Laura Vanderkam: An interview by Bob Morris

A New York City-based journalist, Laura Vanderkam is the author of 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think, published by Portfolio/Penguin Group (2010). She is also the author of Grindhopping: Build a Rewarding Career without Paying Your Dues (McGraw-Hill, 2007), which the New York Post selected as one of four notable career books of 2007. She is a member of USA Today’s Board of Contributors, and her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, City Journal, Scientific American, Reader’s Digest, Reason, and other publications. She specializes in translating complex economic, policy or scientific ideas into readable prose, and making people say “I never thought of it that way before.” A 2001 graduate of Princeton, she enjoys writing fiction, running, and singing soprano with the Young New Yorkers’ Chorus, an organization for which she served until recently as president, and which specializes in commissioning new music from composers under age 35. She lives in the city with her husband and their two young sons.

Here is an excerpt from my interview of her. To read the complete interview, please click here.

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Morris: Before discussing any of your books, a few general questions. First, please share your thoughts about achieving and then sustaining an appropriate balance of what is most important in one’s life.

Vanderkam: I think we have to look at what we do best and others cannot do for us. For most of us, this is nurturing our careers, nurturing our families, and nurturing ourselves (by which I mean getting enough sleep, exercising, and focusing on personal passions like volunteering). When you devote most of your hours to these priorities, life feels pretty good.

Morris: Given your response to the previous question, in your own life as well as what you have observed in others’ lives, what seem to be the most serious challenges to such balance? How best to avoid or overcome them?

Vanderkam: Many of us make ourselves busy with things that don’t matter. We volunteer for projects that we don’t care about, we spend time on housework or errands that don’t need to be done or don’t need to be done to the standard we’re doing them, or we spend time at work on things that aren’t advancing our careers or our organizations. We also watch a lot of TV.

Morris: As I read several of your articles for various publications, I was struck by the range and especially by the diversity of your interests. You seem to have an almost insatiable curiosity about so many subjects. Is that a fair assessment?

Vanderkam: It is true that I love to learn about new topics. Sometimes that makes my professional life harder, as I don’t achieve economies of scale in my writing, but on the plus side, I don’t get bored. Today I’ve been researching the Korean-American community in New York, environmental issues in lawn care, and the Ramona Quimby series of children’s books. How random is that?

Morris: To what extent has your formal education (e.g. Princeton) had a significant impact on your career thus far?

Vanderkam: I am very grateful for my Princeton education, and I learned a lot in college. I studied with some excellent writing teachers including John McPhee, and I took classes such as art history, and the Bible in Western cultural tradition, which had me reading great works of literature. But, of course, the most useful aspect of my education now is the network. For instance, the executive at Portfolio who facilitated their acquisition of 168 Hours is a Princeton grad.

Morris: Here’s a subject on which opinions are sharply divided. Given the emergence of various electronic reading devices, do you think the bound volume is an endangered species?

Vanderkam: I hope not! I own a Kindle and love how quickly I can get a title and start reading, but I love the feel of turning pages, too, and I like to mark up my books. I like seeing them on my bookshelves, just as I like holding a physical newspaper as I drink my coffee. I think there will be many ways to enjoy books in the future.

Morris: To what does the title of your first book, Grindhopping, refer?

Vanderkam: I made up the word “Grindhopping” to mean those who hop out of the corporate grind to do their own thing. Broadly, the book is about the rise of self-employment among young people.

Morris: The subtitle, Build a Rewarding Career Without Paying Your Dues, certainly caught my eye. Are you suggesting that success (however defined) can be achieved without paying any dues (however defined)? In fact, how do you define “dues”?

Vanderkam: By paying your dues, I mean climbing the corporate ladder to finally get to a place where you can do interesting, creative work. That’s one approach, or you can just start doing interesting, creative work on your own, see if you can get people to pay you for it, and build your career that way instead. That’s what I’ve done. I have nothing against working hard – in fact, I’m all for it! But if you’re going to work hard, why not make sure you reap the rewards of it?

Morris: As I read the book, I was reminded of Teresa Amabile’s admonition, expressed in a Harvard Business Review article almost 20 years ago, that people should do what they love and love what they do.

Vanderkam: That’s great advice. You will have more energy for the rest of your life working 50 hours a week in a job you love than 30 in a job you hate

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To read the complete interview, please click here.

You are cordially invited to check out the resources at her website by clicking here.

