How She Does It

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Sophie Vandebroek, Xerox's chief technology officer, in the company's offices in Rochester, New York.

"So many things we worry about," she understands now, "are not important."

Over time, with promotions and pay raises at work, she began to outsource more home responsibilities. She used to worry that hiring out every household task would set a bad example for her kids, but no more: Today, any time she can hire someone to do something that will give her more free time with the kids, she does it. Her 15-hour-a-week sitter handles the bulk of the laundry and the cooking. On her refrigerator hangs a two-page computer printout of grocery items, the sequence corresponding to the layout at the local grocery store. During the week, she and the kids check off what they need, and on Fridays a $10-an-hour high- school student does all the shopping.

Next to the kitchen sink hangs a bunch of bananas. To Vandebroek, it symbolizes the trade-offs of her outsourced life. Some weeks the bananas are too green; others, they're too brown. If she did the shopping herself, they might be perfect. Likewise, she'd do a better job than her housecleaners or her lawn-care crew. But timewise, it's not worth it. "I learned that the hard way when Bart died," she says. "So many things we worry about are not important."

On a monthly calendar in the kitchen, she and the kids all fill in their schedules. There's plenty of white space--reflecting her desire to keep their lives simple. Each child can participate in only one sport or after-school activity each season, to keep the family from spending all weekend running from one event to another. They don't watch regular television; instead, the children are big readers, and on Friday nights the family watches one Netflix movie together. Vacations are simple, too--usually skiing or camping. Many professionals plan such elaborate vacations, Vandebroek believes, that they actually take on stress when they should be relaxing.

Sophie and Bart, both engineers, had always embraced an efficient, rational approach to things. Now all the more so: Sophie keeps her hair relatively short to make the morning routine quicker. For work she dresses in basic pantsuits and scarves--though since her latest promotion, one Xerox executive has suggested that she wear brighter colors for client meetings.

To save time, she doesn't believe in niceties like sending Christmas cards or thank-you notes. She even tries to limit her friendships. "Don't maintain 50 friends--a handful of close ones will give you perhaps even more satisfaction," she tells colleagues. It's an attitude that can sound off-putting, but some find it inspirational. "She has fewer hang-ups about stuff that to me seems so important," says MIT professor Jesus del Alamo, a longtime friend who, with Vandebroek's encouragement, recently went cold turkey on Christmas cards himself. "Some of the strategies she has applied are so sound, so commonsense," he says. "She seems to have learned to delegate in an amazing way so she can carry this enormous load gracefully."

At the office, Vandebroek's routine is, if anything, more disciplined. She and her administrative assistant strictly limit her schedule to prevent the workday from spilling into family time. They won't plan meetings before 9 a.m. or after 5:30 p.m., allowing Vandebroek time to make the 12-minute commute and relieve the sitter by 6:30.

In meetings, she's a BlackBerry fiend; she was the second Xerox employee to carry the device, and she uses it so much she wears out the keys. "It saves me an hour a day of email," she says, citing it as a key example of using technology toward better balance. She and her sitter communicate mostly via text messaging. And though she checks email after 9 p.m., it's always from home. When Stephen Hoover, a vice president in charge of one of Xerox's research centers, sends her an evening email, he says she'll sometimes BlackBerry him back: "Oh my gosh, what are you doing at work? Go home--we can do this later."

When Vandebroek travels domestically, she avoids scheduling meetings before 10 a.m. and usually flies that morning, allowing her to limit most U.S. travel to day trips. In her last job, as Xerox's chief engineer, it wasn't unusual for her to go a month at a time without any overnight travel, says her sitter, Sarah Van Cor-Hosmer, a student who stays overnight when Vandebroek is on the road. The promotion to CTO changes that, at least for now: Looking over her schedule recently, Vandebroek noticed she'll be away 10 nights out of the next 30. "You always travel a lot when you take a new job," she says. "I have to be present in all of these divisions I lead as part of building the human fabric. Once you've worked with people and built up relationships, you can [manage] much more through the phone and through email."