I know I’m heading into some sticky terrain with this, but lately I’ve been wondering if indeed women wouldn’t be better off if they had something equivalent to a “Red Tent” during those premenstrual days.

Many professional women I talk to say it’s definitely harder for them to be productive right before their periods, and so many men tend to blame a woman’s bad mood and other negative behaviors on her period.

I was joking around with a friend of mine recently that women should be given a day off each month to deal with PMS.

I was only kidding folks. For the most part, women are very productive even if they have PMS. Yes, women can run companies and even this nation during this time. I just want to make that clear. Many women believe we shouldn’t even be discussing this as a problem publicly because it’s one of many reasons women still don’t get respect in the workplace. What are your thoughts on this? Just suggesting that I wanted to write this blog post made many of my female colleagues uncomfortable.

But there is something to PMS impacting our work lives. The questions are — Is it real or perceived? How bad can it get?

I asked PMS expert Diana Taylor for her take.

Taylor is professor emerita at the School of Nursing at the University of California, San Francisco, and she’s also the author of “Taking Back the Month: A Personalized Solution for Managing PMS and Enhancing Your Health.”

“Not everything can be attributed to PMS…stress plays a major role in work-related problems. However, our stress response can be accelerated during the “premenstrual days,” she says.

It’s hard to know which came first, the chicken or the egg when it comes to PMS.

“In one study, about 15 percent of the women reported that relationship problems at work—such as increased conflicts, criticism, complaints, and rejection—increased the severity of their PMS. These findings were confirmed in my own research. It’s not just the communication problems with individual coworkers that are stressful to women with PMS. Often, the overall work environment can place an added strain on women during the premenstrual phase. Women with PMS often report being more sensitive to noise, temperature changes, odors, and non-verbal tension among coworkers or work groups. Conflicting demands from various managers or supervisors or a lack of control over how the work is performed can also be especially tough to take premenstrually. Not surprisingly, women often report increased stress due to excessive workloads or insufficient time to complete their work during this already difficult time in their menstrual cycles.”

So is it all in our heads, I asked her.

“There does seem to be some evidence for what we call the expectation-experience link which can create a perpetuating cycle: While women may come to expect premenstrual symptoms for a variety of reasons, their actual experience of symptoms can also come to influence their expectations. In other words, women who have premenstrual symptoms may come to anticipate their arrival each month and, hence, may perceive events around the time of menstruation as more stressful. And this heightened perception of stress may wind up exacerbating their symptoms and so on.”

She believes we need start thinking of women’s cycles in a much more positive light, and in turn that may diminish some of the negative feelings we associate with PMS. But good luck with that one. I think many of us women have gotten used to bitching about that time of the month. No?

If there is something to the claims that PMS does indeed impact our lives/work, what can be done about it on the part of women, employers?

“Women can read my book and incorporate the remedies which include easy to integrate strategies into busy lives. As for employers, both men and women workers would benefit from stress management strategies. At least the menstrual cycle is predictable…men don’t have the same predictable period of stress vulnerability. For women, tracking their stressful days whether it be premenstrual or on the weekend when they have additional domestic burdens. Rather than focusing only on the women, employers would be better off using some to the cognitive-behavioral stress reduction strategies for all their workers (and themselves).”

And what about a day off?

“Some women may want to disappear into the modern version of the ‘menstrual hut’ each month,” she explains. But, if you can’t build that hut, she adds, women can help themselves by managing their time better and anticipating the worst of PMS. And that means avoiding or postponing stressful events.

Oh, if it were only that easy.

When I was pregnant with my daughter many years ago, I was working for the worse boss I had ever had. He was vindictive, passive aggressive, and afraid of his own shadow — all the key characteristics you don’t want in a boss.

I loved what I was doing, but this guy made my life hell. Many nights were lost to bitching about this manager and at some point my husband and I decided I needed to make a change.

My ultimate goal had always been to write a book or two, and try my hand at freelancing and becoming my own boss, but it was always not the right time to take the plunge. Well, we decided to save my whole paycheck for the nine months I was pregnant and then consider whether I could actually start life as a freelancer once my daughter was born. The jerky boss was a great motivator for finally pushing my fears aside.

We ended up saving enough money that after my six-week maternity leave I made the happy walk into my boss’ office.

