Category Archives: Career

Opt Out or Lean In?

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(Tied for third most viewed. Reposted from December 12, 2014)

Many people seem to think that leaning in and opting out are opposites – either you lean in, or you opt out. I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be either or, you can do both.

In her book Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg writes, “I have written this book to encourage women to dream big, forge a path through the obstacles, and achieve their full potential.” And then later, “I hope they [my children] end up exactly where they want to be. And when they find where their true passion lies, I hope they both lean in – all the way.”

Now that sounds an awful lot like what the women who opt out do. They opt out in order to opt in to a way of life and working that allows them to be who they are and to work to their full potential on terms that work for them.

I have talked to women who have opted out of jobs or career paths that hold them back. Women are still discriminated in the workplace (although now-a-days it’s generally harder to detect than it used to be) and still get bypassed by their male colleagues. I have talked to women who feel they just can’t be themselves in a corporate environment where they have to keep parts of themselves hidden. It’s ok for work to spill over into the private sphere – we’re expected to answer emails when we’re at home with our kids – but ironically it doesn’t go the other way. Women are expected to keep whatever issues they may have at home or with their children invisible in the workplace.

While Sandberg calls on women to lean in and make a difference, many women don’t feel the effort of trying to change a workplace or working culture to suit them and their needs is worth it, nor do they want to take the risk that it may entail. Not only do they think it’s a lost cause, but they are also genuinely worried that it would harm their careers and their reputations.

One might think that they therefore choose opting out as an easy solution, except that opting out is never easy. It’s a path these women have been compelled to take in order to create a working environment where they have more control over their professional lives, where they can work to their full potential, while seamlessly combining work with other areas of life. In other words, they do this so that they can lean in all the way.

All the women I have talked to have been ambitious and have wanted their work to be meaningful. They want to lean in, but on their own terms. After opting out, these women did not necessarily work less, nor did many of them spend more time with their children. The difference was they had more control over how and when they worked, and how and when they were with their children. Having more control, in turn, entailed less stress. It allowed them to feel passionate about their work, and being passionate about what you do tends to automatically make you want to lean in.

So by all means, do both, opt out and lean in!

Control

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(Tied for third most read. Reposted from January 2, 2015, see original here)

I find opting out a fascinating topic, which I suppose is to be expected, as this is what I wrote my PhD about. But what is perhaps more interesting than the things about society, culture, and expectations that propel people to opt out, is what it is they choose to do instead – what they opt in to. The new solutions they create and the lifestyles they adopt potentially tell us a lot about how people want to live their lives and how they want to work, what they think is important, and what it is that makes them tick.

In a world of quick fixes and short-term wins, where the constant downsizing means no one is safe, and where it isn’t unusual that people change jobs every or every second year, I’d say knowing what makes people tick in order to figure out how to get them to commit to any goals, not to mention long-term goals, is pretty strategic.

Considering all the great technological breakthroughs and how cutting edge many corporations are in their fields, it’s actually quite surprising that they just haven’t kept up when it comes to career models and work solutions.

When people opt out they opt in to a number of different lifestyles and types of work. While they basically all opt out of the same thing – the corporate models and ways of working that leave them stressed, exhausted, and without the ability to create a coherent narrative of their lives and work – they opt in to a myriad of different ways of living. Some downshift and move to less hectic areas, some don’t. Some make a complete career change and retrain in another area, some don’t. Some leave the corporate world altogether, and some don’t. Some start doing research, like me, and some become entrepreneurs. The point is, just like we are all diverse with our own personal preferences, people opt in to a way of living and working that is right just for them. Maybe that is the point, through their opting out journeys they create ways of life that are tailored to their personal needs and don’t follow some corporate norm.

There is, however, one thing that is the same for everyone who opts out and in: control. In their new lifestyles, those who opt in, create a lifestyle where they have more control over their time and thus over their lives. This control gives them a sense of coherence and authenticity, and it allows them to do what they love, to lose themselves in their work, without the stress of not knowing how to make time for all their other responsibilities. It seems that control (corporate leaders, pay attention now!) is actually the key, the secret behind how to engage and commit people.

