Good morning, delightful Readers,
It’s a beautiful warm day outside, and the sun is shining (for a few hours anyway), so of course I am sitting inside, typing away! I plan to get some sunshine later, but right now I am caffeinated and excited to talk about practical ways to move forward. Let’s get going!
Okay – in my last post, I talked about some of the things holding us back from living out our passion and realizing our potential. We covered how those things are usually due to our lack of conviction, our lack of direction, or our lack of a supportive community. Today’s post is going to zoom in on the second of those lacks and we will discuss how to gain some healthy structure and direction.
Lack of direction comes down to poor planning. Don’t be ashamed, it’s an incredibly common shortcoming. The good news is that it is entirely fixable! A lack of direction may mean a breakdown in one or more parts of the plan we have in place to achieve our Assignments. Three common planning breakdowns are fuzzy goals, improper prioritization, and poor time management.
The first planning breakdown is fuzzy goals. Think about it. Having only a fuzzy idea of where you are headed means you have no clear path to get there. This leads to confusion and/or unspecific plans, which end up leading to no real action at all.
Here are a few examples of fuzzy goals:
- I need to get healthier and lose some weight this year
- (as opposed to I want to be more energetic and lose 10 lbs.)
- I am going to spend less and start putting money into savings
- (as opposed to I am going to write a budget and eliminate all my debt)
- I am going to be more intentional with my free time and do things I actually enjoy
- (as opposed to I am going to read 12 books this year and start a regular game night with my friends)
These are all good aspirations and may truly be part of pursuing your purpose. However, they are TERRIBLE goals. You could eat one piece of celery and lose ¼ pound over the next 12 months and say you accomplished goal #1. You could start putting change into a piggy bank and say you’d handled goal #2. But would you really be anywhere closer to how you want to live? No. And that is because you don’t have a specific and clearly defined goal.
Instead of saying “I need to get healthier and lose some weight this year” I should explore what I am really looking for. Do I want to stay active and feel good? Do I need to lower my cholesterol? Am I thinking about entering a body building competition? The steps I take next are going to vary greatly depending on my answer.
Say I need to lower my cholesterol. Okay, I am going to stop eating saturated fat, I am going to increase my fiber intake by loading up on whole grains, fruits, and veggies, and I am going to walk at least a one mile every day.
Or maybe I just want to be active and feel good. I am going to sign up for a 5k (whether I run or walk it will depend on personal health circumstances) 3 months from now. I will follow the couch to 5k training plan and focus on eating great recovery foods so that I can feel great the whole time. After some quick research I decide that I will need to focus on antioxidants, so I am going to add a lot of green salads and berry smoothies into my weekly menu.
Boom – clear goals provide specific direction. And specific direction is much easier to follow than vague ideas about just “doing better” at something. This is so common sense that you might wonder why I am taking the time to even write about it. Yet it is stunning how often we try to move ahead with only that fuzzy goal and no real course planned to get there.
The second planning breakdown is improper prioritization. This is pretty straightforward, but without strong intentionality it can wreck the path toward your purpose before you even start. It’s looking at your list of obligations and commitments and deciding what is and what is not serving your purpose. You need to be very clear on your purpose, so take the time to discover that first (see Posts 1-4 at genevasblog.com). Then actually sit down and look over your schedule. Write a list of what you are spending your time, attention, and energy on. You don’t have to get granular on this one. Just paint broad strokes to figure out where your resources are going. Work? PTA? Hobbies? TikTok? Staying up late wondering where all of your energy went? Put a check next to all the things that are serving your Assignment and an X next to all the things you need to stop or that you need to delegate which are pulling you from your Assignment. It’s a simple exercise but can have life-altering results.
The third planning breakdown is poor time management. While this is related to the improper prioritization breakdown, it can happen unconsciously even when you are clear on your priorities. Time is such an undervalued resource. I mean, we all wish we had more and talk about it casually in everyday conversation. But how many of us measure it and spend it as if it had the same value as money? James Frick said “Don’t tell me where your priorities are. Show me where you spend your money, and I’ll tell you what they are.” This is exactly how we should regard our time.
There are 168 hours in every week. Let’s say we spend 50 hours a week sleeping, that’s 8+ hours each night (seriously? Lucky us!) and 50 hours working/commuting. That leaves 68 hours each week of personal awake time. If you are part-time or retired, you may have even more! I don’t know about you, but 68 hours sounds like a LOT of time to me. Even after considering time spent on laundry, grocery shopping, cooking, and cleaning, there should still be a good chunk of time left, right? And yet it doesn’t always feel that way. Do you know where all your discretionary time is going? Chances are, even if you think you have a pretty good idea, you may be surprisingly unaware of where large amounts of time are slipping away. If this resonates with you at all, I have a couple of recommendations.
- Keep a time journal for a week. Record what you spend every hour doing, down to the nitty-gritty then add them up at the end of the week. The results can be quite enlightening.
- 6 hours of meal prep? Not unexpected, but maybe we can look for ways to cut it down.
- 39.5 hours of sleep? Oooh we might need to look at a more structured bedtime.
- 30 minutes of laundry? Huh, I could have sworn it was way more than that.
- Wait, what? Over 18 hours on social media, reels, and TikToks? Yikes. (That is the actual average per person according to Google).
- Read Laura Vanderkam’s book, 168 Hours, You Have More Time Than You Think on this exact topic.
Side note: Want a quick tip from me for saving time? Think who, not how. We’re so quick to find the best, most efficient way to do things focusing on how we can get everything done. Stop. Figure out what really needs to be done by you personally (the list is shorter than you think) and who might benefit from being assigned the other tasks. Put one of your kids in charge of folding laundry. There. 20 minutes a day a day back. Maybe when you think about it, your weekend time is more valuable than the $40 to have the neighbor’s kid cut your grass. There’s 2 hours back. Have another kid (probably one of your own) do the dishes. At our house, we go through a lot of dishes, so that’s about an hour a day back.
Okay, I have so much more to say on time management. It’s one of my passions. I’m a planner. But I’ll spare you and leave it there. The point is that there are fairly simple, very actionable steps you take to give yourself clear direction and great follow-through on your purpose/Assignment. You need clear goals, aligned priorities, and excellent time management.
Let me know what you think! Does this resonate with you, or do you find other things clouding your direction? Also, let me know if you do a time journal and what you discover! Like I said, I’m very much a time management nerd.
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