Prioritizing for Maniacs Tool #6

Believe That You Too Have Only 24 Hours In a Day

Many people with ADHD have time blindness, where they do not have a strong sense of how much time is passing, or how long individual tasks will take. They are often wildly optimistic or pessimistic on this matter. For example, they will take on an enormous task and assume it can be done in a fraction of the time it really takes, like empyting, cleaning, and repainting the garage in half a day. Or they will refuse to deal with the stuff falling out all over their bathroom counter because they assume sorting the medicine cabinet and cabinet under the sink will take roughly three months. Once they actually do it, they are often astounded that cleaning out these two cabinets and making their bathroom 100x more pleasant to use took roughly 30 minutes.

I have a different sort of time blindness where until recently, I refused to believe that the whole "there are only 24 hours in a day" concept was supposed to apply to me too. Somehow, while I had a fairly good sense of how long certain tasks would take, I would knowingly pile on 2-3 times that much work into a given day, confident that if I was perfectly efficient, I could get it all done. And I sometimes did. Often though, I ran up against my limits, at which point I simply blamed myself for being imperfect and kept being ridiculous the next day. My persistence is legendary (let my enemies take note).

Looking at this strong tendency to keep asking of myself the impossible, and blaming myself for not reaching it, I see something insidious. I had absorbed the belief that in order to be a good woman, I should have no needs, and ask nothing of others and everything of myself. I had absorbed the dehumanizing view of women as objects, ideally perfect objects, and brought it into every layer of my existence. It did not occur to me that I was striving to be "good enough" to avoid the regular mom-shaming I saw everywhere. I had this belief that I would deserve leisure once I had no personal limitations. Once I was in perfect shape, with a perfect house, and was parenting four very different kids perfectly, then I would deserve to sit down. Until then, if I wanted to read, it was an audiobook while cleaning or driving kids somewhere. If I wanted to rest, I simply had to do three days worth of work by 8 pm. When burnout came over me, that was further evidence that I was just not good enough.

However, a key shift came in reading Teaching From Rest by Sarah Mackenzie. My first time through I resisted so much of what she had to say. I was exasperated at her suggestion that I take a break from multitasking and focus on just one thing sometimes. "Does she not know how impossibly busy I am? My life only works because I sleep less than five hours a night and am always doing everything at once!" However, the suggestions of hers which I did try were revolutionary to me, so it gave me pause.

The second time I read the book, my heart had softened enough to receive the wisdom on multitasking and over-scheduling. While this may seem obvious to others, before reading this book, it had literally never occurred to me that there were limits to what I could take on. Whatever that mental illness is called, I have that too.

Mackenzie uses an analogy about overloading the schedule by describing how her husband's ultra long hikes would be intolerable if he didn't pack the absolute bare minimum to keep his bag light. Similarly, a parent that keeps piling on activities, curricula, etc. will soon find themselves crushed under the weight of trying to do so much. She then goes on to talk about looking at the 24 hours, subtracting out all the time that must really be used for sleeping, eating, chores, etc. to find out how much time is even available for homeschooling. She then recommends assuming you need at least a 20% margin, rather than expecting to have all that time truly available.

In short, not only being realistic about what can and should be in one's schedule, but also allowing for 20% margin anyway brought the maniac-level down in my house and helped me "teach from rest." It has carried over and helped me live in a more peaceful state more of the time.

Whether you're a parent or not, homeschooling or not, you can look at your life and account for all the stuff that you absolutely must do in order to understand how much time you have for things you choose to do. You may find you have too many things in the "must do" column and have to make other changes, like reducing outside obligations, outsourcing some tasks, or taking a hard look at the division of labor in your family.

Read the Whole Series:

1. Know your specs (January 15, 2026)
2. Slay the perfectionism dragon (January 22, 2026)
3. Eisenhower matrix (January 29, 2026)
4. Scheduling maintenance (February 5, 2026)
5. The Ignatian Method (February 12, 2026)
6. Believe that you too only have 24 hours in a day (February 19, 2026)
7. Big Picture Questions (February 26, 2026)