Today I'd like to tell you the story of Sarah. Sarah is 36, a project manager at a communications agency in Nantes, and she has two children: Léo, 5, who starts first grade this year, and Nina, 2, who goes to daycare. Her partner, Thomas, works shifts. On paper, everything is organized. In her head, nothing is.
Sarah could define mental load without ever having read an article about it: it's thinking about the diapers to buy during a client meeting, preparing for the pediatrician's appointment while the pasta cooks, waking up at 4 a.m. because she forgot to reply to the school about the field trip. She has no time for herself, and when by some miracle she does, she spends it scrolling, too drained to do anything else.
The day her body said stop
The tipping point was a crying fit in the car, in the daycare parking lot, one Tuesday in November, over something tiny: she had forgotten the cuddly toy. She spent the evening reading articles about parental exhaustion and burnout, and recognized herself in almost every sign: https://www.cobaltapp.io/en/blog/mental-exhaustion-burnout-signs-solutions. The next day, she booked an appointment with her doctor, who asked her a simple question: "You can't keep carrying everything. What are you going to let go of?"
She didn't know what to answer. Everything seemed essential.
Getting everything out of her head
The first thing Sarah did was not to get better organized, but to empty her head. A colleague had shown her Cobalt during a break, and in particular the summary of Getting Things Done by David Allen. The central idea of the GTD method: the brain is made for having ideas, not for storing them. As long as a task lives only in your memory, it comes back to haunt you at 4 a.m. Written down in a system you trust, it leaves you alone. The summary: https://www.cobaltapp.io/en/resumes/getting-things-done.
Sarah did the exercise one Sunday evening: write everything down, absolutely everything, from Nina's ENT appointment to her mother-in-law's birthday present, in a single notes app shared with Thomas. One hundred and twelve entries. Just seeing them on a screen, rather than feeling them spinning in her head, was a physical relief. And the shared list had an unexpected effect: Thomas discovered the scale of what she was carrying, and took on a third of it.
Less, but better
The second book was the hardest to accept. In Essentialism, Greg McKeown defends a simple and unsettling idea: almost everything is superfluous, and saying yes to one thing means saying no to another, often without knowing it. Sarah went back over her one hundred and twelve entries with a single question: what would really happen if I didn't do this? The summary: https://www.cobaltapp.io/en/resumes/l-essentialisme.
The result surprised her. The homemade cakes for school could come from the bakery. Nina's baby swimming class, taken "because you're supposed to", was stopped without Nina noticing. The parents' association, she resigned from the committee. Three hours a week recovered, and above all a permission she had never given herself: to not be everywhere.
Choosing one priority a day
Make Time by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky gave her the ritual that still holds today. Every morning, over her coffee, Sarah picks a "highlight": the one thing that, if done, will make the day a success. Sometimes it's work (finishing the presentation), sometimes family (reading Léo a proper story without watching the clock), sometimes for herself (a thirty-minute walk, alone). The rest of the day is organized around it, not the other way round. The summary: https://www.cobaltapp.io/en/resumes/make-time.
The book also gave her a rule for her phone: remove the infinite-scroll apps from the home screen. The evening scroll, which stole forty minutes without resting her, gave way to ten minutes of Cobalt, then a book, then, often, sleep.
Understanding why we escape into our phones
This point deserves a pause, because Sarah was ashamed of her scrolling. Indistractable by Nir Eyal gave her an explanation that soothed her: we don't get distracted through lack of willpower, we get distracted to escape an inner discomfort, tiredness, boredom, anxiety. The phone is not the cause, it's the refuge. Dealing with the discomfort (sleeping, giving yourself a real break) is more effective than fighting the screen. Eyal also suggests "timeboxing": booking blocks in your calendar for what matters, including time for yourself, the way you would book a meeting. The summary: https://www.cobaltapp.io/en/resumes/indistractable.
Coming back to the present with her children
Finally, Sarah cites The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, not as a method, but as a breath of air. Nina's bath, the walk to school with Léo, dinner: she used to live through them thinking about what came next. Tolle helped her turn them into whole moments, and she says they are now the best parts of her day, even though they haven't changed. She is the one who is there now. The summary: https://www.cobaltapp.io/en/resumes/the-power-of-now.
Three months later
Sarah didn't find an hour a day by getting up earlier or sleeping less. She found it by no longer carrying what wasn't hers, by cutting what didn't matter, and by no longer escaping into a screen. She still listens to a Cobalt summary almost every evening, on topics that have nothing to do with organization anymore: philosophy, psychology, a bit of history. "It's my hour to myself, even when it only lasts ten minutes."
| The problem | The concrete step | The book |
|---|---|---|
| Keeping everything in her head | Writing everything down in a shared system | Getting Things Done |
| Saying yes to everything | Cutting what doesn't matter | Essentialism |
| Running with no priority | One highlight a day | Make Time |
| Escaping into her phone at night | Dealing with tiredness, blocking time for herself | Indistractable |
| Living each moment thinking about the next | Coming back to the present | The Power of Now |
What Sarah's story can do for you
If you're a parent and you recognize yourself in this story, don't start by looking for a better organization system. Look for what you can let go of, write down the rest, and keep ten minutes a day that belong to you alone. Cobalt was designed for those ten minutes: more than 500 book summaries to read or listen to during nap time, the commute or bath time, with a 7-day free trial on iOS and Android: https://www.cobaltapp.io/download.
To go further: our article on mental load, to understand what exhausts you and how to lighten it: https://www.cobaltapp.io/en/blog/mental-load-understand-lighten, and our realistic method for reading as a new parent: https://www.cobaltapp.io/en/blog/reading-as-a-new-parent.
Sarah is a fictional character: her situation is a composite of common experiences. The books and methods mentioned, however, are very real.