Round-up: Where Did My Day Go?

Welcome again to the new website for 168 Hours! We’re gearing up for the paperback launch at the end of the month, and I thought that the site could be a bit crisper as readership grows. Hopefully it will be easier to navigate and read. If you look up at the URL, you’ll see it’s slightly different for the blog: www.my168hours.com/main instead of www.my168hours.com/blog. If you’re following the RSS feed, or have the old site bookmarked, please update the links so you don’t miss anything!

Last week I started posting three times a week over at BNET. On Monday, I wrote about “3 Times It’s OK To Skimp On Sleep.” I am a big fan of getting 7-8 hours a night, and almost always do. But last week I made a few strategic choices not to do so. Sunday, for instance, I was following the news of Osama bin Laden’s death. Saturday, my husband and I decided to sit out on our balcony and talk until 1:30AM, using that time to catch up. This week, I’ve also been trying to do the last round of revisions on All The Money In The World, and I find it compelling enough to work late. I know this is a limited few weeks of craziness, though, and so I’m not about to use anecdotes of my own short nights to draw some conclusion about Americans being sleep deprived. We’re not.

I also posted an interview with Xerox CMO Christa Carone about a desktop app that promises to answer “Hey, Where Did My Day Go?” The app tracks your Outlook inbox to see hours spent in meetings and with who, which drama queen sends the most quick reply-all emails and so forth. I don’t have Outlook, so I’m kind of viewing this corporate curse from afar, but Carone mentioned one team member of hers who was sending updates 3-4 times an hour. Yikes! There was some opportunity for consolidation there.

I urged people to push their work housekeeping (returning old emails, taking nice-but-not-urgent phone calls) to one particular day or morning. The piece, called “Swamped? Try The Friday Morning Shuffle” recommends pushing everything to Friday so you can open up other days of the week.

On Thursday, I did a short video interview with BNET in which I debated Penelope Trunk on whether it was good or bad career advice to “do what you love.” I maintain this is still good advice, knowing that there isn’t necessarily one thing we love. You can watch the video here. There were a few technical difficulties, and we lost Penelope for a bit, but mostly it’s still watchable.

Over at City Journal, I reviewed former Paris Review editor Ben Ryder Howe’s memoir, My Korean Deli (the review is called “Family Business“). My long-form piece on the decline of NYC’s Korean greengrocers is the article that refuses to die, and I’m actually leading a discussion over at the Korea Society on Thursday night this week on Howe’s book. If you’re in New York, check it out.

Also, check out this fabulous photo of 168 Hours on photographer Esther JuLee’s bookshelf! And then here’s a copy on Holly Root’s desk (as spotted by novelist Jael McHenry in a Twitter pic). I love that Holly thought her desk was messy in this photo. She should see mine! Where has your copy of 168 Hours been? Send me photos and I’ll post them.