Goals for 2018? How are you going to find the time to achieve them?

This time of year, the internet and my email inbox are full of articles and suggestions on how to keep our resolutions and change our habits. They’re great reminders that you can’t achieve something new by doing the same things you did last year. 

Recently there was a comment that caught my eye. It said that if you want to exercise more, read more, spend more time with your family or friends, etc., you also had to decide what you were going to STOP doing. We can’t add things to our busy day unless we also remove something.  

There are many things I want to do this year, including writing another book on how to stay positive around negative people and create an online course to help people be more positive. I know I’ll have to “make time” for these things to happen so what can I quit doing, delegate, or do less of? What things do I spend time on that don’t move me towards my goals or that someone else could do for me?

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not talking about removing things that are fun, relaxing, or that recharge my batteries. We have to each think about our own “downtime” activities to make sure they really are worthwhile to us and that we’re not overdoing them. For example, a friend was visiting today and commented how he doesn’t like to sleep more than 8 hrs a night because it feels like a waste of time. I thought of how much I love sleeping in on weekends after a week of getting up early. I might wake up but then enjoy the luxury of staying in bed to enjoy the softness and warmth of the sheets and taking the time to think about my upcoming day. It doesn’t feel like a waste of time to me.

But I could cut back on the time I spend surfing the web, reading “informational” emails, etc. The computer can be a big distraction for me. I also need to see if I could delegate some of the less strategic tasks in my business. 

What could you do less of to make more time for your goals this year?

Tina Hallis, Ph.D., is a positivity speaker, trainer, author, and founder of The Positive Edge, a company dedicated to helping organizations and individuals create a more positive attitude, a positive culture, and positive results.