Then I thought maybe I needed expertise: striving to be an expert would be my obsession. Which it might be. But I don’t think it replaces happiness. It sort of sits next to it. Like, obsessing about being an expert comes naturally to me, but I’m not sure why.

So I’m still looking for what can replace happiness as my what-am-I-doing-here thing. And I’m thinking that maybe it’s mindfulness. It kills me to even write the word, because for the last decade, while I was busy turning Ashtanga yoga into a competitive sport, my teachers kept talking about mindfulness. I kept thinking to myself, I wish they’d shut up and just rank us so I know if I’m best.

But I’m convinced that mindfulness is what gives us the self-discipline to do all the stuff the happiness researchers say will make us happy. And it makes sense, because my yoga teacher always told me mindful would make me happy, if I’d just try it.

So I get about ten zillion books in the mail because publishers ignore the fact that most book reviews on this blog simply say why I didn’t like the book. But. Whatever. So I get this book in the mail – The Power of Slow: 101 Ways to Save Time in Our 24/7 World – and for some reason I find myself reading it during violin practice. This is very bad because we are in a Suzuki program, which means I’m the teacher.

I said to myself, this is crazy, I’m reading a book about slowing down my life as a way to multitask while I am teaching my child to love music. I forced myself to put the book down.

But I liked the book. And I asked the author, Christine Louise Hohlbaum, to write a guest post on my blog. Which is something I never do. Because I end up hating all guest posts and spending way too much time editing them.

The first thing I did when I saw her guest post is I said no. I said this cannot be a guest post. But I think it was okay because that’s her first piece of advice:

1. Learn to say no with panache.
So instead of spending way too much time going back and forth editing, I am just going to plumage through the guest post for stuff I like. I like no. She says, “One of the biggest time sucks in our lives is saying ‘yes’ to something we should have declined. Taking on that extra project at work, organizing the blood drive (again), or accepting yet another party invitation can eat up your time you could have spent doing something you truly love. We have been conditioned to believe ‘no’ is an evil word, when, in fact, it is a complete sentence.” This is how I know she won’t mind that I dumped her guest post but took her best material.

2. Watch your words.
This is the advice that initially hooked me: Hohlbaum says, “Busy is the new fine.” It’s true. Someone asks, “How are you?” and you say, “Busy.” Can you see how messed up that is? It’s a script, right? The person doesn’t really care how you are. The person wants to just hear that you’re fine and move on to the meat and potatoes of the conversation. So if you say busy, you are either saying you do not understand the social convention of opening niceties (very bad to say) or you are saying that busy is the new fine (also very bad to say). Busy is not fine. Busy is too much going on to be your best self. So stop talking about it and fix it.

3. Honor Set-Up Time.
You know the feeling. You return from a week’s vacation to a mountain of work that piled up in your absence. It takes you three days just to slog through it all, and you wonder why you even bothered to leave in the first place. We have the expectation that we should be able to jump right back into what we were doing at a rapid pace. Not so. Every project requires set-up time. Honor the time it takes to get started. It is not about procrastination. It is about wading into the task at hand. It is no wonder you get your best ideas in the shower. You are relaxed and stress-free. Set-up time allows you to tap into your deepest thinking. Make room for it in your life—it will contribute more to your success than pushing through with no stops.

4. Save the best for last.
“Procrastination is a huge time-killer. You spend most of your time worrying about what you haven’t started, pushing it into the recess of your mind. Instead, start saving the best for last. Tackle the hardest project earlier in the day. Reward yourself with your favorite project at the end.”

I love this advice in a book about slow, because it’s not just a way to get your stuff done. It’s a way to slow time down. If you are procrastinating, time goes so much faster than if you have your most important stuff done.

I am trying to figure out what mindful is. And I’m pretty sure it’s doing this stuff. It’s making little rules for yourself throughout the day that force you to check in to make sure you are living a conscious life, purposefully guided. These might not make me happy—that might be impossible—but they might make my head spin slower.

Comment on: Mindfulness makes you more productive

Here’s what I am going to start saying to those people: Only losers say they don’t have time to read blogs. Because everyone has the same 24 hours in the day. So it’s not that you somehow are more busy than everyone else – no one is actually too busy for anything – the issue is that reading blogs is not high enough on your priority list to read them.

