I knew I was going to like Dimity McDowell and Sarah Bowen Shea’s new book, Run Like a Mother: How to Get Moving — and Not Lose Your Family, Job, or Sanity, when I ordered it. I like any publication aimed at women athletes that doesn’t sport the cover line “Walk off the weight!”

I am drawn to anything aimed at women that discusses calories in the context of fuel, not as something to be avoided.

I devour any bit of writing that treats exercise, real exercise, as a safe part of pregnancy. You know what’s more dangerous than running during pregnancy? Gaining 50lbs during pregnancy by sitting on the couch.

And as a somewhat inadvertent time management expert, I definitely like the authors’ demonstration that yes, it is possible to have a job, multiple kids, a husband, a life, and still get in your long runs (brag alert! I ran 20 miles this morning and it was awesome. It means I will have to work Saturday, but so it goes).

Fortunately, if you buy Run Like a Mother’s thesis, more and more women are believing all these things. The ranks of serious women runners are growing. In 168 Hours I recount my journey to being one of them, and if you are interested in optimizing your time, I think running has a lot going for it:

• Running gives you a lot of bang for your buck. If you have 45 minutes to exercise, walking briskly will burn about 300 calories; running will burn more like 450.
• You don’t need to waste time commuting to a pool or gym. You can just put on your shoes and run around your neighborhood.
• You look better and better in minimal amounts of time. It is quite possible to train for a half-marathon in 5 of your 168 hours a week. A mere 5 hours will definitely keep your weight in check, or better. Bowen Shea writes of the benefits to her husband of having “a wife who weighs the same after having three kids as she did when we first started dating. (Actually, come to think of it, a few pounds less.)”
• You care less and less about how you look. This is a more unsung benefit. When you become a runner who can power through the miles, you start seeing your body as a functional object, not something for other people to see and judge. This frees up an incredible amount of mental energy, which you can then devote to other things.
• Moms in particular often lament a lack of solo thinking time. Running will give it to you, and probably give you some great ideas with the endorphins of the runner’s high.

Anyway, it takes a few months to become a runner, and then a few years to truly be in the habit, but I believe it’s worth it. Hopefully others reading Run Like a Mother will agree, though I did have two quibbles with the book.

The first is that Run Like a Mother toys with the same sleep deprivation narrative that characterizes much mommy lit. The back cover notes that “Run Like a Mother will inspire even those who got three hours of sleep last night to lace up their shoes.” But it sounds from the way McDowell and Bowen Shea describe their schedules that even with their pre-dawn runs, they generally get 7 or more hours of sleep per night. We all like to kvetch about bad nights, but the kvetching sends a message to young women that being a working mother will inevitably leave you frazzled. McDowell and Bowen Shea are working, raising kids, running marathons and, as far as I can tell, getting enough sleep. That’s a more empowering message to put on a back cover.

Also, the post-partum chapter was, in my opinion, unnecessarily depressing. At 2-4 weeks, McDowell writes, “the hat… is your new staple accessory: It hides the fact you haven’t showered in a week.” At 6-9 weeks you’ll be “Avoiding telling your husband you got the green light from your doc at your 6-week post-partum checkup to have sex. You’re pretty sure you’d rather run a marathon. Barefoot. Over broken glass.” You will be “suppressing the urge to strangle a woman from church who you… run into at Target and she asks when you’re due.” At 3-6 months, you will finally be “entertaining the idea of doing a 5k fun run with some friends,” though you should “emphasize the fun: run/walk as a group…”

It is always possible that I am a total freak, but this was not my experience with new motherhood at all – that is, months of a sexless, flabby existence – precisely because I was a runner. Thanks to running during pregnancy, I didn’t gain much extra weight, and so I was back in my normal clothes in about 1-2 weeks both times. I started running at 2 weeks post-partum (wearing 3 bras, but hey) and was back up to my normal 5 mile route at 1 month. All this running and weight loss made me feel good about my body. When you feel good about your body, you shower. And have sex.

But other than that, I really enjoyed the book, and especially Bowen Shea’s admission that she’s never understood why people “look at me like I’m a supernatural being” when she says she’s got pre-school aged twins, a job, and she runs. There is more than enough time in 168 hours a week for all these things, and it’s good to have books out there describing how it all works.