And knowing this, it’s frustrating to see organizations that, for example, have a policy for working off-site, but when asked about it admit that they don’t usually allow their employees to do so, because how can they then be sure that they actually work (yes this is true). We have all these policies like flexible time to make life more flexible and manageable, especially for employees with care responsibilities. But research has shown that flexible time actually makes us feel like we have less time. So all these policies strike me as window dressing without actually changing the way we work or making an impact on our lives. Instead of measuring how much we work – quantity – how about focusing on what we get done – quality? Who cares where we work and how we do it if we get the job done? The thing is, while it shouldn’t matter to our employers (results are results, right?), it matters a great deal to us. We want to have more control over how we work, when we work, and where we work. That really shouldn’t be too much to ask.

Guilt, care, and time with loved ones

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I was in Glasgow last week at the BSA (British Sociological Association) conference and as a result my head is spinning with plans and ideas for my research. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting lots of interesting people and have had some really good conversations. But as I sit here and reflect over the conference there is one thing that sticks out in my mind, and that is the word ‘guilt’.

It’s not that I or anyone else was feeling especially guilty at the time, although who knows, that is at least not what we were talking about. No, it came up as a recurring theme when talking about women, work, careers, and mothering.

Now I admit that I have a somewhat unhealthy guilt complex. I sometimes joke that if there is anything that I could possibly feel guilty about, I do, and if there is absolutely nothing to feel guilty about, I do anyway. I know this is completely irrational and I have gotten better at not feeling so guilty all the time.

One thing that seems to connect women, whether or not they have a career, whether or not they have children, is that they, or rather we, feel way too guilty about too many things. I know I probably don’t need to spell it out, but I will so that you know you’re not alone. Here are a few things that you possibly and probably often feel guilty about:

Not being with your kids enough; not being at work enough; not spending enough time with parents/friends/family/loved ones; not getting enough done; not being a good enough mother/daughter/wife/friend; not being attentive enough to others’ needs; not being ambitious enough; not exercising enough; not giving the kids food that is nutritious enough; not monitoring their screen time enough; and not getting enough done although we’re doing all of the above to the best of our ability (yes, really, to the best of our ability, stop beating yourself up) and feeling guilty about it too, which also takes a lot of energy.

I could go on, but there really is no point. The point I wanted to make when listing all these things, is that if you recognize any of these you will know that you are not alone, because unfortunately, this is something I have found in my research: women tend to think it’s just them. That every one else is doing fine, and many women ask themselves, why can’t I handle it when everyone else seems to be able to? The thing is, we’re just really great at keeping it together and putting on a brave face.

So why is this, you ask, why do we feel so guilty? Well, it’s complicated, but the main reasons are cultural and structural. With cultural I mean the way women are brought up and the gendered ideals prevalent in society. And with structural I mean the way we organize society, they way we define work, and the way we continue to put most of the care responsibilities on women. These two are very closely linked.

While women are taught to have it all – a family, a career, and to participate in public debate and policy making – we are also making it difficult for women to do this because of the contradictory messages we send them about femininity and what it means to be a good worker, citizen, woman, and mother. Simply put, women get extremely mixed and contradictory messages regarding what it is that they need to live up to.

Despite gender equality initiatives, which include encouraging men to take paternity leave and participate more in childcare, the change has been and is extremely slow, and women continue to be mainly responsible for care in society. Childcare is also actually only a small part of all the care done in society. Although we mostly think and talk about stressed and sleep deprived mothers of small children when we talk about care, we have other care responsibilities too. Not only are women mainly responsible for childcare, they are also mainly responsible for other care, like caring for elderly parents, spouses, or other ailing relatives and friends. And even though care is often outsourced, someone still needs to manage and coordinate it, and either way it can be draining and emotionally very difficult. Talking to a good friend and colleague at the conference, it really started to dawn on me how much women organize their lives and their work around care. This is also true for the women who opt out. A big part of their narratives, whether or not they have children, is about the people in their lives and the relationships they want to nurture, which the career they opted out of left very little room for. It may seem obvious, that we want to and should be there for the people who are important to us and need us, but this is just not the way work is organized. Very little room is left for care, which is one of the main reasons we tend to feel overwhelmed.

