It’s been said that, “If you want something you’ve never had, you have to do something you’ve never done.” For me, that meant I gave up weeknights watching TV with my new husband. I gave up my weekends wandering around Bed Bath & Beyond to find a new duvet for the guest room. Instead, I worked. I interned for local wedding planners so I could learn the industry. I traded hundreds of hours on my feet in heels at weddings and movie premieres for knowledge of how I might be able to do this on my own. I worked for a solid year in one of the hardest, most thankless jobs on the planet (event assistant at high-end parties), in addition to my regular working hours, and I worked them for free. I never got a nickel for those hours. I traded comfortable weekends at home with Dave for the opportunity to work with demanding clients and abusive event planners in order to learn about the industry I wanted to be a part of.
Not to put too fine a point on this, but it sucked! Do you think I wasn’t tired after my regular job? Do you think I wanted to go run a wedding rehearsal for a bridezilla on a weeknight after putting in ten hours at the office? Do you think I wanted to miss out on friends’ birthday parties and weekends away so I could work a wedding? Do you think it wasn’t discouraging to be treated badly when I was working for free? Of course it was. But, dude, look where it got me!
I used the knowledge I learned that year to launch my own event-planning company. I used that event-planning company to start my blog. That blog gave me this fan base. And later, that year I spent working for mean-girl event planners gave me the story line for my first bestselling fiction book, Party Girl. Learning to carve time out of my day back when I first started in business meant that whenever I wanted to commit to something new, I understood that the only thing standing between me and my new goal was a willingness to find time for it.
For instance, when I wanted to write that first book, I started waking up at 5:00 a.m. in order to push toward my word count before my kids woke up. I learned to write whenever and however I could in order to get to my goal. That tactic still serves me to this day. Right now, I’m editing this chapter on the stairs of an overcrowded gate at the Toronto airport. I’ve just spent three days doing press and book signings, and I’m exhausted to the marrow of my bones. But I believe in this book, and I want to get it into your hands as soon as possible, which means I’m choosing to sacrifice some rest time in order to make this happen. If I want to achieve any new thing in my life, the question is never, Can I do it? The question is always, What am I willing to give up in order to get it?
That’s what it boils down to. Not whether or not you have the time, but whether this goal you have is so compelling, so beautiful, so necessary to your future happiness that you’re willing to trade your current comfort in order to achieve it. You in? You willing to give up a little of today’s rest for tomorrow’s possibilities? The first step is to get over the excuse that you don’t have the time. The next step is to reconfigure the time you do have in order to achieve the goal you’re after. Here’s how:
1. MAKE A TIMELINE OF YOUR CURRENT WEEK.
You know how, when you meet with a nutritionist for the first time, they ask you to keep a food diary for a week so you know every single thing you consume? This is the same idea. You need to account for every single hour in an average week. I want you to list out everything you do. The easiest way is to open a calendar app on your phone and document as you go. Did you go on a run that took forty-five minutes? Add it. Did you volunteer at the church bake sale? Add in all the time it took, including getting ready, drive time, et cetera. Did you spend fifty-eight hours this week playing Candy Land with your toddler? We all bow down . . . that’s sainthood work right there. Put it in the calendar.
Once you’ve recorded an entire week, figure out where you have the time to add five hours a week to work on your goal. Don’t hyperventilate. Five hours is not actually that much time. That’s one hour a day for five days out of seven. That’s one three-hour session and less than a handful of thirty-minute segments. There are a ton of ways to mix and match this time. The point is that you decide right now that you’re committing five hours a week minimum to your goal.
If you’ve hung out with me long enough, you know that I have some daily habits that help me live my best life, which I call “Five to Thrive.” Well, sister, these five hours are goal based and have a fun name too: “Five to Strive.” As in, you’re going to commit to five hours a week striving for your goal, minimum. If you’ve got more time, give it, but at the very least, make a habit of your five hours and stick to it!
2. ONCE YOU’VE SET YOUR NEW SCHEDULE, TREAT YOUR “FIVE TO STRIVE” HOURS AS SACRED.
If I open your calendar next week, I should see a life that’s set up around the things that you want to achieve. Let’s say you told me, “My goal is to get into incredible shape this year because my husband and I have always wanted to run a half marathon together and this is our year.” If I open your schedule right now, will I see three appointments a week to run?
When something is sacred you protect it. Imagine I came to you and said, “Hey, do you want to meet Chris Hemsworth for coffee at 3:00 p.m.?” You would of course say yes because he’s dreamy and he has an accent and you’re more than a little curious why Chris even knows who you are. You would put it in your calendar as a non-negotiable because there are so many awesome and exciting things you’ll experience with that appointment in your calendar. Then, if all of a sudden someone said, “Hey, can you pick up the kids at 3:10? I know I said I was going to do it, but I can’t now.” You wouldn’t just agree. You wouldn’t just blithely blow off your date, because it’s Chris-freaking-Hemsworth, and that scheduled appointment, that promise to yourself, is something you wouldn’t give up lightly.
Whatever vision you have for your future, it has to be at least as valuable to you as that coffee date with Thor . . . or whoever your version of Thor is. You have to recognize that your commitment to it will yield just as many awesome and exciting things as a date with a hunky Australian superhero. These five hours are what’s in between you and something great, and if you can’t commit the time in your schedule to becoming the person that you want to be, what are we even doing here? Why are we even trying? Is your schedule populated by things that will make your life better, or is it dictated by everybody else’s wants and needs?
3. MAKE SURE YOUR MINIMUM HOURS ARE YOUR BEST HOURS.
I write best and fastest in the morning. I’m more energized than I am later in the day, and I don’t have decision fatigue that makes me overthink everything. I can write at night, but it feels like a slog and it typically takes me twice as long to get the exact same word count. I know this about myself, so I schedule my minimum hours for the mornings. It’s not enough to simply make time for the hours; you have to also schedule them for when you’ve got the mental capacity to do them well.
4. PLAN YOUR SCHEDULE WEEKLY.
You have to. Every Saturday or Sunday, Dave and I sit down together and go through our calendars. We talk about work meetings, our kids’ drop-off and pickup schedules, our workouts and the time we’re planning to go out with friends, and our weekly date night. We also reaffirm our priorities so we both know what’s on each other’s plates and where we might need some extra support. Life happens, you guys, and your schedule will shift and change. Those sacred hours? They might have to show up at a different time or on a different day from week to week in order for them to make it into your schedule at all. If you wait until midweek to try and find a place for them, the chances are less likely you’ll actually get to the thing you know you need to be doing. You can’t just plan your calendar at the beginning of the month and expect it to stick; you’re not an android. Schedule at the start of the month and again at the start of each week to make sure you adhere to the plan.
You can make the time to pursue your goals, and you have to do it now. Why now? Because if not now, then when?