How To Accomplish Your Goals When You're Running Out of Time

Published: at 12:00 AM

It is June 16th and I still have yet to accomplish most of my quarterly goals. Every quarter I set new goals for myself. I started doing this after I read the 12 week year, which is a book I highly recommend. If you’ve found yourself in this position before, I’ll teach you how to mitigate the damage. In this post, I’ll teach you how to break down your goals into how many hours they’ll take, determine how much free time you can spend on them, and which goals should take priority.

These are the goals I set out to accomplish this quarter.

I’ve only accomplished one of these goals. What’s my problem? Did I set my goals too high?

Let’s break down these goals by how much time they would take:

Finish Ryan Robinson’s blogging course and book:

8 hours of watching the course and 5 hours of interviews. His book is only 49 pages long so it should only take about a hour to read. His course is about 8 hours but I like to apply what I learn as soon as I learn it so it’ll probably take me about 16 hours to finish it.

Hours: 16

Begin Akron Marathon training

This is the only one I’ve done so far. I just learned that this year’s race is virtual so that’s going to be much harder. I love marathons because it’s like a party that lasts for 6 hours. People are very nice and along the course, they’re outside of their houses handing you free drinks, sometimes alcoholic.

Alternate day fasting until I’m 160 pounds

Currently, I’m at 185 pounds and I set this goal while I was at 190. I’ve lost a little bit of weight but not enough to complete this. I’ll be a little easy on myself and say that if I alternate day fast the rest of the month then I completed this.

Complete John Sonmez’s blogging course

His course has was pretty great. I spent a whole afternoon coming up with 50 blog posts that I could write about Advanced Custom Fields. His course is also why I chose Advanced Custom Fields to write about. I still have yet to produce a post about it but trust me, they’re coming. I’ll be writing a review of his blogging course soon.

Complete John Sonmez’s marketing yourself as a programmer course

I purchased this a long time ago but I haven’t gone through it yet. I’d say this is going to take about 10-15 hours to go through.

Hours: 15

Write 13 500 word blog posts

This blog post will be the 4th one this quarter. I have 9 more to go so you’ll be seeing a lot from me this month. Once I’ve accomplished this goal I’m going to consistently write twice a week. I estimate it’ll take about 10 hours to complete this.

Hours: 10

Create a block to capture emails and send them to Mailchimp

I need to learn more about Gatsby to do this, but this is the reason why I chose Gatsby as my platform, so I could learn more about it and React. I’d estimate this will take me about 5 hours to learn how to do it and implement it.

Hours: 5

Create 1 sequence for new subscribers

I have a sequence in mind that I would like to create for new subscribers. It’s going to be a 3 email sequence that you receive as soon as you sign up. I estimate this will take about 4 hours.

Hours: 4

Finish cabinets and doors

This is probably going to have to get moved to next quarter. Last year I bought a duplex and my girlfriend and I redid the top cabinets in my kitchen. We did those before we redid the floors and moved it. It took us longer than expected and we needed to move in so our cabinets have been “two-toned” for the past year now. We’re going to keep them two-toned and paint the bottom cabinets an espresso color. I estimate it’ll take us about 20-25 hours to complete this.

Hours: 25

Read these books

I decided on these books this quarter because I have plans to make this blog a full-time business in the future and I want to be best prepared for it. 22 Laws of Marketing, Small Giants, and the Effective Executive are all books that Tim Ferriss recommended in a Youtube video that you can watch here.

Content Inc and Bird by Bird are books about blogging and writing. Then Refactoring is a book that will help me in my programming day job.

I’d estimate that it’ll take me about 30 hours to read all of these books.

Hours: 30

Complete C25k with Mandi

My girlfriend and I sort of fell out of working out together when COVID hit. This could be another goal I can move to next quarter.

Total Hours: 105

If I stick to a schedule of working 2 hours every weekday morning on my goals then I have about 20 hours left his quarter, way below the goal I set for myself.

I have off today so I have about 4 more hours I can dedicate towards my goals, so we’re at 24.

I adjusted my weekday calendar so I could have time for my personal goals in the evening as well, it looks like I can have about an hour. The rest of my free time is dedicated to my girlfriend and to running. My calendar ensures that I have time to spend with my friends on Saturdays and to recover on Sunday. It also ensures that I work 40 hours a week and I get 8 hours of sleep each night.

If I stick to this schedule then I can have about 15 and a half more hours, putting my total at 39.

As for my weekends, I have 2 birthday parties for my friends on Saturdays and I don’t expect I’ll be able to do much on Sundays this month. I’m going to put a tentative 2 hours on my calendars on Sundays, so now I’m at 43 hours.

Which goals will get me the farthest towards my overall goals? I’d say these:

  1. Writing 13 500 word blog posts (10 hours)
  2. Ryan Robinson’s blogging course and book (16 hours)
  3. Start email marketing (9 hours)
  4. Read Content Inc (5 hours)
  5. Read The Effective Executive (6 hours)

The total hours for these goals are 46 hours, about 3 hours over. Hopefully, some of these take less time than I think they’ll take.

Here’s a screenshot of my calendar:

My June 2020 Calendar

Thank you very much for making it to the end of this blog post. I hope that I didn’t bore you to death by talking about my personal goals and that this post has taught you how to break down your goals, determine how much free time you have, and how to prioritize your goals if you set the bar a little too high.