The Liz Moody Podcast - New Science: Why Women Are So Exhausted + The Surprising Ways to Feel Better

Episode Date: September 3, 2025

Economist and Wharton Associate Professor Corinne Low shares the shocking data behind women’s declining happiness, the “squeeze” of modern life, and the invisible forces shaping our choices around work, marriage, and caregiving. In this episode, we unpack: Why women still do most of the housework—even when they earn more How outdated divorce laws shaped women's career decisions and financial risk The caregiving and career “squeeze” that hits hardest in your 30s How gender roles and attraction patterns keep us stuck in cycles of burnout Practical, data-backed strategies to reclaim your energy, time, and joy ✨ This episode changed how I think about happiness and ambition and I hope it gives you tools to redefine “having it all” on your own terms. ✨ Homework: As soon as you finish listening, block out time for the activity that brings you the most joy (your “utility function”)—and protect it like it’s a meeting with your boss. For more from Dr. Corinne Low, find them on Instagram @corinnelowphd or online at https://www.corinnelow.com/  Grab your copy of Having It All here. Ready to uplevel every part of your life? Order Liz’s book 100 Ways to Change Your Life: The Science of Leveling Up Health, Happiness, Relationships & Success now!  Connect with Liz on Instagram @lizmoody or online at www.lizmoody.com. Subscribe to the substack by visiting https://lizmoody.substack.com/welcome. Buy our cute sweatshirts, conversation cards, and more at https://shop.lizmoody.com/. Use our discount codes from our  highly vetted and tested brand partners by visiting https://www.lizmoody.com/codes.  To join The Liz Moody Podcast Club Facebook group, go to www.facebook.com/groups/thelizmoodypodcast. This episode is brought to you completely free thanks to the following podcast sponsors: Puori: go to Puori.com/LizMoody and use promo code LIZMOODY for up to 20% sitewide. Seed (DS-01): head to Seed.com/LizMoody and use code LIZMOODY for 25% off your first month.  Pique: check out PiqueLife.com/LizMoody for up to 20% off plus a special gift. Shopify: sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at Shopify.com/LizM.  LMNT: go to DrinkLMNT.com/LizMoody to get a free LMNT sample pack with any order. The Liz Moody Podcast cover art by Zack. The Liz Moody Podcast music by Alex Ruimy. Formerly the Healthier Together Podcast.  This podcast and website represents the opinions of Liz Moody and her guests to the show. The content here should not be taken as medical advice. The content here is for information purposes only, and because each person is so unique, please consult your healthcare professional for any medical questions. The Liz Moody Podcast Episode 361. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Your research uncovered a massive paradox to me. As women gained more freedom and opportunity over the last 50 years, their happiness levels actually declined. What's happening there? What's happening is we have economic opportunity, yes, but we also have a lot more work. I always say gender roles have converged at the workplace, but they haven't converged at home.

It allowed us to kind of play the same role in the workplace as men, but there wasn't a similar revolution in the role that men were playing. My data shows that men's level of housework has actually stayed almost entirely constant since the 1970s. Then at the same time, there's this parenting time has really increased since the 1990s. So when you look at women's time use data, they have kind of less time than ever. Women in heterosexual marriages who are the primary breadwinners do almost twice as much cooking and cleaning as their male spouses. Why are men not cooking and cleaning? Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Liz Moody podcast. Do you feel like you are doing everything right? You are

working hard in your career. You're showing up for your family. You're trying to be the amazing partner, the great parent, the great friend, the badass at work, and yet you still feel like you are failing at all of it. You look around and you think, why is this so hard? Women today are more burnt out, more overwhelmed, and less happy than our mothers and our grandmothers, even though we technically have more freedom and opportunity than ever before. How is that possible? That is what we are getting into today and the good news is we are not just naming the problems, we are giving an exact playbook to fix them. My guest today is Dr. Corinne Lowe, a Wharton economist and the author of the upcoming book,

having it all what data tells us about women's lives and getting the most out of yours, which is one of my favorite books that I have read in a long time. This episode is going to give you so many aha moments about things that you have felt but haven't been able to put exact words or data too. And by the end, you're going to have so many action steps to create a life that actually feels good. If you have ever thought something has to change, this is the conversation that will show you how. Cran, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. I loved your book. I have not read a book that I loved this much in a really long time. It felt like it encapsulated

so many of the conversations that I'm having in my day-to-day life, which I feel like is probably what happened to you too, which is what inspired it. Yes. Yeah, that's exactly it. I felt like I was in a moment when I wrote the book. And then all my friends were also in that moment. And I was like, we need to talk about this. And then I was like, oh, well, I'm an economist. And so I can actually see what the data says about this. And so I got to bring that together with the stories and the experiences that I was seeing all around me. A hundred percent. We're going to get into so much data. But let's start with your research uncovered a massive paradox to me. As women gain more freedom and opportunity over the last 50 years, their happiness levels actually declined.

What's happening there? I think that what's happening is that we have economic opportunity, yes, but we also have a lot more work. So the thing that's interesting is I always say gender roles have converged at the workplace, but they haven't converged at home, is that, you know, the freedom, the economic opportunities you put it, it allowed us to kind of play the same role in the workplace as men. But there wasn't a similar revolution in the role that men were playing. And so men are playing the same role at home. My data shows that men's level of housework has actually stayed almost entirely constant since the 1970s. Then at the same time, there's this shadow force that's happening in the background that we'll get into, that parenting time has really increased since the 1990s. And so when you look at women's time use data, they have kind of less time than ever.

And so I think we are certainly doing more. We have the ability to kind of do more and more different domains, but it's also then more. possible to feel like we're screwing up in all those different domains. Yeah, let's talk about that. So women in heterosexual marriages who are the primary breadwinners do almost twice as much cooking and cleaning as their male spouses. Why are men not cooking and cleaning? Yeah, I don't know. And that's like something in the data that shocked me as well. So you're not alone and feeling surprised by that because I knew that women were going to do more, but I expected that it was going to be driven by child care because I wrote my dissertation about

something I call reproductive capital, which is the fact that women actually have the technology to produce children, right? So there's stuff that we do like breastfeeding that like it's not interchangeable, it's not labor that can be shared equally between spouses. And then that creates these complementarities where then you end up spending more time with children, whatever. I knew that there were kind of some real reasons for child care to be disproportionately on women. But when I saw that it was cooking and cleaning, I think that really shocked me because it's also not something that men can't do. Like, if you look at, like, Michelin-starred chefs, like, they're all men, right? And I always like to joke that, like, I don't sweep the floor with my uterus. So,

like, these biological differences shouldn't really drive that time difference. So it absolutely really shocked me. And I think you cannot separate it from gender roles and socialization. It's interesting because it is, like, we were able to gain this foothold of power at work. but we weren't able to change those gender roles at home is what you're saying. Yeah. And I don't know if it's, you know, we weren't able to or that's just, that's not what happened. That's not the direction that society went or men weren't able to adapt to a new role. Yeah, I might be like societally too.

Because I'm not like, this is not mental load that I want women to be carrying to be very, very clear. Yeah, I think it's, I look at that and they see like, oh, men are really struggling to adapt to this new reality where they cannot just focus on being the breadwinner. It's like when you read about trade opens up and then there's, you know, some sort of industry change and people need new skills to be able to get jobs. I feel like that's happened to men is that like, oh, actually the economy shifted. Women are competitive in the labor market and they're bringing home the bacon and you haven't learned to fry the bacon. Yeah, it's so interesting.

I mean, part of that gets into the history of women entering the workforce, which you talk about in your book. And it really, a lot of parts of it really surprised me. Can you share just like a little, a brief overview of women in the workforce? I think it wasn't this like wonderful like feminist revolution that we like to think of it is. So the piece that I talk about that tends to surprise people a lot is that I think the changing stability of marriage had a lot to do with women entering the workforce. So historically, we kind of seemed to start our memories in the 1950s when we had this like TV household that was the ideal where you had, you know, the wife who was taking care of everything at home was raising the children. looking and cleaning. And then the husband, you know, was like kiss on the cheek goodbye with

this with the briefcase like on the way to work all day, right? That was division of responsibility. And it turns out that that was actually a very particular moment in time. Because if you think about it, when the U.S. used to be much more agrarian than actually everybody worked, right? It was something called like a corporate household. So women on the farms were working 60 hour work weeks, right? They were not just doing home production. But that, you know, post-war period, we had this division of responsibility, this specialization. But it relied on something really particular. It relied on a strong marriage contract. Because if you think about it, the woman who's doing that, who is the one who's investing in the children and who's not investing in her own career, she's taking an enormous amount of

risk. Because if that relationship can just kind of dissolve willy-nilly, then now she has this lower ability to earn, but he still gets to share the benefit of all of the investments she made, the fact that like, oh, the children are going to Harvard or whatever, that's still something that he gets to, you know, enjoy and benefit from. And so when as part of what we think of as a feminist revolution, we had this big change in divorce laws where we went from bilateral consent to divorce where you actually had to get sign off from the other person in order to divorce. And what that meant practically is that if like the man wanted to go marry somebody else, he had to like buy his wife out of the marriage, the way you have to like,

like buy a partner out of a business venture, right? Couldn't just dissolve it. You couldn't just walk away. And we went to unilateral consent to divorce, which certainly has some upsides and people tend to focus a lot on, well, you need to be able to walk away from, let's say, an abusive partner, right? And so there were things that were really problematic about not being able to just walk away. But I think what hasn't been documented as much is that actually for a lot of women,

they lost that security that had allowed them to kind of specialize in that one domain and still, you know, know that they were going to be okay economically. And so a generation of women entered a marriage under a certain set of terms and then they got left really poor and like having to go back to work in their 40s with like limited human capital. Because their partners did not need their consent for a divorce. Because the divorce laws changed. And, you know, that's the classic trope of like, he falls in love with his secretary who's 20 years younger and, you know, and walks away. And what you're going to get in child support and alimony is not going to be as much as sharing in the full kind of economic gains of the investments that you made because everything that you did at home

