Dear Moms, Use Your In Between Time to Achieve Your Goals
You can't even go to the bathroom without someone asking you for something so how are you suppose to find the time for exercising and taking care of yourself?
If you are a mom, the odds are that most of your time is not your own. It belongs to making sure the kids are set for the week, dinners are made, the laundry gets done, groceries are purchased, and lunches are packed, PLUS you might have a job to add in as well.
I want to do something good for me, but my kids and home schedule make it hard to find the time. —All regular moms everywhere
We just started the second quarter of the year, but the odds are that your commitment to any New Year's resolution has faded away, like your child’s willingness to make their bed in the morning after you leave the room.
We all want to make good choices. We all want to eat right. We all want more sleep. We all want to connect more with friends and have a power posse group who will help us achieve the goals we want to achieve. We all want to help decrease the profit margin of the pee pad companies by exercising our pelvic floor and the rest of our body. #nomorepeeingwithsneezing
But the reality is that the days of being unattached and carefree are behind you, which means the flexibility in your workouts, eating patterns, socializing with friends, and your ability to “just go to sleep” has significantly changed.
Obviously.
Yet it's surprising how many mothers still measure themselves against who they were and the time they had in their 20s. It's time for that to change.
Your approach to exercise as a mom in your 30s, 40s, and 50s will definitely be different from your early 20s. Maybe this year, you wanted to cook more from scratch, but after a few weeks, you gave up because the estimated prep time for recipes has to be tripled or quadrupled. This is primarily because the humans you are raising do the following:
They tell you they are starving, and what you are cooking looks gross
They tell you they must have water now but CAN’T get a cup themselves
They tell you they need a costume next week for a dress-up day you didn’t know about
The baby is alternating between screaming and crying because they fell asleep in the car and then wouldn’t nap
They want help with their math homework
This is why the pizza delivery person is occasionally our hero
You would love to spend more time with friends without your kids around. But your house is never clean, the laundry is never put away, and let’s not discuss how clean the kitchen is right now. You don’t feel like you can make the time for it because of all this other stuff in your home life.
Yet, as the calendar flips from one year to the next, people still consider making goals and changing the story of some part of their lives for the next year.
Goals are still possible, even as a mom. Really. They just have to look different.
What Can Wellness Goals Look Like in the Mom Multiverse?
Committing to large and lofty goals doesn’t work because they require absolute diligence. In other words, they are not attainable for mortals who have to spend part of their day with young to very young humans who don’t consistently wipe when they go to the bathroom and don’t wash their hands. Then they eat their boogers.
Changing from “I do squats for five minutes a day because that is the number of times my kids ask me to get something right after I sit down” to “I am doing bodyweight strength training for 30 minutes 4 days a week” is a 500% increase.
If I want to help my kids to get better at something, I do not try to achieve a 500% improvement. They will get demoralized because what I am asking them to do is just too much, and our number of arguments will increase by about 27,549%.
To make wellness goals sustainable, you need to make slow, sustainable progress instead of temporary dramatic shifts in how you spend your time. Those dramatic shifts ultimately fail. Additionally, when we fail time after time, we are plagued with shame and guilt. Shame and guilt don’t fuel behavior change, so we will be less likely to try to make a change again the next time.
As mothers, it's important to make small adjustments to our routines when we want to change. The key is to start with achievable habits and gradually expand them over time. It's often impossible to dedicate large chunks of time to personal goals, so breaking them down into smaller, manageable tasks is the way to see success now and bigger success later.
According to Dr. BJ Fogg, a leading expert in habit change at Stanford University, creating lasting change is achievable for most of us by focusing on small shifts in our daily routines. By adopting tiny habits that fit seamlessly into your natural breaks or in-between time, you can take the first step toward the goals you have been thinking about. These tiny shifts lead to larger goals down the road and work despite the demands of motherhood.
Create a constellation of habits, tiny in size but big in impact. BJ Fogg, PhD
What is In-Between Time and Where Do You Find It?
Definition: In-between time is when you wait for something else to finish or start and have 1-5 minutes of otherwise unusable time.
There was a time when you’d be taking a family trip, and you had to make sure you went to the library to check out a few books on cassette tape. You also checked out a few regular books just in case you were on a straight road so you could read without getting car sick.
📼🪄Cassettes are these things that would play music and books off of ‘magic ribbon’ if you haven’t heard of them before. Even though I have heard of them, I don’t understand how ribbon produces sounds, so they are still magic to me. 📼🪄
I grew up and entered my 20s at a time when waiting meant that you literally had nothing to do but think.
Not now, though.
