Who Thought This Was a Good Idea?: And Other Questions You Should Have Answers to When You Work in the White House

Persistence will get you far, and leaders have to champion the push.

Preparation is protection you can create for yourself; for some people, the hard part may be balancing precautions with paranoia, but in my experience, you can never be too prepared.

If I went through life cramming like every day was the SATs, it would be a miserable existence, but being in control and taking a beat to think about the next five steps—about what comes next—is critical. You would be surprised what five minutes here, 15 minutes there, can do to make you feel confident and ready.

There is no bigger compliment than being intellectually curious about what someone else spends his or her days doing—it turned out that not having the answers did me no harm.

A question women often ask one another is: “What do you do?” It may refer to a skin-care or exercise regimen, or a set of dietary restrictions, or how you manage to get out of the office with zero emails in your in-box, but I think the question—which basically boils down to “How do you live your life?”—is rarely posed out of nosiness. Maybe it’s ge

Jobs like this—the kind of job of which there are many, the kind that are definitely good but that no one teaches you to want—are found only with an open mind and a willingness to do your own thing.

That might be the difference between men and women: Women need to know they are right before they stand up. Men are OK objecting if they just think they might be right. I thought, but I didn’t know.