are really also investments in his human capital because he can just focus on, you know, going to work and, you know, having a career. And so then I think younger women grew up with these stories of women who had kind of been financially devastated by divorces that kind of caught them off guard and we're told, like, you always have to make sure that you can take care of yourself at the end of the day, right? And so in the book, I talk about a paper by an economist I love, whose name is Marianne Bronson that's called Degrees Are Forever. And she shows that some of this big increase in women going to college, which people kind of ring their hands about of like, why are women going to college more than men? A lot of it was actually driven by this period where

divorce became so much easier. And so women got degrees because they would always have that degree to fall back on even if they did want to specialize in home production for a time, at least then they would have the degree. That's so interesting. Also, just to be clear, when you say specialized in home production, you mean essentially be a housewife? Yeah, it can be, it can take the form of really like 100% like you're a housewife, but it can also just mean, okay, you're the one who works part time. You're the one who when, you know, the kids are sick, you stay home with them, right? And every opportunity he has to work a late night or work a weekend that's going to advance his career, you know, he takes it. So in a lot of modern-day households, we still see some degree of specialization. And it might look like, you know,

you're both lawyers, but instead of you both working 40 hours a week and neither one of you makes partner, he gets to work 80 hours a week and she ends up moving into kind of a lower paying position, even though they both have the Yale law degree. Okay, so we're going to talk about a lot of solutions later in the episode. Right now, we're kind of exploring the problems. But I'm curious for this particular one, if you could wave a wand, would you change divorce laws? What would you change in this particular situation. Yeah, that's a great question because, as I said, like, the idea of just like making marriage, like, super strong no matter what has some major downsides. And I don't think it's really possible to, like, put that genie back in the bottle. But I do think that divorce laws

should take into account investments in homemaking when it comes to a financial settlement. And that's something that some states do to some degree, but nobody really makes somebody whole. And I think we should have divorce laws that recognize if somebody's, really makes a full-time investment in home production, then they should be recognized as kind of like a co-equal partner in the human capital that the other partner has been able to produce. Because divorce laws are pretty good about dividing assets. And so that's why, like in my research, one of the things I show is that marriage is more secure and we see more specialization for people who are able to own homes because she still has some security of at least the home is going to get divided. But if you're operating on kind of an income only basis instead of assets, then none of the investments that she made in his human capital are going to be divided. Meaning like if she made him able to climb the career ladder, make all this money, she's not actually getting her piece of that high. So let's say you're a household, which a lot of households are where there's a high salary coming in.

He's earning six figures a year, but you're actually in debt. You actually don't have any assets, right? Her investments still contributed to the fact that he has that six figure salary. but once they get divorced, yeah, he's going to have to pay child support, but she's not going to get to split that salary. So the fact that there's no assets there mean that she's completely exposed. So an absence of states changing those laws, also we could write that into preempts, correct? Like, we could do that on an individual level. Yeah. And so this is one of the most interesting things I found in doing my research on divorce

is that I thought all prenups because it was like the kind of the trope in the movies. I thought all prenups were about like protecting the rich partner's assets from the poorer partner, but it actually found out that in some cases, you know, because divorce law just states that you're entitled to any assets accumulated over the term of the marriage, but let's say somebody is already rich when you get married. In some case, prenupts actually say you'll get something from this like preexisting set of assets. Why? Because if you're going to ask somebody to make a big sacrifice for you, so if you want to marry somebody who's super high human capital, but like, you're a, you know, a rich billionaire and you want her to leave her career and raise the kids and

follow you around, she's taking a huge risk and she needs to know that she's going to be compensated if things go wrong. And so that's the interesting thing in my research is that this isn't like actually men versus women. It's that both people would like to enter into a more secure marriage contract because it allows people to make investments in the marriage. And when you don't have a secure contract, then it's kind of every man for themselves or every person for themselves instead of it being what it should be, which is like how do we create the best partnership possible? And I always like to remind people that we all have pre-nups. We either just let the government write them or we write them ourselves.

Right. Yeah. Okay, I have to ask, what do you think of the trad wife movement? I have very mixed feelings here, but I will say the thing that I think is the hardest about this movement. And I will just also call it the sort of like Instagramable, very aesthetically pleasing, like child rearing and home production is that it actually puts a lot of pressure on women who don't want to be a trad wife. But they now feel like not only do they. they have to be a career woman, girl boss, lean in, but they should be able to produce this beautifully,

aesthetic, warm, hosy, picture perfect life for their families at home. And, like, we're trying to do both of those things, and that's where the time just doesn't add up. But then the second thing that I want to say about the childwife movement is that I think one of the things in my book that might surprise people and people sometimes think I sound kind of retro when I talk about it, is that I really think that any time spent on home production or parenting is also a form of economic production.

It's also something that's immensely valuable to society. And I take nothing away from women who genuinely say the way that I get the most happiness and fulfillment in my life is by parenting my children or is by, you know, making sure that I enjoy my home life, right? I think the issue is, we see, is that society ends up being set up in a way where it doesn't work for the women who don't want that. It's like, oh, okay, because some women are going to take time off when they have kids. Well, now we're going to see all women get discriminated against them that they're not going to get promoted as much because we're like waiting for them to take time off, right?

So I don't necessarily think that a perfect set of policies would result in men and women having the exact same working hours throughout their lifetimes. Because I think it's possible that based on evolutionary forces or it could be also a society. vital forces that women want to spend a greater portion of their life parenting, like over the course of a lifetime, right? And that might mean, and maybe you don't actually earn as much, right? But to me, if you have a perfect set of policies in place, then the woman who says, no, no, no, I don't want to be treated any differently than a man in the workplace. I have the same preferences as him. I do want to have the same career. She's actually able to do that. And I don't think that we're there right now. Okay. And then the other part of what you talked about is like,

Women are getting less happy, but men are getting happier, according to your research, which flies in the face of a lot of the conversations that I'm hearing people have right now about men are in crisis, men are lonely, men are making less money in a lot of major metropolitan areas. How do you square those two ideas? You know, there's data in the U.S. and there's also data internationally that it does not show that men are less happy. It shows that, you know, women's happiness is going down and, you know, men's happiness is going up or staying constant.

So that's, but that's on average, right? And so, of course, then there's going to be, like, people who are unhappy within that. And I think there is a fundamental truth that this revolution that's happening is leaving men in an uncomfortable place. Because when the economy transforms from kind of a manual labor-based economy to a service and knowledge-based economy where, like, women can be equally competitive in that as men. So now women can play the same role in the workplace as men. And then men are kind of like, well, where's my place now, right? And in some cases, they have been structurally displaced in the economy and they're not earning as much. And so particularly lower educated men, we see, like, not earning as much and kind of falling behind and men of color, right? And so then they're in this kind of uncomfortable position because they don't have like a new set of skills to kind of be able to play a different role or a new set of role models or gender roles. And so I kind of think of it like when you have structural change because like the economy opens up to trade and a sector gets displaced. And then there's usually like government policies that say,

okay, we have to retrain these workers so they can find jobs elsewhere because we acknowledge that this is happening. And so I do think there's been this economic shift. Then the men are kind of, they don't know what to do. It was really shocking to me is I have data on households where both people are hourly workers. So you could think like she's a nurse and he's like an Uber driver or something like that. So they both are earning a wage. And that means that if they work more hours, they get paid more. It's kind of mechanical. Whereas like in a digital, different type of job. If it's a salary job, it's like in the future I might get paid more, but it's not mechanical, right? And what I see is that when, in those households, when the wife

is earning a wage that's more than twice what the husband's wage is, that he still does less housework than she does, and he still works more hours than she does. So he still keeps working 40 hours, even though she's working, she's earning more than twice the wage that he's earning, right? And she's working like 30 hours. And so if he would, for example, pick the kids up from daycare so that she could pick up an extra shift, the household would be better off financially, right? Well, what's stopping them? And I just have to think that what's stopping them is that feels so an ethema to the gender role and the role model and, you know, their beliefs about themselves. And so in some ways, even when the money's not there, if they keep working 40 hours,

they still get to feel like they're playing that role. They still get to feel like they're the breadwinner. But that's not the reality. And it's then hurting everybody. That's so interesting. So do you think one of the solutions to the crisis we're seeing amongst young men is for young men to put household labor up on more of a pedestal? I absolutely think so. I think that for men to continue to kind of like be competitive in the marriage market, that they need a different set of And I think when you hear like the in-cell stuff and, you know, that men are worried that, you know, they can't find anybody to date. It's like, oh, because your skills are actually not well-suited for the market as it is right now. Because the woman that's out there, she knows that she can support herself.

So she's not looking for that, right? She's looking for a partner in all things. And if you can't be a partner in all things, then she might just decide that it's not worth it. And that might be why we're seeing lower marriage and fertility rates. What do we do about the fact that women are socialized in the same world, too? Like I have so many women in my life who like they're strong feminists. They make a lot of money. They're super successful.

And they still are attracted to that in a man. They want a man who just makes more money and can be more of the provider. And like there is still this thing. I think where a lot of women react to changing what they're attracted to. Yeah. I mean, I think that's absolutely true. And I talk about that in the book. I have this chapter called Love is the epsilon and epsilon and, you know,

statistics, it's like the error term, meaning love is how we make mistakes, right? So like what we're attracted to might not actually serve our interests. It might be something that is like leading us astray from actually what would make us happier because maybe the guy who's like a teacher, but like is going to, you know, pack the kids lunch every day for school is going to be better than the guy who's like an eye banker who we never see, right? So I absolutely think that's true that that's on all of us as society to kind of think differently about what gender roles in a relationship can look like. And that said, I know of so many relationships where the man is already not playing that role, where he isn't the one who's bringing home the bigger paycheck. And then I know

that the wife would be way happier if she knew, okay, but he is giving the kids a bath. He is restocking the fridge. He is putting the laundry away. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. Tell me about the squeeze. So this is one of those facts that kind of like made me feel. scene when I saw it in the data. And it's basically, I was in this point in my life where I was like, life is so hard. I had, you know, a baby and I was commuting to my job in Philadelphia from living in New York. And I was trying to get tenure at Wharton. I was trying to make all these investments. But at the same time, like, relative to living in Manhattan, we like didn't actually have that much money. And so I didn't feel like I could just like throw money at the problem and just like, you know,

get an extra nanny and, you know, get a cleaner and do all those things that people tell you to do. And I was like, I'm so tired all the time. Is this just what like adulthood is like? Like, is it always going to be like this, right? And then after I got divorced and got tenure, I found that I didn't feel like that anymore. I actually found that things in my life shifted. And when I went back and looked at the data and I used this data set called the American Time Use Survey, which is actually a diary of how people spend their time, like a representative

sample of people. And when I look at this data, it tells that story. I see that women's time cooking and cleaning goes up like this, you know, from your 20s, cooking and cleaning and then additionally childcare. The time goes up like this from your 20s. It kind of peaks in like mid 30s and then it starts coming down again. And at the same time, though, income is still growing that whole time. And so it hasn't reached its peak yet.