So the real response, when I say, “I’m a blogger,” should be “I stay away from blogs so I can shield myself from alternative opinions to mainstream media.” And you wouldn’t want to be that person, right? In fact, you’re probably not that person, because look, you’re reading this blog.

But the problem of saying “I don’t have time to read that” applies to anything – it could be blogs but it could be those really long articles in the Atlantic that scream: “I know no one is reading this article! I only wrote it to get a book deal!”The reality is that you have time to read everything.

Here's what to do if you feel like you can't get a grip on your reading pile:

Stop talking about information overload. That term is for weaklings. Guess what? Generation Y never talks about information overload. That’s because they know how to process information better than anyone else. That’s actually what they were doing when their parents told them to turn off the TV and the music and log off of IM and do their homework.

Information overload is actually the feeling that you cannot sort through the resources in the world in order to figure out what’s important. If you feel like you are overwhelmed it means that your career is at risk, because the best employees in today’s workplace are information synthesizers. And information synthesizers don’t feel overwhelmed by information – they either use it or they don’t, but they don’t whine that there’s too much.

(Here’s a way to test yourself for how fast you can process information online. Look at these two blogs for three seconds each: On Simplicity and Marginal Revolution. Can you tell which is the bigger? If you can’t figure it out that quickly, you won’t be able to sort information quickly. Solve the problem by practicing: You don’t need to read more stuff to decrease your sense of information overload. You need to read a wider range of sources.)

Stop talking about good and bad media. Just because you don’t read it doesn’t make it bad. There is not any type of media that is so stupid that you can categorically dismiss it. I have found that I learned things from romance novels, People magazine, and even books that, in hindsight, were time wasters. So instead of saying, “I don’t have time for xx,” talk about time like you have a grip on it. Say, “I don’t have that type of media at the top of my list because of xx.” It’s a great exercise to make yourself talk this way, because good time management is actually about understanding your priorities, and you cannot explain your reading choices without also explaining your priorities.

Stop talking about time like you need to save it. You just need to use it better. Look, if you wanted save all your time, and sit around and do nothing all day, then you would be gunning for a 4-hour work week. But most people actually enjoy being busily engaged in interesting things (which is why I think Tim Ferriss is a scam) so we are not so much saving time as figuring out the best use of our time.

So focus on meeting your goals rather than saving time. Information is not something you have time for or don’t have time for. Information is either helping you meet your goals or not.

And anyway, maybe your real time management problem is that you are a perfectionist, you spend too much time doing research, or you work too hard on Mondays (yep, that’s right, you should plan to do the most on Wednesday and Thursday).

Comment on: How to feel like you have time to read everything

This is not the kind of guy I usually seek out. But I clicked to his blog, and when I realized that he mixes careers and church like I mix careers and sex, I was hooked.

My conversations with Tony are always about what matters; he approaches this topic from a church perspective, but honestly, careers would not keep me interested if I didn't talk about it from that what-is-the-meaning-of-life perspective.

Tony combines his religion and his work in a social-media, grassroots, new millennium way. I think that on some level, we'd all like to do what he does: take something with deep meaning to us and add a layer of hipster, what's-new-and-cool exploration.

In Tony's new book, Killing Cockroaches, he tells the story of when he was a city manager, and he was in the middle of running a meeting, and he heard a woman down the hall scream about a cockroach. So he got up from the meeting and killed the cockroach. He talks about the dichotomy between wanting to make big-picture impact on the world and being drawn to the smaller, but louder, more immediate issues in front of us.

Really, all time management discussion is about this: How to know when to kill cockroaches and when not to. It's about why we spend time doing small, stupid stuff that is crawling around in front of us instead of the stuff that makes life meaningful. Here is my discussion with Tony about the issue (which is also published in the book):

Tony: Tell me about an instance when you found yourself "killing cockroaches."

Me: I kill cockroaches every day because it's easier than doing the hard stuff on my to do list. I get up in the morning, and my to do list is organized with the most important stuff written on top and the other non-threatening stuff on the bottom, and I so frequently spend my time on the bottom, on the stuff that is small and squishable with just one stomp.

Tony: What are some of the strategies you've implemented to avoid it?

Me: I try to check with myself emotionally. If I'm not doing the hard stuff, I ask myself why. Sometimes I'm feeling anxious or I'm premenstrual or I just yelled at my kids and I think I've ruined their lives (for the millionth time) and I need to just let myself wander up and down my to-do list doing easy stuff. I need a break. But sometimes I look at what I'm doing and I say, "I have more strength right now. Don't squander it." And I go to the top of the list and do the hardest thing.

