The front page of the Wall Street Journal this morning has an article called “Billable Hour Under Attack.” Apparently, many companies are using the recession as the impetus to push their outside counsel to bill flat fees rather than for each hour worked on a contract.

I think this is a great idea. Time is an absolutely non-renewable resource. While you can always hire more lawyers to bill more time, even the best lawyer only has 168 hours in a week. Tales are legion of lawyers double- or triple-billing their time, but still. Time is a scarcer resource than (if you’ve got smart people) ideas and solutions.

Consequently, in order to maximize billable hours, the incentive is to waste this scarcest resource. If you can do a 10-hour job in 10-hours, great, but better to do it in 12, since you can bill two more hours. Incentives are on the side of inefficiency.

Long term, what this does is create a culture that rewards the lawyers who value their non-working time least. There is a reason that even at the law firms that make Working Mother magazine’s “Best Law Firms” list, the percentage of female equity partners is seldom over 20%. Though this is changing, for a variety of reasons women often place a greater premium on having time for a life outside of work. This is partly because men are often judged primarily on their income (alas) and women still carry the bulk of childcare responsibilities, sometimes even in families where the mom is a highly-paid attorney. Some amount of this is choice, and some is social pressure, but there it is.

In other words, it is not unreasonable to believe that the billable hour model has helped keep women from becoming a proportional share of equity partners at top firms. Women have made up close to half of law school classes for years — long enough for about half of new equity partners to have been women for much of the last decade if women and their firms thought that was a good plan. It hasn’t happened.

In general, working longer can lead you to land more clients, but there is a point of diminishing returns. The billable-hour model creates an incentive to work past that point. So it’s time to see it go.

Most of us with full-time jobs don’t work nearly as much as we think we do. Very few people who claim to work 80, 90, or 100 hours a week actually log that kind of time. But in the course of asking people to record their 168 hours for this book, I did come across one woman who was, in fact, working 100 hours a week. We’ll call her Dorothy for now — she wanted to be anonymous, which means I can’t put her in the book, but I still think her story is instructive, so I’m putting her on the blog.

It’s not that she was spending 100 hours a week on a work trip. She was actually in her office, on the computer, for 100 hours. This was possible because her office was at her home — she ran her own accounting firm — but she clearly wasn’t getting any flexibility benefits from being self-employed!

She told me that she felt like all she did was work and sleep, and she wanted to spend more time with her kids. But she was the primary breadwinner for her family, and so she worried about cutting back. She didn’t think it was feasible to hire staff for her business, so she was doing all the work herself. She also hadn’t taken a day off in more than 5 years.

When I heard that, I knew we weren’t dealing with quite a normal situation. I am not a therapist, so I didn’t want to delve into the issues of why people work long hours when they don’t want to — particularly in her case, when there was no boss involved — but I did email back a few observations:

1. Most breadwinners are able to support their families working 40-50 hours per week.

2. Consequently, I wondered if there was a problem with her business model — either her family’s expenses were too high, or her rates were too low. I suspected it was the latter, but in either case, she needed to do something about it or the health problems she’d mentioned were not going to improve. While I’m not a doctor either, it’s hard to imagine that working 100 hours a week is good for anyone’s health!

I realized this was a bit curt, so I was curious to see what her response would be. Imagine my surprise when she sent me an email that started with [Hugs]! It turned out that not only was her family living well within their means, she hadn’t raised her rates since 1997. She had been more willing to steal time from nurturing her family and herself than negotiate for better compensation. And she was glad to have someone point this out to her.

Given that she hadn’t raised her rates in 12 years, I imagined that she could probably get away with an increase easier than most businesses, but we also decided that there was another solution — she could fire her most problematic client. This particular client was a big source of her stress and was, by itself, taking 40 hours per week. Since she didn’t need to earn as much as she was currently earning, she could terminate her contract with this client, and hence get herself back to a far more reasonable workweek.

I also challenged her to simply take a day off. There would never be a perfect time, and I was sure her clients wouldn’t mind a few hours of no availability. Some might think it was a family emergency, and in a way it was! She agreed to try this out.