I told him I was not coming back to my job because I wanted to become a freelancer and take time to write my first book.

His response: “oh, I know, once women become moms the pull of the child is just too strong.”

I tried to reiterate that I was quitting to embark on a new career path for myself, but he kept doing the wink and nod, as if I was just kidding about my new direction.

I sat there thinking, should I tell this guy — “you’re a prick. That’s why I’m out of here bozo”?

But I restrained myself, opting to do the right thing for the sake of my future in journalism and for the sake of our civil society.

Women do not leave a job they love, that pays them a good wage and fulfills them just because the call of motherhood is tugging at them. I don’t care what Dr. Laura says.

They leave because they don’t like their job, or because their bosses suck, or because the opportunities suck, or because the pay sucks.

The latter, it turns out, is one of the biggest reasons, according to a new study to be released today.

The New York Times broke the story this morning about a Congressional study and research by economists that shows women are leaving the workplace in higher numbers because of the tough economy and it’s not for the reasons everyone has assumed.

Indeed, for the first time since the women’s movement came to life, an economic recovery has come and gone, and the percentage of women at work has fallen, not risen, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. Each of the seven previous recoveries since 1960 ended with a greater percentage of women at work than when it began.

When economists first started noticing this trend two or three years ago, many suggested that the pullback from paid employment was a matter of the women themselves deciding to stay home — to raise children or because their husbands were doing well or because, more than men, they felt committed to running their households.

It’s the money stupid.

After moving into virtually every occupation, women are being afflicted on a large scale by the same troubles as men: downturns, layoffs, outsourcing, stagnant wages or the discouraging prospect of an outright pay cut. And they are responding as men have, by dropping out or disappearing for a while.

“When we saw women starting to drop out in the early part of this decade, we thought it was the motherhood movement, women staying home to raise their kids,” Heather Boushey, a senior economist at the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, which did the Congressional study, said in an interview. “We did not think it was the economy, but when we looked into it, we realized that it was.”

I have long talked about how a good job, with bosses who are understanding of family issues, with opportunities for advancement, and that pays a fair wage, are the kinds of jobs most people don’t just check out of. You don’t need an HR experts to explain why there is low turnover in gigs like this.

Women are done a disservice if we all just assume they are leaving the workplace because they have a child. It’s clearly not the case for most women. Saying it diminishes the importance of changing the major negatives in today’s workplace — a growing disparity in pay among the rank and file and top executives, and the inflexibility when it comes to work-life balance.

And the occasional pricky boss of course.

There I was taking a hot yoga class when our instructor starts talking about the benefits of yoga. It was 6 a.m., and the instructor probably wasn’t totally awake. He said, “the practice of yoga helps your e-ternal organs.” He quickly corrected himself, saying he meant, “internal organs,” but I found myself laughing out loud at his faux pas.

You see, I’ve been working on a story for Business Week’s SmallBiz magazine about virtual worlds, and one of the key parts to the story are avatars, those cartoon depictions people create of themselves when they want to go into one of these virtual worlds.

When the instructor said “e-ternal” I pictured myself as my own avatar doing yoga with my e-ternal organs glowing or something. I laughed so much the other students were looking at me funny, so I felt compelled to tell the instructor after the class what got me going.

When I mentioned an avatar he looked at me like I had six heads. “What’s that?” he asked.

I went on to explain, a bit shocked that this sort-of-hip yoga guru had no idea what an avatar was.

I realized right then that we’re at a technological cross roads, a big one. Things are happening so fast, no one can really keep up with it all.

Avatars, LinkedIn, YouTube. If you’re not up on all this stuff you really need to start educating yourself.

I’m telling you folks, the work world is being transformed over and over again by technology day in and day out.

Even my own world of journalism has been altered beyond recognition in just a decade. Almost all the newspapers in the United States are firing workers as ad revenues for paper newspapers plummet; and almost every publication has a web presence. I surely could never have predicted this when I was working for a newspaper in Tampa, Florida, less than ten years ago when a weird, young editorial assistant sitting next to me was spending all his time writing about his love life on this new thing called a blog. And, I can’t believe I had no iPhone, no laptop. I was a tech dope.

Recently, my intern Katherine became a tech tutor to her mother, who is reentering the Corporate workforce after years of staying home with her kids.