Sometimes I need a warm up. Like right now. Answering these questions is not the toughest thing I have to do today, but it's harder than, say, answering the emails whee people tell me they loved my last post and I'm great. So I picked this task because I knew I'd feel accomplished at the end because it's challenging but it's not so challenging that I couldn't face it. It is my bridge to the hard stuff today.

Tony: What have you learned from some of these experiences?

Me: If I spend too much time on the stuff that doesn't matter, I feel like I did nothing. Killing one cockroach is okay because maybe you are helping someone else. After all, the woman in your office that day was screaming. And sometimes you are helping yourself. We all have times when we are silently screaming. But killing cockroaches all day feels dirty. (Yes, I know cockroaches are the cleanest insects around.) We feel dirty because it is actually squandering our passion and energy to spend a day doing nothing to promote our vision for what our work is about. The big picture, though, stuff that we keep an eye on is what makes us feel good about our work, I think.

Tony: How do you help your team avoid "killing cockroaches?"

Me: I hire great people so that they think as hard about this stuff as I do. It's nearly impossible to really know what we are supposed to be doing with our days to make life matter. But I love being around people who are asking themselves this question every day.

A team of people like this means that everyone is trying to do some of the hard stuff everyday — without me telling them to. So then my job is to show people how I'm trying to do it every day. I get inspired by this set of questions right here. We can inspire each other with an honest struggle to have meaningful days. But only if we surround ourselves with people who are engaged in asking good questions. So thanks for asking good questions, Tony.

Comment on: How to decide what to do next

My problem with consistency is that I am a tornado, and I have found my tornado nature is both wildly inconsistent and difficult to change, which makes me think that co-dependency on a stable (read: low-maintenance) boyfriend might help. So I think I need an ENTP. So, I’m only dating those from now on. (Yes, the 25-year-old is an ENTP. Personality type is ageless.)

But my inconsistency is no small problem. Here’s an example. I agree to new photos of me for a publication even though I have done tons of photo sessions already and have a gazillion expensively-lit ten-people-making-it-happen photos of myself.

Not only do I say yes, but I agree to do it the day before I leave for the SXSW conference. And I tell the magazine I’ll get a fake tan. Because it’s a summer issue. I’ve never gotten a fake tan and it seemed like maybe it would be fun. Maybe I’d end up looking like I’m in an artsy Versace ad where everyone has big attitudes and big tans.

But at the tanning place I got extremely nervous that maybe tanning places in Madison, Wisconsin suck. I realized that a messed-up tan was no problem for the photographer. He can Photoshop it. But I cannot Photoshop myself at SXSW.

But I already said I’d get the tan. And I am trying to be more consistent. Following through on getting a fake tan would be the consistent thing to do. After all, I didn’t have a commitment to just the photographer, but also to Jan. Jan is the spray-tan lady.

I tried to be trusting but once I got my clothes off, there was no more trust: It occurred to me that I would have this tan for my sex romp with the 25-year-old, and I imagined all the ways that spray tanning could be done incompetently. I ask Jan a barrage of questions: Should people with freckles get a tan? Is that too much too wrong in a Michael Jackson sort of way? Does the spray stuff pool in my belly button? And what about under my breasts? Will that part be white?

Jan charges me double because of the questions. I pay, because maybe it’s true that you get what you pay for.

Four hours later I do the photos and we end right at five because it’s family dinner night, even though my ex and I are not the family you’re thinking of. And I worry a lot about being consistently there for family stuff, because, remember, you never have a problem at work that you don’t have at home as well.

I get home to dinner and scoop up my three year old and kiss him. He says, “Something smells like dirty socks,” and starts taking off his socks.

I panic. I ask the Ex if I smell. He says, “I don’t want to smell you.” He is working on setting boundaries. Then he says, “Do you have a fake tan?”

Crap. I can’t ask the ex if I look too stupid to go to SXSW. Bad boundaries. And the risk of smelling like fake tan seems very bad in the 25-year-old department. So I take a shower.

Then I call my friend Sharon who is a hairdresser. I am a very inconsistent friend to Sharon and do terrible-friend things to her like only call when I need something. Fortunately she’s a hair stylist to the rich and famous in LA so her knowledge of how to groom to perfection complements my own lack thereof, and I call her a lot.

