Making Every Year a Leap Year

Heather Cabot is a woman who knows a little something about multi-tasking. After 15 years as a broadcast journalist (including a stint co-anchoring the overnight and early morning network newscasts for ABC-TV), Heather became a mother to twins, moved to Los Angeles with her family, and launched her own business: The Well Mom, a space for moms to gain encouragement and advice on nurturing themselves, as they care for everyone else in their lives.  She still keeps her hands in broadcasting with the video reports she produces for Yahoo!.

I, on the other hand, am the woman who once received the ultimate insult from a PTA colleague, because I would rather focus on one thing at a time than work on several projects at once: "I've noticed you can't multi-task. You're practically a man that way."

To be fair to myself -- I believe I was declining yet another "opportunity" to volunteer even more of my limited time to one of that woman's many school improvement schemes. It's not that they weren't worthy -- I just hate making commitments I cannot fulfill, and I refuse to give away so much of my time that I don't have any left for myself. Call me selfish, but my family and I come first.

But that insult has always hurt - so I was anxious to chat with Heather to find out how she does it all.

What I discovered is that she isn't so much different from me -- or probably you, although her working days might be a bit more glamorous.

I caught her right after she finished a "satellite media tour," where she gets to appear on several local TV broadcasts from a studio here in Los Angeles (she does this monthly). She graciously agreed to an interview that would not result in any direct quotes, because my note-taking isn't fast enough to render them accurately. It was more of a chat between two busy moms, one of whom is getting a lot more done than the other.

We talked about her journey from anchorwoman to Internet editor and publisher. Like a lot of us moms, Heather did not have a roadmap pointing her in this direction after pregnancy. She had a touch of serendipity, as her husband was offered a fabulous job on the West Coast just as she was about to give birth to her twins. They moved to Santa Monica when the babies were just 10 weeks old, and after recovering (both from pregnancy and the shock of such a radical lifestyle change), she found herself trying to figure out what to do next.

Heather was experiencing what she calls an "identity shift" - that constant conflict between doing for your partner and kids and finding time for yourself. She noticed that she was not alone, and that this was something that a lot of women are embarrassd to talk about.

And that became the germ of the idea for her online publication. Thinking about the monthly well baby checkups performed by pediatricians during a child's first year, she named her new venture The Well Mom -- because mothers need some care and nurturing during that time, too.

Around the same time, Heather was approached by Yahoo! to serve as their Web Life editor. She describes herself as a consumer spokesperson who can tell people what's new and help make the web more accessible.

Heather says that by opening herself up to the possibilities, she managed to create a new career as a mother with the flexibility to schedule work engagements around the things that are truly important in her life. She works around the twins' schedule -- she turns off her Blackberry and tells her employers at Yahoo! not to book any engagememts during "family time."

She also takes time for herself and makes sure she gets her exercise every day.

Heather's Leap Day Tips can be found here. Want more? Sign up for Heather's weekly newsletter here.