Ninety-three percent of time management books were written by men. This is a problem, says self-improvement guru, Kendra Adachi.
In her recent book, The PLAN, Adachi advocates for an integrative approach to time management. While most (male) productivity writers view time as something to be controlled or mastered, Adachi views time differently. She recommends the pursuit of integration—of our intellect, emotions, and bodily cues—over measurable results. She worries that women— especially those who are mothers—are striving to implement strategies and achieve goals that aren’t built for them, for their bodies, their minds, or their work within their families.
Adachi’s New York Times best-selling book raises questions with important implications, both personally and societally. How do the daily lives of women differ from those of men? How might the language of production and optimization be causing undue stress and anxiety? And, finally, what might it look like to reject this modern framework altogether, in favor of something more in keeping with our nature—as women, but also as human persons?
The Productivity Paradigm Doesn’t Work for Most Women
In a conversation with Kate Phelan published by Fairer Disputations last month, theologian Rachel Coleman quoted radical feminist Barbara Katz Rothman: “Liberal feminism works best to defend women’s rights to be like men, to enter into men’s worlds, to work at men’s jobs for men’s pay, to have rights and privileges of men. But what of our rights as women?”
Indeed, men’s worlds and women’s worlds tend not to look the same. More women than men work as stay-at-home parents, and more working women than working men also function as primary caregivers (whether for children or elderly relatives). Even apart from the unique joys and challenges posed by caregiving, women of reproductive age find their days and weeks shaped by the emotional, psychological, and physical effects of their hormonal cycles.
Men experience a rise and fall in their testosterone levels over a 24-hour period. This physical predictability often shapes the advice of time management writers. On the other hand, women have hormonal cycles that tend to last between 21 and 35 days and which consist of four distinct periods: follicular, ovulatory, luteal, and menstrual. Although every woman is different, for many, these phases have a marked impact on everything from mood to energy levels. For example, the surge in estrogen and testosterone that women experience when ovulating can boost energy and increase self-confidence. This, therefore, could be a great time to complete a major project or attempt an intense workout. As the body prepares for menstruation, a woman who experiences characteristic fatigue can honor her body’s cues by seeking out more restful activities.
These fluctuations make women different from men, but they are not short-comings. Those who might be tempted to characterize them as such might take the opportunity to question how they have been formed by productivity culture’s tendency to reduce persons to how they perform and produce.
The results of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2023 Time Use Survey provide further insight into how sex relates to time management. The survey collected data from Americans employed outside of the home. On any given day, 48 percent of women who work for pay also engage in some kind of housework, compared to 22 percent of men. Women spend an average of 1.2 hours a day providing physical care for children (e.g. bathing, changing, feeding), while men spend an average of 34 minutes.
In general, women simply are not living their 24 given hours in the same way as men. In light of this, it is foolish for most women to expect the time management paradigms that work for their husbands, fathers and brothers to work for them. And yet, so many women continually make this mistake. In addition to limited data suggesting that women read more self-help books than men do, anecdotal data reveals that many women who spend their days caring for others struggle to categorize their work as meaningful, equipped as they are with the language of external, observable production. It is imprudent and unkind to hold oneself to standards of efficiency and productivity when engaged in care tasks, beset as they are by unpredictability, repetition, and the need simply to be present to others—even when there’s a long list of things to get done.
Women wiser and older than I have written about the importance of discipline, organization, and self-governance for mothers. I am neither experienced nor organized enough to counter this advice, which can be quite helpful. But I do think that this focus has the danger of pushing already harried, overwhelmed women further into a mire of self-criticism.
Much has been written, positive and negative, about the concept of the “mental load,” or the psychological toll caused by being responsible for behind-the-scenes work needed to run a household and care for a family (e.g. paying attention to the state of the kitchen, keeping track of when the kids need new shoes, calling family members on their birthdays). While this discussion can help illuminate certain aspects of being a mother today, I think it can also obscure one of the root issues.
Women aren’t necessarily struggling because they have more responsibilities from men, but because their responsibilities don’t fit neatly into a productivity paradigm. Tasks that involve caring for others typically cannot be neatly checked off a list. The dishes will need to be washed again tomorrow (or, rather, after the next meal). The children’s feet will continue to grow. Birthdays, shockingly, come around year after year. There is a need for a way of talking about care and work and time that recognizes the meaning in the continuous work of noticing and maintaining, as well as the more obvious successes of the office and the boardroom.
A Life of Limits
In his book Daily Rituals, writer Mason Curry examines the daily lives of artists. After receiving criticism for overwhelmingly featuring male artists in his first book, he wrote Daily Rituals: Women at Work, which focuses exclusively on female artists. Currey reveals a startling variety among in how female artists schedule their work—one that can provide women with inspiration and a sense of freedom in responding to the duty of the present moment. Science fiction novelist Octavia Butler strived to write something every day. Meanwhile, Nobel Laureate for literature Toni Morrison—who was the single mother of two children—revealed that she never had a regular writing schedule. She simply wrote as the needs of her children and the responsibilities of her life allowed.
