(cross-posted at lauravanderkam.com)

This year I attempted to make my first big turkey dinner. The holiday meal has long been one of those womanly rites of passage, viewed as complicated and requiring days of preparation and moving parts, more dishes that can fit on a table, and a skilled cook.

Since I’ve spent the past year studying time use, though, I wondered if maybe Thanksgiving could be done better–in a way that tasted wonderful, but didn’t involve too much labor. My family wanted to go watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in the morning, and I didn’t want to stay home, chained to the stove. Plus with a nursing baby and a 2-year-old, there simply weren’t going to be long stretches of uninterrupted cooking time. My husband planned to do an equal (if not greater) amount of cooking, but again, with the two small kids, we were going to be trading off kid and cooking duties most of the day.

So what to do? As I learned from writing 168 Hours, you can save many hours by planning ahead and thinking things through. I took a quick look through my stash of November and December magazines to find the easiest, but best looking holiday recipes I could. I streamlined the dinner to what we consider essentials: turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, corn bread, green beans, cranberry sauce, and pecan pie. I chose recipes, and ordered the ingredients from Fresh Direct, which delivered our frozen 12-lb turkey late Sunday, in time to thaw in the fridge for Thursday. I could have bought the whole dinner ready-made, but decided just to take that approach on the pie.

At the same time that I was doing all this, I was reading through some December 1959 women’s magazines—Ladies Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, etc.—for a column I planned to write. Juxtaposing my menu planning with this task made one social trend very clear to me: we have moved from a fussy, casserole- or gelatin-based cuisine to one that focuses on enhancing the food itself.

Modern recipes and 1959 recipes don’t seem to consider the same things ideal at all. We value fewer, better ingredients. My cranberry sauce was just cranberries, apple cider and sugar. It never occurred to me to mix it with Jell-O and put it in a mold. How would this have improved it? My green beans did not in any way involve onion rings or cream of mushroom soup. Green beans are good on their own, or maybe with some almonds at most. Though we didn’t do sweet potatoes, my 2009 magazines had a refreshing lack of marshmallows in their recipes; one enticing one was just sliced sweet potatoes in olive oil, salt, honey and chili peppers. My mashed potatoes featured nothing but potatoes, milk, butter, salt and grated Parmesan cheese. The most complicated dish was the stuffing, and even this we got down to mostly simple ingredients: bread, celery, mushrooms, onions, stock, herbs and an egg. The turkey got a rub of butter, garlic and herbs. Throw in a bottle of wine, and you have a feast—albeit a far different feast than the Christmas dinner described in the 1959 Woman’s Day, which features “Lime Charlotte Russe” with green Jell-o, meringue, and a double-boiler cream mixture, and “Blanc Mange with Jelly” with red Jell-o and another double-boiler cream mixture. Those dishes take a long time and many bowls to prepare, which just have to be washed, with unclear dividends. We, on the other hand, didn’t have many pots to scrub at all.

My Thanksgiving cooking experience was broadly emblematic of what I call “the new home economics.” Over the past 40 years, the amount of time American women devote to housework (which includes cooking) has fallen precipitously. Some of that is due to technology and modern conveniences; 40 years ago, obviously, you couldn’t order groceries online and have them delivered whenever you wanted. Though we didn’t use the microwave for our Thanksgiving dinner, having a quick way to reheat something makes timing less critical.

But most of the differences are more cultural than technological. A side benefit from shifting from fussy casserole and Jell-o dishes is that food is not only healthier but is far simpler to make. Nothing shows this better than one “Rice Imperial” recipe from the December 1959 Ladies Home Journal. With its rice, candied fruits and (of course) gelatin, it’s touted as great for sweet tooths. It’s also apparently great for people with a ton of time on their hands. Though women’s magazines were, in the 1950s, years from alerting readers to the exact amount of “hands on” and “total” time recipes took, the editors did put a flag on this dish. It honestly appears to take 8 hours, and so the magazine includes “a word of warning: don’t imagine you can whip it up between the lunch dishes and your 3 p.m. dentist appointment.”

