# [Re-Design Your Life: A Softly Wired Journal](https://softlywired.substack.com/)

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Redesign and curate your life - softly. A quiet journal for ND mothers and creatives learning how to live without burning themselves away.

# Are we really time poor?

### Week 1: Redesigning Life

[Amy Holistically](https://substack.com/@amyholistically)

Feb 08, 2026

It’s February. Already.

A snapshot of the first week of Feb: learning to crochet, the skateboard comp, a bit of DIY happening, chores with the kids + a biz meeting for Wake Up to Wellness,

I stg a week ago it was Christmas, and yet somehow time has (again) elusively skipped by me. Maybe it’s a chronic, and extreme, case of time blindness?

More likely, it’s the fact that I have been _still_ fucking around, repeating the same habits and patterns for the past month even though I know, I KNOW that I need to re-design things in my life.

Not a full burn it down and start again, but more like a _let’s fine tune this now so that we don’t spend another half a year burning out Amy._

Very mature. Very demure. Extremely mindful.

* * *

Last month I wrote about 2026 being the year of anti-optimisation, and instead it being the year of the re-design. Interrupting patterns that have been life long, of annual burnout - not necessarily from shitty lifestyle choices but more from living as an unknown AuDHD woman in a world made for NT’s.

I think humans are (mostly) relatively aware of what feels off in our lives, or ourselves. We might not always notice the patterns, or where the “off feeling” leads to… but **we can** feel that _it’s not quite right._ Yet, even when the changes required are small - something stops us from actually doing the thing.

This is where I have been the past month.

I’m trying to frame it as a slow start. Easing in. **But the truth is,** if I don’t interrupt this pattern now, I will continue to play out the burnout cycles of my past. And 2026 is not about that.

And so, welcome to The Re-designing Life Project - a slow reclamation of life so that it feels like mine again. Each week, I am going to re-design and implement one small part of how I live, mother, work and exist without burning everything down to do it.

NB: It’s not about optimisation, biohacking or becoming a better version of me. It’s about removing the invisible things that are making life feel harder than it needs to be and replacing them with the time and space and capacity to see what happens when we stop carrying the invisible load.

Join me? I’m sure it’s more fun with friends lol

> **For week 1 of my Redesigning Life project, I’m starting with structure and rebuilding my time. Creating the framework for my nervous system to feel safe in making these changes.**

#### **Surely I’m not the only “non-morning” morning person?**

Mornings are not something I look forward to anymore. Which sucks, because honestly I have always coined myself as an ‘early bird’. And I don’t know if I’m still just paddling in the remnants of the most excruciating burnout I’ve experienced thus far, or if it’s just me like getting worse as I get older.

But anyway, I dread them. And there’s nothing even awful about them in our home. I am the last to get up - mostly because I want to savour the quiet - and I think that’s it. We don’t really **start** the day, ya know? We enter it, sure, but it’s already happening and instantly asking us to respond to it.

And then add in the onslaught of input: a notification (silence them all!), a child needing helping, another asking a question, the mental list running in the background and by the time I sit down, I already feel like I’m on the back foot.

Yet when the week is planned on paper, there’s space. It looks good - doable. But, in the physical space of the day, I’m feeling behind by mid-morning, kind of like I’ve lost the day already as it’s slipped through my fingers. My brain says that I’ve basically failed before it’s even properly started.

And this sentiment of being “time-poor” isn’t isolated to my life; when I look at the world and how we operate, it would be entirely impossible **not** to feel this way. But also, there’s been large time-use studies that show how mothers in particular are far more likely to experience _time poverty_ (read: having too many demands and not enough usable time). Another survey found that 20% of parents have **no personal time** at all in a day.

And, sure, life has become this hectic pressure cooker where over-productivity is glorified. But, even when we are trying to slow it down, lower the demands, remove shit from our lives - **why do we still feel time-poor?**

#### I’ve figured it out (I think). It’s not time that’s the problem!?

I’ve started to notice the patterns in my life, and I wonder if they are global though? I’m beginning to understand that it’s maybe less of a **lack of time** problem and more of a **fragmentation problem**.

##### ATTENTION FRAGMENTATION

This is a new concept to me but it really does make a hell of a lot of sense: try doing three things at once and notice how long ten minutes feels.

Make breakfast for the kids.

Answer a message in the group chat.

Write a list for the rest of the day.

Suddenly what should take a few minutes each has taken nearly an hour. _Time blindness_ you might think (I get it, ADHD too)… _but is it?_ Or is it that when we’re constantly task-switching, attempting to multitask, time doesn’t expand, it ends up fracturing.

(Not only that, but it’s taxing on our cognitive load and fatigues us even when the tasks are small.)

##### **DECISION FATIGUE**

Then, with the many roles we fill, we’re making thousands of micro-decisions a day. Each of these fatigues us, reducing focus and again, makes time feel rushed and unsatisfying. I find, too, that having to tap into different mental roles takes A LOT to do. Being in mum mode with the kids, and then being asked a business question takes time and capacity to change thinking brains back and forth.

##### **ALWAYS-ON NERVOUS SYSTEM**

Being neurodivergent, our nervous system is constantly in low-grade activation mode: the noise, clutter, alerts, demands, roles, pressure felt, even having your phone nearby all activate us. This, compounded onto fragmentation and fatigue = time further compresses.

**Writing this largely feels like we’re fucked lol. Clearly we’re not. But it actually explains a lot of why I feel the way I do.**

My strategy to counteract the above?

Try to get clear, plan and outline wtf I’m doing. Which then uses up the little time I have for me, on gaining clarity, only to lose it by the next time I get a minute of peace. We’re told that planning will help us get on top of things, but productivity won’t solve fragmentation.

**Streamlining will (hopefully)**

#### The Plan for February

This month I’m exploring time, beginning with how life feels lighter when roles are separated, not stacked. Dan Sullivans speaks on this in 10x is Easier than 2x and how the most successful business people are able to have clear definition between their work time, admin time and leisure time. Why? Because complexity creates drag, whereas elimination creates power.

How we currently live as mothers _**is**_ **complex**: when we try to mother, work, manage a household and emotionally regulate everyone all at once, we burn ourselves into the ground and time erodes from underneath us.

Instead: a mindset shift that it’s easier to fully be one thing at a time than to be ten things halfway.

We already live with [rhythm](https://goldendaysproject.substack.com/p/designing-a-family-rhythm-based-on) in our home, but I have made intentional shifts to time block my own rhythm and my roles.

I am either:

- homeschool mum, or
- business woman (DND), or
- family time mum.

If I’m in one role, I’m not answering questions that belong in another role. I am reaching deep within me to trust that business **can** be contained to its own time blocks, attempting to undo years of programming to always be “on”. I am practising compartmentalising so that when I'm in family mode, I am not off in my mind thinking about something else. When things do pop into my mind, and they will, I am writing them into one notebook, to then check through in the appropriate time block.

* * *

#### Join me?

If you want to follow along with me in the Redesigning Life Project, this week:

1. Choose one part of your day.
2. Give it one role only.

See how it feels to be fully in that role, to not stack or multitask a thousand things.

And hopefully we both find that we don’t need to win back our time - rather, we have had it all along, but we’ve been scattering ourselves across it ✌️

Amy x