What The Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast

Here is an excerpt from another lively and informative article written by Laura Vanderkam for BNET, The CBS Interactive Business Network. To check out an abundance of valuable resources and obtain a free subscription to one or more of the BNET newsletters, please click here.

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Mornings are a mad-cap time in many households. Everyone’s so focused on getting out the door that you can easily lose track of just how much time is passing. I’ve had hundreds of people keep time logs for me over the past few years (you can see some of mine here and here), and I’m always amazed to see gaps of 90 minutes or more between when people wake up and when they start the commute or school car pool.

That would be fine if the time was used intentionally, but often it isn’t.
The most productive people, however, realize that 90 minutes, 120 minutes or more is a long time to lose track of on a busy weekday. If you feel like you don’t have time for personal priorities later in the day, why not try using your mornings? Streamline breakfast, personal care and kid routines. Then you can use 30-60 minutes to try one of four things:

[Here are two. To read the complete article, please click here.]

1. Play, read, or talk with your kids. Mornings can be great quality time, especially if you have little kids who go to bed soon after you get home at night, but wake up at the crack of dawn. Set an alarm on your watch, put away the iPhone, and spend a relaxed half an hour reading stories or doing art projects. If you have older children, aim for a leisurely family breakfast. Everyone talks through their plans for the day and what’s going on in their lives. If family dinners aren’t a regular thing in your house, this is a great substitute.

2. Exercise. You shower in the morning anyway, so why not get sweaty first? Trade off mornings with your partner on who goes out and runs and who stays home with the kids. Or, if your kids are older (or you don’t have any) work out together and make it a very healthy morning date.*     *     *

Note: Are you looking for a better start to your day, or to use your time more effectively in general? I’d like to do a few time makeovers of readers over the next few weeks. Email me if you’d be interested in logging your time, trying a few strategies, and sharing what you learn. Thanks!

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Laura Vanderkam, a New York City-based journalist, is the author of 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think.  Called “a great read” by Natalie Morales on The Today Show, and “intriguing” by the Chicago Tribune, 168 Hourslooks at how Americans spend their time now and in the past, and how we can all spend it better. Laura is also the author of Grindhopping: Build a Rewarding Career Without Paying Your Dues, which the New York Post selected as one of four notable career books of 2007. She is a member of the USA Today board of contributors, and her work has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, Reader’s Digest, City Journal, Whole Living, Good and other publications. She enjoys running and singing soprano in the Young New Yorkers’ Chorus, and she lives with her husband and two young sons.

5 Ways To Stop Procrastinating By Friday

Laura Vanderkam

Here is an article written by Laura Vanderkam for BNET, The CBS Interactive Business Network. To check out an abundance of valuable resources and obtain a free subscription to one or more of the BNET newsletters, please click here.

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We all have one: some big, horrible, awful-sounding task that we’d prefer to put off to next month. Or never. Unfortunately, procrastination doesn’t really mean pushing something to the future, because if you’re worried about it, a postponed task has a sneaky way of consuming a lot of mindshare in the present. Here are a few ways to finally get moving:

1. Do a “home inspection” on the problem. I’m in the middle of buying a house. Part of the process is finding a disinterested yet expert third party to spell out exactly what’s wrong with the property and how to fix it. I think this is a concept that should be used more broadly. Survey several other parties (a spouse, close friends, your mentor) to tell you what they’d do with your particular project. You may discover that the Biggest Editing Job Ever just requires moving a few paragraphs around.

2. Break the project into concrete steps. Say you need to give a speech. This sounds like a huge undertaking, but it’s really more like seven much smaller projects. You need to figure out a thesis, make an outline, find some key statistics and anecdotes, write a draft, practice it, revise, then practice it in front of others and ask for their feedback. All of these sound infinitely doable.

3. Figure out how long each step of your task will take. We tend to overestimate how much time things we hate to do consume. I hate doing the dishes, so I used to think I spent like an hour emptying the dishwasher each time. Then I looked at the clock and found it takes 5-7 minutes. Likewise, if you hate cold-calling people, you may be telling yourself that making 5 cold calls will take all day. It won’t. It will probably take less than an hour. Don’t you feel silly fretting all week about something that will take less than 60 minutes?

4. Block your task in first thing in the morning. Do it before you expend any energy on checking emails or even saying hello to your co-workers. If possible, make it the only thing on your to-do list for the day. Often, if we’re dreading a task, we hide it in the middle of 20 other goals. Then, we feel like we’ve done something when we hit 19 of 20… but not the thing we really know we should have done. Don’t give yourself that satisfaction. Force yourself to sit there twiddling your thumbs if you’re not attacking the problem.