She says buy Nioxin. And she says, “You are doing too much.” Sharon consistently gives me good advice.

I tuck the kids into bed. After I sing to them so that they will have childhood memories of me being a consistent parent. I take one more shower for good measure. I answer email, return phone calls and IM the 25-year-old to see if he is feeling excited to see me which takes a while since he’s not the type to say so without prodding.

Then it’s 1am and it’s time to pack. I pack almost every week to go on business trips. But SXSW is not a normal business trip. It is prom for bloggers. And I’m not sure what to wear. So I pack everything. I take two suitcases for five days.

I speed on the highway and I make the flight.

But my suitcases don’t.

I tell myself, fine. I’ll get them on the next flight. I tell myself, be calm. Consistent people do not come undone over late baggage.

I get on my plane to Dallas. I sleep. I land. I get on my Blackberry and answer emails because consistent people do not let emails pile up when they travel. I call into the office. I find my gate, and I do not miss my connecting flight.

Then I go to the bathroom. I stand in the stall while I finish an email. I sit on the toilet and I am amazed at how dark I am. I pull down my pants to my ankles to inspect my legs. The airport bathroom light is not flattering, but is likely true. And the truth is that people will know this tan is fake.

I tell myself not to panic. I can have sex with the lights out. But there’s no way SXSW is happening in the dark. Crap.

So far, I have somehow maintained consistency.

Then I leave my Blackberry in the bathroom stall. And I fly to Austin before I notice.

I fall behind on emails. I miss a phone call at 10:15. I also miss the 10:45. Two more people who think I’m unreliable. And I miss my radio show. My guests call in and listeners tune in, and I’m not there. And neither is my consistency.

Comment on: Consistently successful careers stem from consistent personal decisions

Today I was besieged by out of the office responses. Of course, everyone is out of the office. Very little news happens between Christmas and New Year’s that you can’t predict and write beforehand.

The time between Christmas and New Year’s is a great time for you to take things into your own hands. During this time, almost all of senior management is completely checked out in most industries. After all, this is what senior is all about – getting to go where you want to at the end of December. So you might find that there are opportunities to get a big break.

For example, two years ago, my investment banking brother was sitting around in December and a big merger came up. He got to do high-level work on the deal because no one wanted to interrupt their vacation. And here’s another example: I know that what’s going on in Israel is not cheery news, but there is a bunch of western journalists getting their first chance to report on a big story because the big-story journalists want to be with family and friends the last week of December.

So much of career advice is about finding someone to mentor you and taking jobs with people who will create opportunities for you. But that’s not enough. You also have to take responsibility for yourself.

So use this time to make your own big break. Keep alert for something big that might need doing, and, in the meantime, if there’s not something big, here are five ideas for what else you can do at work between Christmas and New Year’s.

Comment on: Why you're lucky to be in the office between Christmas and New Years

When I got there, he made me hamburger that was shaped a little too much like how it might have looked in the cow's body, and then he asked me what I wanted.

"I want this to be a date," I said.

"And then what do you want?"

"Well. I don't know. I guess we kiss. That's what you do on a date."

The farmer laughed. And he asked me if I thought I could live on a farm.

I said no. I said I was thinking this would be a summer fling.

I'm sure I don't need to tell you that he is not the summer fling type.

I sat across from him at his kitchen table thinking that he is so simple and stupid for thinking I could be serious about him.

After dinner we walked through his fields, over his creek, and next to his hay, and an hour later I thought that I am so simple and stupid for thinking that just because he is a farmer, I am not serious.

So I went back to the farm three times in one week to negotiate how a date might work. Each time I felt like I was crazy. What am I doing with a farmer? I am already sometimes sleeping only four hours a night. There is no room in my life for anything but kids and work.

The next time I was there, it was time to put the chickens back in the house or pen or whatever it is that they live in. I noticed that the farmer sort of encourages them to go to the house, but really, they could get away at any time. But they go back to the house because he gives them everything they could want there.

One hen will not come in. The farmer waits. He negotiates. Then he walks away. He says the hen is not ready. I worry out loud that she will be eaten by coyotes. He says she will decide to go in before that happens, and he'll be there. He says it's timing.

