The Caregiver Cup Podcast

Why Traditional Time Management Fails Caregivers And What Works Instead

• Cathy VandenHeuvel • Season 2 • Episode 5

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Traditional time management advice wasn’t created with caregivers in mind.

When your days are shaped by appointments, emotional labor, interruptions, and the unexpected, trying to follow rigid schedules or productivity systems can feel frustrating — and even guilt-inducing.

In this episode of The Caregiver Cup Podcast, we’re talking honestly about why traditional time management fails caregivers — and what actually works instead.

This isn’t about doing more or squeezing productivity out of every minute.
 It’s about making your day feel lighter, more supportive, and more sustainable.

You’ll learn three simple, caregiver-friendly approaches:

  • Energy Mapping — how to work with your energy instead of the clock
  • Must-Do vs. Can-Wait — a compassionate way to reduce overwhelm and guilt
  • The Power of 10-Minute Windows — how small, intentional moments can move your day forward

We’ll also talk about caregiver fatigue, brain fog, and why time management can feel hard — and why that doesn’t mean you’re failing.

This episode is for caregivers who want more ease, more clarity, and a way to manage their days that honors their reality.

Because time management is a skill — not a personality trait.
 And your time doesn’t have to be perfect to be purposeful.

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SPEAKER_00:

Well, welcome, my friends, to the Caregiver Cup podcast. It's Kathy here. And if you've been with me at all during any of my podcasts, welcome back. If you are new, I want to send out a huge welcome to you. I'm so glad you're here as we continue now with season two. And season two started the first of the year or just a few weeks ago, and it's all about caring your way. So I want to start with something I really believe. And it may be just a little, I might be rocking the boat a little bit, but caregiving and caregivers don't lack time. We lack control over our time. We all have the same amount of time during in the day, but as caregivers, we lack control over our time. And because of that, a lot of traditional time management advice just doesn't work for us. It can feel rigid, unrealistic, and honestly, a little useless, especially in our caregiver life. I've taught time management to caregivers. I've even created online courses around it. And here's what I've noticed: people leave. Caregivers leave feeling inspired and empowered, and they feel like I can finally figure this out. But what happens a few days later, the real life of caregivers hits. Think about a day that you had that's been very care chaotic. Maybe you get to the doctor's office and they're they're running late, and that throws your whole time management plan off. Or you're feeling stressed or just exhausted, and your emotions are running high in a day, and you just don't have the motivation to get everything done. Or the unexpected shows up. Maybe you're working your full-time job, maybe your loved one is sick, uh, maybe something in the house breaks down, whatever it would be, and suddenly all the structure turns into pressure, and pressure turns into guilt because you can't figure it out and get it all done. So today I want to talk, and I want to gently reframe this conversation. This episode isn't about squeezing in more in your day. You have enough going on in your day. It's about making your days feel lighter. Yes, lighter. Because you and I don't need harder systems. We need ones that feel easier, kinder, and more realistic for caregiver life. So let's talk about why time, the traditional time management advice doesn't work for caregivers. I want you to picture this. You wake up after taking a time management workshop and you're feeling motivated and ready. You have your plan in place. And your plan is to get up one hour earlier each day so that you can jump ahead of the day and not feel stressed through the day. You're gonna get up an hour earlier and you're gonna meal prep for the day so that you have all of your meals done and ready to go. You're even gonna throw in a couple loads of laundry in that hour. And if you get some time, you're going to catch up with something like mop the floors or whatever it would be. You're working on your tasks. And you're thinking, if I just could get ahead, the rest of the day would feel easier. And that's your plan. Lunch and dinner won't be stressful. You won't be staying up late folding clothes. It feels like a win. Honestly, it reminds me of those days getting up before the kids woke up to have a little control over the day. You know, think about it. When you're raising kids, you're trying to get them off to school and getting all of the things done because they had at least my kids had act after school activities besides. So let's get back to caregiving then. And then caregiving happens. Your day, caregiving happens, whether that be your loved one wakes up early with you or they call you because they had an accident in their bed. Now there's cleanup, there's extra laundry, there's help the there's helping them get settled again. By then, it's breakfast. And then breakfast is done. And if it's a caregiving day where you have to take