The children are finally asleep, the kitchen is more or less clean, and you have about forty minutes before you need to sleep yourself. Then you spend them scrolling, because you’re too tired to do anything else. If you’ve been wondering how to find time for yourself as a parent, the honest answer is that you probably won’t find it. You’ll have to take it, in small, deliberate pieces.
Here’s a practical way to do that, without pretending you have hours to spare.
Why “me time” keeps disappearing
Parenting time doesn’t come in blocks. It comes in fragments: ten minutes during a nap, twenty while someone is at a club, a half-hour after bedtime. Most advice assumes you’ll protect an evening or a morning, which isn’t realistic for many families. The fragments are real, though, and they add up to more than you’d think. The problem is that they get spent by default on whatever is nearest: the phone, the washing, the inbox.
So the goal isn’t to find a big block. It’s to decide in advance what the small ones are for.
Step 1: Decide what “time for yourself” actually means
Write down three things that would genuinely make you feel more like yourself. Be specific and small. Not “exercise” but “a 15-minute walk alone”. Not “read more” but “ten pages of a novel”. Not “see friends” but “a 20-minute phone call with one person”.
If something takes more than an hour, break it down until it fits into a fragment. This list is the most important part of the whole process, because when a gap appears you won’t waste it deciding.
Step 2: Find your three fragments
Look at a normal week and spot three gaps you already have. Common ones:
- The first 15 minutes before anyone else wakes up
- Naptime, or the hour of a weekend club or lesson
- The commute, or the walk back from the school gate
- The half-hour after bedtime, before chores
Pair each fragment with one thing from your list. Walk on the way back from drop-off. Read for the first ten minutes after bedtime, before the dishes. Call a friend during swimming lessons.
Step 3: Trade time with your partner or a friend
If you share parenting, a simple weekly swap works better than hoping it evens out: one of you has Saturday morning, the other has Sunday morning, every week, no negotiation needed. Single parents can do the same with a trusted friend or another parent: you take their children for two hours one weekend, they take yours the next. A standing arrangement removes the guilt of asking every time.
Step 4: Lower the bar for the house
The hidden thief of parents’ free time is the idea that the evening must end with everything tidy. Decide what the minimum is (dishes done, bags packed for tomorrow) and stop there twice a week. The rest will still be there tomorrow. Your one free half-hour won’t.
Step 5: Protect it from the phone
The fastest way to lose a fragment is to pick up your phone “for a second”. Put it in another room, or switch it to do-not-disturb for the length of the gap. It’s not about willpower; it’s about making the default the thing you actually chose.
Don’t wait until they’re older
It’s tempting to think this gets easier later, and in some ways it does. But the habit of treating your own time as unimportant is easier to keep than to break. Twenty deliberate minutes a day is two and a half hours a week that are genuinely yours, and children notice a parent who has a life of their own as well as theirs.
If you’d like a gentle read on this, our book Time’s Richest Harvest was written for people with no time to read: short chapters you can finish in one of those fragments. For a related practical guide, see how to stop your weekends disappearing.
A lot of this comes down to turning things down. If that’s the hard part, here’s how to say no without feeling guilty, with scripts for work, family and friends.
If you’d like a reminder on the wall
There Is No Right Time, Just Time
For the kitchen or the hallway you pass ten times a day, as a quiet reminder that the right moment is usually now. See the print