No Time for Yourself? The Hour You Keep Handing Back

Erica Anderson Rooney is an ex-CPO turned executive coach and AI educator on a mission to get more women into positions of power and keep them there. She is the author of The AI Gap (2026), host of the Glass Ceilings & Sticky Floors and AI Voice or Victim podcasts, and NC Chapter Lead for Women Applying AI. Her SNAP and AI Continuum frameworks are taught to thousands of women through CHIEF, WICT, and Fortune 500 leadership programs. She is the sought-after speaker at the intersection of women, AI, and leadership.

A woman joined our coaching call this month walking laps around her own house with a screaming newborn on her shoulder. Her toddler had come home from preschool and melted down. She had planned to log on five minutes early, fed and changed and composed, and instead she got soaked and had to change clothes twice.

Partway through she said this out loud: "I haven't had a moment today to go to the bathroom by myself, let alone brush my teeth."

She counted showing up to the call as her accomplishment for the day. We counted it too.

Forty minutes later, in that same hour, a different woman in the same room told us she had run the math on her own week. One hundred sixty eight hours. Subtract sleep, commute, chores, work, family obligations, hobbies. She had thirty nine hours left that she could not account for.

"I feel like I'm so damn busy," she said.

Both of those women are telling the truth. That is what I want to sit with, because if you have no time for yourself, you are probably somewhere between them.

Why do I have no time for myself?

Part of it is that there is less of it. That part is measurable.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics published its 2025 American Time Use Survey results in June 2026. On an average day, women spent 5.04 hours on leisure and sports. Men spent 5.83. Women spent 2.75 hours on household activities to men's 2.11, and 2.47 hours caring for and helping household members to men's 1.90. Eighty seven percent of women did household work on an average day, compared with 75 percent of men.

That leisure gap is 47 minutes a day. Call it five and a half hours a week. A WEEK.

Pew Research Center surveyed U.S. adults in March 2026 and looked at couples where both parents work full time. 52 percent said the mom does more of the day to day parenting, 10 percent said the dad does. 43 percent said the mom does more of the chores, 17 percent said the dad. Among moms answering for themselves, 63 percent said they handle more of each.

Then two numbers from that same survey that made me put my tea down. Asked who takes the time off when childcare falls through, 68 percent of moms said they would be the one. And on satisfaction with how the chores get divided, 49 percent of dads are satisfied and 26 percent of moms are.

So the load is real and it is not evenly held. And there were still thirty nine unaccounted hours in that other woman's week. Both things, at the same time, in the same room.

The Hour With Nobody's Name On It

Another woman in the Collective said the quiet part without meaning to. She was laying out her plan for the month and said she wanted to carve out time each week for thinking, writing or learning, "and just be intentional about not giving that away."

Giving. Not losing it. Not having it taken. Giving.

Every hour in your week already has a name on it. Your boss's name. Your kid's name. Your mother's name. The one hour that belongs to you is the only one with no name attached, so it is the first one handed over when something else needs a slot. You value it. Nobody else is coming to look for it, so it goes first.

I do this to myself. I have sat in a chair and told a room full of women that I do not have time to strength train. It was never true. I just never gave that hour a name.

And one more woman, in that same hour, laid out her whole plan for herself, hiking, the gym, reading, getting back into her art, and then said, in the next breath, "We'll see if that happens. But I don't think that's going to happen."

She was right, and she knew it before anybody could respond. We have all narrated our own forecast like that.

Four Moves From Women Who Made It Work

Everything below came out of one hour, on one call, from real women with real lives and real schedules. They are all different, but all with that same underlying theme of “not enough time in the day.”

1. Swap an hour, do not add one

One of our members is trying to write 50,000 words in a month. She did not find an extra hour anywhere. She replaced an hour of morning doom scrolling with writing on her phone, and the total surprised her.

Adding never works, because there is nothing left to add to, but trading works. Go find the hour you are already spending on something that gives you nothing back.

