Achieving Your Goals While Raising A Family

Ryan Justin
Sep 7, 2018 · 4 min read

Working your goals around your family.

by Rhone on Unsplash

We all have dreams of bigger and better things. Providing the best possible life for yourself and for your loved ones. It’s good to have ambition, but, with a full-time job and a family to keep, where do you find the time to work towards these goals?

Throughout my twenties I lived a carefree life, coming and going as I pleased, free to pack up and go travelling on a whim, explore different lands, those were the days, right? Having all the time in the world with little responsibility and living in the moment.

Those days are long gone. Now that I’m in my thirties, I have matured from the young go-getter I once was and now thoughts of the future occupy my mind, triggered as a result of now having a young family to care and provide for.

As much fun as I had in my twenties, the thought of building a future for myself and my family excites me a lot more.

Finding Time

Fantasizing about how life could be for yourself and your family isn’t going to make it a reality — regardless of what the ‘Law of Attraction’ states.

Achieving the life your desire requires work.

Finding the time to put in even half of the work needed to get moving in the general direction of your goals can be extremely difficult.

Quitting your 9–5 job is not an option as it provides the wages that keep a roof over your head and food on the table.

You could spend less time with your family, constantly jumping between your profession and working towards your goals, but, how much fun will your dream life be when your family aren’t there to enjoy it with you, leaving due to years of neglect. (I know this is an extreme example, but you get the idea)

There must be a middle ground, a balance between work and family life.

Optimize Your Time

Over the past few years, other than my full-time job, I have been working and experimenting with various other small side projects.

Teaching myself new skills, creating new ideas and trying to expand my mind in the hope that one day all the information I have gathered comes together and adds greater value to mine and my families lives.

Finding the time to quench my thirst for knowledge has always been a challenge, I have tried various methods of working my personal learning time around my family life. Some have worked superbly, others not so much. I have listed a few below.

Working late into the nightThis worked for me for a short period of time. I would start working as soon as everyone went to sleep and usually finish up around 2 am or 3 am. With the house being so quiet I was free to concentrate fully with no distractions. However, working in the ‘wee’ small hours took a toll on my 9–5 job. I found it quite difficult to concentrate after a while due to lack of sleep.

Working early in the morningAgain this method worked fine for me for a while. Waking up around 4 am, before anyone else in the house, guaranteed that there were no distractions for a few hours at least to focus on what I wanted to work on. The downfall in waking up so early was that I found myself crashing around 3 pm in the afternoon — there wasn’t enough coffee in the world to pick me back up — struggling to produce the quality of work that is expected in my day-to-day profession.

Working at intervals throughout the dayI am currently using this method. With my main focus at the minute being writing, I find that working at intervals throughout the day is fantastic. I tend to use a Google doc or Word to write, both of which have downloadable apps which I have put on my phone. Writing a few lines here and there whenever I get a minute — on my lunch break for example — helps minimize the time I work when at home. I still do some work in the evenings but now I get to bed at a reasonable hour and have at least eight hours of sleep each night.

Of course, everybody and every family are different. What works for me may not work for others. You may be fine with less sleep each night and still be able to function at a high level, I, unfortunately, cannot. There are no right or wrong ways to do things, whichever works best for you is the right way.

There are a lot of other different techniques that can be used to optimize your time when working towards your goals.

I would love to hear some of the method you are currently using and how they are working for you?


I hope you enjoyed this article, thanks for taking the time to read it, much appreciated. I aim to improve my writing with each article so I welcome any tips or advice.

Thank you.

Ryan Justin

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Writing with the aim to inspire | Top writer | “No one sees the world the way you do, so no one else can tell the stories you have to tell” — Charles de Lint

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