There is a point in midlife when something strange starts to happen.
You look at your calendar and wonder where the hell the time went.
The weeks seem to disappear. The months fly by. You’re juggling work, relationships, family, health, money, responsibilities and a never-ending stream of emails, messages and notifications.
And yet, somehow, you still feel behind.
So you do what most of us do.
You decide you need to get better at managing your time.
You download another productivity app. Buy another planner. Start time-blocking. Make a new to-do list.
And for a while, it might even work.
But then life happens.
A meeting runs over. Someone needs you. Your phone pings. Something unexpected lands in your inbox. You get distracted. Your carefully constructed day falls apart.
And by the end of it, you’re exhausted and wondering why, despite being so busy, you still haven’t done the things that actually matter.
According to Lissa Figgins, scaling strategist and host of REDEEM Her Time, the problem might not be that we don’t have enough time.
It might be that we have the wrong relationship with it.
We all have the same 24 hours
One of Lissa’s central ideas is remarkably simple:
You have time.
Every one of us gets the same 24 hours.
The problem is that we spend an enormous amount of energy trying to get more of something that isn’t available to us.
We say:
“I don’t have enough time.”
“I’ll have time when…”
“I just need to get better at managing my time.”
“If only I had another hour…”
But the truth is that nobody gets an extra hour.
So perhaps the better question isn’t:
“How can I find more time?”
It’s:
“What is it time for?”
That one question can change the way you approach your entire day.
Because once you stop trying to squeeze more and more into your life, you can start deciding what actually deserves your time in the first place.
The midlife wake-up call
This becomes particularly powerful in midlife.
When you’re in your twenties and thirties, it’s easy to behave as though you’ve got an infinite amount of time ahead of you.
Then somewhere around your forties or fifties, you look up and think:
Where did all those years go?
It can be confronting.
But it can also be liberating.
Because midlife gives you an opportunity to become much more intentional about what you want the next chapter to look like.
You begin to realise that you can’t do everything.
And perhaps you don’t actually want to.
The question becomes less about achievement and more about alignment.
What matters to me now?
Who do I want to spend time with?
What gives me energy?
What drains me?
What am I doing because it genuinely matters?
And what am I doing because I’ve simply become accustomed to doing it?
The “not enough” trap
Lissa talks about something particularly powerful: the connection between not enough time, not doing enough and not being enough.
It starts innocently enough.
“I don’t have enough time.”
Then:
“I’m not getting enough done.”
And eventually:
“I’m not enough.”
That is a dangerous psychological loop.
Because when your sense of worth becomes connected to your productivity, slowing down can feel like failure.
Rest feels unproductive.
Saying no feels selfish.
Doing less feels like you’re falling behind.
And being busy becomes a badge of honour.
We start measuring our value by how much we can cram into a day.
But you are not your calendar.
You are not your inbox.
You are not the number of things you crossed off your to-do list.
And being busy doesn’t automatically mean you’re living a meaningful life.
Busyness isn’t necessarily the problem with your calendar
One of the ideas discussed in the conversation is that busyness may be less about having a badly organised calendar and more about having a disordered relationship with what matters.
This is why another productivity system often doesn’t solve the problem.
You can have the most beautifully colour-coded calendar in the world and still be using your time in ways that leave you stressed, disconnected and exhausted.
Because the deeper question is:
Why are you filling your time the way you are?
What are you trying to prove?
Who are you trying to please?
What are you afraid will happen if you slow down?
What would it mean about you if you weren’t constantly achieving?
These are much bigger questions than where to put your next meeting.
Stop managing your time. Start stewarding it.
This was one of the most interesting distinctions in our conversation.
Managing something means keeping it contained and under control.
And that is exactly how many of us approach our lives.
We try to control our calendars.
Control our workload.
Control our commitments.
Control our environment.
Control our time.
But Lissa suggests another approach:
Stewardship.
Instead of thinking that time belongs to us and we have to control every minute of it, we can think of it as something entrusted to us.
That creates a very different mindset.
The question becomes:
“How can I use this time well?”
Rather than:
“How can I squeeze more into it?”
There is still responsibility.
There is still action.
There are still goals.
But there is also flexibility, perspective and purpose.
Give your day some breathing space
Lissa also shared the idea of time anchor zones, rather than rigid schedules.
Instead of putting every single task into a specific 15-minute or 30-minute box, think about broader zones in your day.
A period for focused work.
A period for family.
A period for exercise.
A period for reflection.
A period for connection.
A period for rest.
The exact structure will depend on your life and your priorities.
The point isn’t to create another complicated productivity system.
It’s to create enough structure to protect what matters without creating such a rigid schedule that there’s no room to breathe.
Because life doesn’t run to your calendar.
Things happen.
People need you.
Plans change.
Your energy changes.
And sometimes you simply need to stop.
Your phone isn’t helping
Of course, we can’t talk about time without talking about our phones.
The average smartphone has effectively become another appendage.
The moment we wake up, we check notifications.
Messages.
Emails.
News.
Social media.
Work.
Then we wonder why we feel behind before we’ve even got out of bed.
And the problem isn’t necessarily the technology itself.
It’s the fact that we’ve allowed everyone and everything to have access to our attention.
Someone sends a WhatsApp message and we feel obliged to respond.
An email arrives and we feel we should deal with it.
A notification appears and we immediately investigate.
We’re constantly reacting.
Instead of deciding.
So perhaps one of the most powerful things you can do is simply create some space between something happening and you responding to it.
You don’t have to answer everything immediately.
You don’t have to be permanently available.
And you certainly don’t have to let your notifications decide what your day looks like.
Ask yourself: what is it time for?
This might be the simplest and most useful takeaway from our conversation.
Instead of waking up and immediately asking:
“What do I need to get done?”
Try asking:
“What is it time for?”
What is it time for today?
What deserves my attention?
What deserves my energy?
What can wait?
What isn’t actually important?
And when you feel yourself becoming overwhelmed, stop again.
Take a breath.
Ask the question.
What is it time for right now?
It might be time to work.
It might be time to have the difficult conversation.
It might be time to exercise.
It might be time to switch off.
It might be time to sit with someone you love.
It might even be time to do absolutely nothing.
The answer will change because life changes.
And that’s the point.
Midlife isn’t about doing more
Perhaps this is one of the biggest lessons of midlife.
The second half doesn’t have to be about becoming more productive.
It can be about becoming more intentional.
You’ve already spent decades collecting commitments, responsibilities, expectations and habits.
Now you get to ask:
Which of these still deserve my time?
Because time is the one resource you can’t earn back.
You can make more money.
You can change careers.
You can move house.
You can rebuild relationships.
You can get fitter.
You can start again.
But you cannot manufacture another Tuesday.
So stop treating your time as something you need to beat into submission.
Receive it.
Respect it.
Protect it.
And use it for the things that actually matter.
Because perhaps the goal isn’t to fit more life into your time.
Perhaps it’s to put more life into the time you’ve got.