So you're at this moment where when you reach that peak of home responsibilities of child care because you have young kids at home, but for other people, it could be elderly parents, right? Caregiving responsibilities and housework responsibilities, you haven't reached your peak of earnings. So that means you're torn in two directions because you still have to be making investments in the office, but then because those investments haven't paid off, you don't have the money to be able to like kind of solve your problems with money, right? And so that graph is when the graph story showed people and I'm like, it's not in your head. It's in the data. Like, things really are that hard right now.

And they might get easier on the other side of it. And so I think both women and firms sometimes make mistakes based on that kind of temporary squeeze. And what I mean by that is like, I think women sometimes make permanent career decisions based on that temporary feeling of like, oh my God, way too much. And there's a lot more off ramps in careers than there are on ramps. And so, you know, sometimes that is absolutely the right decision for their happiness in that moment when they have two young kids at home. But then they find it's harder than they expected to, like, still find something fulfilling and meaningful and kind of intellectually stimulating to do and lucrative to do, you know, after that period passes.

But I think I would also put the mistake on firms because I think firms don't do enough to retain female employees through that very temporary period. because I talk a lot to like, you know, corporations and business leaders and they will say things like, well, if this is the truth, if women want to spend more time doing this or if the data shows they are spending more time doing this, then aren't they a less productive employee for us? And I'm like, well, for that like three-year period on the graph, right? But if she could be a leader in your firm for 30 years and you've already invested in her for 10 years, it's a huge mistake to let her leave because you can't make this one period work for her. What about though in the current economy, I feel like people jump around jobs so much.

So companies aren't making this 30-year investment in employees anymore. And I think that makes that period even more difficult because you're hiring somebody. They might be around for two or three years. And if they're going to spend six to eight months of that on maternity leave, that's a really tricky thing to square, especially for smaller businesses. Yeah, I mean, I think that's absolutely true. I would say that there's still a lot of employees who do stay at firms for like a long time. But I think that is part of the calculation that firms are making.

But then another thing I would say to them is if the job is working, for women, then maybe they will stay for longer, right? So if you are differentiated from your competitors and that you're kind of making it work, then maybe that's a job that they're going to say, hey, this fits me over my life cycle and this is a place that I can stay versus needing to make a decision to move because you're saying, like, this isn't working for me. Are there any data to support like the benefits to companies of helping women through this period? One thing I will first say is that I just think it's not going to be as hard as firms think it is. And that's because I think we haven't been very evidence-based in terms of like giving women what they actually want. And so firms are always

like, well, yeah, but we can't have everybody working from home, right? Or like, oh, it is a high-powered workforce. We can't have like endless flexibility. And like, we do need a certain number of hours. Okay. The data does not support that women don't want any of those things. What I always cite this great study by Alex Moss and Amanda Pallas that shows that when workers were offered a choice of different jobs, and one was kind of a standard 40-hour week nine to five, one allowed them to work fewer hours, one allowed them to have flexible timing of when they worked, and one allowed them to work from home. They weren't willing to give up a lot of pay for any of those three options, and in fact, they didn't like the one with fewer hours,

okay? But when instead they were, the alternative job was one where the hours were set at the firm's discretion, meaning they could kind of call you any time, weekends, evenings, and tell you when you were working, they were willing to give up a huge amount of pay to avoid that job and be able to stick with the structured schedule. So that means that women don't actually want flexibility. They want boundaries. And it's not actually that expensive to give your workers boundaries, especially with kind of the new technology that we have. So firms are saying right now, no, work from home didn't work for us. We want people back in the office. Fine. But can they leave at five, be offline between five and eight for that crucial kind of dinner time, family time,

and then log back on after bedtime when it's a lot cheaper for the worker to show up, right? Or they don't want to be called in every weekend because they want to go to their kids soccer game. Can you draw from the medical profession where we see a lot of women going into different medical fields like nursing and pharmacy? Okay, nursing is highly inflexible. You're working a 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. shift or the opposite, an overnight shift, right? and you are all on, right? But it's also very structured and it's 86% female. So could we take a cue from the medical professions where you have a specific on-call time rather than everybody

being on-call all the time? And so we say, look, we have six associates working for this client. We're going to have each of them take one on-call day and you're going to rotate taking a weekend, you know, one weekend a month. And if you did something like that, there would be a little bit of a cost or an adjustment cost to the firm, right? But I think there would be a huge payoff in that working for women. And I think it would be much less costly than firms think when they think, oh, I need to let her work way fewer hours or have a completely different schedule than what works for me. I also think about like when you were like saying log on at eight, my eye was like twitching a little bit. Because I was like also when employees are well rested and when they have recuperation

time, they get better work done. Like I do think that good companies are not just thinking about hours worked, but outputs. And a lot of research shows that working less hours and having more recuperation time results in better outputs. Yeah. And I totally agree with that too. Trying to respond to the data that we see that like a lot of workers are like working these 80 hour work weeks. And so firms are saying, well, if women aren't going to do that, we don't want them. And I'm saying they actually might be perfectly happy to do that if you still let them go home for dinner. Right. Because it's like there's certain times that are most costly for employees. And one of the things that we see is like, this is Claudia Golden partly won the note. Bill Prize for him of documenting this is that there's certain type of jobs where that there's this convex returns to hours, super econi term that just means like more hours of the same person is better because it's so dependent on the knowledge and the relationships that you have that instead of like

being able to spread the work across multiple workers like I need more of you right and those jobs are the ones where we see the biggest gender wage gap because they're hardest for women during this time when their time is the most squeezed right and so I'm also trying to find solutions for the jobs that structurally least well for women, like, how can we change it? And is it possible? And I think it is. And I think firms just need to dream bigger. I also think the boundary conversation is so interesting. I know so many people who are like in their 30s and they're like, okay, I'm ready to retire. Like, I'm so exhausted. And I'm like, because cumulatively, like with the amount of hours we are expected to just be available to answer email, we probably worked until we're like 50 in

essence. You know what I mean? Yeah. And that's why I'm like the stories I was hearing of just like people just feeling so burned out all the time. And when you talk about people changing jobs, I'm like, I think that's part of it. I think people are really unhappy at their jobs. And so also if firms could figure out a way to like make jobs work for people, then like people wouldn't feel like they needed to jump around so much. Is the squeeze a new phenomenon? I think it's new in, I think there's things that are conspiring against us right in this moment, right?

So the things that are conspiring against us are women winning the bread and baking it too, because it happens when you're investing at work and you're investing at home, right? And then the second thing is this kind of greater intensivity of parenting that is not something that the generation before us had to reckon with. And so when we think about the trailblazers who kind of entered the workforce and who we look to and we say like, well, they did it, why can't I do it? And sometimes they also say to us, by the way, well, we did it. Why can't you do it? Right. I want you to all know. I want all your listeners to know that, no, they didn't. They were not actually doing the same thing. So parents a generation ago were not holding their infants in their arms

for hours a day, doing extended breastfeeding and talking 10,000 words to them. They were not sitting on the floor with their toddlers playing with blocks. They were not doing hour-long bedtime routines. They were not sitting at the kitchen table doing homework with their elementary school kids and they were not driving their kids to a thousand different activities. The way that parents spend time and invest in their children has changed. And I think that. And I think that think that's driven by two forces. One is like a really positive one, which is just that we understand child development way better than we did a generation ago. And so we understand that attached and connected and one-on-one attention is actually really important for our children

and for their brains to develop and for the development of their human capital. And, you know, now that we know that, right, there's a return to our time of spending that time with our children. And I think the other reason is those same structural forces in the economy we talked about becoming a service-based economy, growing inequality means that there's a bigger return to being kind of one of the higher earners in that economy. And so we're all trying to make sure our kids get there. And that takes investments. That's why like now my college students like come in with a CV like as a high school student, right? And I'm like, you have a CV as a high school student, right? And that takes parental time to produce that. Like when I look at that CV, I see the parental labor behind each of those things,

right? And that type of parenting, I think, is much more incompatible with then also the types of careers that we're trying to have today, right? And when I think about my childhood, I was born in 1984, I don't think I was ever like tucked into bed. I was told to go to bed, right? My mom was a graduate student. She was divorced and she was, you know, getting a degree, you know, while we were children. And so, like, we would like go with her to school and, like, play outside in the creek near her school, like completely unsupervised with like, you know, rusty scrap metal, right? And many people, like, have fond memories of this being their childhood. And it looks completely different today. And that looks completely different. I can see it in the minutes per day parents are spending

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Yeah, between 1993 and 2003, the time college educated mother spent with their kids almost doubled to over 22 hours a week. That's a half-time job, more than a half-time job. So what are we supposed to do about that? Because it does feel crazy to have this data about what results in good. outcomes for your kids and just ignore it. And the world is getting more competitive. It's getting harder to get these types of jobs. There's more socioeconomic disparity. So how do we square those things? Well, the first thing I would say is that just knowing that, I think, let some people like exhale because we had this expectation that it was like, this is supposed to work and I'm just messing it up,

right? Like, I'm the problem. And I think the reality is that this was never, actually supposed to work. This is brand new. You're the first one trying to do this and it doesn't add up. Okay, well, once you have that what do you do with it? Well, it means that like you literally have to try to do less stuff if you're going to make this work. Okay. So where is that going to come from? That's up to kind of you and your unique value system, which is something I emphasize a lot in the book, is that like only you know what you value and therefore where you should put your time. But it might mean that what your career looks like is going to be different. because you don't have the same amount of time to put into it. And so you're going to have to be a lot stricter about where you spend your time. You're going to have to say no to things that you would love to do, like taking on extra mentorship or leadership or volunteer roles within a farm because you just don't have time for that, right?