It’s an odd situation to have your child teach you something, so I’m proud of Katherine’s mom for putting aside her ego and taping into her kid’s brain to help her own career.

Here’s Katherine’s take on how it went:

It’s 2pm on a Wednesday, the day before my mother starts her new job, and I, the child, am trying to teach her, the parent, about computers.

It’s been at least eight years since she has stepped foot into the corporate world, so we just want to make sure she is familiar with a few basics before she goes to work.

It’s not that she has never used a computer before (quite the opposite actually, she uses one every day). However, she only uses the computer for two things: to access the internet and to write.

In fact, to her, the computer is “a fancy typewriter.” It’s just “one that doesn’t need whiteout,” she says.

Since she doesn’t really use programs other than Microsoft Word, we’re going over things like Excel and PowerPoint. I guess you could say that I’m broadening her horizons.

Instead of jumping into the programs first, we end up browsing the web and land on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn. I’m fairly certain she knew about these already, but now she has a more intimate knowledge of them.

After the social networking sites, we somehow end up on YouTube.com looking at a Gatorade ad. We also talk about hyperlinks and embedding things.

I feel that this is at least semi-relevant seeing as she is in the marketing and communications arena. Admittedly, the search for my brother on YouTube.com was not so relevant.

We finally get to Excel and PowerPoint, but have to get through them quickly.

First we go into Excel, where we make a table with bogus data and I demonstrate how to put formulas in place.

Surprisingly, we finish the tables, the formulas and the charts without a problem. We even put the charts on different sheets and give each a special name.

Just when I think it’s going well, she says “what about making the cells wider or narrower?” The word “seriously” may have escaped my lips.

I keep forgetting that she did not grow up with computers like I did.

After we go over the basic things I skipped, she seems less intimidated by Excel. I wouldn’t go as far as to say she is comfortable with it yet, but she’s getting there.

PowerPoint goes much quicker and simpler. We basically just discuss how to insert a new slide and format each one differently.

I know we are done when she says that she’ll figure out the rest if necessary.

Even though we didn’t get to touch on Publisher or other things, I think, or at least I hope, the poorly-taught tutoring session helped.

Now, if I can get her to stop calling a laptop a portable, then we’ll really be on the right track.

A portable. Remember calling it that? You know, I have no problem with her mom calling it a portable or an electronic box for that matter. At least she’s trying to learn what she can to keep up with it all.

Everyday we’ll learn new things. My column this week on MSNBC.com is about all these social networking sites and how the heck to figure out which one you need to be part of to further your career. I even learned a lot doing the piece. I learned a lot of this stuff is crap, but a lot of it isn’t.

That’s a scary proposition. What if you miss out on the important stuff and get mired in the crap?

But that’s sort of how life works. Every day we have to reassess what’s working for us and what’s not. That’s not a bad thing, right? Let’s look at it as an adventure, and also reach out for help to anyone we think can help — our daughters, our friends, our spouses, and me. Send me email anytime at telleve@gmail.com, and if I can’t answer your question I’ll find someone who can. You may even teach me something.

I’m sure, even in cyberspace, a digital Lewis and Clark expedition would still need a Sacagawea avatar.

So there I was sitting with two happy couples for a taping of the the Donny Deutsch show, “The Big Idea”, on CNBC that airs tonight.

I mention that these couples are happy because it’s surprising that they are.

Why? They’re not only married, they are also business partners. I know what you’re thinking - because everyone thinks this – how the hell are they able to be partners in love and in business?

Well, these entrepreneurs are the oddballs. And I said that on the show. (Yes, I’ll be on the show tonight; that is, if the editors don’t cut me out. Which is possible, so don’t be disappointed if you stay up until 10 p.m.. EST and CareerDiva isn’t there.)

I was on the show to offer my counter view to their success.

Maybe some of you couples out are considering going into business with your spouse because the economy is tough right now and you may end up on the corporate trash heap. But think long and hard folks before you share your bed and your company with one person.