I’m happy to report that last time we touched base, Dorothy’s lawyer had drafted a letter outlining the terms of ending the contract with the stress-inducing client. Dorothy had also shut the office door at 2:30PM one afternoon and had gone with her kids to the pool. She also spent another evening toasting marshmellows with them, rather than hunching over her work. As she said, this may sound like small steps, but remember, this woman hadn’t taken a day off in years. Given that the earth did not crash into the sun during her time at the pool, I imagine she’ll try this again soon.

Like I said, I think Dorothy’s story is instructive, because while many people don’t work as much as they think they do, some people work a lot just.. because. Particularly if you’re in a situation where every additional hour leads to additional revenue, it can be hard to just say no. Since work can always expand to fill the available time, you have to be willing to examine both your business model (does your income match or exceed your family’s needs?) and your priorities. You can’t wait for a perfect time to do non-work stuff. You simply have to do it, and trust that few things explode when you are not available for a little while. After all, if you were hit by a bus, likely, people would figure something out. They figure something out while you sleep. So it’s not a huge leap to assume they’ll figure something out while you take the evening off for a family dinner or a weekend day off to go to the park.

As people are starting to turn in their time logs for the 168 Hours project, certain themes are coming up again and again. One recurring one? Finding time to exercise. A high proportion of us claim we have no time for this, but that isn’t true. Even if you work 60 hours a week and sleep 8 hours a night, that would leave more than 50 hours for other things. The CDC spends much time cajoling us to get a mere 2.5 hours of activity per week!

What people mean when they say they don’t have time to exercise is that they do not currently consider it a priority during their waking, non-working hours. There may be good reasons for this; for instance, some parents worry that exercise will take time from their kids (though few people spend 50 hours per week interacting with their kids either). Often, the problem is more that there are barriers to exercise which make it difficult to allocate time. For instance, exercise will make you sweaty, which you then have to deal with. It may require a place to do it, and some people don’t live or work near places where it is easy to run or walk. You might be tired, or might have eaten recently. When a free half hour appears, it is often easier to turn on the TV than to establish a different habit of doing something active.

The key thing to remember is that in our sedentary culture, it is never going to be *easy* to find time to exercise, and it’s unlikely that the stars will all align at a time where you have zero work to do, nothing else on your plate, you’re feeling peppy and your sneakers have magically appeared beside you. People who stay in shape make time to exercise.

Since this is a matter of getting in the habit, it’s fine to start small. Aim for three times per week — 2 weekdays and 1 weekend session. Ideally, the weekend session would be something the whole family could do together, though if not, spouses can trade off, or you can do an exercise DVD or something from FitTV in your basement while the kids are napping.

On weekdays, look at your schedule, and see if there’s available low-impact space. Lots of people exercise in the mornings, because, as one trainer told me, there’s always going to be a reason not to exercise at 4pm, and it’s going to be a good reason. Alternate mornings with your spouse helping the kids get ready, and get up a little earlier so you can run or walk. If your employer has an onsite gym, this is perfect — do the early AMs or your lunch hour. Even if a gym is not available, you can often walk around the parking lot briskly. This will clear your head and focus you for work in a way that an additional half an hour of emailing just can’t do.  Some people can walk to or from work, which is a great way to tag on extra activity.

One of the best reasons to exercise is that it models healthy behaviors for your children — you don’t want them to grow up and think that it’s optional! So some parents run while their kids bike, or jump rope together, or put the kid(s) in a jog stroller (find a used one on Craigslist or Freecycle). Build lots of activity into a family trip to the neighborhood pool by playing games, carrying your toddler as you “pool walk” or swimming laps competitively if they’re older. Play soccer in the backyard. Build an obstacle course together and see how fast you can go through it, and if you can lower your time if you do it ten times in a row.