That line, right there, sums up a big chunk of what has changed on the home front. For starters, whose busy day includes lunch dishes and a 3pm dentist appointment? Very few modern women are at home between lunch and 3pm and planning to spend that time cooking anyway. On week days, most are doing paid work. If they are at home, generally it’s because they’re taking care of small children, an activity that doesn’t mix well with an 8-hour recipe. On weekends, the average modern Ladies Home Journal reader is still doing other things – likely with her children (think sports games and the like) – whether she is in or out of the workforce. Modern women are no longer looking to fill time with elaborate dishes whose main function, as the 1959 LHJ says, is “to make a great show.” They value their time more, and so they spend it on higher value activities, like paid work and interacting with their children. According to time diaries, American women spend a lot more time playing with and reading to their kids these days than they did in the middle of the 20^th century, when far more of them were at home full-time.

And so the standard of what is considered good cooking has changed. In Family Circle’s December 2009 issue, the editors advise “Instead of baking treats, follow Willy Wonka’s lead and keep a tantalizing assortment of candy within reach.” I’d rather have a few pieces of chocolate from a sampler with a glass of port than Rice Imperial any day. In 1965, American moms spent 34.5 hours per week on housework. These days, they spend less than 20. Moms like me who work full-time spend about 14.5 hours per week.

I’d say this is a positive development for everyone except the makers of Jell-o. As it is, the net result of the simple cooking philosophy is that I not only got to see the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade with my kids, I got to go for a run and, of course, tend to the needs of my 2-month-old infant. Time – all 168 hours of it – has to be filled with something. I’d argue that the shift from housekeeping to paid work, children and personal time is a major victory for women (before we even get to the fact that many of our husbands are now taking their turn in the kitchen). And given that dark chocolate squares are much tastier than Lime Charlotte Russe, it’s hard to see that anything meaningful has been lost.

The pre-order page is up, here. Very exciting! Six months until launch…

Like the rest of humanity, I watched Sarah Palin’s appearance on Oprah on Monday. (I have a personal interest in her book… I had wanted to ghost write it. I wasn’t chosen, alas).

Palin is, of course, a politician, refusing in as slippery words as possible to declare whether she would run in 2012. But she came across as a far better, straighter shooter than she did in the dismal Katie Couric interviews of 2008. Her excuse for that hatchet job? She thought she and Couric would be doing a light interview about balancing work and motherhood. Then (in my opinion) Couric elected to actually do some version of her job and—rather than ask light questions about balancing work and motherhood— grilled Palin, who hadn’t prepared to do her job of deftly getting across her message no matter how shrill the interviewer sounded.

But anyway, for our purposes, the question of balancing work and motherhood actually is relevant. Oprah asked Palin how she had intended to handle the pressures of the vice presidency as the mom of five kids. She almost apologized for asking it, noting that no one ever asks men these things. Palin gave a rather refreshing answer: it had never occurred to her that she couldn’t handle it. As she said, she has so much “equality” in her marriage. This is a word she kept using over and over. I took it to mean that she knew, if she needed to step up her career, that Todd Palin would step up his duties at home, just as she had done during his stints on the North Slope. Plus, as she mentioned, she has a slew of grannies and aunties and such around. All enabled her to have five kids and a real Career with a capital C.

This last point is, I think, most important for the question of how to “have it all.” You need a lot of help. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. We’re all OK with having what I call a “work team.” Unless you’re a sole proprietor intent on survivalist living, you probably have help in your professional life in order to do your job. Maybe you have an assistant, but even if you don’t, you probably don’t cook up lunch at your office cafeteria. You don’t monitor whether the light bulbs are replaced, the halls are vacuumed or the bathrooms have toilet paper. Unless you’re in the accounting department, you probably don’t do your employer’s taxes or follow up on the bills. You may not make your own travel arrangements or plan your own conferences. Other people with core competencies in these areas do these things so you can focus on what you do best.

Likewise, parents with outside careers have to focus on what they do best at home: nurturing their children (and their marriages) and nurturing themselves. Palin could rely on family to help with other things. If you don’t have family around, you’ll probably have to pay for the help. But if you do have all that support, miraculous things start to happen. Imagine having the mindset that it would never occur to you that you might not be able to deal with the vice presidency and a special needs infant! That’s powerful stuff.

“Your email is not your work; it is simply a tool to help you do your work.” — Paul Sloane at Lifehack.org

I have been trying to work a lighter schedule since Sam’s birth on September 24. I’m feeding him every 3 hours during the day, plus he seems to subscribe to the attachment parenting philosophy, which has sort of forced me to as well. Somebody needs to be holding him most of the time he’s awake. I’m trying to create enough mommy-and-Jasper time so my first born doesn’t feel too resentful. Oh, and lose the remainder of my excess pregnancy weight, too.

