Dempster followed Tiffany
Dufu’s manifesto Drop The
Ball to strategically let some
of her responsibilities slip.marieclaire.com.au 55JASON IERACE/RELOAD AGENCYDROP THE BALL
marieclaire.com.au 55M
ummy, why do
only boys get to
go to the office?”
my five-year-old
daughter asks as
she watches her
dad run through the rain to work. I’m
about to pull out in to traffic after drop-
ping my husband off, but I need to take
a moment. Wow, that one hurt.
I used to go to the office. I used to
go to the office big time. But five years
and three kids later, I’ve gone from
negotiating multimillion dollar con-
tracts to negotiating with my children
to get in their car seats.
It hit me like a ton of wet nappies:
I had to go back to work. Full-time. Go
to bed one night a stay-at-home mum,
wake up the next morning as Sheryl
Sandberg. What could go wrong?
Fast-forward a few weeks to a Sun-
day afternoon as I stood staring at the
mounds of washing, the unpaid bills
and the counter space where the
prepped meals for the week should have
been sitting – except the baby had
woken from her nap early – and I won-
dered what the hell I’d been thinking.
So when I spotted Tiffany Dufu’s
new book, Drop The Ball (Penguin,
$35) I clutched at it like a lifeline.
“Achieve more by doing less,” it prom-
ised. That’s what Dufu, a driven,
ambitious professional and women’s
leadership expert, did.What happens
when a stressed-out
working mum-of-
three tries to become
a balanced, rested
and fulfilled person
in one month? Emily
Dempster decided
to find out
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CHALLENGE