Time (to mangle the Rolling Stones lyric) is definitely not on my side. Like many Financial Times readers I’m sure, life for most of last year involved juggling a sheaf of to-do lists, with the clock as a permanent reminder that such a volume and variety of tasks would not and could not be completed.
Procrastination is not one of my psychological quirks, so that’s not it. And I’ve become quite good at “eating the frog” – doing one of the most unpleasant things on the list first, to give yourself a boost from getting it over with. No, the problem is quite simple: there is too much to do. This may be particularly the case for those with both young and old people to look after, as well as work responsibilities.
Luckily (if not happily), it seems that for many middle-aged women, large chunks of extra time open up in your diary around the same time as the tasks and responsibilities proliferate. But there is a catch – those hours are from about 3am to maybe five or six in the morning.
Yes, that’s right. Insomnia – it’s my tried and tested productivity hack for 2026. We’ve all been bludgeoned by the competitiveness of “the 5am club”, the go-getters who boast of starting their day super early to steal a march on the losers who need eight hours’ sleep a night. Well, this year I’m already planning the 3am club – think less business elite, more frazzled sandwich generation.
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Here’s how it goes. Strange midlife biological changes start to interrupt your sleep patterns, leading to some sort of internal alarm going off at approximately 3am, regular as clockwork. It’s not that you are sleeping badly (although a newfound sympathy for friends who have suffered with lifelong insomnia is perhaps a moral gain from the experience).
You are just plain awake. And judging by the number of times colleagues and friends have described the same phenomenon, joking that we could have sorted out our work questions in the small hours when we were both up, this is widespread.
You then have a choice: either worry about how bad the next day will feel, thereby worsening your anxious state; or embrace the bonus of a couple of extra hours to get on top of things.
Personally, I found, following advice from a counsellor, that getting up to put on a load of laundry or mopping the floors has the benefit of a physical task that will eventually summon sleep again. Then I rationalise my to-do lists for the following days, and often get my physio exercises done. If I’m incurably alert, I might do some work, but using screens is not conducive to winding down again (though many are the columns I have written after midnight).
You could also get creative – but be warned the output may not be a gift to the rest of humanity. One of the moments of 2025 was surely Reform UK’s sequin-clad Andrea Jenkyns, on stage at the party’s conference belting out lines from her own composition – a bombastic rock anthem entitled “Insomniac”. “I’m an insomniac!/ Staring at the ceiling, waiting for my thoughts to switch off.”
Unforgettable, for sure, but not in a good way – and you have to assume she wrote it at night. So make sure you take a good hard look at your own masterpiece after you have managed to get some sleep.
Reading, somehow, doesn’t work for me – the mind stays too active and I’m still awake as the rest of the household gets up. Last year I took up Japanese visible mending for our socks and sweaters, with mixed but useful (and therapeutic) results. The aim is to eventually fall back into an emergency top-up sleep before the day really has to start.
Clearly, none of this is ideal. The mental and physical health effects of a lack of sleep can be severe. And on those nights when the internal alarm fails to go off, I slumber on blissfully and wake refreshed, much like my old (for which read young) self. But since at least for now it seems to be inevitable, better to accept and adjust.
Chances are that this productivity hack will not solve the insomnia. But hey, we can beat those layabout 5am-ers at their own game and carry the day. And the night.- Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026
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