Now I’m obviously not saying that we shouldn’t care for loved ones, but we can be aware of how unequal the distribution of care in society is and work on that. And we can think about that maybe we need a society and a working culture that accommodates and makes more room for care and relationships, for both men and women. Either way, women have some pretty unrealistic expectations to live up to, and we need to realize this and we really need to not feel so guilty all the time. It is such a waste of energy.

The five main myths of opting out

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Myth #1: Only women with small children opt out

There are a lot of misconceptions of what opting out is, the main one being that it is only women with small children who opt out. However, research has shown that women who opt out, don’t necessarily do it when their kids are small. Most plan to continue working after having children. Having small children is hard; mothers with young children are often tired and slightly overwhelmed by sleep deprivation and crazy schedules, getting kids to daycare with the right gear, picking them up on time or on short notice when they’re sick, and nursing them back to health while also working at the same time, birthday parties, activities, gifts for teachers… I could go on. However, women with very young children often stick it out, grit their teeth, and just do it – often in a haze – but they do. It isn’t until their kids are a bit bigger that many actually have a moment to consider that maybe this just isn’t the way they want to live their lives. And often that is when they start to reconsider. Not necessarily when their kids are very little, although that obviously happens too.

I’ve met women who opted out when their children were grown. And some women I know who’ve opted out, don’t have children at all. Opting out isn’t only about women with young children; it isn’t only about women with children. I’ve interviewed women both with and without children, and their experiences, their reasons for leaving, their hopes and dreams, were all remarkably similar. Mothers often use their children as a reason for leaving. After all, it’s easier to say that you want to spend more time with your kids than to say things like ‘this working culture just isn’t working for me’ or ‘I’m being discriminated and I just don’t have the energy to take the fight’ or ‘you are not very nice to work with’. If you say you want to be with your children, people are generally not going to argue with that. Also, women are usually applauded for wanting to be there more for their kids. And the reality is, that these women are often so exhausted by the time they do leave, that they tend to choose the road that minimizes confrontation.

Myth #2: Women opt out to become stay-at-home moms

Most of the research done on opting out – and this also goes for the debate in the media – has been on women who leave their high-powered careers to be stay-at-home moms. In reality, however, there is absolutely no statistical evidence that shows that women are opting out in any great numbers to become stay-at-home moms. On the contrary, research has shown that the women who want to spend more time raising their children, generally also want to do something else, something outside the home that doesn’t involve their children. Like work; work that they can better combine with being a mother. Besides, like I stated above, opting out doesn’t have to involve children at all. Not all women who opt out even have children.

No, opting out is about opting in to a different mindset, alternative lifestyles, and working and/or living on one’s own terms. It can be anything really: downshifting, retraining and finding a completely new type of job, or staying at the same company but with a completely new mindset. It can also mean staying home full time, but it certainly doesn’t have to.

Myth #3: Only women with rich husbands who can support them opt out

Among my interviewees I have had single women without children, single moms, and women who did have a husband but who were the main breadwinners in their families. I have also interviewed women with husbands who could have supported them, but despite that, these women continued to generate their own income anyway after having opted out. Opting out does not have to entail giving up an income. It is rather about finding a way to have an income but on one’s own terms. Yes, the income was often smaller than it had been because a high-powered career is after all a high-powered career, and in that case they adjusted their lifestyles accordingly.

Myth #4: Women who opt out aren’t ambitious or don’t have what it takes

This is just completely wrong. The women I interviewed were all highly ambitious. They never even planned to opt out. They just realized they didn’t want to go on the way they had. Often they re-evaluated what was important to them, and some realized that they just didn’t share the values of the companies they worked for anymore. All of them had plans and dreams and wanted to continue working. And the ones that did opt out to stay home with their kids, knew from the start that it was only going to be temporary, that they would eventually start working again, but on their own terms.

