The Importance of Thinking Through Your Goals

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"This is purely a thought experiment. We'll talk about this in three months and see how it's working." "I'd want to know, you know, what you were willing to give up," she says of part-time work. "The social anxiety of not being around all the time ... I'd also want to make sure that you had thought through the kind of the social anxiety of Not Here All The Time?" 'She's reading your mind,' he adds. "'You have to give it a chance to work out' It will be very different for people who are used to having their career taken over by someone else.'"

There are a lot of reasons working part time might make sense: among them, you have more hours in the week to take care of kids or parents, take on freelance work, go back to school. But working part time can stall career advancement, and oftentimes women end up doing a full-time job for half the pay while taking on more responsibilities at home.

We speak with Linda Duxbury about the problems she’s seen some professional women run into when they work part time. She suggests factors to consider before reducing your hours and conversations that can smooth the transition. We also talk to an incredibly organized consultant and mother of three whose part-time schedule hasn’t kept her from getting promoted.

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