Why There Never Seems to Be Enough Hours in the Day? (and What Working Mums Can Do About It)

Do you ever get to the end of the day and wonder where your time went?

You’ve been running non-stop, cleaning up spilt milk, answering phone calls, driving the kids to their activities… yet it somehow feels like you haven’t achieved much at all. And now, you’re completely exhausted.

If so, you're amongst the 70% of women who almost always feel rushed and pressured for time (according to the data from a 2010 Australian survey).

Women in the survey reported feeling more time pressure than men. This is not surprising! And in this blog, we're going to unpack why.

The invisible load: The ultimate time thief

First, let’s acknowledge that mothers do juggle a lot: paid work, childcare, household management. Switching between these different roles is challenging in itself. Even just looking at these three aspects, it’s easy to see why women already have little time left for themselves. But that’s not the full picture.

In fact, when women choose to reduce their work hours to better balance their lives, many still report feeling time-poor (Rose, 2016). This often happens because they end up taking on an even greater share of household chores to compensate for their reduced financial contribution. But again, that’s not all.

Something that takes up a huge amount of mothers’ time and energy is the invisible load. This refers to all the unseen mental and emotional labour that women do to keep the household running smoothly.

The mental aspect of the invisible load includes the planning, organising, and anticipating required for a family to function.

For instance, having dinner on the table at night isn’t just about cooking. It’s about deciding what meals to make, which ingredients to buy, how long it will take, and whether everyone will actually eat it.

The weight of the invisible load doesn’t come from the task itself, it’s the constant planning and decision-making that happens behind the scenes that makes it heavy. And while this work is invisible, it still demands time and mental energy.

Beyond the cognitive side of the invisible load, there’s also the emotional side. When you worry about your child struggling to make friends at school, when you manage meltdowns and sibling conflicts, or when you spend hours scrolling for parenting tips… that too takes time and energy!

Most parts of the invisible load never make it onto your to-do list (after all, they’re invisible!), yet you do them anyway… they just go unacknowledged!

So, as a first step, simply recognising this invisible load can help you see that you’re doing far more than you give yourself credit for. And ideally, you can then start communicating it to your partner and working together to share the load more equitably.

When multitasking feeds the rush

That’s almost every working mum’s reality: boundaries between work and home become blurry, and you find yourself replying to emails while cooking dinner.

If you work from home, your breaks are often filled with housework. When you manage to get five minutes off your computer, you use it to hang the laundry.

It’s not so different if you’re in the office. Have you ever spent your lunch break trying to schedule your child’s doctor appointment?

And vice versa! on the days you’re supposed to be off, you might find yourself turning on your laptop to catch up on work during your baby’s nap.

Basically, when you get a bit of time off from one role, instead of resting, you fill it with another role (work becomes the break from home, chores become the break from work). No wonder you feel rushed if you literally never stop!

But there’s another cost to multitasking. When you’re darting here and there, you never fully finish anything. Ultimately, you feel unproductive because you’re unable to complete a task.

In fact, a qualitative research study concluded that multitasking increases time pressure rather than reducing it (Rose, 2016).

Now, I’m not suggesting you should completely remove multitasking from your life. For many, it’s simply a necessity to keep up with work and fulfill your parental responsabilities.

But I invite you to look at your schedule and ask yourself if there are blocks of time you could allocate to a single task. Maybe it’s four hours a day, maybe it’s only one hour, whatever seems feasible.

See if you can use time-blocking to carve out some uninterrupted time for focused work. The goal is for you to complete one meaningful task and feel that sense of accomplishment.

Similarly, try to create moments with your children when you’re fully present. Even if it’s just 15 minutes a day! If these are 15 minutes of quality time that you all enjoy, they can act as a much-needed breathing space in your day.

The Lack of Real Rest

There’s an insidious cycle in constantly rushing: what you need most is downtime, yet paradoxically, you feel like you can’t take any… at least not until your body decides it has had enough, and you end up sick or burnt out. (Hopefully, you will pause before it gets to that point).

Because there is so much on your list, you feel the urge of always be on. If you get a few spare seconds, you might refresh your emails to make sure nothing urgent has come through. Or open your laptop “just to check something.” Or notice something that needs cleaning in the house and get to it right away.

When you’re used to being in go, go, go mode, it becomes really hard to find those small moments of stillness that could actually refill your cup.

But moments where you simply breathe and disconnect from responsibilities are essential.

Research that found some gendered inequalities in leisure time (Bittman & Wajcman, 2000) emphasised that point. It’s not that men have more recreational time than women; the amount is almost equivalent. But women’s downtime is often interrupted.

For example, a mum might log in for an online workout session while her kids are in the same room. Yes, she’s exercising, but she’s also keeping an eye on the children, meaning she isn’t fully disconnected from her parental duties.

This is where the main gender gap in leisure lies: it’s often easier for dads to fully disconnect and recharge because they have that time just for themselves.

So the invitation here is to start noticing where you could create a bit of breathing space in your day.

We’re talking about micro-pauses: those moments when, instead of scrolling on your phone, you take a few deep breaths, stretch, or step outside to feel the sun on your skin. These micro-moments add up.

But you also need larger chunks of uninterrupted me-time: at least 20 minutes when you’re not watching the kids, not reminding yourself to take dinner out of the oven, not checking notifications. A time solely dedicated to you, where you can truly disconnect.

It may feel contradictory, but I assure you that prioritising pauses will actually reduce your need to always be on the run.

A Final Note

It’s easy to think that if you were more efficient or more organised, you’d be able to fit more into your day.

While I agree that time management skills help, and good organisational systems make housework easier, it’s also important to acknowledge that sometimes the load is simply too heavy and something has to give.

Therefore, I invite you to check in with yourself and see which things on your list you could delegate, and where you could lower your expectations to make life just a little bit easier.

References

Michael Bittman, Judy Wajcman, The Rush Hour: The Character of Leisure Time and Gender Equity, Social Forces. 2000. https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/79.1.165

Pocock B., Skinner N. & Pisaniello S. How much should we work? Working hours, holidays and working life: the participation challenge. The Australian Work and Life Index 2010

Rose J. Never enough hours in the day: Employed mothers’ perceptions of time pressure. Australian Journal of Social Issues. 2017 https://doi.org/10.1002/ajs4.2