them to the doctor's appointment, you're off to the doctor's appointment. And just like that, the plan that you had of doing things an hour earlier because your loved one got up earlier threw you off. Your plan is gone. And what sneaks in right behind it is that defeat feeling that defeated, you're defeated, or you're um the air came out of your balloon, you know, kind of thing. You start questioning yourself, why can't I make this work? I've tried now a few days in a row, and there's always something that gets in the way. What's wrong with me? You start thinking. But here's the truth, and I really want you to hear this. Nothing is wrong with you. Caregiving, caregivers live with this. We live with the unexpected, the constant interruptions, or I call them the fires and the chaoses that happen throughout the day. Whether you're, you know, working full time or your loved one is sick or whatever. Appointments that shift the day. Think about it. You know, I think about it when I go and I'm on this roll throughout the day, and all of a sudden I have to go to an appointment and you have to sit and wait and wait. It just depletes me. Or your emotional labor, most people don't say, you know, the emotions that you carry with you and the exhaustions that you feel, and and they we call it the non-stop decision fatigue, too, that you have to make. You cannot plan your day out of caregiving un you know, out of caregiving unpredictably. You can't sometimes you just cannot plan for it. You if you had a a perfect day, you want to stand up and rejoice because for likely it's not going to happen ever again or for a heck of a long time. So it's time to reframe how we think about time. We don't manage time, we manage what matters most in the time we have. Yeah. And if you're like me, oh my gosh, I love it if I could manage what happens every hour on the day and have this little plan. But nine times out of ten, it's not going to ever happen. Or nine times out of ten, it's gonna go to heck after maybe two time slots or within two time slots, and that's why I want to give you the first hack. I want to share with you that it isn't about a planner or a schedule. My first hack is about your energy. I call it energy mapping. The first thing that you want to think about is your energy. Energy map mapping is simply about noticing how your body or how you feel in your body and and mind throughout the day. I want you to really be aware of how is my energy. First of all, think about it. Are you a morning person or a night owl or a middle of the day person? So you might have more energy that way, but you also might go in in waves because of the fact that you may not have energy some days based on maybe what you did the day before or based on your hormones, whatever it would be. So I want you to map out your energy without judgment, without fixing anything, and not pushing through it. I just want you to notice your energy. And if you could do that for a few days, that would be wonderful. I like to think of energy in three simple ways high, medium, and low. And I know I've talked about some of these in previous episodes, but I'm gonna bring back a tip that I do. If you have a calendar or if you have a journal, do a high, medium, and low on your calendar and just kind of pay attention for to it for a while. Or maybe just put a small calendar somewhere that you can just put H, M, or Low and just put them on there. At any point in the day, you can gently ask yourself, where is my energy right now? Without judgment, without fixing it, without pushing through, no beating yourself up, no overthinking it, just plain awareness. How is your energy right now? And it could be like my energy is probably at a medium today because I didn't sleep good last night. And it could be that. Once you know your energy level, you can start aligning your tasks with it, and that alone can make your day feel so much lighter. I want to give you some examples here and taking a look at it. So if you have high energy on days where you wake up now and you've tracked it for a while, and you wake up and you're like, I have high energy today. I can actually smile. I got a little bit of kick in my step, and now just a little disclaimer: you might lose that energy throughout your day, but you're feeling good when you wake up, you're focused, you're mentally clear, you kind of feel like it's going to be a good day because it's you don't have anything really heavy on your plate. That's a great time to handle things that require more brain power for you. And for me, more brain power are like the administrative and paperwork that you have to do. Let's say you have claims that are not paid properly, or you have questions on something, or you need to fill out an application for maybe some support or whatever it would be. Maybe you have work tasks that you need to do. Now, everybody's different when it comes to work tasks, but maybe you're maybe you're working on a project at work. Maybe you're um working on something with your loved one, like maybe it would be there, you know, some paperwork that they need to start filling out, or maybe you're interviewing for a nurse, whatever it would be. Maybe you have to make some advocacy calls. And you have to go ahead and take care of some things from an advocate perspective. Maybe it's calling the