And maybe there will be a later period in your career after the squeeze where you will. It means at home doing that same thing. I call this throwing out your house plants because that's one of those things that I feel so mad at myself for that I'm like, I should be able to take care of these plants and I can't. Fake ones. And yes, exactly. I was like, all my plants like terrible. And so I'm like, but you know what?

Like maybe I shouldn't be able to take care of my plans and be the type of parent I want to be and be the type of professor I want to be. So maybe I can give myself permission to throw them out, right? To like simplify my life and radically prioritize the things that actually contribute to that deeper value system that I'm serving. And that applies to our kids too. I think we have to try to distinguish between the truly evidence-based things that we can do to improve our child's outcomes, like talking to them and reading to them and spending connected time with them versus the things we put pressure on ourselves to do because we think it's what it's supposed to look like.

So I talk about, you know, like those hand-decorated birthday cupcakes, which I also often try to make and like the homemade baby food, right, and the, you know, hand sewn whatever and crafts. Like, I think we have to recognize that that is just incompatible with the reality of all of the other different pulls on our time. And also that it's probably better for them to have us be like relaxed and present and whole in the time we spend with them than to be trying to like make this endless magic that's wearing us so thin. Okay, let's dive into that research a little bit. what does research show is the best use of your time with your kids? So I think any time that you are spending actively like engaging them and spending

connected time together. So you are talking, you are reading a book together, you are doing homework together, right? Those things have enormous payoffs. And I think the time that is spent, you know, chauffeuring your kid to, you know, a travel soccer game, right? it makes us feel happy as a parent because we're kind of meeting a desire of our child, right? But I don't think we have evidence that that's necessarily contributing to their long-term well-being. And I would say the same about time that we spend, you know, kind of creating this extra like magic, these like little sprinkles of fairy dust that we try to make for everybody else but ourselves. And then I also want to say something else that is going to sound a little

controversial, but luckily I feel like Emily Oster paved the way for us to think like this a little bit, which is also, even if there's evidence for something, it still doesn't mean that you have to do it. What I mean by that is there is evidence that breastfeeding is better than formula, right? Slightly better. And especially in like the first three months of life, it's not actually great evidence. It's weaker than you would think, but there is evidence, okay? But what's the tradeoff? And if there's an enormous tradeoff to your mental or emotional health, right, you actually might still get to make those tradeoffs because everybody else in society is making those tradeoffs. It's only women who are supposed to endlessly sacrifice if it makes things an iota better

for our children. So you're a mom. How do you deal with the self-judgment and the external judgment for making choices that might not be like the ideal perfect mom according to research or just according to societal judgment. Well, I'm a giant hypocrite because, as you know, I was just pumping before, you know, we got on. And even though I, what I always say to people is I'm like, breastfeeding produces its own kind of joy and fulfillment, pumping is terrible and everybody hates it. And if it's just to like give them this substance, right? And yet, yet here I am. Right. But I love that, too, because it is like, we contain multitudes and having an ideal world and then recognizing this is the world you live in is important too. Yeah. I do my best to navigate it.

like everybody does, but I do try to ask now in my life, is this working for everyone? And I am part of that too. Everyone has to include me. And that's a mistake I think I made early in my parenting journey when I was commuting from New York to Philadelphia, raising my step-kid and my newborn son. And I was doing everything that would make their lives as good as possible. That was my priority. And I was running myself ragged. And then after I radically changed my life and moved to Philadelphia to be closer to my job and got divorced, I actually saw that I was such a better parent because I was more whole myself.

And, you know, that's why the saying is like put on your own oxygen mask first. It's not because you're more important than the kid. It's because, like, you can't put on your kid's oxygen mask if you don't put on your oxygen mask, right? And so I think that is now the guideline that I try to use is that if I want to do something for my kid, it does also have to work for me. And so I make decisions to say, okay, I can say yes to one activity that requires driving my eight-year-old somewhere, but I can't say yes to two or three activities that are going to mean every single weeknight we have to drive somewhere, right? everything else has to be walking distance. So I think that's the, for me, the decision criteria I've used is to say, if it's something that I think is good for them, it has to actually work for everybody. I'm actually part of this household, too. What's up with women's urge to take care of other people

at the expense of themselves? Like, I know there's so many people listening to this and whether they have kids or not, they're doing that with their parents, they're doing that with their friends, or doing that with their partner. Is that something that society has drilled into us forever? Is there like an evolutionary component to it? I think that it's evolutionary. Sometimes people raise eyebrows at, which I do talk about the kind of evolutionary origins of gender differences.

And that doesn't mean that that's destiny. It doesn't mean, you know, that there aren't women who display more masculine tendencies and all these different things, right? But there is like a real evolutionary pathway, which is that women make eggs and men make sperm and eggs are metabolically costly, and it's hugely costly to be pregnant for nine months, and it's hugely costly to breastfeed. And so once you've made all of those investments, then our genes are going to be selected for the person who's going to keep making those investments to keep this one precious offspring

alive, whereas for men, because sperm are not costly to make, then you don't have this tradeoff where, oh, just because I kind of, you know, made, I fertilize these eggs. I can't go and fertilize these other eggs, right? And so then their genes are selected for differently. They're selected to kind of like defend territory to try to compete to get women who have the costly reproductive resource to pick them. And so men's genes are actually selected to be chosen by women. And that's also why I think they're a little ill-equipped now in this current moment

where the way women are choosing them might not be based on their ability to like defend territory or beat somebody up. And women's genes are selected for basically. in our ability to care. And it's not just caring for our offspring, but it's also to keep this offspring alive. I need my community. And so my genes are selected to create social ties and to make sure that everybody really likes me and to make sure that, you know, I'm taking care of people so they're taking care of me when I need them. But in our current environment, we're not in a fight for survival anymore. And so whether, you know, everybody at my kid's school really, really likes me is not

going to determine whether or not I live or die, but my genes still think that it does. So now I feel like I have to volunteer for the school board and I have to do a really super excellent job at that because otherwise it feels like a matter of survival. So it's interesting because I feel like a lot of the like tradwife people would be like, this is the argument for why women should be in the home because they're evolutionarily adapted for these things and men are evolutionarily adapted to go off to work and make all this money and provide and whoa. But you're saying maybe there are some evolutionary basis for these things, but because society is shifted, we almost need to recognize it and then overwrite that wiring. Yeah, I mean, men are not evolutionarily adapted

to be iBankers. Men are evolutionarily adapted to be hunters, okay? Like, we're all evolving for like a new society. And it's often like maladapted. And I know like this is something that you talk about a lot, right? Like our genes are telling us to do things in an environment that's no longer the same environment. Like they're telling us like every time you see food, you better eat it because you don't when you're going to see it again, right? And no, we have to adapt. And I think that also is a point that I often find myself pushing back on people on because there is research, and I think we're, like, scared to admit it.

There is research showing that, like, women on average exhibit some different traits in the workplace. And that might come down to competition, risk aversion, the way we negotiate, how much we self-promote. But what I push back on is that there's no research showing that women's traits are less productive than men's traits. And so therefore there's no excuse for saying, oh, because there's differences that means like you can't do this and he can. And in fact, I have research showing that women do negotiate in a very different style than men, but male male pairs were more than twice as

likely in a high stakes negotiation to walk away with nothing to be unable to form an agreement and have the negotiation break down. And so negotiations that had women in it were actually more financially productive because an agreement got made. I think that's something that has been completely lost in the discourse when, you know, we say, oh, you know, women don't ask and they need to lean in and nice girls don't get the corner office, is that actually we should be asking how these traits that women might exhibit on average more than men might actually be really productive in the society we live in where, again, I think potentially male negotiation traits, they were selected for in a world where, like, if you don't defend this territory, you die.

But now... Which I feel like we see in, like, male politicians. Exactly. You're working with a world that we don't live in right now, and it's making the world work. And it's not productive. I love that part of your book because I was like, get two women in a room negotiating like a peace treaty and like, let's see what happens, you know? Yes, exactly.

So I think that's, you know, just because women's traits are different, it doesn't actually mean that they're not adapted to the workforce at all. So we're going to talk about the workforce in a second. but I have a few more questions about parenting, some of which are personal. What advice would you give to somebody who's trying to figure out when to have a kid given, like, the real world that we live in and the real taxes on women who are making that choice? Yeah, absolutely. And this is my advice to you too, which is that there's no right time to have your kid, okay?

And I think you're going to make a tremendous mistake, whoever the you is out there, for your own happiness and joy across your life, if you try to like make this neatly fit into like the arc of your career because it's not going to. It is going to take up time. It is going to make things feel hard for a little bit. And it's going to be a tremendous source of joy and meaning and value if that's something that you want.

And there is no time when it's going to suddenly magically feel easier. So I think that women should have kids whenever they want. And then what I would do, then is give them advice about, okay, well, how to make your career work as well as possible around that choice. So what are some like hot tips for that? So one thing I would say is like invest in your 20s. So when we look at that graph of the squeeze, I call the period in your 20s before you get into the squeeze the kind of time but no money period. And I think because it's time but no money, we often make some mistakes there of like spending a lot of money and going into debt. Okay.

well, the problem is you're going to get into this period in your 30s where you also have no time, okay? And now you're going to be really upset at your former self that you have this debt that you have to take care of that part of your paycheck is going towards when it could be going towards outsourcing something that would give you back time, right? So I think we have to be really smart in our 20s by saying, like, yes, I want to have fun and yes, I want to live a life that's balanced, but also if I make investments now, the rest of my life is going to be better. And so one of the ways I talk about careers is as a way to convert your time into money. Okay. And the more you invest early on, the better that conversion rate is later on. Okay. So obviously I think that makes sense.

