Drop the Ball: Achieving More by Doing Less

by Tiffany Dufu

If he had an African mother, he was accustomed to strong women, so I knew he could handle me.

the stealth submarine was pent-up resentment, and the reason I directed it so squarely at Kojo was because, from what I could see at the time, he had it much easier than I did.

imaginary delegation. This is when we mentally assign our partners a task but never take the step of telling them. We assume that they will intuit our needs or that they’ll naturally step forward if we hang back.

“Resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”

Women have long been dissatisfied that men don’t do their share in the domestic sphere. [But when men do take charge], there is often a sharp and reflexive: ‘You’re not doing that right!’”

the root cause of burnout is not that we have too much to do, it’s the feeling that the things we do aren’t meaningful or don’t reflect who we really are.

“I’ll send you e-mails when it works for me. It’s your job to respond when it works for you.

“Because you’re black, you’ll have to work harder than white people. Life isn’t fair.” This might seem a harsh message to give a young child, but I’ve found that having clarity about how the world actually operates has come in handy.

I know what’s on my tombstone, and I’m just project managing my life backward.