Welcome Motherlode readers! (plus, a balanced vacation)

Phew! Get a link on the home page of the New York Times and you can get enough traffic to really slow a webpage down!

I was the guest blogger for Lisa Belkin’s Motherlode blog on Wednesday of last week, with a piece titled Parents Who Don’t Waste Enough Time. The gist of the piece was that in our efforts not to shortchange our children, sometimes parents shortchange our careers by not spending some “inefficient” time focusing on long-term priorities and creative daydreaming. I maintain (as I do in 168 Hours) that there is enough time in a 168 hour week to invest adequately in both career and family and self (yes, I really do sleep 8 hours a night!)

Anyway, I’m happy to report that the post sparked a lot of discussion, and I’ve been getting great offers to keep time logs from some people who checked out my websites. I’m still looking for some more volunteers (though I’d really like a few men too!)

So why is this post a few days late? Partly, it’s because I couldn’t access my own admin page due to the increased traffic coming from the New York Times, and partly because I was on “vacation” last week — roughly 168 hours — at the New Jersey shore with my extended family.

It was actually a pretty balanced vacation in terms of time spent on various things. I rarely completely tune out work — I love what I do, and so I spent about 2-3 hours per day working on the book project or checking in on things. I did some reading. I went on four runs. I also went to the beach  twice a day and played with Jasper and his cousins.  I ate a lot of fudge and ice cream 🙂 And watched zero TV.  So now I’m feeling pretty relaxed and ready to start the week. I could have not checked email at all, but then I’d be in a total panic trying to catch up, which would have ruined this weekend. Instead, I got to spend the morning with a friend and her daughter at the playground. Fun stuff!

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