There are all sorts of ways to work up a sweat without neglecting other priorities. A good way to stay in the habit? Log your time exercising — recording what you did and how long you did it. Over time, you’ll feel such a sense of accomplishment as you write these numbers and descriptions down that you’ll want to keep going.

One of the most fascinating — and I must say, often simply reflexive — lines of feedback I’ve gotten about the concepts of 168 Hours is that outsourcing household chores is expensive, and therefore you have to be extraordinarily wealthy to get these things off your plate.

Of course, having money makes outsourcing household chores easier, but often, people don’t know what various things actually cost, and since women are often willing (or culturally conditioned) to do them for “free,” we view them as optional expenses. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that lawn care, which is a “male” job (traditionally) is the most outsourced household chore! When men work a lot for pay, they don’t feel like spending their weekends mowing the lawn. So they pay someone else to do it.

Anyway, here we go. Grocery delivery costs $5-10 depending on the store and the metro area (if you’ve purchased the goods online). This needs to be compared to the cost of gas, the danger of making impulse purchases when you’re in the store if the bread smells heavenly, and your time. If the federal minimum wage is now $7.25 an hour, almost everyone comes out ahead on this one. There are also other ways to outsource food chores. For 168 Hours, I interviewed a young man who hired a personal chef to do bulk frozen meals for him. It was $60 a week plus the cost of groceries, but kept him out of the store, which turned out to be really padding his credit card bills.

Laundry: We aren’t really outsourcing this in my house right now because my husband does it. But if you drop it off at a wash&fold (with your dry cleaning) it tends to be 50-75 cents per pound. If it’s full service (they pick it up and deliver it), you’re looking at $1-1.50/pound. I’ve had a few people keep track of laundry weight, and if you’re not using fresh towels daily, and you re-wear jeans and such, a family of 4 can get by on 25-35 lbs. So that comes out to a max of $52.50 per week for outsourcing this completely. This is not a small amount of change (though if you’re dropping it off with your dry cleaning at 50 cents per pound, it will be a lot less). On the other hand, the average American spends about $35 in restaurants per week, so for a family of 4, that comes out to $140 per week, or way over the cost of laundry. We spend about 4% of our income on apparel overall, so another option is to buy fewer new clothes, and outsource the laundry half the time.

Cleaning service: This is apparently considered the height of decadence by some folks — the dividing line that makes one rich — though again, you have to build the opportunity cost of time into the equation. A residential cleaning service will probably come out to around $100/cleaning ($50 a week if it’s done every 2 weeks, or $200/month). In some places it’s less, particularly if you have a smaller space. Again, this is not a small amount, but the average cable bill is now about $100 a month. So that’s half of it right there — though most people don’t consider cable nearly as optional as cleaning.

The point is that time, like money, is a choice — and often, these are related choices. If you really hate one particular household chore, it might be worthwhile to see how you can find the money to outsource that by cutting something you don’t care so much about. I think these things are also a matter of changing attitudes. Very few Americans sew their own clothes anymore. Few do their own auto repair, or grow their own food. We outsource almost all these things — and dry cleaning! — but somehow outsourcing laundry is perceived as different.

One of the most universal — and often wasteful — features of corporate life is the weekly departmental meeting. This all-hands-on-deck meeting tends to take place in order to keep everyone in the loop, as it were, and often happens largely because it is Monday, or whatever day has been deemed the appropriate day for a weekly meeting. In its best form, this meeting is short, agenda-driven, and ends with everyone clear on next steps. In its worst form, it drags on for hours, bumbling into topics that don’t apply to half the people in the room. Or else everyone goes around the room and says that they are still working on their projects… just as they were last week.

So, can it be tamed? As I’ve been talking to people for 168 Hours, one interesting tip that came up more than once is to schedule as few all-hands meetings as possible. These should only happen when there is something specific that has to happen (not the fact that it is Monday) and… involves everyone.