nurse and asking some questions, maybe it's uh trying to go ahead and advocate for for a better facility, whatever it would be. You're making appointment, uh, important decisions because your energy and your mindset is in a good place. I want you to think about this of using it wisely. Maybe you only have 10 minutes, an hour in that day, but you know today you can get some things done. Not you don't want to do everything because you're gonna burn yourself out and tomorrow's gonna be a low energy day. But maybe you do some things because you know, hey, this is a good day for me. But to do what's truly needed and focus in on that, saying, okay, I'm gonna focus in on this today because I'm feeling good. Or maybe you have a high energy list and you pick something off of that list from a priority perspective. Now, let's say your energy is middle of the road, like mine is today, medium energy, and is that steady, capable place. You're not wired and feeling super, super great, but you're not wiped out either. On these days, I find myself doing light cleaning because I have enough physical energy to do the cleaning and the laundry. I might even run errands because that will help my my medium energy stay stable, especially if I play some music and run errands. Maybe you take your loved one for a walk or do something with them. So because you have that energy to go ahead and take them out and about. Or maybe you're organizing and prepping a little bit because you do have that energy. You get that spurt of energy that it's not going to break your mind and doing that, but you have enough. Maybe you do more meal prepping and you break you bake a whole bunch of chicken and you you you bake them and you start freezing some, so it's just pull out of the oven or pull out of the freezer kind of thing. Getting outside during this energy level often helps us sustain it longer. Even a short walk can make a difference as well. So then let's talk about the worst. That's low energy. And there are then are the those days that we're feeling really exhausted. Maybe we wake up and it's like, oh, I'm so exhausted. I'm emotionally heavy. I could cry at the drop of a pin, or I could go ahead and start an argument with someone, or I just feel blah. On those days, I want you to listen to your body. No pressure to tackle the hard stuff, no forcing productivity for yourself. This might look like resting when your loved one is taking their naps. It might be sitting together and watching a favorite show with them. Maybe it's doing the dishes with your favorite music playing so that you can go ahead and just kind of do the dishes and you know, just kind of get through it. You want to choose the easiest path through the day because low energy doesn't mean failure. It means you're human and keeping and your caregiving is demanding, and you're just doing enough to go ahead and making sure everything is stable. So the key takeaways from the high, medium, and low energy and the shift that you want to remember is do the right thing at the right energy level because it's going to save you time and insanity. I think of some times that I've tried to make phone calls to, you know, appeal to challenge a claim or send an appeal into the insurance company. Well, everything that they say when I was in low energy would set me off. And I would be emotional and upset and frustrated. And it did them no good. It did me no good to be had to go ahead and do that. Or, you know, when I had um high energy, yeah, you want to tackle everything, but what things should you focus in on because you have good energy? And so time management becomes less about control and more about your awareness and compassion for yourself. Okay, so that's the first hack is the energy mapping. The second hack is must-dos and the can weights. I want you to reduce overwhelm instantly because when you do the must-do and the can waits, it will help you. And one that helped me more than almost anything is this one. And especially on overwhelming days. Instead of asking, how do I prioritize everything on my to-do list, I ask a much gentler question to myself, what is the must-do's and what can wait? Because I don't need to get it. I seriously, if somebody looked at my list, they're gonna be like, There's a lot of things that you don't have to do today. Because when I hear the word prioritize, my brain does something funny. It does, it turns everything in my to-do list to really items that I have to get done. Which ones are important? Do those first, but don't forget you have to get all of the rest of them done. I I see a chronological order and it's exhausting. And it could be an entire page or two of things to do, and it would exhaust me. So I stopped thinking in terms of priority and started thinking of time sensitivity. And here's the simple difference must-dos are items that are truly time sensitive. Right away, what comes to my mind is making dinner for your loved ones, getting a medication that they need during the day, getting them to their appointments at their specific time. They usually involve health, safety, and real deadlines. The can waits still matter, but they don't have to do it. And it doesn't have to happen today. I'm not saying about procrastination at all. I'm just saying, could they wait if my energy level is low? And this is where