Myth #5: Opting out is a women’s issue

I started out studying women because when working on a PhD you have to limit your study, otherwise you’ll end up writing an encyclopedia and not a PhD and you will never finish. I chose to study women, and quickly realized I had to also limit it to women with children, because I wanted to add to the current debate on opting out and offer an alternative view. But opting out is not only about women. It isn’t a women’s issue, it’s a societal and a contemporary issue. People – both men and women – are, for different reasons, increasingly looking to define the parameters of their lives themselves, and create ways of working that specifically meet their individual wants and needs. They don’t want to work in a specific way just because that is what’s expected of them, or because that is the way it has been done for as long as anyone can remember.

In fact, my plan is to study men next – that is men who opt out. Although different than the norms women deal with, men are also expected to live up to certain social standards. However, these social norms and traditions don’t necessarily reflect the multitude of ways that men want to live their lives. And like for women, mainstream career models don’t necessarily reflect the way many men want to work.

So, this is what I plan to do. No, I take that back, this is what I will do. Just like when I opted out in order to opt in to working on my PhD, I know that it is something I have to do. It’s important research and I feel passionate about it. If none of my funding applications come through, I’ll just have to figure out some other way to organize it.

Thinking out of the box (or working two hours per day)

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A few days ago, Swedish Professor Bodil Jönsson caused a bit of a stir in Swedish media. In an interview, she stated that, considering our technological developments and how productive we have become during the past decades, we should really be working much shorter days. She even goes as far as to say that two hours per day could be sufficient. Yes, you read correctly, two hours.

Now I think that is fantastic. I don’t know if I agree with the two hours, I still need to think about that, but I greatly admire what Jönsson is doing. She is questioning the status quo; she is thinking out of the box.

The working culture and career models that dominate today haven’t always been standard. They are a result of industrialization, and were developed after the Second World War. In the history of the world, 70 or so years is not a very long time, however, it is long enough that we have difficulties imagining an alternative. Since this is the only working culture we know, it has become a ‘truth’ – and it seems like the only right way of working and living. Imagining other truly different models or ideologies is difficult, and if we can imagine them, they may seem silly, unethical, or simply wrong.

Two-hour workdays may sound crazy, but that is assuming that being busy, efficient, competitive, and constantly striving for greater profits is something to aim for. And this is exactly what Jönsson is questioning. She is calling for a re-examination of the ethical and moral reasons for working the way we do. In our current working culture, we are defined by what we do, and advancing in our careers provides us with power and a sense of worth. Jönsson is asking why we still live according to these ideals, considering what we have achieved. Who really benefits from them?

At the same times she argues that we need to re-evaluate what is considered real and valued work. But this idea of two-hour workdays doesn’t only entail less work. Jönsson argues that we need to think about how we work; we need to find different ways of working. And let’s be honest, eight hours in an office doesn’t necessarily mean eight hours of efficient work. On the contrary, I think at a certain point energy levels just go down the longer we stick around cooped up in the office.

I might still be undecided regarding whether or not two hours is what we should strive for, but I do know that the hectic pace we have today is not doing us any favors. This need to stay lean, flexible, and competitive, combined with the downsizing and constant streamlining we’re seeing in organizations today, is stressful. And negative stress can have dire effects on health. It is simply time to create and adopt more sustainable ways of working. And this doesn’t mean we should achieve less, we just need to achieve it differently, and yes, maybe re-evaluate what’s important.

I admire Jönsson for her creativity and audacity, and her courage to voice opinions that may be outside of people’s comfort zones. More of us should try to come up with ideas that question the status quo and completely contradict what we know as ‘true’. And while you’re doing that, please ignore anyone that says that this is not the way things are done, because only then can we instigate real change.

As some wise person once said, “People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.”