(my column from today’s USA Today — some interesting comments over there. Is waking up at 7:30 on a weekday really late? I don’t know – if you have to be at work at 9, that would be entirely reasonable. Even when I was commuting an hour to USA Today years ago I got up at 7:15, and was usually in bed by 11:30. If you’re sleep deprived because you have to stay up for Letterman… well, that isn’t exactly a statement about society. But I think it’s important to plant the flag. Many of the busiest people I interviewed for 168 Hours were not sleep-deprived).

Not-so-sleepless in Seattle — or anywhere else

Americans — even moms — log lots of hours in bed. So why does our society want to think otherwise?

By Laura Vanderkam

Sunday, March 14, was a grueling day. After staying up until 1 a.m. for a dinner, I woke at 7:15 to catch a train to Washington, D.C., to report a story there. That’s a short night anyway, but the switch to daylight saving chopped out another hour, and by the time I came back to New York in the evening to trade off kid duties with my husband, I was fading fast. Unfortunately, my baby and toddler, thrown off their schedules by the time change, stayed up half the night. Hello Monday, right?

Let me start this blog post by saying that I love Real Simple magazine.

I have been a subscriber for at least half of the 10 years the magazine has been in business. I probably would have been a subscriber longer, but I was basically too young to have a permanent address before about 2004. Like Cookie (a parenting magazine for the sophisticated set that alas, went to that great diaper bin in the sky this year), the concept is so  appealing that I have my subscription on auto-renewal. Life made easier! I love the recipes; I have made several, including the baked chicken with leeks and apples, multiple times. Every month the magazine promises a moment of respite in a chaotic world, and so I take the time to flip through each cleverly styled issue shortly after it arrives.

Note: I take the time to flip through the magazine. And this is where things start to get tricky with the Real Simple concept.

The premise of Real Simple is that its readers are thoroughly starved for time. Indeed, an email survey arrived in my in-box in late January inviting me to “vent about how little time you have.” To do this, you could go to the Real Simple website and answer questions about what you would give up for a free hour. This echoes a Real Simple feature that ran back in January 2007 in which readers wrote in about what they would do with an extra 15 minutes a day. As I recount in 168 Hours, in wistful prose, respondents described all the soul-restoring pursuits they’d indulge in if only their clocks would slow down for a while. In that magical 15 extra minutes, women wrote of playing the flute, soaking in the tub, sitting on a hammock, or, as one reader from Abilene, Texas mused, “Fifteen minutes of uninterrupted writing time would be a priceless gift.”

Which raises the question: how long did it take her to write an email to Real Simple describing that elusive dream?

Likewise, anyone who opens spam email from a magazine and then answers an email survey about how starved for time she is, is by definition, not starved for time.

Nonetheless, the results of that survey ran in the current April issue, which is so fixated on time that the magazine commissioned several artists to design high-art clocks for the pages. Some 41% of respondents told Real Simple they would opt for an hour of free time over sex, but reading Real Simple takes about an hour. That’s an hour of free time right there, without having to give up sex to get it.

This odd discrepancy between reality and the time-crunch narrative continues. For instance, Real Simple is holding a sweepstakes in which people can enter for a chance to win $3,000. The pitch? “How would you buy yourself a little time? With $3,000, you could hire a cleaning service, send out your laundry, even have someone make dinner for you.” But Real Simple has one of the magazine world’s higher average reader household incomes. That’s why April’s “Destined to be a Classic” page touts a $395 handbag, and the fashion section recommends a linen-blend tailored jumpsuit from Malene Birger at $425, and a linen Lela Rose skirt for $595. Note to Real Simple readers: You already have the money to send out the laundry. Just don’t buy the clothes in the magazine. Use the money to outsource cleaning the clothes you have!

Again, I like Real Simple because it always manages to get back around to the same point I tend to make: time is precious, and you should use it to do the things you value most. The April issue devotes several pages to profiles of serious volunteers: “[Time] is the most precious commodity any of us have, and yet these five inspiring people have chosen to spend it (lots of it) helping others,” the article begins. One profilee? Jocelyn Allen, a single mom of a teenager, who’s also an executive at OnStar, was the youth director at St. John Evangelist Temple of Truth in Detroit, and is the founder of Divas4Life, an organization that has mentored 75 at-risk African American girls and sponsors weekly field trips. Phew!

Yet the magazine’s editors don’t seem to ponder the incongruity between the existence of people like Jocelyn Allen and a cover line that promises readers that they can “find extra minutes every day.” Some people may be willing to give up sex for an extra hour of free time, and some people may write Real Simple about all the great things they’d do if they had an extra 15 minutes, but these people, and Jocelyn Allen, all have the exact same amount of time. They all have 168 hours a week.