Here are the five things that can go wrong:
1. Marriage and business both go belly up. You could end up losing your marriage and business because many marriages just can’t take major financial upheaval, which is what happens when starting any business.
2. Kiss romance goodbye. Many couples say they get sick of being together day in and day out. Even the most lovie-dovie couples need some time alone in order to keep the passion burning.
3. Dining room becomes the boardroom. The lines between homelife and worklife are blurred. There is no way around it, you’re going to be bringing your company woes home with you and vice versa. Right now, when I’m bitching too much about my business, my husband slaps me around and reminds me I need a personal life. Who will be there to slap you around if your partner is also bitching about the same company?
4. “I can’t believe you said that.” Talk about hurt feelings! Try telling your spouse they screwed up, or made a wrong business decision.
5. Battle of the sexes. If you never resolved the who’s-the-boss issue at home get ready for all out war at work. One of the reasons my mom and dad couldn’t make a go of running a business together was because my father saw himself as the king of his household, and that translated into him being the king of the business, even when my mom had good ideas because she really was the one who understood the retail business they started. Now my mother’s advice is always, “never with your husband.”

If you watch the show tonight you’ll hear some of how the couples that made a go at partnership made it work. They were the two cutest couples, totally friends, lovers and great business partners. Cricket and Brian Allen, the owners of Bot, a fortified water business. And Sandra and Kym Yancey, owners of eWomen Network, a national networking website.

But again, these are the oddballs.

Here’s a good example of why Cricket and Brian are successful at melding love and company:

I was in the Green room waiting to go on the show, and just before we went into the studio Cricket turned to Brian and said, “did you eat your sandwich?” He turned to her with a genuine smile on his face and yes, “yes, I did.” He was so grateful his wife was thinking of him.

OK, if I did that to my husband, this would be his response: “I’m not Cheiron.” Cheiron is my six-year-old son.

Do you see my point? If not, I will explain it to you. When two partners work together to make a business grow they have to say mean things, critical things to each other often. They can’t take things personally and they have to look at the criticism or advice as constructive and for the good of the business.

Most couples get emotional with each other. That’s not a bad thing. It’s just reality.

You have to leave you emotions and the constant business talk at the company door, don’t take it to work and don’t replay it at home.

Can you do that with your spouse? When’s the last time you guys had an argument? What was it about? Imagine now that you were really angry at your spouse but when the alarm went off in the morning you had to head to an office or factory together and focus on working together in harmony all day.

If this doesn’t worry you, go ahead. Start a mom and pop. I dare you.

Three-year-old sunflower seeds. Sweetarts. An overflowing, yet useless bulletin board. Piles of papers and folders from past projects.

If you guys missed it, here’s a link to my column on MSNBC.com this week where I share my own story of disorganization and how an expert saved me from drowning in the white hole that was my desk.

I actually had a professional organizer come in and help me organize the piles of stuff, just days after an avalanche of my stuff spilled over onto my husband Andy’s desk. (One reader calls this a “crapalanche.”)

I was writing a column on clutter and talking to all these experts, so I figured, hey, “why not have one of them help me.”

I got lots of mail after this story about my desk appeared on MSNBC.com and most of it was about how no one believed I’d be able to keep the organization going.

Shelley wrote:

I hope you will do a follow-up at some point, to let your reader’s know how it ‘took’ longer-term, and maybe ask your organizer how to cope with or conquer those types of emotions.

And on Newsvine some meanie wrote:

What is truly pathetic is that a ‘professional organizer’ had to be enlisted to clean up what looks like about three square feet of desk space. I mean that’s lazy! I am the farthest thing from a neat freak but 3-year-old food where I am working? How could this person be giving career advice? My advice? Get a bigger desk. But I bet it’s gonna look like the ‘before’ picture again within days.

That’s hitting below the sloppy belt. Anyway, it inspired me to show everyone, including myself, I can stay neat.

To prove it I will be taking a photo of my desk periodically and sharing it with you guys. Maybe we can rate my desk’s mess ratio, from one to five.

Readers often ask me to help them figure out what type of job or profession they should pursue. Lately, this question has come up even more frequently as people lose their jobs, or feel the ax is near, and figure this is a good time to go into a career they can really love.

I wish I had a career crystal ball so I could tell all of you what path you should follow when you’re ready to change careers, or just out of school wondering what to do with the rest of your life.

I don’t.

While individuals have to do this career homework themselves, there are tools out there to help you narrow your search.

I’m not adverse to personality and career tests. There are pitfalls, and I’ve written about those in the past. But overall, they can give you a good starting off point.

