) Also, write down ahead of time how you plan to make use of any time you're going to spend waiting at kids' sports events. Mom writes down: "I'll read the whole Sunday times" while she waits four hours for her daughter's swim meet to end. Brilliant.

On Sundays: "Sunday? Miraculously everyone is free." Indeed. That makes it a great window of time to spend with friends you hardly ever see. Why not have people over for an early Sunday dinner?

On why "the simplify Christmas narrative" is wrong:

"But if you’ve got young kids, it doesn’t take long to realize that there won’t be many Christmas seasons when the little ones will race downstairs in the morning to see what Santa brought. They won’t always be eager to bake with you, spilling flour on the counter in their excitement. Eventually they won’t care if you put up a giant tree, or go caroling, or make hot chocolate. You can beg off making a snowman because you’re tired. But there are only a few winters—and only a few days each winter when it’s snowy and you all are home together— that your children will ask to make snowmen with you. Someday, perhaps, you will be staring at the snow from the too simple room of a hospital or nursing home, dreaming of the days when making snowmen with your children was an option. This realization leads to a different question than that suggested by all these tips on simplifying the holidays. Namely, what are you saving your energy for? This is all there is. Anything could happen and you are not guaranteed another snowman. So make a fuss. Make a show. Spend your energy now."

Quite the spot-on argument to carpe diem this Christmas. "Life cannot happen only in the future." So very true. "What the Most Successful People Do on the Weekend" by Laura Vanderkam will be released on December 31 (you can pre-order it now). Happy Holidays, all!

Happier At Home, for the Holidays

Just finished Happier At Home by Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project. I can't seem to get enough of her. While I understand her tone is not everyone's favorite, I promise if you give her ideas a chance, her very approachable suggestions will inspire you to do some little things to make yourself happier. The bibliography at the back of her book is also a real treasure trove of wisdom and emotional intelligence - I literally photocopied the pages of it from my library copy, and plan to read many of the books she references.

One of Rubin's suggestions I have actually practiced is to mini-decorate my home for the holidays. Honestly, this one was a stretch for me. Rubin's a fan of doing a little holiday breakfast for the family on various holiday mornings - simply putting up something festive as a centerpiece on the breakfast table and then sitting down together as a family before everyone leaves for work and school on the holiday morning. Yeah, no.

Since I don't cook, and mornings are a bit too harried around here already, I decided to amend her suggestion and decorate the mantle for the holidays. So far we've done Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas - all using items we already have. Each time, the kids have jumped in and taken over decorating. So yeah, decorating the mantle has turned into some unexpected family holiday fun for all of us - DH and I like not having to be the one to do it alone, and the kids love calling the shots. Who knew? Gretchen Rubin's right again.

Have I mentioned I'm not a super happy-go-lucky holiday person?

Nevertheless, having two preschoolers has definitely changed my outlook on the December holiday season. They get so excited about decorating, about reading anything Santa-related, about pointing out the "beautiful" lights on people's homes (but lights on the exterior of our house? over my cold dead body.) I never could have predicted the sweetness of the holiday magic these two little kids have brought into my life. Now I get it.

One of our holiday traditions is watching National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation each year. How did I never before notice the hotness that is Beverly D'Angelo? Also, many of the late 80s fashions depicted in the movie are back again - crazy! Is little cousin Ruby Sue wearing a wig? The kids love the Julia Louis-Dreyfus character, Margot the mean neighbor. All day yesterday DS asked DD to ask him: "Why is the floor wet?" so he can respond "I don't KNOW, MARGOT!" Ds also pointed out a house that resembled The Griswold home a little too closely. Cracks me up.

What's happening in your home for the holidays?

Broken Open by Elizabeth Lesser

Finally, I recommended a book club book that everyone else hated! I think this has got to be some sort of odd rite of passage.

"Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow" by Elizabeth Lesser was my pick. Well, it was sort of my pick in a way but not really.... See, I bought a copy as a birthday present for my friend, C, who loved it. C then recommended it to our book club as her pick, before she had actually read it. Turns out, C and I were the only ones who liked it. But C did not show up to book club, so I was the only one present to defend the book that everyone else hated. Hence it suddenly became "my pick" to defend.

It felt damn strange.

Defending it made me feel vulnerable, due to the subject matter.  The basic thesis is more complex than what I'm about to describe, but here goes: we're all just a bunch of bozos on the bus, and nobody is perfect. Yet almost everyone puts on a capable face and tries desperately to act like they've got it together all the time. Then, usually when something pretty bad happens in their life, they find their old capable face has to go, and they choose to start behaving more authentically.

Ok, not the best sales pitch anyone ever did for a book, I admit.

What can I say. This is not a book for everyone. INFJ-types like me will probably like it or at the very least appreciate it. Anti-therapy types who belittle the idea that people can go through a Phoenix Process after something bad happens to them will not care for this book. And people who cannot abide the story of a mother who cheats on her husband and ends a marriage for what our larger culture construes as frivolous reasons also will not like this book. Folks who don't want to think about aging, death, and dying will hate this book.

So to the 1% of the population I have not already described here: go ahead and read it!

I loved it, and am finding it hard to articulate why. Perhaps it is because I found one message of the book so appealing - and that's the encouragement to stop playing it so safe. Stop clinging to your most closely held judgments about the way you think others are living their lives so incorrectly. Instead, be flexible, be vulnerable, trust the universe, look for the signs that are there.

Halloween Reading

I had no idea there was once a Great New England Vampire Panic, during which people allowed the exhumation of the bodies of their relatives who had died of tuberculosis, and treated said bodies as if they were the living dead. Creep out! Love it.

Thoroughly enjoyed this online test to determine whether I would have been accused of witchcraft. Answer: Yes, the village menfolk totally would have roasted me in the flamety-flames. Definitely. (Thanks @feMOMhist via Twitter.)

Off to get the kiddos to their trick-or-treating, but first we must drive to one of those actual neighborhoods where everyone keeps the porch lights on. I have dibs on all of the Snickers, DH the Butterfingers. My kids, who are going as Spiderman and Spiderwoman, have been "practicing" the candy ask for several weeks now.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Dissent of the Year - Slaughter's "Why Women Still Can't Have It All"

Given the recent mothering critiques/shit-shows/desperate attempts to generate page views in mainstream print media, I had largely given up on hoping to find the answers to life anywhere in those once-prominent but now largely-irrelevant magazines my parents used to subscribe to back in the day.

It's exceptionally rare that I come across a piece I flat out do not agree with in many ways, but enjoyed reading anyway. Anne-Marie Slaughter's July cover story in The Atlantic Why Women Still Can't Have It All should have rubbed me the wrong way. The title alone makes me want to vomit in my mouth a little bit - my knee jerk reaction being so where's that cover story on "Why MEN Can't Have It All" - oh wait, they can. Thanks, Patriarchy! She never once directly mentions patriarchy, and it can't be that she's never heard of it. I think her silence as to "patriarchy" alongside her descriptions of the way "men and women are socialized differently" means she basically gets it, but is choosing not to sound too feministy in the hope of appealing to a mainstream audience, perhaps, perhaps...

Slaughter offers up her own musings on the challenges of having a high-profile government career and parenting her 14- and 12-year-old sons the way she wants to. Note we are not talking about Good Enuf Mothering here; she strikes me as an unacknowledged uber-Type A parent (maybe ESTJ-type?) who demands excellence in all areas of her life. My own mom is a bit like that, so let's just say I know them when I see them. I'll admit this aspect was enlightening to me - I'd always assumed the demands are greatest with infants/toddlers/preschoolers (especially those trying 3.5 year olds) and that parenting gets easier with time and the child's independence. Turns out some young teenagers might actually need their mothers and/or some mothers might feel the need to reprioritize their work lives to spend more time with their 14-year-olds who are suddenly having some school issues and are not talking to anyone. Or it could be an overreaction to the normal mini-rebellions of the young teen phase - I'm sure Slaughter will get some pushback on the internets for it. That's what happens when you put yourself out there, I suppose.

