Follow Your Passions

I understand the major themes in my life, and I have taken stock of how I am spending my time relative to those themes (see the previous two posts for what I am referring to). So… now what?

Two summers ago, my wife and I went to a beach town in Oregon armed with a couple of pens and a stack of index cards. We each began writing every goal we individually had in life, whether short term or long, small or massive. Then we combined our individual stacks, tossed the duplicates (luckily there were a lot of those), and laid the remaining cards out in front of us. Slowly but surely, we discussed and agreed upon the priority each item held for us, and combined the results on one sheet of paper in order of priority. Once we had our list, we wrote the time frame associated with each goal, broken down into the categories of “one year”, “one to five years”, “five to ten years”, “by retirement”, and “ongoing”. Some of the items were things we both wanted to work towards, some were individual items, so we noted that as well.

We keep the list on our fridge, looking at it every time we walk by, talking about specific items on it as time passes. Keeping aware of it.

Last year, we went to a beach in San Diego and got our list out. We discussed where we were on the items. What did we accomplish? What new goals do we have? Which goals have dropped in priority or completely off our list? What has become more important? Do the time frames for any of them need to be adjusted? Once we had our answers, we wrote the new list on a new sheet of paper, brought it home, stuck it on the fridge, and kept moving towards our dreams.

I want to be clear - you do NOT have to be married or have a partner to do this exercise. Just trim it to a single person - you just pull out the part where you combine the index cards. But I do recommend once you have them done, you share them with a trusted friend or family member and discuss them. Often times, this will help you get some of them clearer in your mind, and help hold you accountable to the goals.

Also, you don’t have to go to a beach to do this exercise, but I encourage you to find some relaxing, quiet place you can be alone with your thoughts for a while in. And make sure you can stay there for at least a few hours, so you’re not stressed out about getting it done in time. This is worth spending a good chunk of time on, to make you a better manager of your time in the long run.