The timing is what gets me, though. This is not a good time in my life to fall for a farmer. Of all the things to invest my time in, this is not one of them. It's not something that will work out. So moments of doubt turn into time-management panic.

Like, at the end of our second date, the farmer walked me to my car, which was on his front lawn, and he kissed me goodnight. I got in the car and looked behind me, and somehow, in the span of seconds between going from the car back to the house, he started peeing. On the front lawn.

I got out of the car.

"Are you kidding me?!!? Are you peeing on your front lawn? Are you nuts?"

"This is normal."

"No. This is not normal!"

He laughs.

I laugh.

But I am not sure we are laughing for the same reasons.

"On the farm you pee outside if you're outside and you pee inside if you're inside."

I tell him this is a huge cultural gap and we have a huge problem.

I come back the next day even though the more things are weird with the farmer the more I worry that I am making a poor time management decision by spending time with him.

The next day, he is very tired. He woke up at 4 a.m. because he heard thunder and he knew that the mother who has new twin calves would lose one in the rain. He went out and found the lost one and brought it back to the mom.

He tells me this story while we sit on the sofa on his porch. This is where we do everything. I hope we will make out on the sofa. But he is tired. And I am scared of being rebuffed, so we talk.

"How much would it cost you to lose a calf?"

"About $200."

"You do all that work for months and months just for $200?"

"It's not that much work every day for one calf. This is an exception. But bringing the calf back to its mother is not about the money. It's about taking care of the animal."

You can see where this is headed, right? We have this conversation 500 times.

Here's another version, different day, same porch:

"I can't move to the farm because I have so much more money than you do. I will get into the same situation with my last marriage. I will have all the power and it will be terrible."

"I don't think you have more money. I have more money. "

"You made $15,000 last year. And it was a good year. I made $15,000 for one speech just last week."

"You make a lot of money, but you spend it. You're in debt."

"It's about cash flow. I have a lot coming in. I could have a lot. If I decided to be good with money."

"My land is worth $2 million."

"Really!??! That's so exciting!"

"I'd never sell it. The land means way more to me than the money. And it's ridiculous that you spend $200 on a pair of jeans."

So I do this drive, this three-hour drive, again and again to see the farmer. Because I feel like I am understanding myself better and better as I go farther and farther from where I think I belong. Until I find myself in a tornado, ignoring his phone calls to tell me that a tornado is too dangerous and I should stay home.

I read that people do totally crazy things when they are in love, but how do you explain me driving to the farm in a tornado to negotiate something that is not a summer fling while we sort of start having a summer fling? If I can't count it toward being in love, then does it just count toward losing my mind?

But I don't think I'm losing my mind. For example, I know it's the farmer's understanding that my children matter most that makes him hard to regard as just a summer fling.

One of the times I had the kids with me, I spent most of my time worrying that they would get into trouble, while the farmer did things like help them climb up onto hay scrunched up into sushi-shaped rolls that were too large for the kids to get down from. And then he said, "Thank you for yelling at the kids for stepping on the corn so I could focus on just having fun on the farm with them."

For a while the farmer was very careful about the kids only coming on days he could be around, because of things like the electric fence, which he has memories of as a kid that include falling on it while riding a bicycle and getting shocked fifty times.

But then I got an email from him that said, "You are welcome at my house with the boys. I trust your judgment and I think you know most of the dangers. But remind me to take the gun out of the house."

I never thought I'd get an email about a gun that was so touching.

So I cut back on work. But I still did an interview with a teacher's publication while sitting on the farmer's front porch. He laid down next to me with his arm on my leg. He said he likes hearing me work but he also likes that I don't bring the Blackberry when I go to his fields.

"There's reception in the field?"

"Yeah. Other people bring it there when they visit."

I don't tell him that I would have brought it if I'd have known. Because I don't want to be that person. But it's so scary that this might go on too long and be squandered time.

I snuggle up next to him on the porch and I tell him that he makes me nervous because I'm risking so much for him.

He says, "What exactly are you risking?" And he points out that he has agreed to allow his very private life to be the subject of very public blog posts, which makes him nervous.

I am silent. I feel awkward because I'm supposed to be the queen of work life balance. But I tell him that cutting back on work seems like a huge risk to me.

I know that people who are workaholics are scared of two things: Not being great at work, and having to face an empty personal life. And I'm worried about both. It's so hard to cut back on work that I adore to see a guy who is a complete wild card in my life. But I see now that the farmer doesn't need to be THE ONE. And there's value for me to just stop working so hard. That's the first step. I'm just lucky I found someone who makes me want to try that.