2. Put it on the calendar, not on the list

I read something a while back that I have not been able to shake, and I’m still integrating into my world. Real leaders do not keep to do lists. They keep calendars.

Think about how often you have a list a mile long and you try to wedge it into the cracks of your day. Those cracks get filled with other people's emergencies. Work, kids, animals. Then when do you do all the things?

A calendar block has a name on it. A line on a to do list does not. Keep a parking lot list right beside it so the ideas you are scared of losing have somewhere safe to go. (This is the part I am still working on, in true transparency.)

3. Lower the bar until the habit survives

One member told the room her rule: twenty to thirty minutes beats nothing. She stopped waiting for the real workout and her energy is better for it.

Another, in an intense caregiving season, set herself a one month goal of not working out for two full weeks. She hit it, and she told us the resting was the hard part.

Sound familiar? Rest was the goal she had to white knuckle.

4. Unbundle the role

My favorite move of the month. A member is hosting both Thanksgiving and Christmas this year, and she is pre ordering the food.

"I will host and I will serve the people what they want, but I will heat it up rather than make it myself," she told us.

No apology, no justification. She kept the part she wanted, her people in her house, and she put down the part nobody ever asked her to carry. Do that with one thing on your list this week. The hosting without the cooking. The team offsite without the swag bags. The birthday party without the homemade cake.

What It Costs to Keep Handing It Back

I am not going to tell you that rest is self care and send you off with a bubble bath. Here is the bill.

The Women in the Workplace report from Lean In and McKinsey, published in December 2025, found that six in ten senior level women report frequently feeling burned out, compared with about half of men at their level. That same report found that for the first time, women are notably less likely than men to say they want to be promoted. 80 percent of women, compared with 86 percent of men.

Read those two findings together. A woman who has not had one unclaimed hour in three years looks at the next level, tries to work out where the hours would come from, and quietly takes her own name out of the running. Her ambition is intact. Her arithmetic is not.

So protect the hour as a business decision. It is what keeps you in the running for the role, the raise and the seat at the table where the money gets decided.

Meghan French Dunbar interviewed a thousand leaders about why success is making women sick, and we got into all of it on Glass Ceilings & Sticky Floors. Listen here: She Interviewed 1,000 Leaders to Find Out Why Success Is Making Women Sick. And if you cannot tell whether the exhaustion is coming from you or from the job, I wrote about that here: Lost Confidence at Work? How to Tell If It's You or the Job.

One Thing This Week

Not four. One.

Open your calendar right now and find one hour next week that is currently doing nothing for you. Put your name on it. Title the block with the real thing: Walk. Write. Doctor. Nothing.

Then tell one person it exists, so it is harder to hand back.

The women in our room are not better at this than you are. They block it, they give it away, they block it again. What they do differently is say it out loud to each other every single week, and saying it out loud is what makes it hold.

If you want that room, come sit with us. HER Collective runs live coaching every week, and this is the conversation we keep having. We saved you a seat.

More on this pillar: Boundaries & Burnout

You're not crazy. The load is real, and so is the hour. Go put your name on it.

I am cheering you on.

Erica

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do I have no time for myself?

Two things are true at once. Women do have less discretionary time, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics measured a gap of about 47 minutes a day in leisure time between women and men in 2025. The hour you plan for yourself is also the only hour in your week with nobody else's name on it, so it is the first one that gets given away. Naming it on a calendar is what protects it.

How do I make time for myself when my week is already full?

Trade an hour instead of adding one, because there is nothing left to add to. Find an hour you are already spending on something that gives you nothing back and swap it. Then put it on your calendar with a real title, not on a to do list, and tell one person it exists so it is harder to hand back.

Is burnout worse for women in senior roles?

Yes. The Women in the Workplace report from Lean In and McKinsey, published in December 2025, found six in ten senior level women report frequently feeling burned out, compared with about half of men at their level. That same report found women are now less likely than men to say they want to be promoted, at 80 percent compared with 86 percent, which is what happens when the next level looks like it costs hours you do not have.