People with school, they're like, okay, oh, I get it now. If I go to school, right, an hour of my time earns me more money, right? But that's also true of just investments in getting further in your career when you're young, is that now later on, an hour of your time gets you more money back. And that's going to be something you value a lot when time starts to get squeezed in your 30s. Okay, but what if we're in our 30s and we're like, I didn't do that. I did drugs for most of my 20s. Well, I think there's still a chance to, you know, part that course, right, to say like,

okay, what am I doing to prepare for this period where I'm going to enter the squeeze? If I'm going to have kids, I'm recognizing I'm going to enter a time squeeze, So what can I do now to prepare myself for it? So do I need to make changes in how my life is set up where I might have loved, like, living in the country in a big house and commuting an hour and a half to my job? But when I'm entering a time squeeze, maybe that's not actually a practical setup. And so maybe my values around where I live and how much material stuff I need to have, maybe they need to shift for this period.

And that's something I talk about a lot is like really thinking about the arc of your life, thinking of it as a book with many chapters. And so understanding, just because I'm doing something right now, that's not meaning I'm choosing that forever. And so if I say, like, but I love my nice house. It's like, yeah, you might be able to have that again when you exit the squeeze, right? But what do you need to do to kind of get through this period right here? And so I would think about setting up your life to create as many of those like

a sisters as you can, which is like replacing what we used to have, the intergenerational households and all those things. right, but it could be like moving closer to your parents and you might say like, well, that's not my ideal in the long term. And I would say it doesn't have to be the long term, right? It could be moving closer to your job. It could be moving into a field that you actually enjoy a little less. Okay. So you get less direct joy from your work. But because it has a better time to money conversion rate, it's going to work better when you actually want to get more of your joy from your kids and you need time to spend with them. Right. So it's like making choices that are

going to get you through this period of the squeeze and get you out the other side. Where do the men come into all of this? Because I have so many friends who are like, I don't want to be a mom, but I would love to be a dad. I love that way of putting that. And yes. And so like then, you know, maybe you can, one thing is you can either marry a woman, right? And we're going to talk about that. Or you can find the man who always wanted to be that type of dad that is the really high investment dad. And I also, like some of my friends who are happiest in their marriages, like, that's who they found. That's who they married, right? So yes, I think that that's why I tell

young women at the same time I was talking about career. What's the other stuff you can do to kind set yourself up for success after you have children? It's be really choosy about your partner. And that's where, again, I say, like, love is the epsilon. Love is potentially something that makes us make mistakes. It's because, like, evolutionarily, we're selecting for the person who gives us all those tingly feelings, right? But is that actually what's going to contribute the most to, like, our happiness and well-being over our entire lifetime? And you really should be choosing a partner as interviewing for a co-CEO job, right? Which would involve a lot of tough questions that I feel like we don't ask when we're, like, asking, like, what type of movies do you like?

What tough questions do you think we should be asking when we are selecting for partners? Who does your laundry? What's in your fridge right now? If you want kids, what type of parenting style do you want to have? How is it different than how you were raised? And I think it's so important if you want to have kids to find somebody who has thought a lot about that because for women, there's this tremendous evolutionary force that's going to make you care immensely about this small, tiny being that you are suddenly in charge of. And I see that during that moment is when a big gap often opens up in marriages where there wasn't a gap before. And so if he's already kind of ahead of the game and he's thought a lot about kids, then that gap is going to be smaller when you get there. Knowing how much he's actually prepared and trained for the role of being a co-householder. So has he wrestled with any of the decisions that women are wrestling with all the time about like career and family timing, right? Asking like if we have kids and we're still at a point where we're investing in our careers, what do you think is reasonable about like how much child? child care we're going to employ versus how much we're going to raise them ourselves.

Or just asking about values. And it doesn't have to be with kids. It's, you know, how much time do you think you want to spend working versus how much time do you want to spend traveling? Like, how many days of vacation? Do you think it's reasonable to take a year? How much do you want to cook at home versus how much do you want to eat out? What do you think our house is going to look like and how is it going to get there?

Like, has he never thought about it? Is he living in an unfurnished kind of white box? and does he want it to always look that way? Or does he imagine that it's going to be like beautiful and, you know, look like a page out of architectural digest, but he also just thinks that's going to like magically happen and not that it's someone's labor that creates that. If one of our kids is sick and we both have an important meeting,

how do we decide who stays home? And if I had a job opportunity in another city that meant that I was going to earn 50% more, but you would have to take a pay cut, how would we decide whether to move? Because again, the data shows us that couples move for men's jobs, but not for women's jobs. Okay, I have kind of like a nitty, gritty question about that, which is, I think a lot of women, I know, would be scared to ask these questions early on because we're sort of socialized to be like, women want to settle down. Their biological clock is ticking.

They're going to scare men away. And so like, be cool, be casual at the beginning. But then by the time you get to a point where you feel safe asking those questions, you are in love. Like you feel a strong emotional connection with this person, particularly if you've had sex, which increases those feelings of bonding. When do we do this? And if they're scared by these questions, is that like red flag and a sign we shouldn't be with this person anyway?

You've spent time and time is costly to women because of the biological cost. So like if you're going to, the biological clock. So if you're going to wait, you know, like, and you, oops, you waited seven years and now it turns out he's not the right person, you know. So yeah, it is hard. And I'm not a relationship expert in any way. But I think that there is something to what you said that it's like if he's scared off by these questions, then the answer is actually no, right?

Like, then the answer to them is no. Like the answer is like he hasn't really thought about what it means to like have a household and a family and not just like, you know, hey, somebody who I like to spend time with. And so if you are at a point in your life where you're wrestling with those questions because these are important to you, then you should be looking for somebody who shares those values. And so I'm not saying do it on the first date because like that's a little bit too much. You do have to know if you're compatible first in certain other ways, right? But when you're starting to think about getting serious, then I do think those shared values

are super important. Based on what the research says about long-term relationship success, what do you think are the three biggest green flags and what do you think are the three biggest red flags when we're looking for a partner? So I think the green flags are all the things that would tell me I would hire you for the job of co-CEo of my household. Okay? And I think that's almost like none of how we select a partner in reality.

Like me and all my friends, we just like dated until we found a guy who was like nice to us and we were attracted to, right? And I was like, okay, great. Like all the other guys were jerks, you know? But I think this idea of like, are you actually good at something that's going to help me in the business of my life,

which is like having a household and having a family? So I would say, you know, like somebody who actually there's a thing that like they're going to do, around the house and they're going to do it better than you and you're not going to have to think about it. Like, my girlfriends who are happy in their marriages are the ones where their heterosexual marriages are the ones who are like, oh, I don't even go near the fridge. He does all the cooking. I don't even know what's on the grocery list, right? Like where he like really owns something and it's just like as good at it. Like that is a huge weight off of your shoulders. Because then not only do you give up the task, you give up the mental load associated with the task. So green flag, yes. Another green flag is somebody who as I said has actually thought about parenting. or is actually making some of those same decisions around their career because it sucks that women have to constantly be navigating like, how is this job going to work when I want to have kids and whatever? And men are just like, do to do to do.

They pay me a lot of money, right? So someone who's actually thought about navigating that means that then they've thought about the practical, the not just like, of course your career is just as important as mine, baby, but what does that mean when somebody actually has to stay home? What does that mean when there's actual tradeoffs, right? I would say another green flag is somebody who has similar values to us in terms of, and in terms of like this is getting into the econ terms that I use, I talk about your utility function.

And your utility function is what produces joy and value and meaning in your life. And it's what I want you to think about maximizing because we can't just maximize happiness because sometimes we have to do hard things. Sometimes we have to turn off Netflix and, you know, work on an important project, right? So what I talk about maximizing is this economist term of utility function. It's like your individual profit function. And it's all the things that are going to give you satisfaction at the end of your life, where you can say like that was a life well lived.

Your utility function shapes your decisions. So if somebody has a very fundamentally different utility function than ours, meaning like what they like is a lot of like expensive gadgets and fancy cars, whereas like what we like is really quality time with loved ones. then it's going to be really hard for us to make that joy and meaning together because they're going to want to put more time into the machine that converts it into money and we're going to want more time spent with us and with our family. So another green flag is shared values around those very deep things about what gives you joy, happiness, and fulfillment. And some red flags?

Not having those things. Red flags are like literally never thinking about stuff. like, you know, home production type stuff. So like all the laundry goes to the dry cleaners, all the food is takeout. There's no groceries in the fridge and there's nothing on the walls. I would say that's a red flag because unless you also want those things, right? If you also want those things, then you go. You found somebody compatible with you. But if you want your life to look different, right, he's telling you he's not going to help you with that because he just takes for granted that those things happen because somebody else does them. So I would say that's a big red flag. another red flag that I would say is the people who are kind of on the surface feminists, right,

in the sense that they're like, yeah, of course women should succeed in the workforce. Of course you can go get them. But when they're pushed in terms of the tradeoffs or the sacrifices they're actually willing to make, they're not. So, you know, that's why I would ask that confrontational question of would you move for my job because that's a needle scratch for a lot of people. So, you know, you're hearing a green flag because they're saying all the right things. but I think when the rubber hits the road, it might not be there.

And then the other red flag is, girl, the reality of the situation right now, which is I hear so often from young women, like, oh, yeah, like my boyfriend doesn't do anything around the house. And it's so frustrating. I can't get him to do anything, but we're getting married. And then I'm like, I just want you to know that the data says it's not going to change, okay? It's going to get worse.