Comment on: How I started taming my workaholic tendencies

A lot of people try to justify their outrageously long commute. I think this is delusional, and I would know, because I used to have one: Two hours each way between Los Angeles and San Diego. Two hours, that is, if I left home at 5 a.m. and went home at 8 p.m. I thought it would be okay because the money was so good, but actually, I nearly lost my mind.

So think twice about accepting an outrageous commute in order to make outrageous amounts of money. Especially if your extreme commute means that the time outside of work for family and friends is gone – to the car ride. Nattavudh Powdthavee of the University of London published research to show that if you are going to take a job where you will give up seeing family and friends on a regular basis, you would need to earn $133,000 just to make up for the lack of happiness you feel from being away from those people.

The idea that you move deep into the suburbs to get a huge house is pretty much over. Gen X and Y don't believe in McMansions, which is why there's a glut of them on the market right now. But Gen X and Y do believe in maintaining nimble, flexible careers, so it's surprising that this trend isn't the nail in the coffin of deep suburbia. Because Brendan, at The Where Blog, points out that the values we hold highest – marriage, community, and extra time with the family – are falling apart in the face of a long commute as we are in our cars commuting for so long and spending days far away from our communities during the day.

And, if the city is too far to justify driving in for a part-time job, then your commute limits the way you can structure your family. For example, polls show most mothers would rather work part-time than be at home full-time with their children, but Wendy Waters points out, in her blog All About Cities, that the possibilities for part-time work are severely limited if home is a long commute from the city. For both spouses.

But even if you are not killing your spouse's career potential with your choices for a commute, the amount of stress a commute brings on is bigger than you could imagine and it's uncontainable.

This is because a bad commute is bad in a different way every day, and you can't predict it. Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert explains (video) that the human mind is great at adapting to things that won't change:  we convince ourselves we will be fine, and then it becomes basically true that we will be. But if things change all the time, we cannot use that adaptive part of our brain. In this way, having a bad commute is worse than losing a limb.

So if you have a bad commute, you are probably not very happy. And you should know that a bad commute spills over into all aspects of your life. Raymond Novaco, a psychologist and professor at the University of California, Irvine, found that bad traffic on the way home makes for a bad mood in the evening. This is true regardless of age, gender, income, and job satisfaction.

A lot of managing your daily commute comes down to making compromises in terms of limiting where you can take a job, what kind of job you can take, and how big a yard your kids can have to run in. For most of us, a long commute is about getting a better job in exchange for less personal time. But the decision about how far to commute is like most career decision points in that you must consider that your biggest problems will not be solved by getting a better job or more money, they will be solved by spending more time with friends and family, or getting to know yourself better.

Comment on: How to decide if your commute is too long

It happened slowly at first. I was taking care of my kids half-time and writing my syndicated column half-time.

Then I added my Boston Globe column, which required reporting. I had no idea how to be a reporter, so I did way more work that I needed to, trying to find my way.

Then I added my blog. I found that I could handle it by getting a little more honest with myself and cutting out all the time-wasters of my life, like phone calls I didn't want, magazines that added no value, and household chores that we could pay someone to do.

Then my blog traffic doubled and I started publicity for my book and it was no longer an issue of time management. I was totally overwhelmed. That's when I started to do a few crazy things:

1.  I stopped sleeping. For some reason, I was able to go for about three months on three hours of sleep a night and tons of caffeine during the day.

2.  I stopped changing clothes regularly. If you know you are not really going to sleep, you don't bother putting on pajamas. And once you get up after so little sleep, you are too tired to think about a new outfit.

3.  I stopped thinking about the future. I had clear plans outlined for my book publicity, but other than that, I had to churn out a column three times a week, and blog posts the other days of the week, and I was thinking only about sixteen hours ahead of myself at any given time.

I think I might have gone on like that for more than three months, but I realized I was not being a good parent. I didn't sign up for indoor soccer in time. I didn't know which babysitter was showing up when and often told the kids the wrong thing. And I had no patience for the kids when they did regular kid things, like fill their boots with snow.

So I went to bed. And I changed clothes. And I signed up for soccer. And I even drove my son there and watched him play.

I found the time I needed by deciding which parts of my job to stop doing.

