The to-do list is full. It’s always full.

This morning it seemed reasonable. You’ve done harder things, longer days. You’re not a stranger to work, and certainly not afraid of it. And then, somewhere between breakfast and lunch, something changed. Not dramatically; there was no one big thing you can point to that threw things off. It was just the slow, familiar slide of capacity draining faster than expected. And certainly faster than desired.

By 2pm, the list is a source of frustration. Maybe there are two things done. Maybe four. But that’s not what matters – the gap between what was expected and what actually happened feels big enough to fall into, and you’re stuck standing on the edge, staring into the abyss and trying to calculate where something is wrong with you. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Here’s the dirty little secret no organizational program I tried ever walked me through. Almost all of them use the same unit of measurement: the hour. But, sometimes, it’s not time that’s the problem. Just because something fits in the tidy 30 minute time block on the calendar doesn’t mean it actually fits the day. 

Let me tell you a short story. When I started my Clarity Companion, I put a scheduler on the page: 15 minute time blocks, the whole day. I’d sit down in the morning, write down what needed doing, set a specific time to it, and put it on the schedule where it best fit. I ended up with a perfectly planned day, and it looked beautiful. I felt good. Accomplished. Like I was winning life.

And then the day actually happened. Someone asked me for help with an additional thing. This other took longer than usual. My body decided this was the day to have more petite mal seizures and wipe my energy out, or throw a POTS flare my way. My body decided it needed a nap, and I woke up feeling worse than I started. Three things blew up at once and one of them was my perfectly planned day.

It all only added stress as I scrambled to rescue that perfect day from the jaws of reality. Because here’s the thing. Time blocks and schedules sound and look pretty, but they hardly ever feel pretty; because that’s not how life works. 

Yes, you have the same hour as whatever influencer you’re listening to. What you can do with it, though, may very well be different, even on a good day, and a day spent at 80% energy is going to necessarily produce different results than a day at 20% energy. Hear me well, friend: you’re not failing. You were given a bucket of sand and told to build a log cabin. There’s a better way: not just muscling through to your own exhaustion and frustration. Finding (or building) management systems that work for you; finding the cracks and crevices in the day and learning to work with them rather than against yourself as a whole.

Did you know that the average adult is estimated to make 35,000 decisions in a single day?

Is anyone else exhausted just thinking about making that many decisions? No wonder trying to split your mind between two simple tasks in the afternoon can sometimes break you, when, in the morning, you’d be able to handle it with no issues.

And then you have the difference between big decisions and small decisions – “do I wear the blue or green shirt, today,” doesn’t feel nearly as heavy as, “I can either do the laundry that’s been piling up, or make dinner, but I can’t do both.”

The good news is that big decisions rarely start as big decisions, and you can cut them off before they get there. The ‘laundry or dinner’ dilemma feels less world-shattering if there’s a meal prepped option, or if ‘laundry’ isn’t running every load through in one day, but is one step: switch it, set up a load to go through, push the button. Now, sometimes you do get to get creative and think outside the box with this. I’ll give you an example:

My service dog is a standard poodle. So where others get to dust and vacuum, I get to brush, shave, and blow dry. A full grooming session (complete with a bath) can take three hours. And that’s down from where it had been! Needless to say, there are seasons where I just don’t have the energy to keep up with so much grooming. So, I get to get creative: what’s a small action I can do that doesn’t involve too much energy so that the guilt and mental load of needing to groom him doesn’t sit in my head all the time? 

• One option is to take him to a groomer, but I also don’t necessarily have the finances for that. 
• So what did I go with? Shave him down all over. 

Sure, he looks more greyhound or whippet than poodle, but he’s cooler in the summer, the guilt isn’t weighing on me all the time, and bathing and brushing go much faster (and are needed less often).

Sometimes it takes a minute and a bit of thought, but there is, ultimately, an option for just about any “big decision” mental block.

Many times, especially on the hard days, it feels like the “right” way to do the thing that needs doing is all at once. “Power through; don’t look up until you’re done; you can sleep when you’re dead,” sort of thing.

Anyone who struggles with health issues will tell you that is a highly unrealistic view of life.

Remember my earlier story about when I set up my Clarity Companion for the first time? The scheduler stuck around for maybe a week before I realized that just wasn’t going to work; you don’t usually find one big, solid vein of gold. Far more often you find bits and pieces hidden in crevices. 

