How Passions Propel You toward Your Goals

If your goals and your passions are unrelated to each other, you can still use your excitement from your passions to help you achieve your goals.

There are several ways to do this.

Practice delayed gratification: Reward yourself for completing baby steps of your goals by spending time working on your passion. This approach can equally be used for pleasures which would ordinarily be time wasters. It's like what many parents tell their children: Do your homework and chores, then you can watch TV. Are you this stringent with yourself, or are you allowing your pleasures or passions to rob you of your dreams and goals? (This approach works for some people and doesn't work for some people. It doesn't work for me.)

Create an "Unschedule" (from the book The Now Habit by Neil Fiore): Set aside one day a week, or two hours two days a week, or 15-30 minutes a day working on your passions. For example, I go hiking or orienteering every Saturday or Sunday. I study Japanese for 30 minutes a day. Both activities make me more relaxed, self-confident, and excited about life. I can then take this added energy, and apply it toward my goals. (Even mundane chores become less boring.) According to the unschedule, you actually put these activities on your calendar or at the top of your To Do list, and rarely let anything interrupt your scheduled activity. It's literally as important as a meeting you can't afford to miss.

                   

Use a timer: Spend 15-60 minutes on one of your passions. When the alarm goes off, stop working on your passion, and start working on your goals.

Make one of your goals related to one of your passions: In the example of the goal of paying off debts and the passion of snowboarding, a snowboarder who already owns his or her own snowboard and boots could set a goal of saving up for a 5-ticket or 10-ticket pre-purchased lift pass, but with the rule that twice as much money be used to pay off debts as is saved in the saving account for snowboarding. When you've saved enough for snowboarding, go have fun on the slopes! Meanwhile, you are motivated to pay off debts so you can simultaneously save up for snowboarding--without the two goals conflicting with each other. In this way, snowboarding can make it easier to pay off your debts, rather than making it harder for you. Snowboarding can help motivate you to get out of debt! Can you use an approach like this with one of your passions, to help motivate you to achieve one of your goals?

Replace time-wasting pleasures with your passions: You might be tired when you come home from work every day. Your inclination (especially if you are male) might be to do a low-energy, passive activity such as watching TV or drinking beer in a pub. In this way, you rob yourself of time to achieve your goals and dreams. You also rob yourself of time doing your passions. Even if you're tired, why not replace the pleasurable activity with one of your passions? Instead of watching TV or reading a romance novel, spend time on your hobbies. This will add to your energy and happiness, making it easier to work on your goals when you have time. Instead of being deprived of energy (which is already very low), you will find yourself more excited about life, and eventually ready to take on new challenges.

Let your passions propel you toward your goals, rather than keeping you from them!