Drop the Ball Instead of Trying to Do It All

When businesswoman Tiffany Dufu learned from her husband that her two children were able to get themselves ready for school when she was out of town, she had an epiphany: By taking care of everything yourself, you prevent other people from growing. Dufu also noticed that while she made it her mission in her professional life to promote women into leadership positions, she acted like a servile “Stepford wife” at home. She suffered from “home control disease” whereby she insisted, for example, that leftovers in the fridge be eaten in a particular order or that the towels be folded just so. For Dufu, “dropping the ball” – that is, “failing to take timely action” – was a sign of failure. Yet when...