Instead, managers who want to minimize interruptions schedule frequent (maybe 2x per week) short (20 minute) meetings with the people who report immediately to them. If people know they’ll get one-on-one face time with the boss, they tend to be able to hold on to most issues until that point, and are more likely to actually keep the boss abreast of important issues than if the only face time is with the rest of the department in the room.  This tends not to take too much time. If you have 8 people reporting to you, meeting with each of them for 20 minutes twice per week would take  320 minutes, or just over 5 hours — a small percentage of a 40-hour workweek — and gives you much more time to do effective coaching than a 3-hour departmental meeting plus ad hoc meetings with everyone else.

My September 2009 issue of Glamour has a one page profile with life management advice from Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who happens to be my senator here in New York. She has two children under the age of 6 (and, of course, a very full time job). Her tips? Very similar to 168 Hours!

First, she works what I call “split shifts.” That is, she stops work at 5:30PM, hangs out with her kids until 7:30, and then goes back to meetings or dinners or whatever else she needs to attend to. Yes, this may cut down on the number of cocktail parties thrown by special interest groups that she attends, but hey — our government would probably run better if fewer members of Congress attended such things.

She also talks about pursuing your passion — focusing your efforts on the things that really matter to you — and then not trying to be good at everything else. The example she uses is gutting fish (she refused to do it while on a fishing trip with son Theo) which is an easy one to throw out there (hey, she is a politician!). But I would say that this extends to more important things too. Senators outsource a lot of research and legislation writing and wrangling to their staffs, and probably outsource a lot of household management too. To truly be effective, you need a work team and a home team helping to keep things on track. This doesn’t necessarily mean a staff (which most of us don’t have at work and can’t afford at home). It means people you can rely on — which you can be willing to do for others, too.

Gillibrand notes that she has always made time for workouts. While pregnant, she worked out almost every day, forcing that hour into her schedule. She says she hasn’t found that hour in her new job yet, but plans to. In 168 Hours, we talk about finding a few “extracurricular” activities (one of which has to be exercise) that truly matter to you, figuring out exactly how long they will take, and then blocking them in, and planning ahead so they don’t fall victim to bad scheduling.

Finally, one of her most important tips? Find a partner who supports you 100%. Clearly, having a senator as a spouse is going to require some adjustments from any partner, and this is more true with Gillibrand than others, given how young her children are. But having a solid marriage is worth investing in, because it gives you amazing energy for the rest of your life. I’ll write more later this week about this question of nurturing a marriage during a busy 168 hours. But anyway, I’m happy to see Gillibrand get some attention. As some of the comments on this blog show, lots of people like to complain about how hard it is to do it all. I like seeing the stories of women — and men — who make it happen anyway.

One of the questions I’m encountering most with people logging their time for the 168 Hours project is “how can I find more time to read?”

It’s a good question, and one I’ve certainly been trying to improve on. The easiest answer is to turn off the TV. The average American watches 18-23 hours of TV per week (per the American Time Use Survey) though Nielsen claims an even higher 30 hours per week. But it definitely takes time to get in the habit of committing to turn off the TV at, say 9:30PM, and then reading for the next hour. The entire field of TV programming is designed to keep you watching into the next hour, or even if you’re watching TiVo’d programs, it’s very easy to just watch another one.

Aside from committing to turn off the TV, you also have to keep interesting books nearby, so you don’t just pick up a magazine or putter around the house when you have 15 free minutes. I’ve been trying to read on the stationary bike (though I know that this means I’m not getting my heart rate high enough!) You can read during mass transit commutes, or get books on CD or mp3 for car commutes. It also helps to have a book in your purse or briefcase so that if you get stuck in a post office line, it’s not a complete waste of time.

There are also a few websites that offer books in the public domain (DailyLit.com comes to mind) for office workers who have some downtime during the day.

Fascinating “charticle” on the 2008 American Time Use Survey at the New York Times website. Looks at how Americans of various demographics spend their days.

There is a Q&A with me in Canada’s Globe and Mail today called “Sorry Moms, 168 hours a week is plenty of time.” I think the brusque headline is designed to get attention (and 168 Hours is certainly for men and women) but there you go. I may be doing a radio interview with a Vancouver station about it tomorrow.