Today, I decided to take a couple of tests myself to see what type of job may suit my personality. Don’t worry, I’m not giving up my day job. I was just curious and figured it might help all of you to see if my results are on target or not. I’ve also asked my intern, Katherine, to take both tests. This will give us a good gauge of what these tests come up with for two people at very different points in their careers, one established, the other trying to figure out what the heck she should do.

I decided to Google “career test”.

The first site I came up with was something called SimilarMinds.

The test was short and sweet and here’s what it came up with for me:

You are an Inspirer, possible professions include - conference planner, speech pathologist, HR development trainer, ombudsman, clergy, journalist, newscaster, career counselor, housing director, character actor, marketing consultant, musician/composer, artist, information-graphics designer, human resource manager, merchandise planner, advertising account manager, dietitian/nutritionist, speech pathologist, massage therapist, editor/art director.

You all probably noticed that “journalist” is included it the types of jobs that would work for my personality. But so are “speech pathologist” and “clergy.”

Here’s Katherine’s results:

Guardian, possible professions include - counseling, ministry, library work, nursing , secretarial, curators, bookkeepers, dental hygienists, computer operator, personnel administrator, paralegal, real estate agent, artist, interior decorator, retail owner, musician, elementary school teacher, physical therapist, nurse, social worker, personnel counselor, alcohol/drug counselor.

This tests seems to me to be a bit like what you’d get from a fortune teller at a carnival. They usually tell you things that a broad and far reaching, and hope you jump on one something they say that applies to your life.

I’m not sure what you really get out of something like this.

I decided to do another test that had a bit more meat behind it, so I asked Juliet Wehr Jones of career counseling website CareerKey what she suggested, and she sent me The Career Key test.

This test costs about $10 to take and it’s much more elaborate and includes many more questions.

I scored highest on in the “Artistic” category with “Social” right behind. And I was able to be a bit more proactive with this test picking the types of jobs I would like so “poet,” “editorial writer,” and “bartender” were all on my list. That works for me.

Katherine scored highest in the “Social” category and these are the jobs that were most suited for her, according to the test:

Clinical or Counseling Psychologist
Counselor
Social Worker
Licensed Practical Nurse
College Teacher
Fitness Worker

So, what did we get out of these tests. I pretty much figured out I’m doing what I should be doing. But if I ever decide to make a change, I may open up a bar.

Katherine says she got more out of the Career Key test. “That technically I should be some kind of counselor. I think there’s a little bit to it.”

But, she adds, “real estate agent. Never. Just no.”

And, “if I was a nurse I’d probably kill somebody or something. Like ‘oops, wrong medicine. Sorry.’”

The one thing I would caution is that a bad test could actually do more harm than good at a time when you might be vulnerable and trying to figure out what your next step should be.

Lawrence K. Jones and Juliet Wehr Jones, both of Career Key, offered these tips for people wondering how to choose the right test:

* Consider taking a high quality career interest inventory. The best valid interest inventory will do four things: help you understand yourself better, match you with careers that are likely to lead to satisfaction and success, suggest careers you had not thought of, and give you comprehensive information about each one. Through this process, you learn about yourself, the pros and cons of each job option, which helps you make a successful career decision.

* For a serious career decision, choose a serious, valid test. Quizzes, games, sorters, profilers, and finders that assess and match you with jobs are all career tests. To be helpful, they must be valid measures. But few of them are. For a test to be “valid,” there must be published, scientific evidence that it measures, in fact, what the author claims it measures. If you want accurate information about yourself and job options that fit you, take a valid test.

* Make sure the test website contains information about the test’s validity. It should mention specific studies or offer a professional manual you can see. A manual will describe validity studies. If no such information is available, avoid using it.

* Look beyond credentials, links, and endorsements. A Ph.D.’s endorsement or authorship does not make a test valid; anyone, with or without a Ph.D. can create an invalid career test. Links from schools, government and professional organizations are well-intentioned, but often unreliable.

* Seek the help of a professionally trained career counselor who recognizes the importance of test validity. They can help you choose the right test and help you interpret your results. The National Career Development Association, www.ncda.org, provides helpful consumer guidelines on selecting a counselor and CounselorFind of the National Board of Certified Counselors, www.nbcc.org, can help you find a certified counselor near you.

But the bottom line is, no test will ever tell you what you should be doing with your life.