The data says that that inequality in how you spend your time gets worse. as you move from dating to cohabitation to marriage to having kids. And so if it is not working right now, it's not going to magically start working when suddenly there's more work to do. And so does that mean you have to break up with him? I don't know, but it does mean I want you to confront this issue right now and surface it and try to negotiate and navigate it right now because I'd rather you realize he's not the one now rather than seven years down the line.

because as I talk about because of reproductive capital, time is a lot more costly for women. What do you think most women get wrong when they're choosing a partner? I think we choose somebody based on the now versus choosing somebody based on the entire arc of our lives. And that is, it's so understandable. And like I've 100% done it because those forces of like love and oxytocin and seroton and all those feel good chemicals that we get when we're with somebody who were. attracted to and who we have connection with, those forces are so strong. But in terms of the overall arc of our lives, it's going to matter less who we enjoyed going to dinner with and going to the movies with. And it's going to matter a lot more whether he knows that you have to buy food

for there than to be food in the refrigerator. What do you, what do you say to people who are like, that's not romantic? Like, it makes me. I get told that all the time. What? you say? I would say that romance and love and connection is a necessary condition for a relationship to work, but it's not a sufficient condition. So we need it for as a foundation, but it can't be the only thing that we use to make the decision. And so, yes, I indeed found this very inconvenient because after I got divorced and when I decided to be to date women instead, I decided that this time around I was going to be rational and I was going to choose a partner based on somebody who checked all of these boxes. So I kept going on dates with people who like checked all of those

boxes and then it was very disappointed that I was not attracted to those people. And I was like, this is so inconvenient, right? And so I, yes, I had to find somebody that I was attracted to and who had shared values with me, right? But that's what I would say is I would just say like, yes, those feelings are like a great first step. It's an opening to the conversation to on date one if you have at least a little bit of that potential for a spark. But then I want you to pull out the interview questions before you move in together, please. But as we talked about, because of all of these societal forces, in some ways, dating a woman

makes that alignment more probable because they were socialized in the same way as we are. And then now they're making more money and they're like making all these moves too. I know so many people who have switched to dating women later on in their life. you are one of them. Do you think that is because they were always queer and there's just an acceptance of that? Or do you think that is some sort of reaction to what's happening with men these days? So I think because as I said, you know, attraction is like a baseline part of the equation to have a good relationship. Then I think that queerness probably has to be present for you.

You can't just like flip a switch and be like, okay, I'm going to date women because it makes more sense. The same way I couldn't say, oh, I want to be with this person because, she ticks all these boxes if I wasn't attracted to that person, right? Kinsey says we're on a spectrum and if you're like all the way on one side of the spectrum, it's probably harder for you. And if you're somewhere in the middle, you know, then it's easier. And so for me, I, what I like to joke is I'm like, I consider myself a lesbian. And now I don't consider myself by. And I'm like, I'm not physically repulsed by men. I'm socially and politically repulsed by men. So it's not just about the attraction, right? Or like attraction is on all of these different scales.

It's not just a physical scale of attraction, which is so interesting to think about. Yes. And so I think that's right because I think that if somebody is not as life goes on, if somebody is not serving our deeper needs, that's also then deeply unsexy, right? If you're picking their clothes up off the floor and they're like, oh, so what's for dinner when they, you know, stumble home from work, right? That also then starts to make you feel not attracted. Like if you're filled with rage every day, you can't be attracted to that person. So I think that this, it's both things in terms of how you asked it, that it was, it's both society, like, accepting it and people realizing that this is an option and it's them realizing that there's something about heterosexuality that isn't working for them and therefore potentially wanting to explore the alternative. And I know, like, for me, I defaulted to a heterosexual relationship. And I almost never considered like, oh, wait, I could try to explore dating women.

Let's say somebody's listening and they're in a relationship with a man and they want to get to the place where there are no defaults. But they feel like at this moment they're carrying the burden of the invisible labor and a lot of the actual labor as well. What can they do? I really like Eve Rodsky's book, Fair Play. I really recommend that people read it if they are already in a relationship and read it with their partner. And her method is like you can't just like try to assign tasks and divide up 50% of the work that way. You have to put the cards on the table and it's literal cards with like each task on it. And whoever takes and owns certain things has to own the conception, planning, and execution of that task.

Because otherwise it's still taking up mental load for whoever else, the wife. The wife is who it's still taking a mental load for, right? So if you're going to be in charge of kids' doctors appointments, you have to fully, fully own kids' doctors' appointments. And so I think by doing that and like dealing out like those cards like actually 50-50 and then saying like, no, you have to become an expert on this because now this is your job. And it can't be like, oh, mom's the one who knows the name of the kids pediatrician, which you would be surprised in how many relationships where both people have equal careers. And then like the dad is still like, oh, yeah, but my wife handles like the parent teacher conferences or my wife. handles the play dates or whatever it is, right? So I like that idea. I recommend doing the technique that is how I got the evidence for the book, the American Time Use study, where it's a diary of how people spend their time.

And people do this for lots of things. If you want to get honest about, you know, what you eat, if you want to get honest about how much you're procrastinating, right? Like, you have to keep a diary of it. So I recommend that people actually with their spouses and so you need as a baseline, someone who's bought in to try to make this change. And if they're not, there's a different conversation. to have, right? Back to the red flags. But if they're willing to, you know, do this with you, you both literally track your time of like, how am I spending my time?

And I wanted to be not just like, am I working, but like, oh, I was at work, but I was actually ordering something on Amazon for the kids, right? Like, that has to be in there too. And I think if you do that and you get the data in front of you, then your husband or male partner is just going to be shocked by how unequal it is. because I think the inequality often when it's like a good guy who like wants to do his part, it's not in the stuff that like is obvious. The inequality is in the tasks he didn't even know existed.

So it's like he's like, oh, yeah, I do 50% of the time I get the kid dressed for school in the morning. So I'm doing half. And then the mom is like, well, no, because in order to even get there, I had to buy clothes for his current size. I had to get rid of the clothes that he had grown out of. I had to make sure that all the toiletries were stocked. I had to make sure that the bathroom was clean.

I had to make sure that I had planned, you know, what drop-off time is and what aftercare is and all of those things, right? And so if he's doing half of the stuff that he's aware of, right, I think he's going to be shocked when he actually sees the data. And that's why, like, every time I present my research on time use, there's a man in the audience who's like, yeah, I'm sure she does more of, like, the cooking and cleaning. But I'm the one who fixes the windows and mows the lawn. And so, like, aren't I doing a lot also? And I'm like, yeah, the data does show that men does more of those tasks. And the data also shows that those tasks are a tiny portion of home time use overall. And so you have this idea that you're this great helper because of these like big visible tasks. You like take them on a lot when there's a million tiny little things that she's doing 98% of. How does salary factor into this versus time? Like, what if the lower earning partner has a higher demand? job. Yeah, I think that that's an interesting question. And, you know, one of the things that I think you can ask in the long term is like why that is and whether that's a good career, right? There are some jobs where you're not getting paid as much right now, but it's because you're investing and

it's going to pay off for the family down the line, which is like, let's say, you know, he's like a resident. And so like right now he's not earning a lot, but like he hopes to one day become an attending, right, as a doctor. And then he's going to earn a lot. And then you could say, well, it still makes sense for our family because like that's how we're going to secure our future long term. And so if that's the case, I kind of understand. But if it's just, if he has like a job that is like eating up all of his time, but it's not actually returning like a lot of money for your family, then I would ask whether that's the right decision.

If you're doing something that you care about a lot and you're putting a ton of time into it, but it's not running you any money, that's not a job that's a hobby. And like, are we willing to devote like this much of your joint resource. of time in a household to a hobby. And so I think it might be time to ask some tough questions because women have to make those decisions all the time. I have so many friends who, when they decided to have kids, they actually gave up a career that, quote, they loved, but it did not work for their schedule and it also did not make them a lot of money for a more like practical, boring-sounding job that let them put hours in and get money out, right? And so

they were like, yeah, my passion was being a labor organization. or being a journalist or whatever, but I realized that that wasn't paying off and wasn't going to help me take care of my family. And so if it's the male partner that's doing that, then he might have to make some tough choices. The number one rule of habits is to make the things that you want easier and the things that you don't want harder.

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allocation of time as a couple and we need to decide together what the best use of that time for our goals is. Absolutely. And I like think of this one example I give in the book, which is one that always makes people's jaw drop as it made my jaw drop. which is that I met a couple who were both in the same industry. And I talked to him first. And he was like, oh, like work life balance is super important for me. I go swimming for an hour every day. And I would take the long way walking home from work for my mental health because that's so important.

And then I talked to her and she was like so stressed out and was like, oh my God, Corin, I haven't been running in four years since my younger son was born. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, right? And thinking about that joint time budget, I was. was like, you need to find some ways to take things off your plate. And if he's not going to do it, then maybe you need to invest some of all of this extra time that you have. Maybe then it's taking the money that's produced by that and buying some help for you to get something off your plate. Because this inequality in the household right now is not acceptable. And again, in the data,

we see that inequality in leisure time. That during that squeeze time, what's getting squeezed out for women is both work and leisure. And men have way more leisure time than women during that peak time of the squeeze. Yeah, it reminds me of like the idea that men have these very laborious time intensive hobbies. Like they golf or they train for a marathon. And meanwhile, women's hobbies tend to be centered more in the home and they tend to be able to be fit into these like in between moments. Should we just get longer hobbies and like force it? Well, that's why one of my recommendations in the book of like how to kind of, you know, maximize your utility function and turn your time into more like joy and meaning is what I call paying yourself first

with leisure time. So it's actually like blocking out time in your calendar to do the thing that you love, whether that's yoga or whether it's that you need to go running or whether it's that you want to spend time with friends and like putting that first because when we put leisure time last, we're so burned out by the time we get there that it ends up being like low quality leisure time of like just like staring at our phones or, you know, it's often it's staring at our phones. That's what it is. So if you put it first, you might actually get more out of it. And one of my favorite reactions I've gotten to the book was somebody at my UK publisher whose reaction was like, here's the big thing I've implemented in my life. And she was like, and when I did that, you know,

what I was doing everything around the house and I was like putting everything away and I was doing all the laundry. And like, then I would take my leisure time. Then I would try to work out. And often I wouldn't end up working out on the weekend. And she's like, and I started doing my workout first and like going to see my friends first and then coming home and doing those household chores. And what happened when I did that is then my partner was home to do those chores with me because light bulb, he'd been paying himself first with leisure the whole time. I'm like, yes, yes, we love. Okay.

