Motherhood Changes the Math
Why some doubled-up hours work and others quietly cost you.
You now have the option to listen to this article. Hit the play button below!
Moms don’t have the luxury of doing one thing at a time.
I know that’s not a revelation. But I think we talk about it wrong. The conversation is usually about multitasking: whether it’s good or bad, whether you should do it or stop doing it, whether it’s killing your productivity or making you a superhero.
But that’s the wrong question. Because when your hours are as scarce as they are in this season of life, you’re going to double up. That’s not a choice. That’s the math. The real question is: why do some of those doubled-up hours feel like they’re working, and others feel like they’re tearing you apart?
I’ve started thinking about this as the difference between layering and splitting. Let me walk you through it.
If you're new here, You're Not Failing. You're Grinding. is the place to start. It lays out the framework this builds on.
Layering is when one hour genuinely serves more than one part of your life, and the combination actually works.
The activities share an energy. They’re compatible. You’re not torn between them. You’re in one mode that happens to fill more than one area at once.
Here’s what layering looks like in my life:
I get on my walking pad during large work meetings where I’m mostly listening. The meeting is still career. The walking is self. They don’t compete. One is my body, the other is my ears. I end that hour having moved my body and done my job, and neither one suffered.
On weekends, my husband and I lift weights together. That hour is self (movement), inner circle (quality time with my husband), and it’s genuinely fun. We’re not splitting our attention. We’re all doing something together.
I do spa nights with my daughter. Face masks, painting nails, the whole thing. That hour is time with her, but it’s also nourishing for me. It doesn’t feel like a care task I’m enduring. It feels like something we’re both enjoying. I’m engaged, she’s engaged, and the hour counts for both of us.
When I’m cooking dinner, I listen to an audiobook. My husband usually plays with our daughter in the other room, and honestly, the audiobook helps me stay in my own zone while the lovely but very loud sounds of squealing and laughter fill the house. Cooking is already fully invested time for me. The audiobook layers something restorative on top of it. Both things get my real attention because they don’t compete for the same kind of focus.
Layering works because the activities are compatible. They draw on different kinds of attention, or they share an energy that makes the combination feel like more than the sum of its parts.
Splitting is the opposite.
It’s when you try to be in two places at once and you end up grinding in both. The activities compete for the same kind of attention. Neither one gets what it needs. And you walk away feeling like you gave everything and accomplished nothing.
Here’s what splitting looks like:
Trying to answer emails or check Teams while doing literally anything else. I’m not doing my job well. I’m not present for whatever I stepped away from. I’m just toggling between two things that each need real focus and giving neither one enough.
Ordering groceries on my phone while I’m meant to be playing with my kid. She’s talking to me. I’m nodding and scrolling. I’m not really choosing groceries with any thought and I’m definitely not playing. Two things that needed my attention. Neither one got it.
Trying to have a real conversation with my husband while tidying up and managing kid logistics at the same time. He’s telling me something that matters and I’m picking up toys and half-listening. The conversation doesn’t land. The tidying barely registers. We both walk away feeling like we didn’t connect, because we didn’t.
And this is the one I want to be honest about, because I think it matters: sometimes during bedtime, I am reading my daughter a story out loud while mentally drafting slides for work. My mouth is forming the words on the page. My hands are turning pages. But my mind is three rooms away solving a problem from my day. And somehow I can read an entire book and have no idea what just happened in it.
If my daughter asks me something when I’m in that mode, I can feel how flat my response is. She can feel it too. Kids always can.
That’s splitting. And there’s no phone involved. My phone can be in another room and I’m still split. Because splitting isn’t about devices. It’s about attention. It’s about trying to be in two places that each need a different kind of focus, and ending up not really in either one.
Here’s what I think matters about this distinction:
The advice you usually hear is “be more present” or “put your phone down.” And look, sometimes that’s the answer. But sometimes the phone is already down and you’re still split. Because the issue isn’t the device. The issue is that your attention is being pulled by something that hasn’t been resolved, or released, or given its own time.
When I’m drafting slides in my mind during bedtime, it’s not because I don’t care about the story. It’s because the work problem didn’t get its own hour during the day, so it followed me into an hour that belongs to my daughter. The splitting isn’t a discipline failure. It’s a planning failure. That work needed a container, and because it didn’t get one, it bled into a container that wasn’t built for it.
Layering works because you’ve chosen combinations that are compatible. Splitting happens because something that needed its own space didn’t get it, and now it’s competing with something else for attention it can’t share.
This is why I think motherhood changes the math in a way most advice doesn’t account for.
When your hours are scarce and your labor load is high, you’re going to combine things. You have to. The answer isn’t “stop multitasking.” That’s not realistic when you’re raising kids and building a career and trying to stay a person through all of it.
The answer is getting honest about which combinations work and which ones don’t. Which doubled-up hours leave you feeling like you gained something, and which ones leave you feeling like you lost two things at once.
For me, it comes down to a simple question: are these two things asking for the same kind of attention?
If they’re not, they can layer and share the hour without competing.
If they are—if both need my focus, my presence, my real engagement—they can’t share. One of them needs its own time. And if it doesn’t get its own time, it’ll invade someone else’s.
That’s the math motherhood actually requires. Not less. Not perfect. Just honest about which combinations build you up and which ones quietly cost you.
Choose accordingly, as often as you can.
Next Tuesday: six things I do in my own life to spend less time grinding and more time in the hours that matter.