If you rely on any one test, or any one person to make such decisions you might as well just invest in a crystal ball.

Well, I can’t say I didn’t look at email on my iPhone at all this past weekend. But I did limit my e-glances to only one or two a day.

And guess what? The headache I had for two weeks has disappeared.

I wonder how much my little mobile menace was contributing to my head pain.

We decided to take a mini vacation and take Monday off. I spent a few lazy days with my husband, kids and friends on the sandy beach, while listening to the intoxicating sounds of the waves crashing on the surf. That must have done a bit to help. But not sitting in front of a computer or constantly checking email must have also done the trick.

It’s hard for me to unhook myself. I admit it.

For a moment this weekend I wondered what was life like before email and the Internet. Could you survive today without it?

Yes. It is possible.

About 20 million Americans have never sent an email. I’m not kidding folks.

These are the findings of a technology survey by research company Park Associates.

It’s hard to imagine never having sent an email. It sort of sounds liberating, no?

Anyway, this technological abyss exposed in the survey has a lot to do with the digital divide in this country. Age and income levels play a big role in the reason these individuals haven’t sent email, or surfed the Web for that matter.

“Internet connections have slowly increased in U.S. households, but getting the disconnected minority online will continue to be difficult,” says John Barrett, director of research at Parks Associates. “Age and economics are important factors, but the heart of the challenge is deeper. Many people just don’t see a reason to use computers and do not associate technology with the needs and demands of their daily lives.”

I can’t help but think, for a second, that ignorance is bliss in this regard.

I know, we need email, right? But, surely, we can go through a day or two cyber free.

“Frankly Eve, I’m worried about your bandwidth.”

This statement came from my editor at MSNBC.com recently. He told me this after I asked him to give me two or three additional assignments each month. With gas and prices for just about everything else so high, I’ve been feeling pressure to make some extra money lately.

When he made his “bandwidth” statement I didn’t know what the heck he was talking about. I said, “What do you mean?”

He went on to tell me he was worried that maybe I was taking on too much work and didn’t know if I could handle more. With a weekly column and small business blog at MSNBC.com, and all the other freelance work he knows that I do for BusinessWeek’s SmallBiz magazine and New York Times, plus working on a proposal for my next book, he was reluctant to give me more.

I insisted and he eventually relented.

When I got off the phone I thought: “Great. More work.”

But a day or two later I was working on a freelance assignment, and I couldn’t remember where I put a critical report I had printed out just hours earlier. My desk has become a sea of clutter lately and I was pulling my hair out trying to find it. Then I realized I had forgotten to RSVP for a six-year-old pool birthday party that my son Cheiron was invited to. And, even though it was midday, I was yawning so much I had to have a second cup of coffee. (My limit is usually one.)

Just as I was making another cup of Joe I heard the words of my editor: “I’m worried about your bandwidth.” And suddenly that statement became crystal clear in my head.

I was indeed using up my bandwidth, a bandwidth I always thought was limitless.

There are some issues here. I decided to take on more work at a time when I’ve become rather unorganized. I have no real system for tracking my work and my desk looks like a bomb went off. There’s a bag of nuts on my desk from 2004.

Any way, I ‘m getting some help with my desk. I will be writing about this for a MSNBC.com column in two weeks.

As for surpassing my bandwidth reserve, I’m still not sure that’s really happened.

I decided to ask Cali Williams Yost, fellow blogger and founder of Work+Life Fit, and author of “Work+Life: Finding the Fit That’s Right for You” what the working-to-much warning signs are. Here’s her list:

1. Consistently missing deadlines for priority work.
2. Noticing that you are making more mistakes than usual (we all make mistakes but the rate is higher).
3. You find you don’t have enough time to concentrate, and focus in order to do your job well.
4. You are feeling more tired at the end of the day.
5. This doesn’t seem to be a discrete period of extra work, it seems to have no end.

She also had some interesting insights on what exactly is too much work.

“I find many people still define it as whether or not they are able to get everything done on their ‘to do’ list,” she explains. “I’m not sure how realistic that definition is in a 24/7, high-tech, global work reality where emails keep coming in day and night and business is conducted across the global.”

