The trick is to live in a big public space together with all your friends and share the labor, the rewards, and the love. Then reap genuine enjoyment and physical/emotional growth from the work you're doing while you support others doing the same.

The problem is when you forced to compartmentalize the tasks, with the expectation that "exercising" and "working" and "socializing" and "eating" and "cleaning" are all distinct activities you micromanage. Living together with people you enjoy spending time around goes a long, long way towards killing many birds with few stones. Then making and eating and cleaning up food isn't something you do distinct from hanging out and relaxing. Biking around gets you energized and sends you where you need to go. Many hands make light work of seemingly onerous tasks. Hell, sharing a shower with your partner(s) can be as intimate as it is efficient.

But all of this is predicated on a foundation - social roots you build up over years/decades. Every time you change schools or look for a new job on the other side of the country or having a falling out with family/friends or switch housing leases because the rent went up or chase a new zip code because the school your kid goes to sucks or watch a close friend or old neighbor do the same, it fucks everything back up to square one.

People who have this close-knit, long-term social circle and don't need to constantly uproot themselves can "do it all" easier than the folks who are told to endlessly hustle in search of that next nut.

Because it was taken from us. We used to divide labor, taking care of the home was considered a full time job for 1 adult.

Now here we are. Where it now takes 2 incomes, or frankly more, to raise a family and have a home. Now you have no time to do anything and purchase more expensive convince items to try to claw back time.

1 income should be enough if they want us to start having kids again

I lost my job a few months ago and so I’ve had an inordinate amount of free time and it made me realize the same thing. Even with essentially infinite time I can’t get everything that needs to be done, done.

That's the neat part, I don't!

It's impossible because we are social animals. We are evolved to live in tribes and extended families. We are trying to achieve things alone that our ancestors achieved in groups of up to 100 people. Rugged individualism is killing all of us.

We aren't.

I cook, my husband cleans. So we both eat. Cooking for everyone else so I do remember to eat too.

I work out because I prioritize it. Same with sleep. Let other things slide if you have to, I promise they won't slide as bad as if you don't work out and sleep.

We have someone come and clean every other week so it doesn't get too far out of control.

And not good at keeping up with people, oh well. I'm not really someone who collects people like that, though I have some friends who do, so got collected, lol. But we have parties once in awhile and catch up at those, or at least hang out.

Apart from what @hayvan@feddit.nl said, it's also important to understand how a human brain works.

Massively oversimplifying, you have a "primate" brain, good at complex and novel things like logic, casuality, motivation etc; and a "reptile" brain, good at just keeping you alive by repeating the same thing over and over. Crucially, the primate brain takes up a lot of energy and other resources when it works, so your reptile brain will shut it down wherever possible. The trick is to use your primate brain to form habits by repetition, which the reptile brain will pick up, because that's literally the only thing it's good at.

To form a (good) habit, you need three things: first, motivation. You need to understand why doing some action is good for you. Second, a trigger - some concrete event that "breaks the flow" of your life, e.g waking up, coming home from work, or just a loud alarm you set on your phone; this is needed for your reptile brain to wake up your primate brain so that it could use the motivation you have to force your body to do something. Third (and this is the hard part) repetition. If you force yourself to do the action every time a trigger occurs, your reptile brain will eventually start catching on. Remember, it is wired to simply repeat what you have been doing before, because you've survived up until now so it must be a good thing to do. This can take different amounts of repititions depending on various facrors, somewhere between dozens and hundreds. After that, you will start doing the action almost automatically when the trigger happens.

E.g. I exercise when I take a break from work in the middle of the day. To do that, I forced myself to do exercise whenever I took a break for like a month. Now I get this natural urge to do push-ups when I stand up from my table :)

Split the house chores between a partner, meme and doom scroll social media while at work, exercise at home or nearby. Don't have the energy to keep in contact with most people all that often though. Get what sleep I can.

The best way to manage life is to just rub one out to extreme German pornography every time you complete a task.

Now imaging having children on top

Who says people do? My house is clean and I spend a lot of time with my friends. But I still don't have the time to work out and I haven't worked for 4 months.

Fuck them normies! One task per day only gang for life!

I don't. I don't take showers. And stopped going to the gym cuz no time.

Do at least two at once

Have enough space

Use company time to do all of them

Nothing about the American lifestyle helps with any of this.

It's even worse when you have one or more small children. When they're awake they need most of your attention and when they're asleep you can finally try to undo all the chaos they wrought.

What you describe is accurate for non-wealthy, mid-class and above.

It's working as designed.

It's hard. And it's an ultra-nightmare setting playing irl with ADHD on.

I think most people don't. I live in a small house with my wife, no kids, and even that gets overwhelming somehow. Some days are just lost to work, cleaning, and maintenance.

We do aim to have at least a couple of days a week where we don't have to do anything at all. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. When it doesn't, it doesnt take long for burnout to set in.

Actually it's because there are days I do absolutely absolutely nothing. That is how I recharge to prepare for the next set of active days.

I exercise at work during lunch. It's really hard to get motivated every single time, but always worth it.

Cook with the kids as soon as we get home. Multitasking is actually good decompression for me.

Have to shower before bed or I can't sleep.

Cleaning the house is a constant unfulfilling battle that I haven't figures out yet.

Friends visit often, but also disc golf has been a great way to goof off in the woods regularly.