caregivers get stuck because when you're caring for someone, everything feels urgent, everything feels like it matters, and suddenly your nervous system is in overload. And I I have this weird sense that I'm like, I gotta get it all done because somebody walked into my house and I didn't put away the laundry, they're gonna think, What the heck are you doing all day? And in retrospect, so what if the laundry sits in a laundry basket until the morning? And if I don't want to look at it, I can go ahead and put it in another room and I can do that in the morning. So here's the one question I want you to ask yourself. Maybe first thing in the morning or when you start your day, and it's it starts to feel heavy, you know, that pressure you feel when you get up and you're like, Oh my gosh, there's so much to get done. You need to take a step back and say, what actually needs to happen today? Not this week, not eventually, just today. Let me give you a few real life examples, and I think I've gave you some. Maybe your must-dos today are the medications and you need to refill their medication uh pill bottles and and whatever, if you have a container's or whatever, or maybe you have to order medications, whatever. Your doctor's appointments today. Do I have any work deadlines that I need to do? Meals that need to be prepared and the essential caregiving tasks. What needs to be done today? These you you might consider these non-negotiable. These are my everyday things that I need to do today. The things that might be able to wait might be laundry, might be emails, might be the paperwork that you got in the mail yesterday that you're still stressing about, but you're saying, I can't do this today. Maybe it's organizing something. Because if you organize something, then you're wrapped up in that and you got to get the meals done, and it's just it's not gonna happen today. Maybe it's the cleaning, and you're saying, Well, it's not urgent today. I'll I'll get that tomorrow because I'm gonna be at the doctor's office for two hours with with dad today. These things matter, but they don't have to happen today. The those are the ones that can wait. And here's the here's Here's the reframe I want you to land on. Can waits don't mean never. Or can wait doesn't mean never. Okay, your your grammar there. It means just not today. You're not failing. You're not dropping the ball. You're simply choosing to protect your energy physically and mentally and focusing on what really matters in this moment. When caregivers treat everything like must-do's overwhelm skyrockets. But when you allow yourself to say this can wait, something shifts. Think about it, your shoulders start dropping, your breath slows down, your day feels more manageable. I want you to recognize it. Are you taking a break on those days that things can wait? Because you need to. This doesn't, or this isn't about doing less. It's about doing what matters that day the most without drowning in the rest of the tasks. Because tomorrow, most likely, you don't have appointments. Tomorrow, most likely, you'll have a couple more hours. Okay, hack number three. Hack number three is about the power of 10 minutes. It's a window. And I want to share this because that changed how I think about time completely. Stop waiting for enough time. Because the truth is, as caregivers, we rarely get large uninterrupted blocks of time. And if we do, sometimes we're like, and then I don't know what to do with it. And when we wait for the right time, the quiet time or the quiet hour, the open afternoon, nothing ends up happening. So instead, I started asking myself one simple question: what can I do in the next 10 minutes? Mom's taking a nap, and I'm prepping for dinner time, and I find myself, she's still napping. So what can I do in these 10 minutes? Not what can I finish, not what can I do perfectly, just what can I begin? 10-minute windows are realistic for caregivers. They show up between appointments, while your loved one is napping, while you're waiting in the car for whatever you're waiting for. Maybe it's your prescriptions, maybe it's uh to pick up your loved one from a therapy appointment. They're between tasks, 10 minutes in moments you didn't plan for. And those minutes add up. Here are some real life ways caregivers can use a 10-minute window. Maybe you get the the prescript the medications out for your loved ones ahead of time and you have them sitting by their bed or you have them sitting by their breakfast placemat. Maybe you can send one important email. Maybe you step outside and just get some fresh air for your sanity and you haven't had a chance to soak in a little sun. Maybe you stretch your body and roll your shoulders for 10 minutes. Maybe you just sit and reset your mind. But 10-minute windows aren't about just or they're not about just tasks. They're also can be about support. Support maybe for your caregiving tasks or support for you. Maybe 10 minutes is just enough time for you to order the online groceries to pick up. Or you're you you ask a friend to go ahead and hey, you offered to go ahead and you said you were going to go grocery shopping today. Here's what I need. Maybe it's texting or calling somebody for a quick check-in because you just need human interaction outside of caregiving. Maybe you ask for help with