5. Use blatant bribery. Kids get stickers for going to the dentist. Why shouldn’t you? If you knock off your dreaded task by 9:30AM, give yourself permission to loaf the rest of the day. And have ice cream for lunch, a margarita after work or whatever it takes to create such positive feelings that you’re never tempted to procrastinate again.

Laura Vanderkam, a New York City-based journalist, is the author of 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think. Called “a great read” by Natalie Morales on The Today Show, and “intriguing” by the Chicago Tribune, 168 Hours looks at how Americans spend their time now and in the past, and how we can all spend it better. Laura is also the author of Grindhopping: Build a Rewarding Career Without Paying Your Dues, which the New York Post selected as one of four notable career books of 2007. She is a member of the USA Today board of contributors, and her work has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, Reader’s Digest, City Journal, Whole Living, Good and other publications. She enjoys running and singing soprano in the Young New Yorkers’ Chorus, and she lives with her husband and two young sons.

The Joy of Housework

Laura Vanderkam

Here is another post at Laura Vanderkam’s “Just a Minute” online newsletter. She is the author of 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think, published by Portfolio/Penguin Group (2010).

To check out all the resources that Vanderkam offers, please click here.

To read my interview of her, please click here.

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Much has changed in the last 50 years. Perhaps most notably? Our relationship with our brooms. While American men are spending more time tidying (a more than 100% increase from 1965 to 2000), American women are spending a lot less.

Back in 1965, married mothers spent around 35 hours per week tending their homes. Labor market economists consider 35 hours the definition of a full-time job. These days, it’s under 20 hours per week, and among women who work full-time, it’s down to 14. 
 
I ponder these statistics every time my raft of April magazines arrives, many celebrating spring cleaning in vivid detail. Real Simple in particular is prone to creating artful spreads on cleaning your grout with lemon; this April’s issue features a stack of neatly folded towels (and a fluffy chick) on the cover.

In her monthly letter to readers, editor Kristin van Ogtrop has an explanation for this rather retro obsession: Olympia Snowe likes to clean! At a Fortune conference not long ago, Snowe (the senator from Maine) mentioned that she cleans to relax. Van Ogtrop viewed this as a sign of progress. “It’s perfectly all right for a powerful, accomplished woman to admit that she likes to clean — no one will bat an eye.” Of course, “perhaps the only reason a U.S. senator likes to clean is because she doesn’t have to.” I kind of buy this explanation myself. When you don’t have to clean, you can turn it into a luxurious experience, buying high-end Caldrea products that have more in common with aromatherapy than Mr. Clean.
 
Or perhaps there’s more to it than that.

Cleaning is “so satisfying because it usually has a clear beginning, middle and end,” van Ogtrop writes. “There is a direct correlation between effort and reward. The results are measurable and almost immediate.” There is a striking parallel with cleaning out one’s inbox. When you delete an email, or file it, or answer every note, you feel like you’ve done something.
 
But have you? It’s tempting to slake our desire for accomplishment with easy wins.

But at the end of your life, will you be proudest of your clean house and empty inbox, or the non-profit you managed, the books you wrote, the children you nurtured?

Women actually spend more time interacting with their children these days than they did in 1965, even though far more of us participate in the labor force as well. Our declining devotion to housework was a big factor in making this possible. An April scrubbing may be nice. But a romp in the spring mud with your kids might be better. 
 
All the best,
 
Laura

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As noted, Laura Vanderkam, a New York City-based journalist, is the author of 168 Hours. She is also the author of Grindhopping: Build a Rewarding Career Without Paying Your Dues. She is a member of the USA Today board of contributors, and her work has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, Reader’s Digest, City Journal, Whole Living, Good and other publications. She enjoys running and singing soprano in the Young New Yorkers’ Chorus, and she lives with her husband and two young sons.

How To Get a Raise (And Get Your Kid to Eat His Veggies)

Here is an article written by Laura Vanderkam for BNET, The CBS Interactive Business Network. To check out an abundance of valuable resources and obtain a free subscription to one or more of the BNET newsletters, please click here.

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Many of us dread negotiations. We approach these high-stakes interactions with trepidation, and would rather spend our time doing just about anything else.

