The Trick to Time Management? Treat Your Passion Projects Seriously

You have a Pinterest board with about 80 things you'd like to attempt: oil painting, redecorating, a movie you've had in mind for years. Maybe you've got a business venture you've been casually pursuing, and the folder full of bookmarked links to prove it. Occasionally you add things to it, pinning inspiring quotes or color palates, but mostly it's a daydream.

It seems we're all over-scheduled and often left without the energy to pursue our passions. When we do score an extra 15 minutes or an hour in our days, many of us will spend them watching TV or catching up with a friend rather than pursuing a project. And that's perfectly fine, but if you do want to find time in your day to pursue a passion project, you probably need to re-think not just how you plan your days but also how you think about your passion project. Advertising

Start by trimming down the ol' to-do list, editing it to include only what's essential to your day. This will give you some extra time, but just making the time is not enough, you also have to be in the position to use that time on your project. In other words, it's time management, not just time, that's the key. For so many people, it's much easier to spend extra time focused on the things we need to do, and quite difficult to give the same level of importance to the things we want to do. However, by indulging in our aspirations, in conjunction with prioritizing our time, we can help ourselves to create better time-management habits overall, which will help us find time to do everything - including that which genuinely makes us happy.

Here are a few tips for doing just that: Advertising

Set Reasonable Expectations

Be realistic about what it will take to accomplish your goals. If you only have about 15 minutes a day of free time, then adjust your goals and timeline accordingly. This might also require that you challenge some assumptions about what is needed for you to work on this passion project. Creatives, for example, can often be tricked into thinking that a 15-minute chunk of time is not enough to get anything done - they may believe they need to get into a creative mindset first, have relative quiet, and know that any flow they get into will not be interrupted. If this is an issue for you, think about ways to make that time work. Perhaps a one-minute meditation to get in the zone could help maximize your time, or perhaps it's just a matter of practice. You may also need to adjust expectations: Maybe this passion project will take a year, or a few years, instead of a few months. So be it! Small, incremental accomplishments toward a larger goal are still better than doing nothing and wishing things were different. By valuing that precious 15 minutes a day, you're also keeping yourself dedicated to a purposeful schedule that allows for free time - which will help you to not over-schedule yourself, in general.

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Carve Out Time

If your to-do list is an immovable object and your passion project is an unstoppable force, then we've got ourselves a classic shield and spear paradox. For some people, their written-in-stone life cannot accommodate other ventures - this is often true for working mothers, who have immutable demands placed on their time, or for those whose income is directly tied to the precise amount of time they work. So, what's the workaround for this scenario? If your life is such that you absolutely cannot substitute one task for another, or can't cancel certain parts of your day to make room for a project, then steal a few minutes from every task on your list. Even if it's as little as 5 minutes from each, it'll add up. Glennon Doyle, a popular author and blogger, has said she started getting up two hours before her kids in order to give herself writing time… and in order to do that she had to do something parents of small children everywhere would find difficult: give up nighttime TV. No one said it would be easy, but if a project is important to you, creating the time for it is the first step toward making it real. Advertising

Take It Seriously

Valuing a passion project means being consistent with all of your daily tasks and taking the project seriously enough to schedule daily time for it. If you treat these tasks as optional, the entire project will become optional. Making a to-do list can help with this; include your daily, weekly, and monthly goals. Create milestones that you can brag about. Post work-in-progress pictures to social media. Do whatever it takes to legitimize the experience for you, thus making you stay on track with all of your tasks, and propelling you forward.

Ultimately, making your dream come true is all about finding the time, managing the time, and making your goals a reality. Advertising

Featured photo credit: monkeybusiness images (iStock) via istockphoto.com