Control and wellbeing: Scientific proof

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I knew it! Here I have been talking about how important having control over when, where, and how you work is for wellbeing, and the other day I opened the newspaper to find that there has been a study that shows – drum roll please – that having control over when, where, and how you work has a direct affect on wellbeing. Notice how this is exactly what I said? (See also my earlier post ‘Control’)

Seriously though, Orfeu Buxton, Associate professor at Penn State, and colleagues conducted a study of 474 employees in the US. Half of the group had complete control over when and where they worked and the other half – the control group (ironically the group without control) – didn’t. The control group, in other words, worked like most people still work in the corporate world, and elsewhere.

The group that had complete flexibility (real flexibility, this is not the same as the flexible time systems that many companies offer their employees) experienced less work-family conflict and actually got more sleep, than did the control group. And this, in turn, had a direct effect on their wellbeing.

The thing about flexible time (for example, being able to come in an hour earlier or later and in turn leave earlier or later in the afternoon), that many of you probably are familiar with, is that while it sounds like a good idea, research has shown that it actually creates a feeling of having less time. Flexible time was first developed especially for women to alleviate the challenge of combining a career with care responsibilities. But the flexibility in flexible time is, in reality, a relative thing. For many women especially, flexible time simply allows work to more effectively spill over into other areas of life. This means taking work home, and working while also caring for children. And I’ve seen another study once that shows that multi-tasking – doing several things at the same time – leads to an acute feeling of time running out. This intensity of time is simply stressful.

Men use flexible time differently. Since they don’t have care responsibilities to the same extent as women (women continue to do of the brunt of care and household chores, whether or not they are pursuing a career), men can use flexible time as it was intended – to give them some more freedom and flexibility. And as men generally have more to say regarding workplace policies and culture, organizations don’t necessarily recognize the problem.

However, this study on control and wellbeing conducted at Penn State, shows that when we don’t have to worry about working eight hours straight, or however long your workday is, in an office but have control over when and where we work, we can focus on getting the job done and not just how many hours we clock at the office. The people who participated in the study worked more in the mornings and evenings and were better able to combine work with their other responsibilities and life needs. And even though they were working more in the mornings and evenings, they actually got more sleep.

This is a hugely important finding. And it makes me so pleased because I truly believe we are at a crossroads. Companies and organizations will eventually simply have to see the importance of adopting alternative solutions for work and adjust accordingly in order to survive on the fast-changing, increasingly competitive global market. So those of you out there in a position to make a difference and implement some changes, please do!

Living my dream

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For the past two years I have been employed by a project, a project, which is ending in exactly one week. I have met and had the pleasure of working with some fantastic people during these two years, and for that I am grateful. I have had quite a bit of flexibility and have had a lot to say about how, when, and where I’ve worked – all things that I’ve found are very important to me – but still I have to admit, this wasn’t exactly what I had imagined when I opted out.

But that is the thing about opting out. When you opt out in order to opt in to the next thing, it isn’t forever. That is a misconception people have about opting out. If someone opts out to become a stay-at-home mom, or if they opt out to change careers or to adopt a completely different lifestyle, people generally think it’s forever. But nothing is forever, and opting out and in is only until one’s wants and needs change again.

The people I have talked to who have opted out all say this. While many of them say they finally feel like they are exactly where they should be, they also say that this is good for now and that they are fully aware that their situation not only might, but will change before long and that they will want to, or have to, figure something else out.

This is the thing about life. Nothing ever stays the same, and in a way that can be comforting. For those of us who are parents, children grow and become more independent. Or maybe we realize that we weren’t quite done with the lives we opted out of, maybe we want to opt back in again. And maybe opt out again further down the road.

I wrote a paper with two colleagues of mine a couple of years ago and we used landscapes as a metaphor to describe what careers really look like (instead of the dated linear career model that so many companies still idolize but that really doesn’t correlate with how people really live their lives). In a careerscape you can walk forwards, backwards, sideways, up mountains, and through valleys. Sometimes the sun shines, and sometimes natural disasters strike. And most things are hard to plan.

Just because a person takes another path than the one up the mountain for a while, or decides they need to wait out a storm, doesn’t mean they aren’t ambitious or they don’t want a career. It just means something else is going on in their lives right now, that needs their energy and attention.

