She was recently enjoying a leisurely morning (a rare treat), still in her bathrobe and slippers as she prepared eggs for her 10-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter. The serenity was pierced when her daughter declared, “Mum, I have to be at school by seven.” Anderson was pacing herself for an 8.30am meeting, and while the announcement would have rattled many less composed souls, she swung into action, bundling her kids into the car with half-cooked toast and a travel toothbrush and toothpaste set from a recent flight.

Anderson arrived at her meeting on time, albeit with dishevelled hair and mismatched Christian Louboutin shoes – one black, one blue.

She chuckles at the anecdote, her ability to laugh at such situations pivotal in what she calls “the art of the dance” – without falling over.

Refusing to be weighed down by guilt, she says the secret to survival is to, “Have a sense of humour and do your best, but forgive yourself. It’s about personal best. We teach our children personal best and I think if you just try to replicate that in your own life, it works.”

It was during a previous struggle to squeeze in time for herself that Anderson realised making ‘‘me time’’ required creativity and flexibility. For two years, she woke at four o’clock every morning, exercised with a personal trainer and returned home by seven o’clock to wake her children for breakfast. “That was a real saviour for me,” she says. “If you’re feeling happy and energised, your children pick up on that and they’re happy. If we find ways to take care of mothers, then everything else works.”

It also helps to have a supportive partner and colleagues; Anderson is lucky enough to have both. Not that she shares every sprint to school and odd shoe incident with them. “I’m a pretty transparent person. For a while I thought, ‘I’ll share, there’s nothing to hide and that allows me to be real’. But do people understand? People are sympathetic, but everyone else has their own life, their own issues.”

MOTHER MANAGEMENT

Anna Itsiopoulos has plenty of yarns about nearly dropping a ball during the proverbial juggle. The most recent occurred when the central service operations general manager for MLC and NAB Wealth was rushing from the office to collect her 10-year-old daughter and seven-year-old son before the after-school hours care program finished. Itsiopoulos discovered she’d lost her car keys. Unable to contact her husband, she frantically retraced her steps to a bookshop and finally the bank where she had left them. “My husband [later] asked why I didn’t just get a taxi,” she says. “We just laughed about my reaction, because I absolutely panicked.”

Itsiopoulos agrees that a sense of humour is critical to making it work. “I find I’m laughing all the time at work, I have to,” she says. “I once said to my manager, ‘I laugh all the time, but that doesn’t mean everything’s OK’. Without a sense of humour, there’s no way you could do this.”

Ditto the wall planner her family swears by. Itsiopoulos travels to Sydney for a couple of days every second week, so she and her husband plan well in advance who’s dropping off the kids, picking up the kids and travelling mid-week. “That seems to work most of the time, but occasionally I get a text from my husband saying, ‘You’re picking up the kids,’ and I’m in Sydney!”

Thankfully, they both work for organisations that support a work/life balance (Itsiopoulos recently spent half a day with her daughter’s art class and her husband is always a marshal at their sporting activities). “Gone are the days where your success or your abilities were measured by how many hours you spent in the office,” she says. ‘‘It’s about the outcomes and everyone understands that.”

With that in mind, she is very conscious of the emotions felt by new mums returning from maternity leave. “It’s a really challenging time,” she says. “You feel that you’ve missed out on a year, you’re disconnected.”

She suggests working mums stick to a schedule and laugh. “Don’t expect that everything’s going to go right and be OK with that. And believe in yourself.”

BOOSTER SEAT

Janine Allis had three young sons when she founded the first Boost juice store. And while focusing on the creation of a juice bar empire paid off in spades as her business burgeoned, her absence from school fetes and canteen duty didn’t go unnoticed by the other mums. At a grade 6 function, other parents assumed she was new to the school, even though her son had been there since prep.

Allis’s sons are now aged from 13 to 20, and three-year-old Tahlia has joined the clan. “The beauty of having my own business means I’ve always had a toy box in my office and when I used to travel, I’d always take one [child], so I felt like I was having one-on-one time,” she says. “Most meetings were conducted with a child on my knee, or on the floor playing. I tried to incorporate it as much into my life as I physically could.”

However, she says this approach has its own complexities. “You’re not focusing on your work, so you’re not doing that well, you’re not focusing on your kids, so you’re not doing that well. Sometimes the pendulum gets completely out of whack.”

She believes a sense of humour is crucial, as is being comfortable with your decisions. “I was never a big one to wallow in guilt because I thought, ‘My children get to travel and have great one-on-one time with me.’ There were a lot of yins and yangs in the journey.”

She says working mothers shouldn’t feel guilty. “I open up a store in London and get really excited, but I get equal amounts of excitement from walking down the street holding my child’s hand. It doesn’t mean I’m a bad person because I don’t want to play with blocks more than once.”

Her advice for working mums is to remember their kids will be OK. “A happy woman makes a happy mother,” she says. “I truly believe that if you aren’t doing what your heart and soul wants to do, you’re going to be miserable. And if you’re going to be miserable, you’re going to be fake, and kids can pick it. If you’re always true to yourself, then in the end, it’s a win for everybody.”

I Don’t Know How She Does It opens today on general release.