Lynda Obst, the famed producer of such films as Sleepless in Seattle wept because the dinner she was trying to prepare was in a state of disaster, her guests were almost due and her husband refused to pick up the fish. When her friend, Nora Ephron, famous author of “Heartburn”, called and said “Lynda, what on earth is the matter?” Lynda told her and she snapped back ” Get a hold of yourself, Lynda. Call a delivery service to pick up the fish.” And that is the lesson we must all learn.

One of the most important strategies you will have to decide on, is one which will allow you to balance work and family in every aspect of your life.

A Women’s Chamber of Commerce Money and Power Conference, featured such luminaries as General Karen Rankin, Director of an Air Force Training Command; Lynda Obst, producer of such films as Sleepless in Seattle, Contact and Hope Floats; Liz Coker, a single mom with two kids who earned her GED at night school and launched Minco Technology Labs, now a $17 million dollar company, and Wendy Lopez; CEO of a Dallas engineering firm with annual billings of $5million and one of the 10 fastest growing Hispanic companies in the U.S.

What was the most pressing question on women’s minds that day, and what did most of the discussion eventually revolve around? Balancing work and family.

That’s right. It is a common misconception that as you rise up the professional ladder you escape some of the challenges which are common to all of us who wear many hats and juggle many chores: How to be two places at once? How to pick up your son at soccer when an emergency meeting comes up? How to get the dry cleaning when you’re watching the oven?

When Lynda Obst, the producer , related her story, which included how she had opened a cook book which, for her was like reading a treatise on nuclear physics, and told of Nora Ephron snapping her back to reality, she said as she looked back on it, she realized that was the kind of trade off she was going to continue to have to make. She began to invest in herself and her career by spending more money…. in the beginning almost as much as she made, getting other household chores accomplished. And only by doing that was she able to devote the time and energy to achieve her eventual success.

In addition to the burden of household duties, women also must overcome the burden of being exclusively responsible for “child rearing duties at home”. This is particularly tricky as most women are , by nature, more nurturing and more committed to caring for both children and elders. Men tend to not only assume this is “women’s work” but, perhaps unconsciously, turn their care giving side against women in the workplace by use of such clichés as “women are distracted by motherhood, not sufficiently committed to work, unable to travel or work over time”, all of which have been proved untrue by various studies, many of which have been conducted by Catalyst.

The fact is men don’t volunteer to share 1/2 the workload for children or elders and women must demand it. Working is a full time job. If both you and a spouse have full time careers, demand that you both do 1 1/2 jobs, instead of leaving the wife with what amounts to two full time jobs: full time work and full time parenting. Off load some of the domestic duties by determining to pay for more of them: pick up, delivery, dinners out, personal shoppers, ordering online, whatever it takes. Don’t accept; communicate, work it out, think of it as a challenge you must solve just as you do at work. Push your company, your industry, for more and better day care and elder care.

Whether it’s weighing the decision to opt for a delivery service, or choosing a childcare or eldercare provider, bringing balance to our lives is one of the central concerns of women. Since our work lives are constantly fluid and in motion, our challenges at home constantly shift and evolve. Women must learn to look, not for a solution, but for a process, a way of addressing these issues that we use over and over as each issue arises. Just as we weigh the pluses and minuses of each course of action in work, just as we perform a cost-benefit analysis on our work expenditures, we must learn to bring this level of concentration, focus and discipline to our decision making at home.

But perhaps Nora Ephron said it best: Call that delivery service! Have a housekeeper come in, even if it’s every other week. Call in a health care worker to help with elder parents. If you look around and take inventory of all the successful women you know, you will see that most of them have freed themselves from many of these chores so they, like Lynda Obst, have the time and energy to succeed.