What does this have to do with my project? Well, even though this wasn’t how I envisioned the new life I opted in to, this project came at a good time. Just the fact that I had a job set up when I finished my PhD and didn’t have to scramble to find one was pretty great. And also, the project made me realize that I wasn’t completely done with the career I had opted out of. Who knows, maybe before long I will opt back in to another job like the one I have been doing for the past two years. But either way, I’m quite excited that in one week I will be able to go back to living my dream. To living and working the way I originally wanted when I opted out and in. For how long I can and will want to do that remains to be seen. But it doesn’t matter; it’s where I want to be and what I want to be doing right now. Until something else comes along.

Control

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I find opting out a fascinating topic, which I suppose is to be expected, as this is what I wrote my PhD about. But what is perhaps more interesting than the things about society, culture, and expectations that propel people to opt out, is what it is they choose to do instead – what they opt in to. The new solutions they create and the lifestyles they adopt potentially tell us a lot about how people want to live their lives and how they want to work, what they think is important, and what it is that makes them tick.

In a world of quick fixes and short-term wins, where the constant downsizing means no one is safe, and where it isn’t unusual that people change jobs every or every second year, I’d say knowing what makes people tick in order to figure out how to get them to commit to any goals, not to mention long-term goals, is pretty strategic.

Considering all the great technological breakthroughs and how cutting edge many corporations are in their fields, it’s actually quite surprising that they just haven’t kept up when it comes to career models and work solutions.

When people opt out they opt in to a number of different lifestyles and types of work. While they basically all opt out of the same thing – the corporate models and ways of working that leave them stressed, exhausted, and without the ability to create a coherent narrative of their lives and work – they opt in to a myriad of different ways of living. Some downshift and move to less hectic areas, some don’t. Some make a complete career change and retrain in another area, some don’t. Some leave the corporate world altogether, and some don’t. Some start doing research, like me, and some become entrepreneurs. The point is, just like we are all diverse with our own personal preferences, people opt in to a way of living and working that is right just for them. Maybe that is the point, through their opting out journeys they create ways of life that are tailored to their personal needs and don’t follow some corporate norm.

There is, however, one thing that is the same for everyone who opts out and in: control. In their new lifestyles, those who opt in, create a lifestyle where they have more control over their time and thus over their lives. This control gives them a sense of coherence and authenticity, and it allows them to do what they love, to lose themselves in their work, without the stress of not knowing how to make time for all their other responsibilities. It seems that control (corporate leaders, pay attention now!) is actually the key, the secret behind how to engage and commit people.

And knowing this, it’s frustrating to see organizations that, for example, have a policy for working off-site, but when asked about it admit that they don’t usually allow their employees to do so, because how can they then be sure that they actually work (yes this is true). We have all these policies like flexible time to make life more flexible and manageable, especially for employees with care responsibilities. But research has shown that flexible time actually makes us feel like we have less time. So all these policies strike me as window dressing without actually changing the way we work or making an impact on our lives. Instead of measuring how much we work – quantity – how about focusing on what we get done – quality? Who cares where we work and how we do it if we get the job done? The thing is, while it shouldn’t matter to our employers (results are results, right?), it matters a great deal to us. We want to have more control over how we work, when we work, and where we work. That really shouldn’t be too much to ask.

The irony of work-life balance

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People seem to be very interested in work-life balance. I guess that’s because it is something many of us lack and don’t know how to get. There are numerous studies on the topic, and on the strategies people use in their quest to find it, but still, many have so little of it.

I once saw a TV documentary on how to find happiness. Barbara Ehrenreich (whose books I can recommend, especially Nickel and Dimed) was interviewed as an expert on happiness – or rather the cultural obsession with happiness. What she basically said was that you’re not going to find happiness if that is all you are looking for. She talked about the importance of meaning in what you do and quoted Freud, saying that really it’s about losing yourself in your work, and when you do that then you can feel content and fulfilled, and in other words happy.