What are some of the best ways that men can support women both at home and in the workplace? So at home, I think it's really being conscious about the allocation of time, right? Understanding that time is a scarce resource and it can be put into. you know, joy and leisure and fulfillment. It can be put into parenting. It can be put into career investments. But those things are actually in competition with each other. And so if you're using up a bunch of the households joint time budget, right, on your leisure and on your career investments, she's not getting to make those investments. And over time, it might feel like you're getting a good deal. But if she's unhappy and miserable, it's not going to be sustainable

and you're not going to end up happy as a household over time, right? So I think, being really conscious about time and recognizing that your time is an investment potentially in your wife's career. In the workplace, I think there's like a million little things that I think men can do. And, you know, there's things like, you know, being the one to, you know, make, take on the non-promotable task, which is like planning the office retreat or seeing about the catering so it's not a woman who gets asked to do it for the hundredth time, right? There's like, there's those small things. There's amplifying women's voices, like recognizing, oh, somebody just repeated exactly what she said. And so saying like, oh, actually, I think Liz said something like that earlier.

Liz, do you want to say again what you were saying, right? Or like stopping the like bro meeting when the decisions get made, but no women are there and being like, actually, can we pause this conversation until blah, blah, who's an expert in this is part of it? Just seeing women as professionals and as your colleagues. I say that to my warden students all the time because I see the men always like pairing off and starting businesses with each other. And I see that, like, they view women as, like, potential romantic partners and even potential friends, but they don't view them as potential business partners. And so just, like, changing the lens through which you see women and saying, like, oh, these brilliant women around you, like, they are potential co-founders, right? They're innovators. They're leaders.

Like, they're not just, you know, women, which also means, like, being conscious of, like, the fact that it creates a joint, aggregate toll on women when you pursue romantic interest in the workplace, because for you, you're like, this is the only time I'm doing it because I feel so strongly. But for her, it's like, could be, you know, the 80th time she's been objectified in the workplace. And it takes an enormous toll on women and in fact leads to women leaving male dominated industries and making less money as a result. And then structurally, like being willing to, again, think bigger about some of the structural changes and not just take things for granted, not just saying, well, this is how we do things. And so if she doesn't want to do it that way, then she can't cut it.

You know, this is a take no prisoners atmosphere where we have to defend our ideas in the marketplace and, you know, if you can't fight for it, then, and saying like, wait, that might be prioritizing male ideas and it might mean that we're like digging really deep in the barrel of the same old ideas. And if I could create an environment where more people felt comfortable voicing their ideas, maybe I'd get better ones and we'd get more innovation. And I call this taking down Star Wars posters after this study that's always stuck with me where if girls were shown a computer science classroom that was decorated with Star Wars posters, they were less likely to want to take a computer science class than when they were shown kind of a neutrally decorated classroom. And the reason

I like that metaphor is I think a lot of the things we really cling to in the workplace that we think are like, no, this is a core value of this job. And so if women can't take the heat, they should get out of the kitchen. I think sometimes they're more like those Star Wars posters. Like they're leftovers. They're retro. And we can take them down. You know, I tell my students, and they always laugh because they don't remember this era,

that like I bankers used to like take meetings and strip clubs. And then when like that wasn't acceptable anymore, like they kicked and screamed about it. And they were like, no, how are we ever going to close the deal if we can't go to the strip club, right? And like, now it's like generally not acceptable to take meetings and strip gloves and like everybody's fine, right? So I think there's a lot of those things that we just don't question. It's the way we've always done things. And yeah, because the workplace used to be male dominated.

But like, do we need to do it that way? Does it need to be that like the loudest voice gets heard? Is it the best idea to make decisions on who self promotes themselves the most? Or is that actually not how we should be measuring talent? because maybe we're going to actually find better talent by looking for people who have a more realistic assessment of their abilities. And then what about for women? Could you share some concrete action tips that women could use to use their unique traits to get richer and more successful?

I would like to think that my book is like the anti-airport feminism girl boss book, because if you read all of those titles on the airport shelves, they all sound like they're, you know, they're all yelling at you. They're all telling you to be different. And I, when I look at the data, I do not see an evidence backing for that because, first of all, there's no evidence that men's traits are better. And second of all, there's no evidence that if women mimic men's traits that will be rewarded for it, right? So like, like I said, my data doesn't show that men's more aggressive negotiation style is better. It shows that it can blow up deals.

But even if it were, right, then there's also evidence that shows, well, when women take on that more aggressive she's going to be penalized for it because it's not what's expected of her, right? So I think if women are doing things differently, they're also skillfully navigating other people's gender expectations. Okay. So my advice to young women is do not try to contort yourself to, like, act more like a man. I think it's find your unique traits and use them as your superpowers. I talked about it with negotiation that I think relational negotiation is like an incredible

superpower, and I think that women are potentially better at it than men. In the study that I referenced earlier, where men blew up the deals more, what you saw was that something as simple as starting the negotiation with like, hi, how are you? Made it more likely that you were going to reach an agreement? And it's like, that one's free, you know, but the men weren't doing it. They were starting with the like, listen, you know? So use your traits, your gender traits, if they are, right? And however you show up, you have all different types of gender.

expression. And so maybe it's natural for you to show up more masculine and then do that. But if it's not, then use that trait is kind of your unique superpower. Another study that I love to reference, because it's one of the big studies that showed that there might be these different workplace traits is a study by Muriel Niederly and Lisa Vesterlund called, do women shy away from competition and do men compete too much? And what they showed is that when you had men and women do a task that they were equally good at, but you let them choose whether they were just paid for kind of their rost score and just sort of like a mechanical payment, or did they want to enter their score into a tournament where if they were the best in their group, they would get paid a lot. But if they

weren't, they wouldn't get paid at all, that women were much less likely to enter their score into the tournament no matter their level of performance. And so that meant that there were some women that were leaving money on the table, right? So there were some women who were the best in their group who still weren't entering into the tournament and they could have made more if they did, right? But everyone wants to focus there and like give those women, like the rah-rah chat, and be like, take a chance on yourself and like lean in. And yeah, sure, I would like give them a little pep talk. But what everybody forgets is the other end of the spectrum, which is the men who were

the worst in their group, so who were certainly not actually going to win. Okay. 60% of them still entered into the tournament rather than just taking the short thing payment. 60% of them. 60% of the men who were the worst were still like, I got this. And actually, if I'm a boss who cares about the profit of my firm, I'm way more worried about those guys, right? I'm way more worried about that toxic overconfidence than I am about the people who are a little bit more cautious. And so I would, I think that we should have a lot more business seminars that are like, men, take a cue from your female colleagues and learn to act more like them.

Okay, how do we get that to happen? Like, who do we have to talk to to get that to happen? Well, what you're trying to do all day, every day is get people to be evidence-based. And I think if we were actually evidence-based in the workplace, there would be more of that. And instead, I just see this one thing that is, like, the seminars and the books that are trying to get women to act like men. Yeah. How do you deal with, like, the unfairness of a lot of it? Like, we're trying to change society.

We're also trying to take on the individual onus to change our own actions to work within the society that's, like, set up against us. and our biological clock is taking and the men are having a hard time and we have to go save them now too. Like how do you deal with how just drastically unfair it all feels? The reality is it is unfair. The reality is like the structural systems are stacked against us. And so the way I deal with is by saying like our job is to maximize our utility function subject to those constraints.

And so I want you. to carve out your best life for yourself amid and around all of those constraints. And the worst thing I could do is gaslight you into saying, like, no, they're not there. Like, you can just work harder and want it more. And then that's not going to exist. I'm going to say, like, no, those constraints are absolutely real. And I think it's still possible to have a happy and a good life. But it means that I think we can't hold ourselves to the standard that, like, it is possible to do it all and be it all and have it all. and for this, again, even to look like a generation ago, the working women, because things have changed. They've changed structurally. And so what it looks like to have it all might be different

now than it was before. We've talked about a lot today. What do you think are the top, like one or two systemic changes that would make the biggest difference? So I think careers are a big one. And so I talked about trying to build in boundaries. So it's rethinking. flexibility during the workday to actually be about boundaries, not about total number of hours and not about like, you know, endless work from home or flexibility, but being about the structure of those hours and when they actually happen and boundaries on that really high return time at home. But I then would say a second type of flexibility that I also feel like needs to be part of the conversation, which is more flexibility across the life cycle in terms of careers.

So I meet all the time somebody who, like, you know, they both went to Stanford and now their kids are entering high school. She decided to be a stay-at-home mom. But now she's kind of like, oh, I'm volunteering because I don't really know what to do with myself now. And like, I take nothing away from her decision at the time because, again, as I said, I think it's a very valid choice to decide that the highest value use of our time investments could be investing in our child's human capital. but it really gets my goat that there's no way to then get back on the ramp and make use of that human capital in terms of what it could be doing for society, the innovation and the leadership that we could be getting from all of those women that we've lost, again, during this very short period of the squeeze. And so my question is, like, why isn't it more possible to, like,

get on that high investment career path later, like after your kids enter school? And I think that's something governments could work on. Like they could the same way governments invest in, I talked about workers being displaced by like trade agreements and they invest in retraining those workers, governments could subsidize firms hiring people who were reentering after a caregiving gap because they could understand that caregiving is essential labor in society. And so then when there's this sort of shock, the same way a trade shock makes an industry not valuable, there's this shock of like, oh, now your kids went to school, your labor at home is less valuable now. Can we help you get reallocated by being able to go back into the career sector?

So governments could help with that. But firms can also get more creative. And so the way I think firms need to think about it is that when you're driving, I've talked about exit ramps. There's a lot more exit ramps than there are on ramps. But you know, when you're driving, you often have the choice between like a local and express route. But the nice thing about the local route or the business route is that like you can rejoin

the express at a later time if you want to, it still goes the same place. And I wish we had more career paths that looked like that. So when I started as a consultant and when I was in consulting, I saw that you would have kind of client-facing work and then you would have this behind-the-scenes work. And a lot of women shifted into this behind-the-scenes work at the time when they had kids. And then there's no way to shift back onto the partner track. And that happens in legal careers as well. It happens in medicine. It's like you leave the surgical residency, you go into family practice, right? And I think as a society, if we found more ways to create those local tracks where you could shift to a more parallel path, but get back on the other track, I think that would have high returns to all of us. So I think those are the big like work solutions.