But that’s because we have mistaken notions about what negotiation means, says Stuart Diamond, professor of a famed negotiation class at UPenn’s Wharton School, and author of the new book Getting More: How to Negotiate to Achieve Your Goals in the Real World (Crown Business). “Every human interaction involves negotiation, from kids and relationships, to jobs and travel, to shopping to chatting, to politics and diplomacy,” he says.

That knock-down meeting on pricing is a negotiation, but so is a colleague’s request for a phone number, or your offer to read your child a story before bed. And unfortunately, “almost everyone does it wrong,” Diamond reports. “That is, they don’t meet their needs very well.” We tend to create conflict rather than actually solve problems. Diamond shared the most effective strategies for getting what you want.

Vanderkam: What is the biggest mistake people make in negotiations?

Diamond: Not understanding the other party enough to know how to persuade them. If you don’t understand them, the negotiation, if you can get it done at all, takes a much longer time. Someone may not want to buy from you because they perceive your customer service is bad because they heard something somewhere. Unless you take the trouble to find out why, you will not know what to do.

It’s about them [the other party]. Finding, understanding and valuing the pictures in the head of the other party is more important than any collection of facts, resources or evidence that you can muster. That’s because it’s “them” that you need to persuade.

Once you have the pictures in their head, you know what it will take to get them to meet your needs, and where to start.

Vandderkam: What about the hardball tactics?

Diamond: The traditional ways – threats, power, walking out, invoking alternatives, good cop & bad cop – just make others resentful and cause retaliation. That means terrorism, malicious obedience at work, the child kicking and screaming on the floor. Valuing their perceptions (as a starting point) gets them to listen more and be more persuadable.

Vanderkam: What is the best way to start off a negotiation?

Diamond: Address emotions first. The world is an irrational place. In fact, the more important the negotiation is to the parties, the more irrational (emotional) they are. Emotional situations call for emotional payments: empathy (focusing on their emotions), concessions, apologies, listening. They don’t call for rational solutions. Mentioning “win-win” in an emotional situation is therefore irrelevant, because emotional people aren’t listening to logic. First you need to understand and empathize with their emotion. At the same time, the more emotional you get (including anger), the less effective you are. Take a break or lower your expectations, since dashed expectations are a big cause of emotion.

Vandderkam: Is there an efficient way to advance a negotiation?

Diamond: First, make a people connection. When people like you, they are six times as likely to meet your needs than if you have no connection with them.  And that means service providers of all types.  Ask about them, find out who they are. You need to actually be curious. If you don’t really care about them or a relationship, then you will get less because they will sense you are phony. Either get another negotiator who does care, or find something about them in which you are interested. There must be something with which you can make a connection.

Second, trade unequally valued items from any source. All of life is about quid pro quo. If you want something, you have to give something, whether in business or your personal life. But it doesn’t have to be money or even part of the deal. It can be anything that another party values. It can be a business title, a corner office, college advice, sports tickets, any intangible item including respect or just listening. TV time for homework. A lower price for business referrals. The key is to give things you don’t care as much about but which they value, and get things they don’t care as much about but which you value. The more you find out about what they value, the more things you have to trade for what you want. This greatly expands the pie.

Vanderkam: Can I use these strategies to negotiate with my kids? I really want my 3-year-old to eat his vegetables.

Diamond: Kids are easy to negotiate with. You just need to understand their perspective. I have been negotiating with my 8-year-old son since he could understand language. Kids have little power, so they like to control things. So I let him pick restaurants and otherwise make decisions for the family as much as possible. So he is always in a debtor situation with me. If he doesn’t want to do something, I say, “Well, didn’t daddy let you do X?” It greatly increases the chances he will do what I want. Or I trade him.

Trading doesn’t have to be a bribe. After all, adults work for salary. So I might trade vegetables for ice cream or the zoo or something else the child wants. “I’ll give you something you want if you give me something I want.” It teaches the child a big lesson in life, quid pro quo. Or I might find out what about the vegetables the child doesn’t like and mix them with something the child likes. Adults do this with sauces. It’s not unreasonable for the child not to like something. Explore creative possibilities.

*     *     *

Laura Vanderkam

Laura Vanderkam, a New York City-based journalist, is the author of 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think. Called “a great read” by Natalie Morales on The Today Show, and “intriguing” by the Chicago Tribune, 168 Hours looks at how Americans spend their time now and in the past, and how we can all spend it better. Laura is also the author of Grindhopping: Build a Rewarding Career Without Paying Your Dues, which the New York Post selected as one of four notable career books of 2007. She is a member of the USA Today board of contributors, and her work has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, Reader’s Digest, City Journal, Whole Living, Good and other publications. She enjoys running and singing soprano in the Young New Yorkers’ Chorus, and she lives with her husband and two young sons.

