Book Review: Succeeding As A Super Busy Parent
Originally published in the Dyslexic Book Review
By Bill Foster, Business & Executive Coach
The subtitle of this book is "75 Practical Tips for Balancing Life, Love, Kids, and Career", and the book is written as a manual a how to do it book. One of the unique features of this book is that it Is all encompassing, covering all phases and stages of a person's life. This ranges from Personal Wellness, Family Time, and Working Mothers, all the way to Professional Skills.
In the section on Personal Growth and Development, one of Gahrmann's tips includes, "Simply say NO." Saying "NO," or rather the inability to say no, is one of the main obstacles that prevent most people from living the lives they want to lead. The difficulty most people have, according to the author, is that that they want to be liked, want to help, be needed, or just avoid disappointing or hurting others. The author goes on to describe her own situation when she was writing this book and was doing the researching and interviewing. A public official in her town she was interviewing asked her if she would participate, perhaps even lead, a committee to address some the issues she was uncovering that impact a super busy parent. Walking her talk, she politely declined.
Another way the author describes is to postpone the decision by teaming to automatically respond and say, "I'll get back to you on that." The reason for this is to put some space between the request and your response. In other words the objective is to give oneself time to consider and to get comfortable with saying "No."
In the Section on Professional Skills the author starts off with one titled, Reclaim Wasted Time at Work. In this chapter she describes how to look at one's day- more specifically writing down one's tasks and the put then in some sort of priority order, after eliminating the ones not really necessary and delegating those items that can and should be done by someone else. Above all, Gahrmann suggests setting up a system, writing it down, and then following it.
Another chapter in this section is titled, Act with Integrity. It is this writer's belief and to a large extent, experience, that this in one of the most critical items in the business world today. All one has to do is to read the business section, let alone the front page, of almost any newspaper to see what the lack of integrity has been and how it is impacting the business world. Integrity involves the knowledge of what is night and what is wrong, the ability to avoid the wrong, and then the willingness to stand up and do what is right.
In our culture one is either in integrity or out of integrity and there is no middle ground. The author goes on to cite instances where individuals are out of integrity; for example, if they continue to work excessive hours while saying their family is their priority. Another instance includes stealing someone else's idea without giving them credit or not apologizing when someone has been wronged. The bottom line here is that integrity is when the actions one takes are in alignment with one's beliefs and when one takes full responsibility for one's actions.
This book also gives the reader two additional steps at the end of each chapter. In the first the author cites a related activity so that the reader can follow through to discover what he/she can do and how to handle what is to be learned from reading the chapter. The second step is listing of recommended resources. so that, if need be, the readers can get more material or guidelines to further explore and chart their actions.
All in all, it is tills writer's opinion that "Succeeding as a Super Busy Parent" is more than a book to be bought and put on a kitchen shelf it is worthwhile Investment for any parent to buy and then to read and use to find success as a parent.
