I have a few extra thoughts on the four-hour work week before I shelve it, both figuratively and literally. At one point in the book he tells that story of the fisherman in Mexico and the Harvard MBA. You know the one. The Harvard MBA is on holiday in Mexico when, late one morning, he meets a fisherman on his way home. He asks the fisherman why he is knocking off so early, and... well, if you haven't heard it, here it is.

What Tim doesn't say in his book - he seems a smart guy, so I will assume he realises it in real life - is that you could easily substitute "Mexican fisherman" for "nine to five office worker" and "Harvard MBA" for "Tim Ferris". In the final chapter, he talks about what to fill your life with, now that "earn an income" isn't the only thing on your list. And he suggests you might want to live your life in service to others, and he suggests that you might want to take up full-time employment of a different (more meaningful) kind. Well and good. What he doesn't say - or at least not explicitly enough - is that you may already be doing everything you need to do, you just need to recognise it.

As someone who resents the drive to consume that underlies much of our culture, I would have a hard time following his business model - which is based around shipping product - without feeling like a hypocrite for most of my day. I'm not saying I couldn't find a way, I'm saying I may be better off finding a way to get paid directly for the life of service I aim to live, rather than shipping product in order to earn the income which frees my time to... live that life of service. I am, in effect, the Mexican fisherman in my relationship to Tim Ferris' book.

Am I glad I read it? Yes. Although I have ultimately rejected much of what he suggests I should do, it has helped clarify things to me. I can even recommend it, not to those who are satisfied with where their life is headed, of course (why would you even feel like picking it up?), or even to those who are truly just overflowing with genuine aspirations (although it is of some limited use in this situation, see for example my last post). If, however, you are in the process of re-evaluating your life, if you are thinking of changing directions, if you feel that you are trapped or stuck and there is no way out of the place you're now in (which, in the reality of the free world, is unlikely), then I recommend it. You may find it gives you the tools and the courage to shut off the constant buzz of your never-ending to-do list and to recognise and evaluate your options in the clear light of day.

Book review over, but I am still looking for comments, tips, advice on my previous post.

Edit: I have been wondering, since I wrote this a couple of hours ago, whether a personal crisis such as... I don't know... infertility? might aid in the process of focussing on things of value in one's life and breeding the courage to act on that focus. Hm.

I don't know if you've read The Four Hour Work Week. For most of the book, I thought the author was an egoistical freeloader with a limited sense of both social responsibility and depth of character who'd been fired from most employee positions he'd ever held. The last part is true - he has been fired from most employee positions he's ever held. Having read the last chapter, I'm not as sure of the first part as I used to be. Are you thinking of reading the book? Well, let me ask you a question he asks half way through to help you decide.

If you won a fortune in the lottery tomorrow, what would you do with your life after that? If the answer is, as with many people, "Turn up at the office, same as always," then you need not pick this book up. There. I saved you hours of your time. If the answer is (as with many people) that you would change everything, or at least a lot, then it may be worth a read.

I read it, not because I felt I would change a lot, but because I am feeling pushed for time lately. As such, I'm not sure I gained much. Yes, there is a chapter on efficiency, but much of it does not apply to parenting. Save time by limiting interruptions, he says? My entire purpose at present is to respond to interruptions. Ooh, there's another one - hang on.

Solved. Now. Where was I? Yes.

Here's a non-secret about parenthood I'll tell you for free: parents aren't busy because they have a lot to do. Parents are busy because it takes for-freaking-ever to do everything. And here's another non-secret, a kind of two-for-one deal: even if I do manage to skate through my errands and chores in record time, it doesn't free me to do whatever I want. It frees me to spend time hanging out with my children. And I have to pause here to emphasise that hanging out with my children is not something I consider an eternal punishment, but at the same time it doesn't get me any closer to completing my plans for world domination saving the dolphins. My reading list is getting longer, not shorter, and there's only so much to be done by batching or going on a low-information diet. Clearly, I have too many dreams for one day. Lately it is occurring to me that I have, really, too many for a lifetime, but that's a whole 'nother barrel of posts.

Right now, I want to focus on the fact that even a small gain is still a gain. Perhaps, at least, I can find a way back to semi-regular blogging, or commenting, or some such. Or reading Life From Scratch (hi Mel!) which is just one of the books on my ever-growing list. So here we go, and this is what I'm hoping you can help me with.

Focussing On Important Tasks
There is this whole bit about discarding unimportant tasks. I find that I am often sucked in to performing unimportant parenting tasks, and I want you to help me illuminate unimportance where I may have missed it so that I can deploy my energies more effectively.

For example, who dresses their children twice a day? Oh, uh, me too. I mean, yes, I dress The Prata Baby at least twice a day, because things would probably go awry if I tried to put him to bed in his kindy uniform, at least in the short term. In the long term, I'm sure he'd learn to rely less on pyjamas and more on other sleep cues to settle himself down, and there's really no other reason apart from social protocol that he can't sleep in what is, essentially, a T-shirt and pair of shorts, just like his pyjamas. As it is, I don't tend to go through pyjamas-then-day-clothes-then-kindy-uniform-then-day-clothes-again. On kindy days, he wears his kindy uniform ALL DAY. Do I dress the baby twice a day? Only if the first outfit gets ruined with some sort of bodily waste. She gets bathed and dressed, and that's it until the next bath. As for me, I sleep in my underwear. Saves dressing time, saves laundry time, just by eliminating a change of clothes each from our day.

What parenting stuff do you NOT do, that everyone else seems to, or that you are sometimes tempted to do?