Clearly Allen does a lot with her time, but whenever I read profiles of people like her, I find myself thinking that anyone who claims they’d live life differently in a 169.75 hour week, vs. a 168 hour week, is full of BS.

The reason to make the easy weeknight meals that Real Simple recommends is not that we are starved for time. Clearly there is enough time to be a single parent, an executive at a major company, and a committed volunteer. We have abundant time. It’s just that time spent doing one thing is time not spent doing something else, and it is far more important to be a mindful parent, an energetic worker and a generous volunteer than to spend an hour standing over a must-be-stirred pot of risotto. That is the truth, real and simple, even if people caught up in the time-crunch narrative don’t want to believe it.

My column heralding the return of Ann M. Martin’s Baby-sitters Club book series ran on the Taste page of today’s Wall Street Journal as “How to Pay for Your Own Uggs.” Hopefully today’s girls will be receptive to the very entrepreneurial message of the BSC books: if you see an inefficiency in the market, you can solve it, and make big bucks doing so. Even if you’re only 12.

I read with great interest Peggy Orenstein’s essay over at the New York Times about the rise of the “Femivore” – that is a woman who’s not only gone back to the hearth, but apparently back to 1865. These moms grow their family’s food (including raising chickens for eggs), make their own clothes, etc.

It’s a strange blend of survivalism with progressive (usually green) politics. While 1950s homemakers felt a sense of malaise because making a home had become largely about consumerism, advocates like Shannon Hayes (author of Radical Homemakers) suggest that the Femivore movement offers a way out. You’re engaged in a purpose beyond schlepping children around and, if you avoid spending, you can contribute the equivalent of a second income too!

In our age of food obsessions and mothering fundamentalism, I suppose this has a certain appeal. If you raise the chicken, you can vouch for the health of the egg. Sewing your own clothes appears to save money (that is, if you value your own time at zero).

All these domestic arts also solve the problem of filling your 168 hours with something. While children do need a great deal of attention when they are little, the problem with going the stay-at-home mom route is that they don’t stay little for long. I’ve had full-time childcare since a few months after Jasper was born, but even if I hadn’t, he would now be in pre-school likely 3-5 days per week at 3 hours a pop. If he kept taking his nap or rest time, that would be another 10 hours during the week that would be freed up (if I didn’t have another baby to deal with). That’s 19-25 hours right there that are not available for interaction, and plus, he likes to play by himself sometimes too. Indeed, the other night, for the first time ever since becoming a mom of two, I was able to read something while the two kids played independently!

Then, of course, when kids start school full-time, they are out of the house for at least 30, and usually more like 35 hours a week (when you add in activities). This is an interesting number because “35” is actually the average number of hours the average mom with a full-time job works. I don’t think this is a coincidence.

Obviously, many homemakers re-start their careers in some fashion when their children start school, but others simply believe for whatever reason that if they don’t have to work, they shouldn’t. The problem, though, with being a stay-at-home mom of older children is that then you have to fill your hours with something. Some homemakers volunteer, do hobbies, help advance their breadwinning partner’s career, etc. But housework is what winds up expanding to fill the available space for most people. It seems like it has to be done.

Of course, the problem with no name is that housework is not particularly fulfilling. You can dress it up all you want with fancy gadgets, but vacuuming a rug is still just vacuuming a rug. Unless you imbue it with some larger purpose. You’re not just making dinner, you’re making the world greener by growing dinner! You’re not just making your own laundry soap and thereby contributing financially to your family, you’re reducing your carbon footprint and saving the world!

But here’s a thought: all this raising chickens and sewing clothes is an inefficient way of getting at the concept of having a larger purpose and contributing financially. If you want a larger purpose, and want to contribute financially to your family, what’s so bad about getting a job? If you want to save the planet, get a green job. Or get a job where you can create change; you’ll make more progress on the green front running, say, a utility than you will with your garden.

Meaningful work can be a source of great joy. Certainly as much joy as squawking chickens.

168 Hours was mentioned in an article at Forbes.com called the Practically Painless Guide to Managing Money (written by Emma Johnson). As I point out, no one wants to spend much time doing financial chores (unless, of course, you are a financial adviser or some such). So figure out a way to get the important ones fast, so you can focus on more important things — like earning your money and putting it to good use.

This seems like a straightforward question. If an opinion pollster calls you up and asks you how much time you spend washing dishes in a week, you probably wouldn’t say “I don’t know.” No one likes to say “I don’t know.” So you’d give a number.

