Women's creativity is dying on the altar of to-do lists
It's not "having it all," it's "doing it all" – and it's killing what gives life meaning
There's a joke by British comedian Sara Pascoe about how only men are ever discovered to have secret second families.
Because it’s only men that have the time to spare.
They finish work, kiss the wife and kids, then pop out for a few hours to see... their other wife and kids. Entire parallel lives.
Can you imagine a woman having the energy to pull that off?
She finishes work and then –
Just popping out, love... to scrub the kitchen of my other house half an hour down the road. Don't tell anyone, it's my sexy secret!
It's hilarious because it's true.
What she nails is this: women don't have energy for secret families because we're already exhausted from all the invisible, unpaid jobs in our actual lives.
Three jobs, one exhausted woman
Our first job is paid (often, not paid well enough). The second is invisible. The third is emotional.
We coach women every day who describe it like this:
I finish work – and then my second job begins.
Dinner, laundry, school letters, packed lunches, WhatsApp groups, medicine to collect, pets to feed, forms to sign, birthdays to remember, people to check in on, teenagers to locate, elderly parents to call, random abandoned socks to pick up, appointments to make, mysterious smells in the fridge to investigate, other people's chargers to find, permission slips discovered at 11pm to be urgently signed, mugs and plates left one inch from the dishwasher to be loaded, and the endless game of "who moved my stuff" to referee.
It's all the work that isn't called work.
And then there's the third job. The one that lives inside our heads and hearts.
The mental and emotional labour of tracking, remembering, anticipating, soothing…
Making sure nobody's upset. Nobody's left out. Everything’s prepped. Everyone's okay.
All the while, we're quietly falling apart from sheer exhaustion.
Productivity culture is toxic for women
And all of this is happening inside a culture that's obsessed with productivity.
It's everywhere. Especially in male-dominated spaces, where productivity has become a religion – a currency, a competition, even a kind of spiritual superiority.
Flow states. Morning routines. GTD. Time-blocking. Pomodoro timers. The quest for Inbox Zero (which, let's be honest, everyone's now quietly abandoned).
But here's what we secretly suspect: for men, these tools are often needed to get them out of bed and get productive. To buckle down and stay focused. To stop relaxing and start working.
Women don't have that problem.
We don't need reminders to do more. We need permission to stop. To rest.
Because even when the workday ends, we rarely switch off. Not physically. Not mentally. Not emotionally.
We're always carrying someone. Often, we're carrying bloody everyone.
And yet somehow, we've still swallowed the lie that we're not productive enough.
The tyranny of the inner critic we never asked for
What makes this even harder to see is that it's not just a cultural problem. It's an internal one too.
There's a model from Transactional Analysis that helps make sense of our inner dynamics – the Parent, Adult, and Child states we all carry inside:
Our Parent parts are made up of messages we absorbed early on – from parents, teachers, culture, media. It comes in two flavours:
The Controlling (or Critical) Parent, who barks orders, imposes rules, and holds impossible standards.
And the Nurturing Parent, who soothes, guides, protects – the part that knows how to care.
The Adult is the calm one in the room.
Grounded. Present. Not caught in old scripts or stories or beliefs.
She can reality-test if unsure of something, solve problems in the here and now, and make wise decisions without the drama.
Then there's our Child – also split into quite distinct parts.
The Free Child is your spark – curious, creative, playful, gloriously unaware of the rules.
The Adapted Child is the one who learned the rules early and never forgot them. She shows up as either:
Compliant (follows the rules at all costs) or
Rebellious (knows the rules… but gives them the middle finger!)
We each have all of them.
The question is: which ones are running the show for you, most of the time?
Who's the one person you reliably fail to care for?
When you look at the lives of most women, it's easy to believe that we're already living from that "nurturing" place a great deal of the time.
We're the ones doing the emotional labour, the caretaking, the soothing. We know how to listen, how to hold space, how to love.
But here's the painful truth:
We almost never direct that nurturing energy inward.
We've been trained to use it exclusively for others – our children, our partners, our friends, our colleagues, our clients.
It's all directed outward.
