Work Smarts: What CEOs Say You Need To Know to Get Ahead

Chapter 11

You Can’t Really Be Good at Everything . . . and That’s OK!

Recently on a shoot in Austin, I went back to my hotel room to rest up for the next morning. As usual, I woke up early. People have asked me how long I’ve been waking up at 4 a.m. to do my morning show. My usual reply is: “For so long that 6 a.m. is considered sleeping in.”

The sad part is that’s one hundred percent true. When I worked in newspapers, I would stay up all night writing my stories. I’m not sure why because my editors were all in London which meant the last deadline was usually around 6 p.m. East Coast time. There was no need for me to stay up all night filing a story that would not have been looked at until the next morning. Sometimes I think I wrote best when I knew my editors were asleep and not hounding me for the piece.

My night owl persona disappeared when I had my twins. No baby allows a mother to sleep until 10 a.m. I began watching lots of ­morning shows. I began to dream about being on one of those ­morning shows. Early morning hours felt like peace, before the babies began fussing and the day’s work started. I came to understand why productive, type-A personalities liked to rise before dawn and head to the gym.

Which is all to say that on the morning in Austin, I woke up two hours earlier than I needed to—at 5 a.m.—and clicked onto a documentary on Bravo TV called First Position. It was about children who excelled in ballet, competing annually in New York for a rare spot at an elite ballet ...