Dear Sunday Sparker,
How do you ever find the time?
My husband sent me a reel of a young mother asking, “How do you ever find the time?”
She said she comes back from work, has dinner, and after bathing her daughter, she collapses into bed.
How do people go out at night?
Go to the gym?
How does anyone find time?
Her exact question was:
Do you have a magic pill?
How do you manage to do it all?
كيف بتلحقوا
I love that people tried to help.
There were hundreds of comments.
Many shared valid tips, but the way they were written was off-putting.
For example:
“Leave your phone, and you will find time.”
“You need a bit of organization, and you can do it.”
“Wake up early.”
And the not-so-helpful:
“I work and go to the gym and go out at night.”
Some said:
“Some women have helpers; they are not doing it all alone.”
Some comments were compassionate:
“Don’t be hard on yourself, you are doing your best.”
True.
True.
And true.
And I bet she is doing her best with the tools she has.
But if I were to comment on that woman’s reel, I would not start with advice or a personal success story.
I am not even sure she will listen to my advice.
I wonder: does she really want to find time, or is it just complaining into the void?
Sidebar
Ten years ago, when I started waking up early and sharing on my social media stories, I met some colleagues in the elevator who asked me how I was waking up so early.
I only nodded, smiled, and said something in the lines of:
“Oh, you’re seeing that?”
I did not answer because they were not really looking for an answer.
It was just a topic we could talk about while waiting for the elevator.
I wouldn’t share my why and my how with someone who is asking to fill some silence.
The Real Question
Let's go back to our friend and her question.
What I would do is first ask that woman how old her daughter is, because that makes so much difference in what I would say next.
If she told me her daughter is under 2 years old, I would say that while it’s a very precious season, it’s very demanding physically and emotionally, and the guilt levels are usually off the charts if you spend time away from your kid, in addition to the time you spend apart while you are at work.
Why did I choose age two?
Maybe your kid is three years old, and you still feel so challenged.
You define what challenging is. You define what season you are in.
Is your baby waking up at night all the time?
Is the sleep schedule still not predictable?
Herein lies the real challenge.
Rotating care-giving times with your partner so one of you can sleep in or do whatever you want is very important in this season.
“The baby only sleeps when I am around” is cute until it is not.
It will drain you if no one else can put the baby down for a nap.
As for you, the amazing, wonderful mother:
Your happiness impacts everyone in your household.
Are you happy?
Maybe you have not checked in with yourself for a while, so you don’t even know.
I have some guidance to gauge your happiness level:
How much discretionary time do you have every day?
The Studies About Time × Happiness
Discretionary time in a day is the time when you do things you WANT to do.
Watching TV.
Working out if you want.
Having a meal with someone you love.
Doing nothing.
It does not include things you HAVE to do.
Doctor appointments.
Driving kids to activities.
Replying to your email.
Studies showed that the number of discretionary hours we have in the day is linked to happiness in a reverse U shape, like a rainbow.
That means happiness levels flat out with too little and too much time at both ends the shape
How little?
If you consistently have less than two hours a day of whatever-you-want time, you will feel unhappy.
How much?
If you consistently have more than five hours of whatever-you-want time, you will also feel unhappy.
We all get why less free time makes us unhappy.
The pressure of it is exhausting without digging into the science.
But how come we become unhappy when we have too much free time?
The reason lies in our human nature.
We are meaning-making seekers, and we need our time to serve a purpose that is important to us and the community around us.
The Two-Hour Minimum
So let’s go back to the two-hour minimum.
It does not have to be two hours in a row.
It could be:
15 minutes of sipping coffee by the window.
A 30-minute walk after work.
30 minutes of a favorite show.
A good meal with a dear friend or partner.
The days add up.
And so does your happiness.
Remember, as Annie Dillard famously said:
“How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.”
But let’s face it:
That woman is right.
She does not have time to do it all in just 24 hours.
Not even close.
You don’t have time to:
work,
connect with your family and friends,
work out,
read,
watch your favorite show,
and work on a hobby or a side business you want to develop in one day.
So, how will you have time?
By expanding your time perception.
Look up from your day-to-day grind a bit and try to see your time in units of weeks instead.
In a week of 168 hours, you do have time to do it all.
You can block times for a workout on days when your partner takes care of the kid.
You can go out with your husband on the weekend to catch up and connect.
You can go do your hair on a weekend morning and see a friend afterward.
Take me as an example:
I have a monthly recurring appointment, and I make a ritual out of each of them.
One of them is my nail appointment, which is never just my nail appointment.
It’s getting coffee at my favorite place across the street from the nail salon and chatting with the nice staff.
It’s reading on my Kindle while doing my nails or catching up on my favorite series when my brain is not fresh enough.
It’s replying to pending DMs while I am getting my pedicure or placing some orders guilt-free, since I don’t like to be the person using my phone in public unless it’s urgent.
It’s visiting the recycling place afterward to drop off the paper waste I collected over the previous month, and then maybe going to Readers, my favorite bookshop, to check recent releases that have arrived in Jordan.
I make it a point to tell my husband not to call me during this 3-hour outing unless it’s an emergency.
I do not even commit to a time of return as I could have some other ideas or errands to run.
Plus, it is better for everybody when I schedule it right at the start of the fall season in my cycle when a wrong breath or an onion smell triggers me.
Intentionality about how we spend our time is key to happiness.
Yes, we can’t do it all in one day.
But we can do it all in one week or one month.
Look up from the daily to the weekly and monthly planning.
Book these activities that delight you in your calendar, like a breakfast date with a friend or a walk-and-talk meetup, then treat them as nonnegotiable.
Yes, I guarantee there will be guilt.
But I also guarantee you will get over it when you return home fulfilled by the connection time you had with your husband or girlfriends.