So even though we might see ourselves as deeply caring, the relationship we have with ourselves is often harsh. Dismissive. Demanding. Even downright cruel.
And that's where the real internal system kicks in.
Inside most women, the dominant dynamic looks like this:
A harsh controlling Parent. A compliant Child trying frantically to keep up.
The inner Critical Parent sets impossible standards:
Sit at your desk all day. Finish every task on the list. Say yes to what you don't want to do. Don't let anyone down. Don’t make a fool of yourself.
It's full of rules and "shoulds." And the Compliant Child obeys, even when it's exhausting, even when it's soul-deadening.
Sometimes, the Rebellious Child shows up – slamming the laptop shut, walking away, having a tantrum. That can feel like freedom in the moment, but the Critical Parent always comes back. Louder than before.
You're lazy. You've failed. You'll never succeed like this.
We're stuck in an internal power struggle that mimics the systems we were raised in.
And we wonder why we feel burnt out, bored, blocked, and bitter.
Your inner 'wild child' is trapped in the attic
Here's what's really tragic about this dynamic:
It completely shuts down the one part of us that actually holds the key to a meaningful, joyful, impactful life:
The Free Child.
She's playful. Curious. Experimental. She doesn't care about results or metrics. She wants to make things, feel things, try things… just because.
She's the part of you that wrote stories as a kid. Painted for hours. Danced in the kitchen. Took risks. Followed hunches. Felt alive.
And she's been locked in the attic by your inner Critical Parent.
That's why so many women we coach tell us they don't even know what they enjoy anymore. They don't know how to rest. How to play. How to have fun that isn't somehow tied to being "good" or useful.
They've lost touch with that vital part of themselves.
And it shows.
In the emotional eating. The mood swings. The anxiety.
These are symptoms telling us: "I've lost connection to my joy. My spark. My source."
The cost isn't just emotional
When we lose access to the Free Child, we lose our creativity.
And for the women we work with – women who've left corporate life and quit working for someone else, who are trying to build something more meaningful, more flexible, more satisfying – that loss cuts deep.
Because we don't just lose touch with what we enjoy.
We lose the part of us that could bring more depth and colour and richness to our work.
The part that could make it feel the way we imagined it would feel, when we were starting out
The part that could help us make the kind of positive impact we actually wanted to make – in the world, and in our own day-to-day life
So we end up turning those beautiful visions into a hard, horrible slog.
Another punishing list of tasks. Another system to follow. Another job that grinds us down.
Do you recognise this inner dynamic? How does it play out in your life and work?
Or maybe you’ve found a way back to your creative inner child…?
We’d love to hear your thoughts:
So, how do we reconnect to creativity?
It starts by recognising what's actually going on.
This isn't a lack of discipline. It's a lack of freedom.
It’s not about fixing your habits. It's about freeing your creative self from internal tyranny.
It's why we're about to start The Artist's Way together.
Because it's hands-down the most reliable way we know to reconnect to creativity.
To get that "spiritual electricity" flowing again (as Julia Cameron describes it).
Because without it, the system wins. The spark goes out. And work – and life – becomes something we're just surviving.
We'll be opening up the chat space where you can join us week-by-week – sharing what's coming up, asking questions, reconnecting with that wild Free Child who's still in there, waiting.
And, if you're a paid subscriber, you'll get access to our live monthly circles where we reflect, share, and reconnect together.
It’s not a writing course. It's a liberation practice. A return to creativity and play.
So locate your old copy and dust it down – or if you're a first-timer, order yours today!
We begin next week.
Join us.
So true, I’ve been learning to calm my critical parent and free my inner wild child. I’ve seen her in a meditation, painted my nails purple, started acrylic pour painting, really seeing the colours in nature….she is coming 🌈
I realise I'm a bit behind in reading and joining this but it's so relevant to me right now. I found the part on transaction analysis so helpful. It's a framework I've worked with before and very quickly helps me see where I'm operating from. I'm currently flitting between critical parent and adapted child. Trying to do everything perfectly then suddenly giving up in despair. Forcing my way through to do lists, then zoning out. So many things resonated, the emotional eating, feeling I'm in survival mode... Time to pick up that book!