But I’d be willing to bet a lot of money that number would be wrong. Indeed, it wouldn’t even be close to accurate, whether you’re a man or a woman. And I’d be willing to bet a lot of money on which direction you’d be off. You would overestimate.

According to studies highlighted in Changing Rhythms of American Family Life, by time use researchers Suzanne Bianchi, John Robinson and Melissa Milkie, when you ask women how much time they spend washing dishes in a week, they’ll tell you 5.5 hours. Men say 2.6 hours. Ask people to keep a time diary, though, and the numbers come out very differently. Women devote, on average, 1.1 hours to washing dishes as a primary or secondary activity. Men devote 0.7 hours.

Audits find the time diary approach is more accurate than typical surveys, and the results show that men overestimate by about 400% and women by about 500%. This is a big problem if you’re trying to make any point about American life and housework and use a quick response poll as your evidence.

So what’s going on? It’s not that we’re lying. It’s a few things. First, few people have any idea how much time they spend devoted to many tasks. If you get paid by the hour you probably know how many hours you work. But doing dishes doesn’t have the same structure. Most people don’t even know that a week has 168 hours, so how would you know how much time you spend on something like dishes?

Second, few people enjoy the routine aspects of housework like scrubbing pots and pans. Because we do these things frequently, we feel like we’re always doing them, even if each instance only takes a few minutes. So we tend to overestimate.

Well, so what, you say. Here’s why this matters: many of the things we “know” about American life–that we are overworked and sleep-deprived, for instance, or that women work a second shift doing housework after work–come from quick response surveys. But if we get dish washing so wrong, why would we think these other impressions are right? The answer is that the situation is not always as it appears. This is important to keep in mind when we issue pronouncements about the modern world.

Two years ago, I wrote a 9-part series for the Huffington Post about “Core Competency Moms” — that is, women who were outsourcing (or minimizing or ignoring) “their” traditional household tasks in order to focus on the things they did best: nurturing their families and their careers.

According to a recent article in the Economist, “Mr. Fix-it: Professional fathers are downing tools to play with their children,” now men are increasingly doing the same thing. A recent study found that the percentage of domestic helpers in Britain who are male has risen from 17% in the early 1990s to 39% now. Some of this is the appearance of the much-heralded “manny” but much of it relates to households choosing to outsource what have typically been male tasks: yard work, odd jobs like fixing broken cabinet doors, car-related tasks and the like.

Though it is still mostly moms who manage all this, “for the most part fathers do—whatever the cynics suspect—spend the time thus liberated with their families, rather than in the office, at the gym or in the pub,” the Economist notes. “Despite the recent recession, dads, it seems, would rather spend quality time with their offspring than put up shelves or fix dripping taps at the weekend.” If you work long hours during the week, then weekends are for family activities like going to games or museums–not housework.  No matter which gender you happen to be.

Of course, any mention of household outsourcing always raises questions about inequality and potential exploitation. Many of Britain’s nannies and maids are immigrants who may or may not be legally in the country, and may or may not be being paid on the books. Just because 39 percent of them may now be male doesn’t necessarily change the fact that some of these workers are incredibly vulnerable. On the other hand, many domestic helpers (including the Hire a Hubby business profiled in the Economist) are in fact small business owners who are working their way into Britain’s middle class. They specialize in individual tasks, and thus become better at them than any individual husband could hope to be. The economy as a whole grows, increasing efficiency, when everyone focuses on what they do best — lawyers on practicing law, lawn care specialists on making lawns look green and neat.

Just as with women, this specialization has benefits for children. Few mothers see, say, sewing children’s clothes, as one of their primary duties these days, and because they don’t do that or make elaborate breakfasts from scratch (or iron their electric blankets) they wind up spending more time playing with their kids than moms did 50 years ago. Likewise, “The trend also suggests a change in the way many professional men view themselves,” the Economist notes. “Gone are the days when fathers spent their weekends promoting manliness by showing little Johnny how to hammer in nails. Now they derive their sense of identity from success at work and from fatherhood itself, rather than having to demonstrate their masculinity through a rugged grasp of power tools or an impressive collection of socket sets.”

In other words, dads are realizing that other people can put your son’s bicycle together, but only you can show him how to ride it with that right parental mix of caution and encouragement that will teach him to take smart risks. If dads are chucking the former in order to do the latter, I’d say that’s a big win.