Riana Kessler is a full-time mother to a 3-year-old toddler, living in a 1-bedroom apartment in San Francisco. In May 2020, prolonged stay-at-home orders left her family trip to visit her parents in Colorado much longer than planned. Riana, her husband, Kevin, and their daughter, Evi, ended up living with Riana’s parents for the entire month of June. When July came around though, they decided that it was time to move back home to the city.

Moving home meant that the extra hands helping to raise a toddler amidst a pandemic were gone, and all childcare duties were once again left to Riana and her husband.

Survey data shows that childcare hours significantly increased during the pandemic for both mothers and fathers, making this transition even harder. Riana shared her data from Mana with us so we could get a closer look at what is actually happening.

In July, Riana spent 30% more time per week on “entertaining Evi” alone, jumping 13 hours per week from an average of 41 hrs/week in June to 54 hrs/week in July. While living with her parents, the house chores were split among four adults; moving back home meant that Riana had to take on almost all of that work, increasing time spent on “house chores” by over 12 hours per week. A lot of these hours were spent baby-proofing the apartment and cooking new foods, since at 14 months Evi started walking more, eating solid food, and sleeping much less. She wasn’t alone, her husband also took on an additional 6.5 hours per week of childcare, while balancing a full-time job and starting a company at the same time.

Since time is zero-sum, many mothers have found their jobs and hobbies being compromised amidst the pandemic. Riana is no exception, while in June she put 24hrs towards courses and practice for her photography hobby, that dropped 90% in July with only a few hours available for practice and photo editing.

I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Riana as she reflected on this transition from living with her in-laws in June to moving back home in July. While the move was challenging, Riana said that after a few weeks, she found a system that works.

Here are my four takeaways from a full-time mom that you can apply to take your time management to the next level!

1. Don’t be afraid to delegate.

Sometimes we feel guilty and uncomfortable asking others for help or think that we need to be able to do everything ourselves.

Riana, too, used to feel this extreme guilt when something came up and she had to spontaneously ask her husband to take care of Evi during his busy day.

Sync schedules in advance

Living with her parents, where the schedules of four adults and a toddler needed to be synched, Riana had blocked off times for her parents to take care of Evi. She says,

“To have to ask for help is very difficult - for moms especially. But by assigning times in advance, I no longer had to ask for help, everyone just showed up for their shift.”

Luckily this new routine proved useful, and when moving back to San Francisco, Riana used the same tip to schedule in Kevin’s “solo-childcare” hours. She recalled that Kevin appreciated the deliberately scheduled time to spend taking care of his daughter and made him more productive since he looked forward to those hours.

Make this time for you guilt-free

During this time, Riana pursued her hobbies (often a luxury full-time moms feel they don’t have). She signed up for online photography classes for August, and re-committed to her yoga practice. By setting a schedule for these activities, her mom guilt vanished.

2. Consolidate planning for the tasks that need it

We’ve all heard it a million times — plan ahead. What we don’t hear often is advice to schedule time for planning, not just for the tasks themselves. Ever get to the gym ready to train, only to realize you have no plan whatsoever, so you end up wasting time searching YouTube for last-minute workouts?

Riana experienced the same thing with cooking. Cooking has been a long-time hobby and living with her parents, she was able to carve out extra time to experiment and challenge herself with new recipes.

But moving back home and facing time constraints, Riana realized that she spent a lot of time planning meals. With Evi beginning to eat solids, there was now an extra toddler-friendly meal to prepare.

Save time in the day by realizing what tasks take up a lot of time planning

It might be meal-prepping, creating a workout plan, making shopping lists, or even thinking about what house chores need to get done. If you’re unsure how long you spend on prep work, start tracking your time. By tracking her time with Mana, Riana noticed that she spent too much time planning meals every day. She was spending, on average, 6 hours a week planning meals.

Plan out the week in a weekly planner

To minimize time spent planning three meals, three times a day, Riana blocked off time every Sunday to create a weekly cooking whiteboard, where she planned out the weeks’ meals and the ingredients necessary. By doing so, Riana ended up saving 5 hours a week!

Have a daily task that’s taking up a lot of planning time? Consolidate the planning in one sitting and create a weekly planner.

3. Set realistic goals

Setting ambitious goals is essential, and there’s nothing more rewarding than to achieve a big goal that you’ve been working on. But if you’ve ever found yourself constantly missing the goal of reading for 1 hour a week (true story), then this tip is definitely for you!

Break down goals into smaller daily chunks

This is what Riana did when she wanted to continue to make time for house hunting. She set a goal of 1 hour per week but had trouble reaching it week in and week out.

After talking to her Mana Guide, she explained that setting aside an uninterrupted hour was nearly impossible with a toddler. Her Guide recommended to carve out 15 minutes a day, four times a week instead.

Habit stack the goal

To not let those 15 minutes get lost during the day, intentionally decide when and where you’ll be implementing this new habit. James Clear describes this as the habit stacking technique — to add on a new habit to something you already do each day.

For Riana, this was right after dinner. While her husband does the dishes, she took 15 minutes to find a new home for their family.

By breaking it down and attaching her micro-sessions to an existing habit, Riana started to consistently reach her goals and doubled her time spent on real estate research from June to July!

Next time you’re setting a new goal, take it one step further to break it down into achievable daily bites and use habit stacking to make sure not to miss it.

4. Combine tasks through alignment

When talking with Riana, I was amazed at how she was able to find time to work towards her fitness goals, spend quality time with Kevin, and make time for reading.

It was much more manageable for Riana to reach these goals when she was living with her parents, as she didn’t need to have eyes on Evi 24/7. Without help back at home, Riana started implementing the concept of alignment from Laura Vanderkam’s book, 168 Hours.

Alignment means combining activities that utilize different parts of your brain, particularly if one doesn't require much active mental engagement.

Find tasks that cross over between different domains

At Mana, we like to think of life as having four main pillars: work, growth, health, and fun. To live a balanced life, it’s essential to spend quality time in each of these domains. A great way to continue reaching goals in these areas is by finding tasks that have crossovers between the pillars. For example, walking while listening to an audiobook is a great way to get in those steps and reach your reading goals.

Riana started to walk more with Evi to get her steps in and spend quality time with her daughter. Kevin also combined his music goals with Evi by playing music to (and sometimes even with!) her.

Don’t confuse multitasking with alignment. Make sure your focus hours for tasks that demand 100% attention stand alone with no distractions. But alignment can be a great way to reach goals in different domains of your life and increase productivity.

Feeling like you don’t have enough time in the day to get everything done? Follow these four tips from a full-time mom:

Don’t be afraid to delegate
Consolidate planning for the tasks that need it
Set realistic goals
Combine tasks through alignment

It Doesn’t Have To Take A Village