ABOUT

What is this blog about and who is it for?

Hi, I’m Laura the Productivity Lady. After I graduated with a PhD in Computer Science, I worked in tech, creating and optimizing software. Then I turned the same lens to optimizing real life.

The productivity methods I talk about in this blog are a product of my thousands of hours of investigation and iteration. I have used these methods to survive our family having two full-time jobs plus a side business, during times when our family had health issues producing up to a dozen medical appointments a week. I have even squeezed some hobbies in there. In the process, I have figured out productivity methods that don’t appear in your standard productivity literature.

I have always wanted to be efficient and productive with everything I do. And by that I don’t just mean productive at work, or productive at keeping my house clean, but productive when it comes to my own dreams and goals. I am addicted to reading, and have spent thousands of hours reading productivity material over the years.

The aim was to find productivity advice that works. There was just one problem. Almost every book I read was written by men, for men. 

Oh, of course, those books didn’t advertise the fact. The pressures that women face, simply by being women, were not dismissed explicitly. They were invisible by omission. The expectations and tasks that so often fall on women—housework, planning, kids—how to actually have a life outside of those, were not dealt with at all. The assumption implicit in these books was that those tasks somehow didn’t even exist. Maybe in those authors’ worlds, they didn’t. After all, I didn’t have a wife who would pick up all the pieces for me, but those authors often did.

There does exist productivity material written by women. There’s helpful material out there. Unfortunately for what I wanted, this material all too often focuses on how to be efficient at cooking and cleaning and have a magazine-worthy house. To achieve this, I would have had to spend more time on those tasks than I did already, and much as I love spending time in houses of perfect homemakers, that wasn’t my goal. Another theme I came across frequently is that quietly, in the background, a lot of these women had paid assistants—a bit like a wife, but one who was paid for it.

There is also material written by rightfully frustrated women, discussing how unfair it is for women to be pressured by society into a role of picking up the pieces after everyone else. This material generally has one action item for their readers: talk to your partner (usually a male one) and ask him to do more. Because, I gather, none of us had ever tried that.

Or else the material tells us that we need a cultural revolution. The problem being that I wasn’t willing to wait around for one of those.

So I started testing things on my own, and noting the patterns. I noted what worked, what didn’t. I read not only productivity advice, but material from other fields. I analyzed why things worked or didn’t. I observed what worked for other people—or didn’t. I updated my behavior accordingly and tried more things. These days, I am more productive and less stressed. More to the point, I am more productive in the things that I want to get done. I am noticing more and more that when my friends talk about the tasks that they feel they have to do, I find myself thinking one of the following.

“I used to do that task, but I don’t anymore”.

“I used to do that task, but someone else does that now, and there was no nagging required”.

“I used to do that task, but now it doesn’t get done at all, and all concerned are just fine”.

“I used to do that task, but I made some unusual tweaks, and I seem to have cut down on ninety percent of the effort involved.”

I am creating this blog to share what I’ve discovered through years of study and iteration. My target audience is, obviously, women. Mainly women living in the Western world. Specifically, women who have become sufficiently jaded with the daily aspects of female life to be willing to at least think about playing by a different set of rules.  

Enjoy.

Contact: info@productivityforwomen.com

Images created using Canva unless stated otherwise.

Names and identifying details have been changed to protect the innocent (and the guilty).

FAQ

Is this just another ‘cleaning’ or ‘organizing’ blog?

No. Most ‘home’ advice assumes the problem is your habits. My investigations suggest the problem is the architecture of the modern household and workplace. I’m less interested in where you put your socks and more interested in the systemic pressures that keep you from having time for your own ambitions. I’m not here to help you clean faster; I’m here to help you re-engineer your life so that you aren’t buried by the relentless operational overhead of life in the first place.

You seem to assume women have a male partner, if any. You also refer to wives like pretty much any man has one. Are other living arrangements or gender identities even on your radar?

I am indeed writing to a stereotype. One that exists and that actual people experience. There are expectations that fall on all women. Then there are expectations that fall on women partnered with men.

The term “wife” no longer merely refers to a female partner, it has come to be used synonymously with the idea of a domestic servant. The particular connotation is very much involved in the topics that I am writing about. Also, as I’ve hinted, there are plenty of stereotypes and expectations that meet women as they move through the world, with no partner even required.

If your situation varies from the “traditional woman paired up with traditional man” model in any way, shape, or form, maybe you’re also one of the people who are way ahead in this game. 

Your writing tone has rather an edge to it. Do you plan to verbally beat up on men? I’m not sure you’re a nice person.

Most men I meet seem to be well-intentioned people and I like them. It just happens that in the world we live in, well-intentioned people can still manage to cause each other a lot of frustration. Especially when you have this thing called a “society” that tries to put us into boxes.

Women are expected to be nice. “Nice” is frequently defined as always pleasing everybody and agreeing with everyone. I may not be nice by that definition, but I promise you that I try to be kind. 

Is your advice only applicable to women with an abrasive personality?

I usually only have the guts to be abrasive in the presence of a sympathetic audience. When I do deliver verbal punches to an actual person, I have learned how to do it in a disarming way. Because, as we know, women being direct is often not considered the done thing.

But of course, there are times when I have said no to people, and I will talk about that too. For that, I have put in a lot of research about how to do this in the least stressful way possible. Least stressful for us, certainly – but also being considerate. There is more than one way to express yourself, and I have worked hard to identify the kindest route I can in each case.

Are you planning to advise every woman out there to hire a nanny and a cleaner?

No. The money (or even just the wish) for that isn’t always there, and I don’t want to assume it is. A large part of my investigations centered around the wish for more ideas than just outsourcing.

Who are the Mom Police?

Anyone or anything – whether it be a person, written material, or a pervasive set of society’s expectations – that puts pressure on mothers, or women in general, to fit into a specific set of (often unspoken) expectations.