A more “realistic gauge,” she adds, “is whether or not you are able to get the priority tasks and responsibilities done in a quality, non-frantic way. How you know you are taking on too much work is when too many things become a priority and the pace at which you need to work to complete those tasks is unmanageable, exhausting and jeopardizing the quality of the work.”

And I didn’t ask her for tips but thank goodness she offered them anyway:

* Sit down with you manager and team (or with yourself if you are an entrepreneur) and ask for help reprioritizing. I’ve found oftentimes managers and team members are unaware when a colleague’s plate becomes too full. Putting your head-down and just toughing it out no longer works today’s world. You need to say something.
* Rethink your planning and technology management system. Are you letting email and voicemail control you, or are you controlling it so you aren’t distracted and can focus? Are you taking the time either daily or weekly to think about what you need to a want to accomplish at work and in your personal life? Gone are the days when we can just let the day “happen.”

Boy, she’s not kidding.

Are you guys doing too much? Have you checked your bandwidth lately?

There’s an essay in the New York Times magazine today on how the “New Deal” is never coming back.

The author, a Democrat, puts out a challenge to his party — Come up with a plan to replace the “New Deal”.

The New Deal, which spawned Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and a pact between business and government: “Business, you provide a living wage and benefits, and government, you fill in the gaps with programs to help those who fall through the gaps.”

The author, Dalton Conley, puts it more eloquently:

Government and big business had an understanding, famously embodied by the line, “What’s good for the country is good for General Motors, and vice versa.” Employers, in turn, agreed to pay their (male) employees a living wage and provide generous benefits. Men, in turn, had an obligation to provide for their dependents. To complete the sequence, the state would step in if any of these links broke down by providing a minimal level of support in the case of unemployment, death, desertion or disability.

Conley makes some good points about providing new systems where people can become part of a pool and buy affordable health insurance, and creating savings incentives.

But alas Conley does not tackle what is probably the biggest problem in our economic structure today, the demise of a living wage.

Wages in this country have been stagnant. Jobs that once paid a good wage, where workers could have a solid middle class life and send their kids to college are disappearing. All the major U.S. automakers are laying off or offering buyouts to huge chucks of their workforces so they can replace them with employees who will work for half the money. And large retailers, such as Circuit City, a recent example, are showing veteran workers the door so they can also fill their jobs with people that will take less.

Last night, I was talking with my neighbor who told us his dad — who without a college education, worked for AT&T as a telephone repair man — and his mom — who was a stay-at-home mom — where able to raise seven kids and provide for them without ever getting help from the government.

Is that possible today?

Paying someone a fair salary will go a long way in providing for the nation’s middle class. We can have endless programs to fill in the gaps, but how will they work if the gaps are like black holes able to consume a whole segment of the population that once hoped it could fend for itself if only they were paid enough.

Workers in the private sector should be crossing their fingers right about now. A bill just passed in the House to give federal employees four weeks off paid when they have a child or adopt.

The bill was introduced by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), Steny H. Hoyer (D-MD), and Tom Davis (R-VA), and it now goes to the Senate where Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), much talked about as a possible running mate for Obama, is sponsoring the bill.

If enacted it could become a template for the nation’s workforce at large.

“The federal government may refer to its leave policies as ‘family-friendly,’ but the reality is that it’s forcing many of its employees to choose between their paycheck and their new child,” says Rep. Maloney. “As the nation’s largest employer, the federal government should be setting a national standard with workplace policies that are truly family-friendly. If President Bush supports family values, he will reevaluate his misguided veto threat of this important legislation.”

I’ve written about the paid family leave debate going on right now in this country. As you can imagine, many businesses are fighting these proposals because they fear it will impact there businesses negatively.

I’m admittedly torn about this issue. Paid leave would be a great benefit for workers who are struggling to care for family and stay productive at work. But businesses, small firms in particular, could find themselves short handed when workers take advantage of what could be a future perk. I write about this conflict today in my MSNBC.com smallbiz blog.

Unfortunately, the realities of life come and bite us on the ass too often. Where family is concerned, we have to give all our priorities. I’m not talking about being there for a soccer game, or having tea with a parent. I’m talking about needing time to care for a loved one who’s sick, or who has just come into the world.

Too many workers don’t have the luxury of taking time off unpaid, or quitting their jobs to become stay-at-home parents. Some workers would face financial ruin at a time when they need to be strong and help a family member.