Your schedule can work the same way; for many of us, it should. And that’s why the Clarity Companion became such a beautiful thing. Because it can shift to fit that need, molding itself to each season of life and helping you find the veins of gold and “small actions” mentioned previously even as they move around.

Now, let’s be real: this is one of those things that people will say that sounds good, but it can be hard to summon from nothing. So, let’s walk through a couple concrete examples of areas I’ve found in my life.

Swish ‘n Swipe – Credit goes to FlyLady, for this one. As you’re getting ready, in the morning, take twenty seconds and swish the toilet and swipe the sink. Add cleaning the mirror every couple of days. Bam. In a minute – maybe two – your bathroom is clean enough to not be embarrassing. (If you miss it in the morning, it can also be added to the end of almost any bathroom trip.)

Social media videos during walks – if you look at my social media, you’ll see that almost all of my videos are taken outside in short clips. Here’s why:

As I write this, I have a nine-month old daughter, Cor – a six-year-old retiring service dog, and am fifteen weeks pregnant. My husband gets home from work at about 6:30/7. (By the time you read this, things will likely have moved on, but here’s where we are, now.) At about 5:30/6:00, we all kind of start to hit the melting point. 

So, we go for a walk. I work on “heel” with distractions with Cor (always good mental stimulation), and Baby gets a change of scenery and something to do. As I wait for Cor to return to heel, I’m just standing there for a few seconds. It doesn’t take much to pull out my phone and record a clip. By the time we get home, all I have to do is post it. Much easier than setting aside ten minutes and a babysitter to go record.

Serving bowls – I like my people to come home to a warm dinner, yes, but also a warm dinner that looks inviting. A closed loop. Clean counters, dishes done, take the beans out of a pot before you serve them. The trick becomes that then you have a lot of serving dishes to clean and put away, afterward. Talk about an energy drain!

So, cut out the middle man – serve the food in the glass storage containers. Put the lids under the containers, and then all people have to do to clean up is put the lids on, put the containers in the fridge, and put their own dishes in the dishwasher. As an added bonus, you can slap a sticky note on the dish to help delineate between what’s available for lunches, what’s spoken for, and even just what is in the dish.

Shopping whiteboard – you know when you’re cooking and realize you’re out of parchment paper, but it’s three days to the grocery shop, so you forget that by the time it’s a fixable issue? We’d run into that all the time, so we put a whiteboard on the fridge. Now, you write it down if you’re the last one to eat something regularly used. Makes putting together the shopping list much easier, too!

Write down the open loops – Between health challenges, a baby, dog, and other claims on my time, there are several times I’ll start a project and then get pulled into something else or have to take a break. Sometimes, that’s a business project, sometimes it’s a cleaning goal, other times it’s as simple as passing the dehumidifier in the morning and going, “I have to empty that,” and then forgetting until bedtime. 

There’s a saying I heard once: The shortest pencil is better than the longest memory. And this, if you can put your pride aside and recognize the truth of it, can save you so much time and so many forgotten loops.

Write down the loop to finish – simple as that. The paper doesn’t forget.

We each have times that we’re running hot with energy, and other times where it’s all we can do to get out of bed. When fitting your to-do list to your energy, it’s important that you know yourself and be able to read your body properly: 

What are the physical signs that you’ve got more energy?
What about the physical signs that you’ve got less?
What are some early signs that your account is starting to dwindle?
Is there something that, if you do or don’t do it, will affect that? (As an example, if I roll out of bed and wear pajamas for the first half of the day, I’m going to be frustrated and scattered far easier by the end of the day than if I change and put myself together right away.) 

Simultaneously, there’s the skill of reading your tasks. While the “small gold veins” still absolutely holds true, there are also some tasks that, if you were to look at them, simply make sense together; one of them can easily roll into the other and it may be easier to let that ball keep rolling than try and tackle it in five-minute chunks. 

As an example, my morning routine:

Open bedroom windows to air the room out
Take self and Baby potty
Change self and Baby
Brush teeth
Rebraid hair
Wash face
Swish ‘n Swipe
Let Cor out
Gather diaper bag
Gather dirty dishes
Close bedroom window
Empty dehumidifiers
(When applicable) Start a load of laundry

If I’m being honest, even though it’s a larger chunk of time to get through this, it feels more accomplishable when put together like that than tackled in five-minute chunks. It’s all the stuff that, at this point in life, people would think is a net-zero energy task, but it takes me effort and a dedicated time of day. If I get it all done at once I can keep up on the “habits,” because it feels like something I can check off. If I don’t, and it’s a lot of five-minute piecemeal actions throughout the day, it becomes exhausting, like putting something in the trash on my computer: they’re still sitting there, taking up memory and computing power while claiming to be gone. White noise in the background of the rest of my day, zapping my energy as a “less than” homemaker, because they’re such simple “normal person,” tasks.

