The 27-Hour Day

Lauren Garrett's New York City-based company, The 27-Hour Day, which consists of a podcast and a blog, is all about how to do more with less time and more efficiency, especially for the modern woman who wants to do it all. efficiency. In developing strategies, she has a "hack" to fix almost any situation. In following her own advice, Lauren devotes whatever time she saves from her strategies to further developing her brand. To move her company to the next level, she is pinning her prospects on a meeting with the guru in the business, Barbara Davrow, hoping Ms. Davrow will invite her along on her new speaking tour. Without giving a definite as to any future they may have, Barbara instead infers that Lauren must find a healthier work/personal-life balance; her personal life is virtually nonexistent. Following Barbara's advice to secure that speaking-tour spot, Lauren, out of her many options to find how to discover how to achieve that personal life, decides to attend Meadowlawn, a week-long retreat in rural Montana run by the Wests: long-widowed mother Sally and her two adult offspring, Jack and Ayla. While she knows the retreat does not allow guests access to electronic devices, she learns that this extends to no watches, to provide one the sense of freedom devoid of time constraints. But however slowly she settles into doing this for herself, Lauren could find that she likes her new freedom, which might also provide her with those opportunities with Barbara that she had so coveted which would take away from her time. She also hopes to fill that personal life with Jack, who is similar to her in doing things for his mother and sister in taking over for his late father, such measures as a planned expansion of the retreat for which Jack had long dropped out of veterinary school on which to focus his life.—Huggo