She misses the mark where she overgeneralizes and projects her preferences and in/abilities on to all women, everywhere but also seems to acknowledge that's precisely what she's doing. Slaughter's personal narrative covers loads of familiar territory, and at first does not seem to be offering anything new that has not already been said a million times at those tired old corporate work/life balance panels. If you can stomach the crappy title, give it a read. She gets it right when she critiques the way our work culture is oriented today. Progressives like me will appreciate her suggestions that should allow for less face time, more telecommuting, school sessions that match the reality of the schedules of working families, and better day care options. She also gets the educated/rich privilege angle and explores it (briefly) in a way that doesn't annoy me.

It's a looong article, and I kept saying to myself whenever she mentioned the logistical tedium of dry-cleaning, and running kids to weekend events, etc "Why couldn't she hire someone to help solve this problem?" They're called Personal Assistants. And Babysitters Who Can Drive. She's rich and educated and feels she has enough knowledge of the topic to opine about it in a national publication under her real name, after all? So why not simply avail herself of those solutions? Clearly this is my own bias coming out. Yeah, yeah, I'm making big assumptions about her family's income level. Perhaps I'm just not getting it. I've definitely been accused of that before.

Your thoughts?

The Woman in Black

I finished reading Susan Hill's "The Woman in Black" today at about 4:15 am. I don't think I'll be able to sleep tonight either. Or ever again for that matter.

I definitely need to change my pants.

It got me, it got me good.

The movie (starring Daniel Radcliffe) hits U.S. theaters this week. I don't think I can watch it.

I'm dying to know (puns rule) what the long-running London play was like, as in how on earth they managed to prevent the audience from tearing out of the theatre, screaming.

For those of you with excess intestinal fortitude, I'd recommend reading it. For the other 99% of people, not so much. I love me some scary stories, but this book was just too much, even for me. Consider yourselves warned, scary moviegoers!

Octopuses, not octopi

It's not everyday you read something that instantly makes you feel like a kid again. This delightful article on the minds of octopuses totally transported me back to being about 9-years-old, feeling full of wonder about the cool possibilities out there in the natural world.

I also learned a new grammatical point: "Octopuses, not octopi, is now considered the correct plural among the octopus intelligentsia. Octopi has been discarded as the plural because of its Latin ending on a Greek word."

2 to Read, 2 to See

I've always wished I were a better writer. I'm a decent talker though, and I think in my professional life that has made up for my less-than-stellar writing skillz. Anyway, I read a couple of extremely well-written and thought-provoking blog posts this week that I would like you and all your amazing, talented friends to go ahead and read, too:

To the woman unconvinced TRIGGER WARNING: RAPE/SEXUAL ABUSE over on blue milk

and

Friendly Fire over on Got it, Ma!

Those are my "2 to read," now I give you "2 to see." So I've been to the movies a lot lately - that's what happens when work appointments cancel and I'm in a random city in the middle of the day with time to kill before another meeting. I head off to a matinee. The result is that for the first time in a loooong time, I have seen most of the movies that are currently playing in mainstream American movie theaters right now. Here are my 2 favorites:

Bridesmaids. Fucking hilarious. "The Hangover"/a female-driven Judd Apatow-esque comedy for women. Jon Hamm is even in it. Now go see that shit.

Super 8. Like "The Goonies," meets "Independence Day," meets a bunch of kids who like "Night of the Living Dead." I wasn't prepared for the range of emotions this movie would bring out in me. It also did a great job of very, very subtly and deftly upending gender and racial stereotypes.

Happy weekend!