Interview: Laura Vanderkam

Laura Vanderkam

A New York City-based journalist, Vanderkam is the author of 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think, published by Portfolio/Penguin Group (2010). She is also the author of Grindhopping: Build a Rewarding Career without Paying Your Dues (McGraw-Hill, 2007), which the New York Post selected as one of four notable career books of 2007. She is a member of USA Today’s Board of Contributors, and her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, City Journal, Scientific American, Reader’s Digest, Reason, and other publications. She specializes in translating complex economic, policy or scientific ideas into readable prose, and making people say “I never thought of it that way before.” A 2001 graduate of Princeton, she enjoys writing fiction, running, and singing soprano with the Young New Yorkers’ Chorus, an organization for which she served until recently as president, and which specializes in commissioning new music from composers under age 35. She lives in the city with her husband and their two young sons.

Morris: Before discussing any of your books, a few general questions. First, please share your thoughts about achieving and then sustaining an appropriate balance of what is most important in one’s life.

Vanderkam: I think we have to look at what we do best and others cannot do for us. For most of us, this is nurturing our careers, nurturing our families, and nurturing ourselves (by which I mean getting enough sleep, exercising, and focusing on personal passions like volunteering). When you devote most of your hours to these priorities, life feels pretty good.

Morris: Given your response to the previous question, in your own life as well as what you have observed in others’ lives, what seem to be the most serious challenges to such balance? How best to avoid or overcome them?

Vanderkam: Many of us make ourselves busy with things that don’t matter. We volunteer for projects that we don’t care about, we spend time on housework or errands that don’t need to be done or don’t need to be done to the standard we’re doing them, or we spend time at work on things that aren’t advancing our careers or our organizations. We also watch a lot of TV.

Morris: As I read several of your articles for various publications, I was struck by the range and especially by the diversity of your interests. You seem to have an almost insatiable curiosity about so many subjects. Is that a fair assessment?

Vanderkam: It is true that I love to learn about new topics. Sometimes that makes my professional life harder, as I don’t achieve economies of scale in my writing, but on the plus side, I don’t get bored. Today I’ve been researching the Korean-American community in New York, environmental issues in lawn care, and the Ramona Quimby series of children’s books. How random is that?

Morris: To what extent has your formal education (e.g. Princeton) had a significant impact on your career thus far?
Vanderkam: I am very grateful for my Princeton education, and I learned a lot in college. I studied with some excellent writing teachers including John McPhee, and I took classes such as art history, and the Bible in Western cultural tradition, which had me reading great works of literature. But, of course, the most useful aspect of my education now is the network. For instance, the executive at Portfolio who facilitated their acquisition of 168 Hours is a Princeton grad.

Morris: Here’s a subject on which opinions are sharply divided. Given the emergence of various electronic reading devices, do you think the bound volume is an endangered species?

Vanderkam: I hope not! I own a Kindle and love how quickly I can get a title and start reading, but I love the feel of turning pages, too, and I like to mark up my books. I like seeing them on my bookshelves, just as I like holding a physical newspaper as I drink my coffee. I think there will be many ways to enjoy books in the future.

Morris: To what does the title of your first book, Grindhopping, refer?

Vanderkam: I made up the word “Grindhopping” to mean those who hop out of the corporate grind to do their own thing. Broadly, the book is about the rise of self-employment among young people.

Morris: The subtitle, Build a Rewarding Career Without Paying Your Dues, certainly caught my eye. Are you suggesting that success (however defined) can be achieved without paying any dues (however defined)? In fact, how do you define “dues”?

Vanderkam: By paying your dues, I mean climbing the corporate ladder to finally get to a place where you can do interesting, creative work. That’s one approach, or you can just start doing interesting, creative work on your own, see if you can get people to pay you for it, and build your career that way instead. That’s what I’ve done. I have nothing against working hard – in fact, I’m all for it! But if you’re going to work hard, why not make sure you reap the rewards of it?

Morris: As I read the book, I was reminded of Teresa Amabile’s admonition, expressed in a Harvard Business Review article almost 20 years ago, that people should do what they love and love what they do.

Vanderkam: That’s great advice. You will have more energy for the rest of your life working 50 hours a week in a job you love than 30 in a job you hate.