Similarly, if I’m doing dinner or dishes, my brain needs to do it all: dishwasher, drying rack, dishes on the counter, wipe down the counters. Otherwise, it feels undone to the point of “shouldn’t have bothered to try it, at all.”

Notice these, when they come up in your life. Momentum is a real thing, and if it’ll carry you through several tasks, let it. There’s no more glory in doing something the hard way than the easy way. 

Here’s what all of this may look like in practice. 

Brain-dump your day onto paper. In an ideal world, what all would be finished by the time your head hit the pillow, tonight? What needs doing, today? What tasks could wait until another day without things breaking, if need be? What are people waiting on you to finish? And (be honest) what tasks do you have a mental block keeping you from attacking? Is there an easier version of that task you could start with?

Match each task to the energy demand – not the clock. What tasks are most important? Can you do the high-energy versions, or do you get to do the low-energy ones? (Because there’ll always be a task that doesn’t care about your energy level. It still needs doing.) Should you start with low-energy versions of certain ones, and come back around when you can? 

Build recovery and energy restoration into the plan as an active step; not an afterthought. Are there things that would make the rest of the day easier to handle? For me, this often involves a skein of yarn and a hook for when Baby is playing independently. Even if my energy (or Baby), means the “big projects” are unavailable to me, the hook and yarn still are. Something is seeing progress, so my brain doesn’t spin out. It may also include having the grace with myself to play some music or an audiobook throughout the day. Find the things that restore and rebuild your energy. Enact them. Protect them. Let them do for you what the “sleep when you’re dead; keep pushing!” couldn’t.

As the day goes on, what gold veins can I discover? Take five minutes and close this loop, fire off that text, grab a few baby toys to buy some time in the bathroom or putting laundry away. Yes, I can finish listening to that podcast while I finish the dishes.

What later “big decisions” can I cut off at the knees, now? Put these parts of dinner in glass dishes and wash the pots and pans while that part is cooking. Write out the labels while I wait for the path to the stove to clear. Throw a load of laundry into the washing machine as I pass. Empty the dehumidifier while Cor pees, in the morning. Take some dog food out of the freezer as I grab the current serving out of the fridge.

What are some unexpected wins? When Cor gets antsy or bored and Baby is getting a bit fussy, we all pack up and go for a walk. There are wins, in that, even if they weren’t the anticipated ones. Mommy fell asleep during naptime and missed work time. This “win” is often harder to see, but it’s better than viewing it as a loss for the rest of the day.

What matches the energy of the moment? Whether it’s crocheting a few stitches as Baby plays with a car, stealing a couple seconds to close this or that loop, firing off a text as I take Cor outside, or addressing a bit of business work in the quiet of the evening; let the energy and momentum of the moment determine what fits, rather than being bound by the time blocks. If something comes easy, there’s no shame in the thing that gets done not being what the paper said should be: something still got done. That’s a win. Especially if it came easier than it otherwise would’ve.

None of this is revolutionary; that’s the point. All it takes are observation and little creative tweaks here and there. That’s honestly it.

Now, this change itself can take a bit of mental space to put into practice, which is why my Clarity Companion has come in clutch. When something is written down and kept nearby, “keeping it in mind,” and adjusting how you tackle things becomes much easier. It’s also far easier to do when you’re not doing it alone, which is why I encourage people to join us at The Able Life on Skool, and join a community of people creating systems that work for them when the “factory default” ones don’t.

That said, those pieces aren’t absolutely necessary. You can take all of this and work on putting it into practice today, on your own, with the tools already at your disposal. Because yes, your to-do list is full. Yes, it may feel overwhelming at 2pm. No, the “normal” way of tackling it may not work. That doesn’t mean the day is a flop. It doesn’t mean something is wrong with you. It means you get to find another strategy. A better strategy. One that works with what you can realistically give, when you can give it, at a pace your body can actually sustain.

You were never bad at managing time; you were managing the wrong thing.