Do you have enough time?

(Yes, you do.)

May 21, 2025

Quick note: Last chance to sign up for my next workshop to help you get out of a rut, deal with new circumstances or just pay more attention to your own life. The ‘What’s Next?” Session is online next Tuesday 27th May, and in person next Thursday 29th May, in Dublin 6. More details below.

Let’s talk about time.

Do you have much of it?

Does it follow you around like a lost puppy?

Do you chase it like a women after a sunset cocktail?

Time is something women have been given a lot more of in recent decades.

We have an extra couple of decades of life expectancy alongside opportunities to do other stuff than washing clothes. (I still remember my grandmother’s little back yard where the big metal wringer stood. She would spend one day every week - let’s read that again - ONE day EVERY week - washing clothes by hand, putting them through the wringer, hanging them out or in pulleys in the house, and then ironing them. Mostly those clothes belonged to others - her husband, her two daughters and her brother who never married).

Thankfully we now have washing machines (although I still seem to spend an inordinate amount of time on washing… 3 teenage daughter who wear something for 15 minutes before throwing it on top of the basket maybe - yes ON TOP of the lidded washing basket, because apparently lifting the lid is a step too far). We also have microwaves, air fryers, dishwashers, robot hoovers (my favourite child), and ready-made meals.

And yet, despite all these time-saving mechanisms, we have no time.

Oh we have time for work, and laundry and cleaning and picking up mayo on the way home, and running someone to their friend’s and picking up all the cups.

But time to think? Fuck no.

Time to have a (gasp!) “lazy morning”. Eh, what’s that?

Time to set aside real space to do something meaningful, purposeful or just fun for ourselves? Not so much.

But here’s what I see with my coaching, and what I try to be aware of in my own life.

Women are rubbish at making, or taking, the time for themselves. Now, before you start throwing things at me, please listen. I’ve written about so much (and am writing about in my new book) why this is the case.

It’s not because we are stupid.

It’s not because we don’t have the latest trendy time management technique down pat.

It’s not that we’re not utterly desperate for some meaningful or meandering time for ourselves.

It’s because we have been socially trained and culturally conditioned to

be busy
be really busy
be really busy for everything and everyone else FIRST.

So when c) happens alongside a) and b) then it just becomes a logistics equation because there are only 24 hours in the day (27464 if you are peri-menopausal and can’t sleep - there are still only 24, it just feels like there are 27464).

And when that is sustained for any significant length of time, it becomes the norm and women completely disconnect with what would actually entertain, nourish or develop them so they can’t even formulate what they would do if they did have a moment.

I had a client who had performed at peak productively (read: running around like a blue arsed fly) for literally decades. She had absolutely no concept of how to relax or just spend time dawdling for herself. There were lots of reasons behind this but now, in her 50’s, it was actually less necessary, but the slow, long boiling of her brain over the years meant the grooves of grind were very deep indeed.

So I asked her about peaks and troughs at work (because this is an easier place to start and practise than the domestic front which is so engrained it’s hard to climb out of the ruinous rut of relentlessly rigorous responsibility (sorry, I’m on an alliteration roll).

I asked her did her working year have flow of peaks and troughs. She’d never really thought about it but now she did, she confirmed yes. In fact she’d just had her really busy period preparing figures and now she - wait for it - “felt guilty” because it was the busy time for others in her team.

So she was now effectively in what I call, a trough. What did she do in this naturally occurring post-manic period? She just kept going at the pace because she didn’t know what else to do. So we began a process of figuring out what she’d like to do if she had some time. She had never really taken a lunchbreak so off she now went to do some meandering and Christmas shopping. She made a fuller list of things she might do if - and importantly, when - she created pockets of potential in her day.

So to become a time-traveller, a wickedly-happy witch doing things for yourself, the first thing to remember is to identify the things you actually want to do. And the second is to slot them in. In the priority list, maybe after the time-specific tasks like school pick, but before the third load of laundry. There will always be laundry. There will always be shit to sort. There will always be errands to run. Do your exercise class, read for half an hour, go for that walk, take time to mentally meander with a notebook or journal in a coffee shop - and then do the non-time-specific stuff.

Because when you don’t take the time, when you could make it / find it, you don’t fill your time with soul-nourishing rest or play, or learning and laughing. You fill it with more stuff. As I wrote here - everything and everyone will drain your time, unless you claim your time first.

There is always more stuff. I write here about stop having a To-Do list and start a Keeping-Doing list and change your energy - from hair-on-fire panic to meandering mood through what needs to be done.

It’s not always time we need - it can be space. A place to be. But we segment our day into periods of productivity. I know for me, if time for some reason floats away I have to quickly run through the list of things I’ve achieved, just to be worthy of my next exhale.

Last week on my writing retreat I found myself doing yoga at 10.09 instead of 6.30. Panicked I had “wasted the day” I had to quickly reassure myself that I had in fact been reading, writing, firefighting and online shopping since 6.30.

Old habits die hard, but I am practising as much as possible being tactical with my time:

Writing before working now.

Energising myself before emails.

Checking in before checking everyone else’s lists.

Most of the time. There are peak points of pressure, of course. But I am practising noticing the natural troughs, and then even creating some.

There is a line in the book The Colour Purple by Alice Walker that I read as a teenager and I remember it still. This young woman Celie, who had been through so much abuse and violence and terror living in the American south in the early 20th century, yet wrote “I don’t know how you can walk past the colour purple in nature and not thank God for being alive.”

Now I don’t believe in God per se, but I do believe in the goddess of mother nature and here’s what I know. You can’t notice the colour purple on your run or your walk or on your way to work when you’re in the time deficit of busyness: when you’re up in overwhelm; when you are shut down emotionally, mentally and psychologically.

Last week while away and was running and this beautiful burst of nature thrust itself out at me from the hedgerow. These gorgeous purple blossoms made me stop. I pulled out my EarPods where I was filling my head with world politics. They pulled me back and forced me to look around and appreciate that exact moment and take a deep inhale. Yes, I’ve got problems like everyone. Yes, I worry about paying the bills. Yes, I’m concerned about all the work that I’ve got to do, and if my daughter will be ok away on a language exchange, and how my other daughter is going to manage living on a budget, and how my other one is getting enough rest, and if I’ll ever be able to afford new carpets, and if I’ll ever find my version of a good relationship, and so many other To-Do’s and shoulds and worries, but in that moment as I ran past the colour purple, I knew that my life is good and okay.

I can’t do that when I’m too tired, or too overwhelmed. I have to take the time for me, amid the time-sucking busyness. Because there is always stuff and worries, but there is also always purple in nature. Or a sky. Or a sea. Or a dog chasing its tail. Or a smile as a passerby catches your eye.

So I know time is short. But so is life. Invest in yourself so you always notice the colour purple and remember that your time is as valid and important as your time spent on stuff.

I’d love to know what you’d create some time for, or dive into in a trough?

Let me know in the comments below. As always, for my paid subscribers, just email me and I’ll send you a little exercise to help with how to identify more time at alana@alanakirk.com

Do you have enough time?

(Yes, you do.)

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