Every January, as friends talk about their plans to wake up earlier, run farther, and cut back on coffee (gasp!), I worry that I have commitment issues. Or, a lack of chutzpah. But, I just don’t see how hanging a new calendar in my office will make a difference in getting those life changes off the ground—you know, the ones that have been stuck on the tarmac for the last twelve months.
Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Lies via unsplash.com
The truth is, I’ve got a runway littered with abandoned plans to write more, exercise in the morning, and jump out of bed when the alarm goes off. But, it seems that I lack self-control. Why else do my good intentions always end up back where they started—as ideas, instead of realities?
But, I’ve been feeling the itch to revamp my life a bit, and January is as good a time as ever to do that. So, I decided to watch Michael Hyatt’s free videos on goal-setting and was startled by what I discovered. Lack of self-control isn’t my only arch-nemesis when it comes to resolutions.
Following Hyatt’s advice, I wrote down answers to the following questions:
- How do I want people to remember me after I die?
- What are my top priorities, in order of most to least important?
- What brave action can I take today toward one goal?
Then, I spend fifteen minutes on his “Spend Your Days” tool to calculate how much time I have left for goals, after logging days for work and rest. The result was less than I thought. My life is already stuffed full of great, good, and—let’s be honest—mediocre things. My problem isn’t just a lack of self-control, it’s a lack of time.
So, I have a choice to make. I can:
- keep up life at the status quo, which would mean exercising about as often as a meteor shower hits our hemisphere,
- choose sleep deprivation in exchange for more time, or
- sift through my schedule, saying “no” to low-priority items so that I can make progress on what really counts.
I’ve chosen the last option—which means cutting back on some of my writing goals in favor of exercise and adequate sleep. For now, I plan to keep blogging, but only as long as it doesn’t prevent me from investing in my relationship with God, my personal health, and my other top priorities. I may not like it, but it’s what I need to do for this season if I want to succeed at what’s more important.
What resolutions have you made for 2016, and what steps have you taken to guarantee adequate time for accomplishing them? Post your answers on Facebook or Twitter.
well said Gia!