[trx_quote cite=”#” title=”Mandy Green”]It’s not so much about how much time you have to work on your goals, as it is about the quality of your goal-achievement time.[/trx_quote]

Do Your Personal Goals Take a Back Seat to Coaching?

Carving out time in our busy schedules to accomplish things outside of our coaching lives isn’t easy. After all, we coaches are all too versed in the multi-role lifestyle. We’re coaches, we’re significant others, we’re parents, we’re colleagues, and we’re friends.
Whatever your goals are outside of coaching–starting a coaching blog, running a 5K, losing 10 lbs, and so on–if you’re not working toward achieving them, you probably have a long list of excuses which purportedly explain why you’re still in stand-by mode. And lack of time because of your coaching job is very likely to be at the top of that list.
Coach, do you sometimes feel like you are “sacrificing” your work for personal goals?
I found this definition of sacrifice: “to give up something for something else considered more important.”
If what I am saying rings true for you, you need to stop using a lack of time as an excuse and start making the time to pursue what you want. But how do you find time when you’re incredibly busy?
Below you’ll find 12 ways to make time to achieve your goals.  Obviously, there are more but I just wanted to give you a few ideas to get started.

1. Can you spend less time in front of the TV or playing games (sorry Chris Logan J?
2. Can you enroll the kids in an after-school program to give yourself after-work hours to work on you and your goals?
3. Go to bed at the same time as your kids so you can get up earlier.
4. Go to bed forty minutes later and work on your goals at night.
5. Use Your Lunch Hour.
6. Use Your Commute.
7. Block out the time for when you are going to work on your goal. By scheduling time to work on your goal, you know exactly when you’ll be working on it, instead of just leaving it up to chance.
8. Use Scraps of Time. Keep in mind that you don’t necessarily need to have a large chunk of time to work on your goals. If all you can carve out are fifteen minutes here and there throughout the day, use that time.
9. Can you negotiate with your employer that you’ll work longer hours Monday to Thursday, and then take Fridays off?
10. Work On Your Psychological Discipline. Keep in mind that making time to work on your goals is, to a large extent, about psychological discipline. A lot of the reasons that we use to explain why we don’t have time to work on our goals are just excuses that we’re using to avoid the hard work of writing, exercising, learning a new skill, and so on.
11. It’s not so much about how much time you have to work on your goals, as it is about the quality of your goal-achievement time. That is, when you’re working on your goals, are you completely focused on the task, or are you trying to answer emails and catch up on Twitter as you write? Work on your goals with laser-like focus.
12. Give Yourself Permission to Work on Your Goals. When the world around us is swirling in chaos, we often feel that taking the time to work on our goals is a luxury that we can’t indulge in at the moment. However, working on your dreams isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. Write yourself a permission slip if you need to; but get to work on your goals.

No matter what goals or aspirations you might have, no doubt there is at least some form of sacrifice required for progress. And the only person who can determine whether or not it’s worthwhile is YOU.
So I encourage you to look at what’s really important. When you are making a decision between your personal and work goals, carefully evaluate the risks and rewards. What will be left behind? What will take its place? What do you really want, and what are you willing to give up in return? What price are you willing to pay? And how much is too much?
These aren’t easy questions. They force you to look at the whole picture and how your career impacts other areas of life. It’s not just about the money, or the title, or the lifestyle. It’s about ALL of these things and what they mean as a whole—to you, your family, and your future.