Linda Brooks is a true pioneer. She’s a super-brainiac, an honors graduate of an elite law school, and a partner at a top New York law firm. But she’s a new kind of partner—an “80 percent” partner. After years of slogging through her work-to-the-max schedule, Linda now has every Friday off. It might not sound so radical, but in the hard-driven New York legal profession, hers is a remarkable situation. And her demand for change had nothing to do with children or family.
“I was in my early thirties and had no marriage, no boyfriend because I was married to my job; I didn’t even have a plant that’s alive. And so you start going to therapy and they’re telling you, ‘You’re identifying too much with your work’ and you kind of see the problem, but you just can’t escape it. So I start slowly thinking, ‘Well, I don’t see anything changing here. I don’t see anything getting any better if I don’t make a big change.’ ”
Linda (we had to change her name because her arrangement is so unusual that she’s still worried about rocking the boat) is thrilled now with her Fridays-off change, one that she says is giving her time for yoga, dancing lessons, and to work on a book.
But by far the most difficult part of the process was taming her fear that reduced hours would inevitably mean reduced status. “The things we tell ourselves—it’s like compounding the negative talk when you’re trying to work less. It’s an amplifier. Every single little mistake you make, you say ‘Oh my God! My career is over! What have I done, this is the most ridiculous thing, I’m going to lose all my clients. If I were a client, why would I ever pick someone that may be out on a Friday when I need them.’ ”
You, like Linda, have probably come to the realization that something needs to change. The next psychological step is to understand that a change in status won’t spike your career. In fact, it may not affect it much at all.
“I really enjoy my job now when I’m doing it, but it’s not everything anymore. I just have other aspects of my personality that are starting to develop. I’m learning what I like to do!” she exclaims.
Maria Souder has always been competitive, with her schoolmates, her friends, even herself. She flew through Georgia Tech with honors. And she was always planning. “After five years I’ll do this, and after two more years I’ll do this. I had always been structured at school. I wanted to graduate with high honors or I wanted to be a part of this organization and I wanted to be successful in this and be known on campus for that.” She smiles.
Maria became an engineer and got her MBA while working at Georgia Power. One of the few women climbing up the ladder in a male-dominated field, she relished the pace, the crises, the twelve-hour days, until she had baby Xavier. “I actually started to break out in spots,” she remembers, “just dealing with the stress I was putting on myself to succeed and do everything to perfection.” The thirty-two-year-old decided a few years ago to make a dramatic change. She’d give up her almost certain shot at becoming plant manager and move into environmental affairs—still challenging, but off the main macho track of power generation.
“I was very scared, because I was stepping out from a structure that I knew,” she explains. “You have expertise and achievement and then all of a sudden you put the brakes on and change directions. And I think that probably was a shock—maybe to some other people as well.”
Yes, it can be frightening. And again, we are hard-core realists. You will give something up. Eventually it won’t seem like a sacrifice, and it won’t seem like the psychic earthquake Maria describes, but it will take some time to get to that point. One of the greatest challenges is simply overcoming your own demons about what scaling back might mean. Almost all of our Women — omics women have put themselves through some sort of drill to help face down their fears. Ours is called the Womenomics “what if” exercise. The point? Not necessarily to uncover clear answers to our “what ifs” but rather to embrace that long-held psychological view that simply confronting fears takes away most of the scare.
Pour yourself a drink. This exercise is tough—a grisly, grown-up version of a haunted house ride. We’re going to zip through all of those bone-chilling, worst-case scenario consequences that pop up in the dark corners of your mind when you consider kicking down the ladder. With the lights on, you’ll usually see your fears are nothing more than dime-store skeletons with good sound effects.
Strap in, and let’s get started.
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