Twenty Minutes Is the New Hour: The Ambitious Woman's Guide to Doing Less and Achieving More

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - An indispensable guide to help women reclaim hours in their day by overcoming the Four 4P's--People Pleasing, Procrastination, Perfectionism, and Padding--from the acclaimed author of The Myth of the Nice Girl.

"A liberating reframing of time in a culture that equates busyness with worth."--Jennifer B. Wallace, New York Times bestselling author of Mattering and Never Enough

Women often carry a different kind of time load--one that adds up in ways that aren't always visible but deeply felt. Often, these responsibilities cause us to fall prey to what Fran Hauser calls "The 4 P's"--people-pleasing, perfectionism, procrastination, and (time) padding. Whether it's saying yes when you know you don't have the bandwidth, rewriting an email for the tenth time, or sitting through meetings that go nowhere, these patterns chip away at our hours, leaving less time for what truly matters. But when we start paying attention to these habits, we begin to change our relationship with time.

In Twenty Minutes Is the New Hour, Hauser shows professional women how to embrace a "twenty-minute mindset" to create more time and space for themselves and their most meaningful work. This mindset helps us break free from the 4 P's, stop over-rotating and make progress in less time than we think we need.

Drawing on Hauser's decades of executive experience--and stories from successful women such as Sprinkles Founder Candace Nelson and Journalist Danielle Robay-- Twenty Minutes is the New Hour is equal parts accessible and actionable. You'll come away with important tools, including:

• The secret recipe for getting an effective meeting done in 20 minutes
• A messy action mindset to help you start (and keep going)
• Ways to streamline projects and negotiations that have become overly complex
• Frameworks for nailing high-stakes conversations without overthinking
• A simple weekly practice to create space on your calendar

Twenty Minutes Is the New Hour is the antidote to our always-on, overworked world and a fresh take on productivity. The goal isn't to do more. It's to focus on what matters--and feel good about how you're doing it.

Author: Fran Hauser
Publisher: Crown Currency
Published: 09/22/2026
Pages: 224
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.80lbs
Size: 8.65h x 5.72w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9798217087143


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 06/29/2026

About the Author
Fran Hauser is a leading career expert and vocal champion of women in the workplace, the owner of Bedford Books in Bedford, New York, and the author of The Myth of the Nice Girl. She has spoken at over 200 organizations, including Meta, Google, Unilever, Blackrock, NPR, Mastercard, and The Conference for Women. Fran's insights have appeared in media outlets including Fortune, CNBC, Fast Company, Elle, Refinery29, and Business Insider.