Girls are succeeding like never before. However, girls’ leadership organizations and experts have been seeing a worrying trend on the ground: Girls working so hard, often starting in middle school, to attain what everyone says is the gold star of life - college admission - are seeing their confidence stagnate and even plummet. How is this possible when, on paper, girls look like they can achieve anything?

To blame are the techniques girls are using to achieve.

Have you ever felt you were in the movie Ground Hog Day? You know that one where Bill Murray wakes up to relive the same day over and over and over again? That was me one year ago. I wasn’t just stuck in a rut or a hamster wheel. I felt I was tediously living each day repeatedly.

So I decided to drop the ball (many balls actually) on purpose to see where failing on purpose hurt or helped. I learned quite a few things in the process of trying to attain a more whole-hearted life.

Researchers asked 1,000 American consumers to name a famous woman in tech. Only 4% could do so. And of those?…1/4 named ‘Alexa’ and ‘Siri.’

The issue might not be so much about recognition of those women who sit at the top of tech, but the more significant problem of a shortage of female leaders overall.

Forget about recalling names, what keeps me up at night is the bigger question: How can you recognize female leadership if you aren’t exposed to it? Worse, how can my daughter be one if she can’t see one?

My daughter and I talk a lot about how important it is to "use social media to become a part of something bigger than yourself rather than making yourself bigger," to quote Rachel Simmons, author of Enough As She Is.

She understands she should avoid the 'I'm an object to be admired' posts.

After seeing her friend’s Instagram post, I didn’t want to talk about using social media responsibly. I wanted to talk about body positivity. Social media can be enemy number one in helping your daughter keep a healthy self-view. Especially when it comes to her friends.

Am I the lone voice in my daughter’s ears telling her it’s okay if she doesn’t want to pursue an interest in STEM?

Out here in sunny, tech-obsessed California, girls’ leadership often equals STEM (Science. Technology. Engineering. Math). Many parents look to STEM as the singular solution to the gnarly and complex problem of getting their girls into leadership positions, and this view always seemed limiting to me.

Thankfully, two new studies run by Google show that in order to be successful in technology you don't need to be a technologist.

Adam Grant says that leveraged well, procrastination can have powerful benefits like enhanced creativity and huge leaps in critical thinking.  This approach is especially good for unsolved tasks.

However, how should I explain this to my kids so that they don't feel they can continue allowing their rooms to look like bottoms of bird cages in the name of creativity?  How to ensure they don't start to believe forgetting or putting off projects and assignments is their ticket to intellectual brilliance?

The problem is that this isn't the kind of procrastination that's beneficial.  Procrastination only helps divergent thinking and incubation as long as you don't wait too long which, ironically, often happens when you are disorganized.

Goldilocks procrastination. That is the goal.