A survey from Microsoft found that 77 percent of young adults answered “ ‘yes’ when asked, ‘When nothing is occupying my attention, the first thing I do is reach for my phone.’ ”
Reaching for our phone in most spare minutes of our day is not limited to the young. I mean, I certainly don’t check out my phone too much. My kids have never complained that I am the texting queen, or at least they haven’t yet this week.
Last year, I started taking Digital Minimalism and breaking up with my phone seriously. I downloaded an app that locks me out of apps like Amazon and eBay after 15 minutes, and I don’t allow myself to have social media apps on my phone. Still, even with that, messaging eats up an average of 40-60 minutes of my day when I look at reports my phone sends to me at the end of the day. I am a work in progress.
Why did I go the extra mile by restricting myself on my phone? I realized I was not trustworthy. I will not regulate myself, so I have to create firm external boundaries to help me keep track of where my time is going.
Apps were cutting into my in-between time and then some. I was letting my phone steal my time, which I could have used to do something for myself. It is not an oversimplification to say that my phone and your phone, computer, and other digital devices are robbing us of our in-between time.
Be Like Jane—Plant an In-Between Time Habit Now
Over a century after her death at 41, Jane Austen is still celebrated worldwide. She completed six major novels that have rarely been out of print since they were first published. Jane Austen's life in the 1700s was far from the sophisticated lives of the characters in her novels.
Austen’s life was filled with farm duties and helping run a makeshift boys’ school at home. These early responsibilities meant her writing took a backseat. Yet, she seized in-between moments to write, working around her duties on the farm, at the school, and caring for her ill father.
Austen had to capture whatever in-between time she could find for herself. By taking these in-between times, she was able to slowly grow her skill and writing process. When she had a time with less responsibility, she was able to take her tiny habit and develop it into a substantial habit, completing multiple manuscripts in the last few years of her life.
As mothers, we can all relate to the challenge of finding time for ourselves. Our lives do not always allow for long periods of uninterrupted time, yet we still need to invest in ourselves during brief in-between time moments.
It's a myth that mothers will find more time for themselves as their children grow. I wish I could tell you I see the gyms and physical therapy clinics overflowing with moms who just had their last kid graduate and leave for college, but it doesn’t happen.
I know that taking care of yourself as a mom is tough. We're juggling so many things at once that it's easy to forget about our wellness. Take inspiration from Jane Austen's example and listen to the research-based advice of Dr. BJ Fogg to make significant changes by starting with small steps.
Using those little moments of 'in-between time,' like waiting for your coffee in the morning or sitting in the car before picking up the kids, we can start building habits that fit into our busy schedules and help us achieve our personal goals. Even with all the craziness of family life, we can still pursue goals and create change for ourselves.
Action Steps for DIGging Deep This Week:
Get Deliberate: Here are some of my In-Between Time exercises and tiny habits I use. Each time I do an in-between time activity I celebrate it by giving myself an actual pat on the back. I acknowledge I took the time because that feels good, and good emotions create change.
Whenever I am stopped at stop lights, I do Kegals until the light turns green. If you don’t know how to do a Kegal, check out this article.
Whenever I am done washing my hands after using the restroom, I do 20 squats.
Whenever I wait for dinner to cook, I cut up vegetables for my lunch, my husband's lunch, or the kids ’ lunch tomorrow.
Whenever I wait for my kids to finish their bedtime routine, I spend 5 minutes putting away laundry (because I HATE putting away laundry, but if I only have to do it for 5 minutes, then it doesn’t seem that bad) and less laundry before bed makes me happy.
Whenever I wait for my tea to steep in the mornings, I stretch my back by reaching for my toes and bending backward for 30 seconds each until the tea is done.
Whenever I wait for my kids to get out of their acting class, I stretch my feet, calves, and hamstrings. Yes, others probably find it weird, but it makes me feel better before I go to bed.
Get Inspired: Feeling guilty about taking time for yourself is pretty common. Sometimes, as a mom, There is so much guilt lying around, waiting for you to pick it up and carry it. Guilt and shame will never help motivate you to change, but inspiration can.
Think of someone you know who is good about taking care of themselves regularly. Try to pick someone in the same part of life as you are right now. If you have small kids and they have small kids, or if you have an infant and work, find someone else who has an infant and works. Ask them where they find it easiest to schedule when caring for themselves. The best tips and tricks are stolen from others in a similar life setup. Ask them about what helps them to get back to working on themselves after tough weeks when it is easier to give up.
Get Going: Ask a group of moms you know to join a group and commit to doing in-between exercises each day. Create your own Power Posse group, which supports each other through the challenging and good weeks BUT ALSO doesn’t let you give up on working on yourself. Share this post with your friends and get them on board for changing in tiny ways starting now.