In one of my favorite chapters of Currey’s book, he looks at the life of American horror writer Shirley Jackson (who also wrote Life Among the Savages, a very amusing autobiographical account of mothering small children in 1950s America). Although Jackson sometimes griped about the difficulty of reconciling her life as a writer with her life as a full-time homemaker, she seems “to have derived imaginative energy from the constraints” of this juggling act. He draws this description from Jackson’s biographer, Ruth Franklin: “Writing in the interstices, the hours between morning kindergarten and lunch, while a baby napped, or after the children had gone to bed demanded a discipline that suited her. She was constantly thinking of stories while cooking, cleaning, or doing just about anything else.”
These women were certainly busy, but many of them were very frank about their inability to “do it all.” They valued a well-kept house and a well-cooked meal, but they knew they were human beings with needs for sleep and for nourishment and for friendship, too. Take, for example, Madeleine L’Engle who wrote novels, essays, poetry and raised three children. In her four-part memoir, L’Engle describes what she called her “tired thirties,” when she was unable to write until after her children were in bed and often fell asleep with her head on the typewriter.
In general, writers of productivity books are very keen on eliminating distractions. But for mothers, such distractions seem almost unavoidable. Self-proclaimed “imperfectionist” Oliver Burkeman devotes a chapter of his most recent book, Meditations for Mortals, to the “importance of staying distractible.” He quotes C.S. Lewis: “The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life—the life God is sending one day by day.” For Burkeman, acknowledging our limits is the real key to doing good work and enjoying our lives. Only by recognizing our inability to do everything we’d like to do are we able to do what matters most. With the deep grooves of hustle culture impressed upon most of us, this isn’t as easy as it sounds. But it is worth working towards—for women and their daughters, yes, but for their husbands and sons too.
Fixating on productivity is not always healthy for men, either, even if the average man does fit the productivity “mold” better than does the average woman. For many men, especially those who take on the role of economic provider in their households, the relationship between production and worthiness goes unchallenged. But men, too, are persons—not just producers. Embracing a more humane approach to time management makes space for those men who don’t fit the mold, whether because of physical limitations, neurodivergence, or just a night of bad sleep. And it makes space for even the most productive men and women to find value in the meaningful inefficiency of spending time with the people they love.
Persons, Not Merely Producers
Human beings are story-telling creatures, and this is as apparent in productivity books as novels. Every set of time management tips implicitly tells us a story about what our days—our lives—are for. When we internalize these stories, it can be easy to think that our only purpose is achievement. In reality, though, there are many better stories, stories that tell us our lives have meaning, and that we can choose things that matter over things that are “efficient.” These alternative stories can help prevent feelings of beleaguerment and burnout. We might choose reading to our kids over baking bread. We might choose watching a movie with a spouse over finishing the dishes before going to bed. We might choose sleep over going to the gym. Keeping choice in mind helps to restore a sense of agency amidst the maelstrom of productivity culture.
Burkeman, the “imperfectionist” quoted above, also writes about the importance of emphasizing choice during seasons of overwhelm. Even when constrained by time, ability, or circumstance, we usually have a remarkable amount of choice when it comes to our daily tasks. He gives the common example of a mother who claims that she simply cannot rest at the day’s end until all the toys are put away. But of course, she is physically capable of resting while the Duplos are strewn across the carpet. She just prioritizes one thing over the other.
Being aware of how the expectations of our efficiency-obsessed culture are often incongruous with the biology, psychology, and daily activities of many women gives us the freedom not to berate ourselves when we struggle to meet them. You’re not failing when you sleep in during your luteal phase; you’re prioritizing rest according to your body’s needs. You’re not drowning because the laundry is never all folded at the same time; you’ve made the decision that something else matters to you more.
As Burkeman points out, we increasingly “experience the world as an endless series of things we must master, learn, or conquer.” We have become so accustomed to the frenetic feedback loop of pushing to achieve and then receiving praise for our achievement. But so much of what women do simply doesn’t fit that framework, and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise. Letting your toddler help when you’re making pancakes, putting aside your work to talk with a friend going through a difficult time, reading that picture book for the twentieth time: these things don’t make sense from the viewpoint of efficiency, but they make our lives so much richer and more beautiful.
The German philosopher Edith Stein wrote that “to cherish, guard, protect, nourish and advance growth is [woman’s] natural, maternal yearning.” These person-centric activities don’t fit easily into a framework of mastery. When women push back against the conventional time management wisdom and uphold the value of inefficiency for the sake of love, it not only helps them make peace with how they spend their days. It helps all of us to build a more human world.
