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154 reviews for:
I Know How She Does It: How Successful Women Make the Most of Their Time
Laura Vanderkam
3.6 AVERAGE
154 reviews for:
I Know How She Does It: How Successful Women Make the Most of Their Time
Laura Vanderkam
3.6 AVERAGE
This book really fits my demographic - mom of two, with a big job - so it really spoke to me. I was encouraged by the message of the book: you really DO have time to do everything you want in your life, and if you think about your life from the broader perspective, you probably already are accomplishing so much. I didn't find any of the "time saving" tips to be ground breaking, but the book was just so encouraging to me, reminding me to keep perspective of how good I have it and how much I can do, rather than focusing on the late nights working on my laptop.
Not super relevant to me right now, but still really interesting! (I also loved the audiobook read by the author.)
Read the full review here: http://newberyandbeyond.com/self-help-roundup/
I Know How She Does It has lots of interesting and surprising statistics about how people spend their time. The author uses time logs from various women with high-paying jobs and at least one child to show how they form a mosaic of their time, interweaving work, play, and family time, rather than taking each as an immovable chunk. This inspired me to keep a time log myself and look for ways to form a mosaic of my time.
My one regret is that this book is skewed toward upper middle class women. The author suggests that if you want to spend more time with your family, you can hire a housekeeper, or that if you want to spend more time working from home, you could hire a nanny. These choices simply aren’t options for women working lower-paying jobs. While I realize that the purpose of the book was to encourage women to enter high-powered jobs, traditionally held by men, I still found this aspect a bit irritating.
I Know How She Does It has lots of interesting and surprising statistics about how people spend their time. The author uses time logs from various women with high-paying jobs and at least one child to show how they form a mosaic of their time, interweaving work, play, and family time, rather than taking each as an immovable chunk. This inspired me to keep a time log myself and look for ways to form a mosaic of my time.
My one regret is that this book is skewed toward upper middle class women. The author suggests that if you want to spend more time with your family, you can hire a housekeeper, or that if you want to spend more time working from home, you could hire a nanny. These choices simply aren’t options for women working lower-paying jobs. While I realize that the purpose of the book was to encourage women to enter high-powered jobs, traditionally held by men, I still found this aspect a bit irritating.
I appreciate the core message of the book: It doesn’t matter how busy you think you are, you can have a full life. It was refreshing to hear about something I strongly believe in and that goes against the common narrative. However, I don’t think the book succeeded in helping the reader actually put in practice what they learned other people can do.
How to make the best use of time is something that fascinates me and eludes me. I hoped to find some helpful advice in this book. Instead, this book only centered around women making at least $100,000 independently (because those are the only hardworking, successful women according to the author...?). The problem is that wealthy women can afford to outsource a lot of their more menial tasks (laundry, cooking, cleaning, etc). Also, the writing style was incredibly dry. I didn't just want a bunch of time sheets and quantitative data. I wanted real-life, rich stories about how women beat the clock everyday. I'm still waiting for that book. My only takeaway from this book was skimming the last half to avoid wasting my time. So I guess I did learn something?
hopeful
informative
It’s not exactly a meaty book (I listened to it at 1.5 speed with no trouble) but useful for those people who have trouble focusing on the things they really care about. It provides a good reminder—we all have the same amount of time and have to figure out our own circumstances and interests to make the most of it. Best to focus on your own true desires and priorities and not worry about other people.
As a working mother, I like to read books about time management. Understanding and better using the time I have is very important to me. There are couple things I liked about this book, and one thing that I didn't.
First, I liked that Vanderkam recommends thinking of the week as a whole rather than the day as a whole. I like this approach because days understandably have fewer hours, and certain days are filled up with work very quickly.
Second, I liked her approach to scheduling leisure. It is much too easy to find yourself in the facebook scroll, but if you are conscientious, there is a lot you can do.
The one thing that I didn't like was how much time was spent talking about ways to flex your schedule. I work in an industry that doesn't really allow for much flexibility, and that whole chapter felt wasted. Vanderkam kept alluding to different aspects of flex schedule throughout the rest of the book, and I would have preferred more ideas for making a traditional schedule work rather then encouraging a non-traditional schedule.
First, I liked that Vanderkam recommends thinking of the week as a whole rather than the day as a whole. I like this approach because days understandably have fewer hours, and certain days are filled up with work very quickly.
Second, I liked her approach to scheduling leisure. It is much too easy to find yourself in the facebook scroll, but if you are conscientious, there is a lot you can do.
The one thing that I didn't like was how much time was spent talking about ways to flex your schedule. I work in an industry that doesn't really allow for much flexibility, and that whole chapter felt wasted. Vanderkam kept alluding to different aspects of flex schedule throughout the rest of the book, and I would have preferred more ideas for making a traditional schedule work rather then encouraging a non-traditional schedule.
I recommend this to mom friends all the time. I really appreciate Vanderkam's empowering perspective. She doesn't slip into the common time-management tips and tricks you hear frequently, but focuses more on reframing your mindset and getting what you want out of the time you have. This is useful for anyone, but I wish I'd been able to read it when our son was young.
One, I like that this was written specifically for the perspective of women (though much reference the struggle of being a mom). Second, I like that this book to a positive perspective on women’s ‘busy’ schedules. It revealed that, yes, we all have a lot on our plates, but that also we have a lot of time to fill with the things we want to do. It’s all about the choices you make with the time you have more control over. Also interesting was that among people in high profile jobs, the average still work just about 40-50 hours per week. No one is working 80, thankfully!