Review: No More 24/7 by Catherine Cowart Roe

A thorough guide to gaining your freedom as a dedicated business owner, No More 24/7: Entrepreneurs, Take Your Life Back by Catherine Cowart Roe is an invaluable resource for anyone who feels like they’re never truly off the clock.

Primarily focusing on the importance of running your own business without letting it overtake your life, this insightful guide touches on the most crucial aspects of entrepreneurial experience, from time management and delegation of responsibilities to self-care and mindfulness techniques, which gives the book the original pull of a self-help guide, rather than a by rote leadership or organization manual.

The book begins by outlining society’s collective shift towards being perpetually on-call, followed by the very real threats that this change poses to our cognitive functioning and capabilities. It then sagely argues that cognitive management is just as important as time management, and that structured scheduling keeps you accountable to your work commitments, while also offering the opportunity to decompress in your free time.

Grind culture, particularly since the stressful squeeze of Covid-19, has infiltrated our public consciousness, but its short-term benefits are greatly overshadowed by the long-term costs of burnout. Existing in perpetual hustle-mode may feel productive, but it can ultimately lead to resenting your chosen profession and passion projects, which can be disastrous for your loftiest goals. This book bluntly outlines these contemporary problems and the importance of setting realistic expectations, communicating clearly, pacing your time in healthy ways, determining the true definition of a “client emergency,” and learning how to distinguish value from personal capacity.

The author’s seamless blend of real-world anecdotes with personal development strategies is coupled with analyses of the most common fears that drive our behavior in professional settings. Whether that is overworking oneself, failing to prioritize happiness, or allowing insecurities to steer the proverbial ship, Roe offers customized advice on how to sidestep those pitfalls. Some chapters present familiar scenarios that readers will recognize, then goes on to break down what went wrong in each example, including mistakes from the author’s own career path, which offers some of the most instructive passages in the book. The chapters are intuitively ordered, with the lessons cumulatively building on top of each other, making this a book that can be returned to during essential steps of the entrepreneurial process.

On a technical level, some of the end-of-chapter summaries of practical tools seem a bit rudimentary or self-explanatory, and elements of the text don’t always offer information that isn’t provided in similar books on business management, though framing these issues in the context of entrepreneurship does make the book more specialized. Additionally, the author’s lens of experience is working as a CPA, but readers will come from a range of industries, so some of the nuanced and long-form passages regarding tax preparation can feel too niche for the broader intended audience.

Overall, however, the book covers the gamut of business obstacles, from the slippery slope of procrastination to the daunting climb of building a new client base, so despite some minor issues, the cumulative benefits of this start-to-finish companion are potentially game-changing, helping new and experienced entrepreneurs to avoid burning the candle at both ends.