What do you think are the biggest individual needle movers, the things that are in our power that we can do right now that begin to address these problems? I think for women, it's fundamentally rethinking what our goal and our objective is in life. life because we have been sold the idea because in order to be feminist that we have to measure our success in terms of our career. And I have a lot of friends who feel like, oh, if I make this choice, am I not just like letting down myself, but my mother and like all the women who came before me and all the women who come after me who I'm not being a good example for, right? And I think your goal in life is to maximize your utility. And I think your career is just a tool to do. that. And it's a useful tool because it converts your time into money, but money can only buy

so much happiness. There's a lot of other things that go into your utility function that money cannot buy. And so I think we have to move our career back into proportion with the role that it plays in our utility function instead of letting it be the be all and end all. We need to do the same thing with these other areas of our life where as I said, and I know that like you talk about this a lot, and I feel it in myself that like we look on social media and we compare ourselves to other people, right? And we're like, I should be able to do this. I should be able to have that. I should be a hell of that.

And then I think we are the architects of our own unhappiness because we're trying to pull something off that's impossible. It's like, you know why her cupcakes look so good? It's because that is her actual job. She's getting paid to make those cupcakes, right? And so if you're going to have a full-time career outside of the household, then like, your life is not going to look like the trad wife life at home. Or she's like crying herself to sleep. Or she's a full-time job and she's like dripping tears into the cupcakes.

Outside of the camera lens. Because you don't see that. And so, you know, then so if you expect that that's what your life is going to look like and you want every little detail to be perfect and your kids have to have every little thing and there's not going to be any tradeoffs, then what you're going to trade away is your sleep, your happiness, your health. in order to fill those gaps. And so I think radical prioritization,

it's like Marie Kondo, but for your time, you know, Marie Kondo was like, throughout the stuff that doesn't spark joy. And it's like, you've got to go through your time and be like, how am I using time in a way that does not actually produce a meaningful return? And because we're being squeezed from all sides, and that's where I think the data is empowering,

once you know that that's true, that like, oh, it's literally true that I have less time than, you know, women a generation before, then that gives you the power that you need to say no to a lot of stuff, to all the clutter that isn't actually serving your deepest values. Is there any other research that you want to highlight or myths that you want to bust in terms of this idea of having it all? Yeah, I think like the biggest one is the one that we've already covered, which is just that

I think women don't recognize the way that things have changed and the ways that things are structurally stacked against them. And so then they think it's an individual problem. Like they think, oh, I'm just bad at this, right? But that's not true. It's actually like, no, this is really hard. And I want people to know that. And then, like, I think that gives you some permission to, like, make your own choices.

Because if we're, like, navigating something that's impossible, well, then there's no wrong way to do that, right? And so then you can embrace, like, whatever your solution is to it. And I think that come, that is in all, like, domains of our life that it's okay to say no to things that we feel like we should have. So it's okay to say no to the high-powered career that you dreamed of if you realize it's not actually making you happy. And, you know, it's not actually serving your utility function across your lifetime. It's okay to invest in that career and then later decide to take a step back or to say it's a book with many chapters. and right now is not going to be the time that I'm going to like be the best at my job.

And I don't have to be the best at everything. And at home, like, it's okay to say no to something even if it would be good for our kids. Like even if it would be good for them, it's okay to say no to it because like you matter too. You're also part of the household and what does it cost you to provide this thing that's good for them? And I think that's easy when it's money. Like if it's like, oh, yeah, my kid like wants the new Nintendo Switch and you're like, but it costs too much money. I'm going to say no.

Like we get that. But when the cost is like our time and happiness, we feel like no cost is too high for like my precious little something because society has told us that. They've told us that like, for example, breastfeeding is free because like women's time doesn't matter. So it's okay to say no to those things. And it's okay to say no to things that work for someone else, but like don't work for us. So like somebody else like makes having that garden out front that's like perfectly maintained and manicured, like, look so good. And you might not have time for that in your life.

And there might be another chapter where you do. So I think, like, real permission to, like, make our own choices. And I think that's the only way we navigate out of this until, like, we have a revolution and just change the structural forces. We like to end the podcast with one homework assignment, something that people can do the second they turn this episode off that they can begin to feel real change, real shift in their life. So maybe we should do that around utility function. What is one thing people could do immediately to begin to maximize their utility function, which just as a reminder means we're

maximizing our fulfillment, our happiness, and our time on this planet. Yeah. So what you said is exactly right. Is that like part of what it comes down to is time. And so it's thinking about how do we align our time with what actually gives us utility. So you have to think a little bit about what gives you utility. That's kind of the like baseline research for this project. And so it's that I'm going to give you. And then I want you to take the thing that is the use of your time that gives you the most utility. And I want you to pay yourself first with it. And so to reiterate, paying yourself first is like that personal finance adage where they're like put the money in savings before you put it into all the other things. And that's how you're going to start investing.

Right. So I want you to invest in yourself with your time. So on your calendar, I literally want you to block out the thing that you enjoy doing the most, the same way you would, like, a meeting with your boss or like something that you had to go to. And then everything else has to be scheduled around that. And I want you to prioritize doing that first. Because the reality is we do still spend time on leisure, even when we're squeezed from all sides. We just spend it doing things that don't really serve us and that actually end up leaving us more depleted and burned out, which is like being on Instagram all the time. So instead, recognizing that you actually do have, that time in your calendar, I want you to put it first and do something really meaningful and

awesome with it. And I want you to, I want to see those calendar holds. Okay. I'm super literal about it. I want you to put that calendar hold on. And then maybe that'll be the first step of bringing all of how you use your time in line with maximizing your utility function. And utility function just to like make it super clear for people isn't like your productivity on the planet. No, yeah. It's not. It's, I mean, it's the same way we think about a firm's profit function that that's their goal in life. It's like, what's your goal in life? Your goal in life is like whatever you're going to look back on from the rocking chair in the retirement community and say like, I'm really glad I spent my time that way, right? And so again, it doesn't mean that it's like super fun,

like dopamine all the time because like sometimes it's things like, you know, actually holding that boundary with my kid was really important for like their long term learning, right? But it means whatever is serving your deepest values. And so that, is the opposite of just focus on your career because in the framework of utility, what your career does for you is produce money that you can buy things that give you utility. But by itself, like most people, when I ask them, like, if money were not an object, what would you do with your time? Most people are not like, well, I'd make sure I'd finish those reports for my boss, right? Like, most people would actually not do their jobs if they didn't need money. So you might

enjoy parts of your jobs, like, while you're doing them. But like the reason you're doing it is ultimately for money. And so therefore, you have to put it in proportion to how much does money serve my utility versus other uses of my time. What are your blocks for on your calendar? So meaningful time with family, like that like good, like the good quality time. So family dinner is like for me, like a non-negotiable. I like to sit down around the dinner table. I like to talk. And then I like to have time with my older son is eight. So I like to like spend time with him. you know, right before bed, that's like we call it like, you know, like mommy kiddo time and we like do something together every night for like just 20 minutes, like before bed. And then for myself,

like, it's yoga. It's cooking one really good meal a week. But like recognizing that like there's a lot of men when I talk about time, you still be like, oh, but I love cooking. And I'm like, yeah, everybody loves cooking. Nobody likes feeding a toddler three times a day and like three snacks. recognizing that like there's a difference between like the function of like producing food because you need to eat versus like the enjoyment. And so having like one really good meal where like it's enjoyment, it's cooking something that I like and it's serving people good food. I love it. Can you tell us a little bit in your own words about your phenomenal book? It's called what having it all, what data tells us about women's lives and how getting the most out of yours. And it is everything I've

learned from studying the economics of women's lives for 15 years, studying how women use their time, how that's changed over time, how time is divided in the household. And then it's about how to think about your happiness and your life like an economist and actually get more from this time that you have and push back on the societal forces that are conspiring against us so that we can all be less exhausted. So if you're a data nerd, it's chock full of stats and studies and data, but it's also full of stories of my own life. You're going to learn way more than you wanted to about me and of my friends and of my students and of all the people who are navigating these sort of impossible forces together and solving it in all different ways. And so I want to say two things

about it, which is one that it's a book for everyone. I don't want anyone to think like, oh, but I don't want kids, so it's not for me. Like it's a book for everybody and it's also for men to understand these forces and to understand how they can help be partners in solving them at work and at home. And two, it's not going to tell you that you're making a wrong decision if you're doing something that serves you. And so I talked to one woman about it and she was like, I'm leaving my job and oh no, but I feel like I'm a failure like according to your book. She hadn't ready. She was like, because, you know, I'm like, I'm taking care of my family instead of. And I was like, no, my book is about in this impossible set of circumstance.

carving out the best life for you. And there's no wrong way to do that. And so there's stories in there of women who stepped back from their careers and there's stories in there of women who leaned in and had to like whip their husband or other circumstances into shape in order to be able to do so. So it's for everybody and it's not going to tell you that you're wrong. What I hope it's going to help you do is identify what you really value and get more of it. I think it's a must read. It's a really 10 out of 10 book for me. And this was a 10 out of 10 conversation. And I really appreciate you having it. Thank you so much. It was great to be here. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of the Liz Moody podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, go ahead and follow on

Apple or Spotify or subscribe on YouTube and hit that notification bell so you never miss a new episode. And if there's somebody in your life you think would benefit from this episode, send them a quick link. It is the best way to support the podcast and it is so, so appreciated. And if you're watching this, drop me a comment. I would love to hear your thoughts and what resonated most with you. Thanks again for being here. I feel so lucky that I get to grow and learn and share with you, and I will see you on the next episode of the Liz Moody podcast. Oh, just one more thing.

It's the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, a psychotherapist, or any other qualified professional.