I remember reading that the job of a CEO is to know what to blow off. That makes sense to me. I already had a sense of how to ignore details. I had been practicing that for a while, and though I sometimes got into trouble with it – like when I misquoted my brother -I am mostly good at it. But I had to take things farther.

Here are examples of essential things I ignored in the last year:

1. I ignored search engine optimization for my blog. I stopped looking at how many people came to my blog from Google searches because it's a very low number and it upsets me.

2. I squandered an invitation from Guy Kawasaki.  He offered me the opportunity to write a test on his blog about how to tell if you are a good job hunter. What a great opportunity, right? That was so nice of him. And he even gave me suggestions on how to do it. I never did it.

3. People asked to see videos of me speaking, but since I hadn't actually launched a speaking career yet, I didn't have a video.  I didn't make one.

Those three things could easily have been twenty.  But what I want you to know is that it was okay. Nothing terrible happened. Maybe Guy Kawasaki would have been my best friend if I had pulled together a test, but he did write about me anyway. And maybe my speaking fee would be $25,000 per speech if I had gone to Hollywood and really outdid myself on a video. But really, I have tons of speaking gigs right now anyway. And my search engine optimization sucks. Still. But I finally have time to deal with SEO now.

I have spent a year learning what I can ignore and what I can't. And I have learned that I when it comes to work, I can ignore just about anything.  

Because what you ignore changes your job, but it doesn't undermine your job. You define what your job by what you focus on. If we focus on everything, our job is nothing. I dumped things that are essential to some jobs.  But just by virtue of the fact that I dumped a task, I declared it nonessential to my job. When you have too much on your plate, and everything seems essential, decide on a job change. Right there.

You don't need to job hop in order to change jobs. You don't need permission. You can just change the emphasis on your to do list, and thus decide what you want your job to be about.  You will be surprised at how many things are on your list because you decided they were important, and not someone else. Which means, of course, that you can dump them.

And in this way, I redefine my job every day, by how I will spend my time. And I like that. Because I am sleeping well and eating well and being both the mom and the writer I want to be. For the most part. Which is probably all we can ask for.

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This time, things were not so dramatic. If nothing else, I am tall enough that no one would notice ten pounds up or down on my body. But still, ten pounds is ten pounds. And I lost it by changing how I do my job.

Here are three changes I made in how I work that, in turn, changed how much I weigh:

1. I stopped letting work slip until the last minute.
I know people think they are creative under pressure. But in fact, time pressure stifles creativity. One of the joys of being creative is going up paths that surprise us. But when you are under a tight deadline, the risk of going down an unsure path is too risky because it might not work and then you'll miss the deadline.

I became acutely aware of this when I started blogging. The immediate feedback one gets from blog traffic made me understand that there was a direct relationship to how much pressure I felt while I was writing and how successful the post was. I also noticed that when I felt pressure to write quickly I ate to cope with the pressure.

Once I stopped writing late at night under intense pressure I ate much less at night.

2. I stopped checking email when I was with my kids.
For the most part, I maintain a schedule where I work seven days a week 8am to 2pm. Then I am with my kids from 2pm to 8pm. And I usually work after they go to bed. Almost everyone is very nice about respecting the schedule.

But still, I was checking email all day. Sometimes because I really needed to, but mostly it was a way to take a break from being with the kids. The kids are hard. Email is easy. Please, don't send me emails about how I should take the kids to the park. I'm not saying I don't love my kids. I'm saying that it's more fun to play email lottery to see if something great came in than to watch kids chasing each other up and down slides.

The worst part about checking email when I am with the kids is that I feel bad ignoring them. But the second worst part is that I sort of check out when I check email and once I check out then my junk-food guard is down, and I find myself watching kids and checking email and eating Cheetos all at the same time.

I instituted the no-checking email so that I could be more present with my kids. But the lucky side benefit was no more junk food.

3. I stopped working late at night.
The first lunch meeting I had with my first publisher was all about book marketing. We talked about how sometimes my editor thinks of a title and then asks an agent to put together a book based on that title.

"Like what?" I asked.

She said, "Like, Sleep Away the Pounds! How To Lose That Last Ten Pounds…. In Your Sleep"

"Ooooh," I said "That is a good title."

For the rest of the lunch the editor and the publicist and I all talked about that book. What it could be. The publicist pointed out that he stays up late working but he never really gets anything done except eating. He thought he should just go to bed.

