Quotes from Laura Vanderkam

This was nothing but an opportunity—an offer by an agent to represent them, but with no guarantee it would work. Still, Shear and Toomey decided to give it their best shot. They knew they needed more material, and the focus to write. So they took off for the Hamptons to bartend for the summer at Star Room, a club. They'd work until 4:00 a.m. most nights, and then haul themselves to Starbucks in the morning. "We just wrote all summer long," Shear says.

Any "work" that is not advancing you toward the professional life you want should not count as work. It is wasted time.

we become full people when we do things to change the world. The "problem that has no name," as Friedan called it, was that housework has never been particularly fulfilling to most people beyond the folks who decide to start their own cleaning businesses. 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 can compress time spent on non-core-competency activities with a three-part strategy: • Ignore it • Minimize it, or • Outsource it