Keep Your Goals Alive, Even When You’re Short on Time

Don’t give up on your side-hustles and hobbies just because you don’t have hours to dedicate to them

The Magic of Januaries

Januaries have this sparkly energy that fills us with the belief that we can become something new. That we can finally become who we’ve always meant to become but just haven’t gotten around to yet. There’s nothing actually special about January though, except that it’s a place on the calendar that we’ve collectively decided is a decent time to take stock of our lives and start fresh.

I didn’t always buy into the whole New Year’s resolution thing because it just felt like a gimmick to pressure us into buying a gym membership.

But then I realized that goal setting should be done on our terms, and as long as it’s done with intention and clarity it doesn’t matter when it happens. So why not use the start of a new year as a reminder to reflect, set intentions, and create a plan for our lives?

This year was no different. In fact, after the nightmare that was 2020, I felt all the more inspired and motivated to create movement in my life and feel a sense of progress. I felt a new kind of urgency to get my priorities straight and create a concrete plan for living intentionally. I set goals in several different areas and wrote down specific plans for how I’d reach them. (I’ve written previously about a couple of the things that set you up to achieve your goals here)

And this actually worked! …for a while. For a couple of months, I was meditating daily, writing regularly, reading more, and staying on track. Then I had a baby in early March and things got derailed.

When Life Gets in the Way

It’s understandable to stall on our long-term goals, hobbies, or side hustles when other urgent responsibilities come into our lives. To be fair, there are tons of completely justifiable reasons to get off track.

Adult life seems to serve up a fairly steady stream of urgent responsibilities that demand the bulk of our energy and time. Job changes, family needs, financial strains, trips, illnesses.. they’re all high priority, leaving little room for anything else.

During these seasons of life, it can be nearly impossible to find time to even shower or exercise, let alone pursue hobbies and long-term dreams.

Are you being inefficient or is there really just no free time?

The first thing I always do and recommend others do when struggling with finding enough time to get everything done is to make a brutally honest assessment of your typical day.

I so often complain that I have no time to spare because I’m so busy with kids and work and keeping the house from being buried in dirty laundry and dishes. But there’s often at least a half-hour spread out across the day wasted on watching YouTube videos or spiraling down Google rabbit holes. With just a little more self-awareness and discipline, it’s possible to scrape together these lost minutes and fill them with something that brings real satisfaction.

Sometimes though, there truly is no space in your day/week/month to make meaningful forward progress on your goals, not because you’re being inefficient with your time but because there’s just zero wiggle room. Or it may be because in the free time you do have, you are just so depleted you don’t feel capable of doing anything more than pass out on the bed. In these seasons, anything non-urgent may feel impossible, no matter how gratifying or life-giving it may be. This is ok, remember, you are human.

An Alternative to Giving Up

Indefinitely giving up on your goals isn’t the only solution though.

Especially because, as parents, the chaos almost never lets up. It’s easy to feel like things keep getting in the way of your plans and you just have to get through this one next crazy thing and then you’ll get to living the life you’ve imagined.

A better mindset though is to acknowledge that the hectic and unpredictable nature of life is life itself. If we wait for conditions to be perfect, we’ll never accomplish anything.

So instead of giving up and waiting until you’ve got tons of free time and low stress (in your 70’s maybe?), try condensing the action needed to invest in your goals into just a couple of minutes.

The book Elastic Habits talks about creating three ‘levels’ of each of your target habits to choose from on any given day. A mini habit is for the days when you’ve got zero time or energy to spare. For example, a mini exercise habit might be to do 5 pushups. So easy you can’t not do it, right?

This new mentality has allowed me to continue investing in things that are important to me even within the massive constraints on my time.

Consistent micro-investments in our goals are a way to keep ourselves on track while being realistic about our limitations. No, spending a couple of minutes a day on something won’t produce meaningful forward progress, but it keeps the dream alive. Maybe more like on life support, but it’s better than dead!

Writing 5 minutes a day means I can keep calling myself a writer, not because I’m producing much finished content, but because writing is still a regular part of my life.

I think of this as “mini maintenance” ..minimal effort, but enough to maintain the presence of something in your life.

It’s like leaving seeds in the ground so that when the rain comes, you may get some unexpected blooms, even when you haven’t had time to garden.

Mini maintenance means that we can take advantage of unexpected windows of opportunity — like a canceled meeting freeing up an hour of your time, or like right now when my son unexpectedly slept 5 hours straight for the first time in months (!) so I’m awake and feeling rested at 4 am when the house is quiet. I can seize this opportunity and dive immediately into my writing because I’ve been scribbling ideas in bits and pieces every day, so the ideas and the habit are near the forefront of my mind.

If instead, I had completely abandoned this altogether when life got crazy just because I didn’t have time to sit and write for an hour every day, I wouldn’t be able to activate this habit so readily.

This is a realistic, manageable way to keep close the things that are important for your long-term success and wellbeing, whether it be a hobby, a small business you’re strategizing, or a new skill you’re trying to learn. If it’s really important to you and you don’t want to put it off indefinitely, then find a way to keep it active — even in the tiniest ways — and your future self will thank you.

Originally published at https://partmomfullhuman.com on August 14, 2021.