I thought that was probably true for me, too. And I pointed out all the research that says the people who do not get enough sleep are at risk of being fat.

That conversation happened a year ago. And, ironically, I then proceeded to get less sleep than any year of my life because I stayed up all night doing stuff to promote my book.

But recently I decided to make a rule for myself that I have to get the recommended six or seven hours of sleep a night. This means I had to get used to not working as much. I had to decide to simply not do some of the work I had. But the life benefits have been worth it — including giving up that extra meal that slips in between dinner and bed.

So that's how I lost the weight. And it's been very easy to keep off because I did exactly what you're supposed to do to lose weight: I changed how I live my life rather than how I eat my meals.

But here's what really gets me excited: I learned so much about self-discipline.
There is great research about how if you add self-discipline to your life in one area, self-discipline seeps into other areas of your life as well. This is important because positive psychologists are always saying that self-discipline is a key factor to making ourselves happier.

So I always want more self-discipline in my life. And I absolutely found that when I became more disciplined about how I deal with my sleep and eating, I became more disciplined about working out. For the last year I have had clear goals for regular episodes of running, weights and yoga. But I have generally failed at achieving these goals on a regular basis. Something always interferes.

But over the past two weeks, when I have been very conscious of changing how I conduct myself during the day for work things, my exercise regimen has improved as well, as a sort of unintended side-effect.

So here's my pitch to you to try something new. Try being just a little more conscious. If you become more conscious in one part of your life, you will be able to affect positive, conscious change in many parts of your life with relative ease.

Comment on: Lose ten pounds in two weeks by changing how you work

Be Realistic
Before I started Employee Evolution, I did a little research and realized four posts was a minimum.   I also realized there was no way in hell I could maintain a 45-hour-a-week job and create a successful blog without completely stressing out.

One night during one of many career conversation with my good friend Ryan Paugh, I had one of those "ah ha" moments.  I asked if he wanted to create a joint blog, and he immediately agreed.   Now I can write four posts a week, but two is sufficient if it's a busy week at work.  Being realistic before starting has allowed my blog to continue growing six months later.  And I am stress free, kind of.  

Know when you are the most creative
Coming up with ideas for blog posts takes a good amount of creativity.   I have my creative moments, but I would never be mistaken for a creative genius.  This lack of creativity has caused me to pinpoint the times when, for whatever reason, I am able to tap into my right brain.

I usually have great ideas in the shower.   I'm not sure if it's the water waking me up or the clear head from a good night sleep, but some of the best ideas seem to come in the shower. 

The shower is great, but nothing beats a long run to get my creative juices flowing.  The time from when I stop running to when I walk into my apartment is like a one-man brainstorming session.   I realized this about two months ago, and ever since I have increased the length of my runs so I can stop about a mile from my apartment.  Often I forget half of everything by the time I stop sweating and grab a pen and paper, but half of those interesting ideas are always better than none.  

Create deadlines
Creating deadlines is crucial to getting blog posts completed.  I have been unbelievably lucky that I have a weekly deadline for Brazen Careerist.   But if you aren't accountable to someone else, it can be easy to slack off.  Create your own deadlines and hold yourself accountable.   Sure it takes some self control, but it's good for you.  I make sure to have at least one post finished before Monday morning roles around.  If it's not done, I skip Entourage and write until it's done.

Another option is to ask someone to create a deadline for you.  Because I know the value of having a weekly deadline imposed by someone else, I am able to push my partner, Ryan Paugh to complete one post by Sunday night as well.   This is a self imposed deadline by him, but he also feels accountable to me.  And no matter who you are, it's much easier to get something done when someone else is relying on you.

Don't forget why you're blogging
Everyone starts a blog for a different reason.  Some start a blog to share their subject matter expertise on a given topic, some start a blog to share all their crazy ideas with the world and others of us blog about a subject because it could lead to new, exciting opportunities.   I fall in the latter group, and I constantly remind myself of this.

It's okay to skip a day
We all have times we simply cannot write well or are to busy with work to write a good post.  Don't put up a bad post. Quantity is good, but quality is king.  Chances are your readers won't even notice a missed day.  Just make sure it doesn't turn into a pattern.   

Ryan Healy's blog is Employee Evolution.

Comment on: Twentysomething: Making time for a blog and a full-time job