Batching
Who cooks seven days a week? Yeah, um, me too. To be honest, I aim for three, double batches every time, with one takeaway night (courtesy of Mr Bea). In practice, I often find myself cooking more often than that, due to lack of forethought. I should forethink more, it could save me a bundle.

I have also started batching my paperwork. I was in the habit of paying bills the moment they arrived in my letterbox, then filing them immediately. I have recently started putting them away in a folder and sorting everything out together on Saturday. Overall, it's faster.

Then there's the laundry. I have to put a load on every day, otherwise I run out of drying space, not to mention children's attention spans. But whereas I was folding it three or four times a week, I am now experimenting with twice (once is not enough).

I have also started batching the dishes. Once a day now. The Prata Baby never would have stood for it, but it turns out Surprise Baby will. This may fluctuate with age.

Which domestic or parenting tasks do you batch - save up to do all at once - to improve efficiency?

Outsourcing
I continually fail to outsource. It's a common problem, and a common complaint, that nobody else seems to be up to scratch. On the other hand, Mr Bea's not actually incapable of looking after the kids for a while even without my micromanagement. What's the worst that could happen? (Don't answer that, especially not with anecdotes.)

The one place where I shine at outsourcing is with respect to cleaning floors and bathrooms. A year and a half ago I realised I was doing this myself on a Saturday morning whilst Mr Bea and The Prata Baby were at the park, and I was hating most of it. I told Mr Bea I would rather work Saturday mornings at my chosen profession whilst he went to the park with The Prata Baby, and use my earnings to pay someone to clean my house during the week, even if I made no financial gain by doing so. Turns out I was not only happier but financially better off. Nobody wants to work Saturday mornings, so I could hire myself out at a premium, then pay standard rates to my cleaner during the week. And damnit if they didn't do the job better than me. It's not that I can't clean floors or bathrooms as well as the next person, but I suffer from a severe lack of motivation. I really, really hate it.

Oh, and I have pretty much given up chopping my own meat.

Do you have any tips for avoiding household micromanagement and/or handing household tasks to outsiders?

They are my questions three. Even an extra hour a week would be welcome.

I was offered a copy of this book to review, and I said yes, because I just thought it was a top idea. There are two aims. The first is to help you explain your child's conception to them - a sort of alternative birds-and-bees talk - openly and at an early stage so they can grow up knowing they're just another type of normal. The second aim is to help explain to your older child what's going on in mum and dad's life as they try again.

I was especially impressed with the second aim. When my mother discovered a lump in her breast I was already in my mid-teens, and even my youngest sister was as old as nine, but I believe it when people say that all children, regardless of age or maturity, are affected by upheavals in the household, and I am firmly of the opinion that age-appropriate communication, rather than hushed whispers and inexplicable tears and outbursts, is the kindest way. And when I say "firmly of the opinion", I mean "let me try to think up a whole other sentence just to emphasise how much I believe that". In fact, I would even go so far as to add two sentences, just to be on the safe side. There.

The book tells the story of a particular family who are trying to conceive their second IVF child. There is a brief and simple explanation of IVF itself, but most of this short tale is devoted to life outside the petri dish - the reasons for the treatment, the daily injections and frequent appointments and blood tests. I love the way it portrays the usual feelings of IVF as normal and not-the-child's-fault, and I applaud the subtle suggestions it gives in terms of how to react, both of which things are woven neatly into the storyline. On one page, the teary mother is sad coming home from the clinic after her blood test, so the little girl tries to cheer her up by offering her a lollypop. On another page, there's a chance for Grandma - or other babysitter - to take the hint by helping the older child craft up a get well card for mum on EPU day. Very clever and constructive.

I did an email interview with Leah Bryan, the author, although this is not to leave out Sara Riches, who has illustrated beautifully. Both of them come from our side of the stirrups, with Sara being the proud mum of two IVF sons, and Leah being the proud mum of embryos and reader extraordinaire to foster kids.

Leah's inspiration came one morning, and when she investigated, she found a clear gap in the literary offerings. "There was one in America where the characters are bears and that's supposed to help explain IVF. I thought that just made it more complicated," she said. By setting the story in a plain old family of three, it's all straightforward.

She's also kept the details deliberately simple, so parents can start reading it early on, but intends it to be used as a foundation, so parents can add information as circumstances or agegroup require. "I think that IVF parents know all too well the details of an IVF cycle so I made the book as simple as possible to empower the parents to add in details such as ICSI, frozen cycles, assisted hatching, donor eggs or sperm - any additional details that apply to their family and they feel their child is ready to hear about. Equally they can skip over some of the words and make it even simpler if they want to."

The book contains an album section at the back, where you can add your own pictures, or someone else's pictures, if your clinic was too stingy to give you an embryo photo like mine was, because to be honest, they all look roughly the same at the six-cell stage anyway. This personalises it, of course, helping to continue the dialogue, and also makes it seem that bit more special for the child. "I imagine it could be used regularly as part of storytime from when the child is a baby so that they'll always know how wanted they were and how loved they are," says Leah.

The book won't, of course, cover the many nuances of each individual case, but as she explains, "It does introduce the subject of IVF and makes it easier for parents to continue talking about it. Even young children are good at understanding real versus pretend." If I have one criticism, it's this: I wish the family in the story had names. As a reader, I find it easier to separate myself from the fiction if the author hands me a character complete with identifying moniker. This is probably just my thing. In any case, I'm going to call the little girl Leah, after the author, and poof! the problem has gone away. I'm sure the real Leah wouldn't object. After all, she's the one that said, "IVF is a very special way to make babies who otherwise might not be here and that's something to be celebrated." Obviously a woman after my own heart.

The Baby Doctor is available from Nunhouse Press.