But life is never typical, and there were some good things too. I went to the 15-year-old’s high school choir concert. He looked very handsome in his tux! And the kids sounded good. He and I went to Princeton Reunions over the weekend (he stayed with my parents for the party part and then came with me for the “P-rade” — which he really wanted to go see). And we found out he got into the summer precollege program he was applying to. Summer planning for him has been a source of some stress as another thing had fallen through, but I think this will be a good choice, if going away for several weeks will be a new adventure.

Also, the hammock I asked for as a Mother’s Day gift arrived, and was assembled, and I even got to sit in it for 10 minutes on Sunday (my 12-year-old somehow got to sit in it for a lot longer…but hey). I look forward to hopefully sitting in it some more this summer.

Now, on to the TBT Scorecard! (TBT = Tranquility by Tuesday, my next book, which will be out October 11).

Give yourself a bedtime. Mostly. I was in my bed around 11 p.m. (or within 15 minutes) 6 out of 7 nights. On Friday night Reunions meant I went to bed at 1 a.m. But at least I slept until 8 a.m. the next morning!

Plan on Fridays. Always. This week felt somewhat unproductive so I actually started the planning on Thursday. I wasn’t doing much else. On Friday I also figured out the activity schedule for the week. Since I normally do this Sunday night, this was a change and I think I am a fan, so we’ll add this to the Friday planning list (even if I can’t do certain things like sign up for individual karate classes until Sunday night).

Move by 3 p.m. Hit or miss. I went for pre-3 p.m. walks outside on M, W, Th, and Fr (I had a doctor appointment Tuesday and it threw everything off). I didn’t do anything on Sunday except chase people around. Saturday I did do a ton of walking prior to 3 p.m. due to Reunions (we parked a ways from campus…) so I suppose that counts.

Three times a week is a habit. I only ran twice, although these were more interesting runs than usual. I did a trail run and also ran with the 15-year-old once. Due to my husband’s absence, we only had two full family meals, though I did eat with all the kids a few times. I sang three times (solo practice, choir practice, and church service). I guess technically I played the piano three times, but that was all on Sunday and it was because I took three small chunks of time to play. It only added up to about 30 minutes total, so that’s not really in keeping with the spirit of this rule. However, I have been getting some new music. I had to exchange the 10-year-old’s trumpet (the valves in the rental got stuck right before her concert…) and while I was in the music store I bought sheet music so that is improving my piano game. In case anyone is curious, I can still play a mean Für Elise.

Create a back-up slot. Friday was mostly open as usual. In more productive news, I had some open time on Monday, and was able to fit in a call with a potential speaking client the day they asked, which is always nice to be able to do.

One big adventure, one little adventure. I’ll call my run along the river with my 15-year-old my “little adventure” for the week. I think we will try to do this more regularly over the summer. And Reunions was definitely the big adventure. I saw some people I hadn’t seen in quite a while! And it’s always fun to see the campus again.

Take one night for you. Choir practice fills this spot, though Thursday was the last practice for the season. We’ll see what I choose to fill its place over the summer…

Batch the little things. Unclear. This week felt like a ton of little things. I was trying to work in 20 minute chunks between home-related woes, so there wasn’t a whole lot of batching.

Effortful before effortless. Because my current assignment in the Shakespeare reading projects is Sonnets 80-154, I did use some bits of time to read these (rather than reading a number of them in a 20-minute chunk, as I would with the plays). But at night it was mostly back to the bad habits, I’m afraid. I didn’t have a book I was reading. Maybe my hammock can become my fun. It takes more effort to go outside than to just pop open my phone, but it would be a lot more pleasant…

Her problem? “I haven’t ever had that job I love.” Since having children, this Princeton grad and Harvard MBA (who blogs at ADesignSoVast, including about 168 Hours) has always worked part-time as a way to pursue that ever-elusive goal of balance. “The thing that haunts me is this: In being unwilling to give up either world, did I end up doing a poor job in both?” she asks.

I would say no on the mom front, since her two children sound quite charming from her blog posts! (Many of us use our blogs to complain about the rugrats). But on the work front, she feels “frustrated by what feels like wasted years, spent only partially engaged in jobs that, in retrospect, did not mean very much to me. To keep the flexibility I prize so highly I have chosen roles that are often peripheral, not core to a company’s function, and I have been an individual contributor rather than a member of a team. This has eroded both my sense of making a real contribution and of feeling part of a cohesive group. What was the point of having missed hours with my babies for something that feels so insubstantial and inconsequential now?”

Of course, as she points out, she doubts she actually would have wanted to be with her kids every second. Still, it’s kind of a depressing essay, and she even floats the idea that she wasted her Princeton and Harvard educations, and let down her parents and teachers, which seems a little silly. Jeff Skilling probably let down his HBS profs. Not Lindsey. But she does raise several points that I think are worth addressing.

First, people have this idea that part-time work would be the best of both worlds between working and staying home with kids. In reality, as she has discovered, it is sometimes the worst of both worlds. You still have work stress, often a commute and work expenses, you may need childcare, and yet you aren’t working enough to get the full benefit of it — that is, working to the point of diminishing returns. And so you earn far less per hour, often don’t get benefits, and your career may not advance to the point where the work is fun. Or where you have the autonomy that would actually bring a better work-life fit. Sure, some people love their part-time jobs. But they are not a universal solution to work-life woes.

My main beef with the essay, though, is the idea that by fully committing to one’s professional life, you “give up” motherhood, even if you have kids. This is the kind of false choice that I wrote 168 Hours to combat. There are 168 hours in a week. If you work 40 and sleep 56, that leaves 72 hours for other things.

Now, you can point out that many of the jobs that HBS grads pursue are not 40-hour/week jobs. But I’ve seen several time logs now of big firm lawyers, executives, management consultants and so forth, and they were not working 80-hour weeks. Yes, they were sometimes 55-65. But this still leaves many hours for a family life if you choose, and I was gratified to see how often they did choose family. And not just at 7pm on weekdays and on weekends, either. Mead was not “willing to give up the flexibility to spend time with my children, during the week, during the day.” Neither were some of them (I enjoyed the Wednesday 10AM school birthday party entry on a particularly hard-charging mom’s time log).

The key for many people is professional situations where we get to be grown-ups. That is, if you want to be at a school event at 10AM, you make the work up at 10PM. In many cases, you get to that grown-up stage by devoting enough hours to your craft to get somewhere. Yes, sometimes the key to work-life “balance” is working more.

In other 168 Hours news:

• Kimberly Wilson’s Tranquility du Jour runs a podcast on 168 Hours
• Men with Pens runs a guest post from me on why you should write that Christmas letter now (and is co-hosting a webinar with me on Free Agent Time Management on Oct 14!)
• Wandering Scientist writes what she discovered during the 168 Hours Challenge, and in good scientific fashion, gives us the daily averages, plus the maximum and minimums. Good stuff!
• Laughing at Chaos rounds up her week and discovers she multi-tasks All. The. Time.
• Light and Momentary discovers that she hates logging her time — but it does keep her accountable.
• The Soap Dish vows to remember moments of family fun that thread through her 168 hours.
• And many more time logs coming in (this is just a smattering – plus some that wish to be anonymous). Everyone finds this a learning experience. Though sometimes not in the ways we envisioned.

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