a task, a meal, or just emotional support. Maybe it's following up on a resource you've been meaning to explore. And maybe it could be a time management thing. Maybe you're looking to go ahead and find an efficiency, or maybe you're just looking at you haven't had a chance to go ahead and buy yourself a new pair of shoes in a really long time. And you have you know that they're getting to the point where you need to, and you've 10 minutes now to go ahead and and find re resource or research the prices or whatever it would be. Sometimes the most powerful use of 10 minutes is asking for support instead of pushing through alone, too. And here's what I want you to hear clearly. You don't have to stack wins in a way that exhausts you. And what I mean by that is you don't have to go ahead and do this alone. It this isn't about squeezing in productivity out of every single moment, it's about choosing small intentional actions that move the day forward. If you know your nervous system and you have you're an overwhelm, and your your stress is an overwhelm, those 10 minutes should be focusing on your health. If you know that you have an extremely stressful day tomorrow and you have 10 minutes today, what could you do in just 10 minutes to ease your mind a little bit? For me, maybe it's making my putting my all my dry ingredients into my shake container. So in the morning I have half of it done already. And so I'm making my life easier. What can you do without draining yourself? Now, small progress counts. 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there. That's how caregivers get their full days, not by marathon stretches of time, but by manageable moments. When you stop waiting for the perfect time or the perfect day and start working with the time you have, you're going to see something shifting. Your day feels less overwhelming. Your to-do list feels less heavy because you're just, you're just highlighting the must-haves today or the must-dos today instead of all of them. And you start to trust yourself again. So before we wrap up today, I want to pause here for a moment because for some of you listening, even these ideas may seem hard and feel hard. If you're experiencing brain fog or emotional exhaustion or low motivation, or that heavy feeling of I don't just don't have it in me, I want you to hear me say, you are not lazy. It's not about laziness. You are in caregiver fatigue. Caregiving asks a lot of you, and it asks so much of your nervous system and so much of your emotions in your body. When you're tired in this way, even simple decisions can feel overwhelming. So if time management feels hard right now, I want you, I want to give you permission, and I want you to give yourself permission to do smaller things. Awareness always comes before change. And if you're feeling this way, your smaller win should be 10 minutes to go ahead and take a walk outside, 10 minutes to sneak in a power nap, 10 minutes to go ahead and stretch, whatever it would be. You have to do some of those self-care things. That's how it worked for me. When I started tracking my energy, I wasn't trying to fix anything, I was just noticing it. And in that noticing, I began to understand the why behind my exhaustion. When I asked myself, what are the must-do's today and what can wait? I gave my permission to stop doing everything and conserve my energy for what truly mattered. I can't be superwoman. And you think you can at the very beginning of a crisis or a situation, but within a week, maybe even sooner, you're feeling it. And those 10-minute windows, that's because they became my golden nuggets. Not because I did more, but because I stopped waiting for perfect conditions and started meeting myself where I was. So it, if it feels hard right now, please be gentle with yourself. You're not failing. You are tired, and that deserves compassion. Let's keep this simple. Let's keep it simple. You do not need to try everything we talked about today. In fact, I encourage you to pick one. Instead, choose just one practice to experiment with this week. Just experiment it. Track your energy. High, medium, low. What are you at? And then if you write yourself a list or you have a mental list in front of you of all the things you need to do, highlight the must-do's and the ones that can wait, especially on heavy days. Use in in another one, use 10-minute windows intentionally for a task, a reset, and asking for help. Well, that's it. One practice, one small step. You're not trying to master time management. You're learning how to support yourself in the time that you have. And sometimes that one small shift is enough to change how your whole day feels. So let me let me conclude here with a couple of things. A reflection, I'm gonna want to talk about reflection questions because gentle guidance and it's not homework. Before we wrap up, I want to offer you a few reflection questions. And as a matter of fact, I will put these reflection questions in the email. If you follow my email list, um, you'll see that. If you're not on my email list, hit that text button and send me your first name in your email list, and I'll add you to my email list if you want to get my emails. They aren't meant to overwhelm you, these questions, or give you another list to complete. Think of them as gentle guideposts, something