And yet the crazy thing is that, when I was sending out some invoices the other day, I realized that my reduced hours hadn’t drastically changed my output in terms of articles or projects. How is that possible?

The answer, I think, is that what happens during a self-employed person’s “maternity leave” (as long as you have a few hours of childcare) may be good conditions for productivity. Here’s why:

1. People assume you’re not working, so they don’t bug you with stupid things. That means limited interruptions. Interruptions suck up vast hours during a normal workday if you’re not careful. Also, people don’t expect you to show up at meetings or on conference calls. These waste incredible amounts of time, too. You can get the summary later.

2. You don’t have huge expectations for yourself. I mean, if ever there were a time to cut yourself some professional slack, it’s when you just gave birth, right? As a consequence…

3. You don’t try to do too much in any given day. Right after Sam was born, I’d put about 3 things, max, on my “to do” list for any given day. One might be working out, another might be to do a phone interview for a column, and another might be to write  a blog post. That’s it. The next day I might only need to send an email about a pitch, do another interview, and write in my journal. In 24 hours (and with a newborn, you see a lot of those 24 hours) you can usually get three things done. But here’s the key part:

4. Because you’re only trying to do 3 things, you choose them wisely. They tend to be the most important things for you to be doing–the things that are most likely to advance you toward your professional or personal goals. You ignore all the other noise. It can wait. If you wait long enough, it will probably disappear. But the funny thing is, if you honestly get 3 important things done per day, that’s 15 things per workweek, or about 20 if you continue to the weekend. That’s 1,000 things a year–quite a bit!

I’m trying to keep the lessons from this fundamentalist version of time management in mind as I slowly gear back up. Now I might put 5 or 6 things on my to-do list for any given day, but I try not to go much beyond that. If you maintain a very focused list, you know what you need to do whenever you have a free minute. That clarity of strategic intent increases the chances that what needs to get done gets done.

The Weekend Journal section of today’s WSJ has a round-up of how various novelists crank out their words. It’s a comforting article, in some ways, since it turns out that many of the recent Booker and Pulitzer Prize winners dumped whole books and spent years getting nowhere in the process of creating their masterpieces. A good novel just takes time.

But you can still use that time as wisely as possible. For instance, Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel Prize winning writer, writes in hand on graph-paper. This is simply the way that works best for him. He fills one side of the page with text, and leaves the adjacent page blank for revisions, inserting “dialogue-like balloons,” according to the WSJ. But rather than then sitting down at a computer to compile it all, he sends his notebooks off to a speed typist, who returns the work as a typed manuscript. He then makes revisions by hand on these pages, and sends them off again. This cycle can continue three or four times.

In other words, Pamuk has learned to separate out the writing of a novel into multiple tasks. He focuses on the task he is best at: creating a great story and telling it in beautiful prose. He also does this task in the way that works best for him: working by hand. Someone else who is good at typing can do the typing and splicing. When everyone focuses on his or her core competencies, a masterpiece comes together.

This week’s Business Week reported on the financial woes prevalent at private golf clubs. The current crisis many are experiencing is predominantly recession-related. More white-collar workers and executives have lost their jobs in this recession than in previous ones, and when you lose your job, paying thousands of dollars for a golf club membership falls way down the list of priorities.

But the sudden crisis is also happening because of a longer term trend: Private golf club memberships have been falling for the last 20 years. Business Week reports that 2.1 million golfers belong to private clubs these days, down 900,000 from the peak in the early 1990s. Belonging to a club just isn’t that important to many executives anymore. In a more competitive world, businesses don’t feel like footing the fees. Many executives are now women, and while plenty of women like to golf, on the margins, you’re less likely to see a woman entertaining her clients on the links.

But finally, most critically, while businessmen may have once viewed their clubs as weekend havens from the wife and kids, younger men no longer wish to spend the weekends away from their families. One of the most fascinating changes in how Americans spend their time over the past 40 years has been the increase in time that married fathers spend with their children. While the numbers are still low, they’ve pretty much tripled since the 1960s.

As these average hours creep up, it changes the culture. In a growing number of communities, a young father who spends his weekends on the g0lf course instead of, say, coaching his son’s Little League team, would be viewed as fairly pathetic. While this may spell tough times for country clubs, it’s a positive for family life, recession or not.