This really resonated with me, and I saw parallels to the search for work-life balance. Work-life balance is symptomatic of something else, and as we try to fix the lack of balance in our lives, we’re not actually getting to the root of the problem. The problem is the structures, working cultures, and corporate norms that are prevalent today. They make it hard to have a holistic view of life and career and to combine work with other areas of life.

After I opted out, I no longer so acutely felt a lack of balance in my life even though I was working a lot and at all hours of the day (and night whenever I had deadlines to meet). I could really lose myself in my work, and it automatically solved my lack of work-life balance. And yes, in case you are wondering, I still sometimes feel a lack of balance when I have too much to do or I am feeling stressed, because opting out does not obliterate all stress. But when I do feel a lack of balance, I know it is only temporary and not a chronic problem.

This is also closely related to time management.

Every once in a while I’m asked if I can recommend a good book on time management. I know nothing about time management, nor do I know of any good books on the subject. I have a vague recollection of being offered to take a course in time management a long time ago in my previous career. Needless to say I didn’t take the course. I remember having the feeling that no matter how many time management courses my colleagues took, or how many books they read on the subject, they still didn’t have enough time.

However, I do know enough about time to know that time management, like work-life balance, doesn’t actually get to the root of the problem. The experience of not having enough time doesn’t really correlate with there not being enough time, nor of not being structured enough in one’s use of one’s time. It’s a symptom of something else.

People feel they don’t have enough time when they don’t feel they have control over their time, and in today’s hectic working culture this is often the case. People don’t feel like they have control. In my research I have seen that the feeling of not having enough time becomes less of a problem when one can create a lifestyle where one can decide over one’s time and how one uses it. After opting out, people often create lifestyles and ways of working where they have more control over their lives and the use of their time (for example when they work and when they spend time with their children or doing other things, not necessarily how much time they spend doing all this). This feeling of control is, in turn, closely related to a sense of coherence, which then leads to a feeling of happiness and contentment.

So no, I have no books on time management, but I do have a good book on time that I can recommend:

Unwinding the Clock: Ten Thoughts on Our Relationship to Time (original title: Tio tankar om tid) by Bodil Jönsson

Opt Out or Lean In?

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Many people seem to think that leaning in and opting out are opposites – either you lean in, or you opt out. I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be either or, you can do both.

In her book Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg writes, “I have written this book to encourage women to dream big, forge a path through the obstacles, and achieve their full potential.” And then later, “I hope they [my children] end up exactly where they want to be. And when they find where their true passion lies, I hope they both lean in – all the way.”

Now that sounds an awful lot like what the women who opt out do. They opt out in order to opt in to a way of life and working that allows them to be who they are and to work to their full potential on terms that work for them.

I have talked to women who have opted out of jobs or career paths that hold them back. Women are still discriminated in the workplace (although now-a-days it’s generally harder to detect than it used to be) and still get bypassed by their male colleagues. I have talked to women who feel they just can’t be themselves in a corporate environment where they have to keep parts of themselves hidden. It’s ok for work to spill over into the private sphere – we’re expected to answer emails when we’re at home with our kids – but ironically it doesn’t go the other way. Women are expected to keep whatever issues they may have at home or with their children invisible in the workplace.

While Sandberg calls on women to lean in and make a difference, many women don’t feel the effort of trying to change a workplace or working culture to suit them and their needs is worth it, nor do they want to take the risk that it may entail. Not only do they think it’s a lost cause, but they are also genuinely worried that it would harm their careers and their reputations.

One might think that they therefore choose opting out as an easy solution, except that opting out is never easy. It’s a path these women have been compelled to take in order to create a working environment where they have more control over their professional lives, where they can work to their full potential, while seamlessly combining work with other areas of life. In other words, they do this so that they can lean in all the way.

All the women I have talked to have been ambitious and have wanted their work to be meaningful. They want to lean in, but on their own terms. After opting out, these women did not necessarily work less, nor did many of them spend more time with their children. The difference was they had more control over how and when they worked, and how and when they were with their children. Having more control, in turn, entailed less stress. It allowed them to feel passionate about their work, and being passionate about what you do tends to automatically make you want to lean in.

So by all means, do both, opt out and lean in!