you can come back to during a quiet moment or even on a walk or when the day feels heavy. You might want to pause and jot these down or wait for my email to come out. They come out, they come, it'll come out Tuesday afternoon. Um, if you're listening to it in real time on February 3rd, 2026. But if you're listening to this at a later date, just pause these and jot them down as I'm telling you. The first question is when do I have the most energy? Is it, and remember, no judgment. Is it morning, midday, certain days of the week? Maybe it's a situation. Maybe you have more energy on on you know, errand days, or you know, when you're when you're at appointments, maybe you have more energy because you're around people. What drains me the fastest? Oh my gosh, that's the second question. What drains me the fastest? Is it certain tasks? Is it people? Is it decisions? Is it a task? Or is it the time of the day? Yeah, certain people don't like doing certain things. You know, maybe it's those advocacy calls that just drain you. So you need the high energy. Third question is what do I treat as urgent that could actually wait? This one is freeing. Ask yourself, does this truly need to happen today? Fourth question, where could 10 minutes help me today? That might be one you if you have a dry erase marker, write it on your mirror when you're getting ready in the morning. You know, where could I where could 10 minutes help me today? 10 minutes to reset, to ask for help, to move forward, or to rest. Where could it help me? You know, you kind of know what your day could look like. So if your loved one's getting chemotherapy or or lab work, that might be your 10-minute reset. Maybe your loved one takes a nap, or maybe your loved one goes to bed at eight o'clock. What's your reset? That kind of thing. You don't need answers to all of these. I it's just getting you to think. Even noticing one thing can change how your day feels. Remember, awareness is power. It's often the first step towards ease and simplicity. So, as we close today, I want to remind you of something important. Time management is a skill, not a personality trait. And it's a specific, crazy skill when you're dealing with caregiving, just to be honest. You're not bad at time, you're navigating this demanding caregiver life in a world that wasn't built with caregivers in mind. As a matter of fact, my son came over today and his wife had knee surgery. Well, his fiance had knee surgery. And he's like, I'm not meant for caregiving. And we had this great discussion about caregiving is is demanding. And when you first go into it, you don't realize how much it takes away from your normal everyday schedule. So he's gonna have to take on more. And I we went through the the musts, must-do's, and the ones that can wait, because he's also got a toddler at home. So he's dealing with a lot. And I'm laughing because of the fact that, you know, he he didn't think he would ever have to do something like this this early in life. And I'm like, it happens, it happens. So small shifts create big relief. When you work with your energy, decide what you must do or must be done, and use small windows of time intentionally, you you start to create a day that supports you instead of the constant draining days, the days that drain you because you wake up in the morning and you you you automatically have a to-do list that's 50 task long. And this fits so beautifully into what we're going to be talking about all session of all this season two session. Your rhythm helps guide your days. Your boundaries protect your energy, your resets help you come back to yourself when things feel hard. This podcast exists to help you navigate caregiving with more ease, more simplicity and more compassion for yourself with these tips and these hacks because you deserve that. And we get so wrapped up in our everyday life that we forget to go ahead and really take a step, take a take this 30 minutes or this 45 minutes to just kind of say, Oh yeah, oh yeah, I need a reminder of this. If you're willing, could you do me a favor? I'd love to hear from you. There's that text button. When you click on text Kathy, that is a private texting system. Nobody uses your phone number, nobody uses your information but me. And I just use it as a pulse check. Or if there's tips or suggestions, I use those. I as a matter of fact, somebody came back to me last week and corrected me on a quote that I gave. And I I truly appreciate that. Thank you for the awareness and helping me look into the mistake that I made. So we all need that. And if you have a hack, if you have anything that you think might help other caregivers, please bring those to me because on occasion I'm going to bring those back to the Caregiver Cup podcast and share your stories as well. Maybe it's energy map mapping, maybe it's must-dos versus can waits, maybe it's a 10-minute window or something different. We learn so much from each other, and your stories truly matter. So next week we'll continue building on this with another episode designed to support your right, to support you right here and right where you're at. Until then, remember this your time doesn't have to be perfect to be purposeful. You don't have to be perfect to be purposeful. I'm glad you're here, my friend. And until next week, bye for now.