Four Steps to More Time in a Day

Four Steps to More Time in a Day

Some of those that have responded to our “Don’t Get Outside Enough?” poll on the home page of the eMagazine tell us they simply don’t have enough time in the day to get outdoors as much as they would like. These people have already identified their goal, getting outside more, and the problem, available time. If the lack of outdoor time is the area of least satisfaction in your life, you are a prime candidate for self-coaching. Here are the four key steps to getting some control back into your life and creating outdoor time:

1. Set a goal. Your goal must be reasonably achievable. It might be something like taking a five mile hike once a week, or going fishing 2 hours every Saturday or taking a lunch-time walk three days a week or whatever works for you. A key here is to set a goal in a desirable direction. A goal like spending less time in front of a screen might lead to more time to do other things, but it’s a negative goal. Positive goals work better, so set your goal toward something you want to do rather than something you don’t want to do. For example “be outdoors more” is positive while “be inside less” is negative. You get the idea – put your sights on where you want to be, not where you don’t want to be. It works in target shooting and golf and it works here.
2. Establish support. There area lot of ways to set up support. You might entice family members and friends to get outside with you, thus locking yourself into participating in a sort of commitment device. You might choose to participate with the adventures organized by a local outdoor group. While the former locks you in more, the latter does make it easier on your time by letting someone else do the adventure planning.
3. Succeed by dealing with failure. There is no doubt that you can succeed in meeting your goals, but sometimes you’ll face setbacks, that you might construe as failures. For example, you miss an outdoor adventure because of a critical need to be in the office on a weekend. You missed your five mile hike for this week, but you didn’t fail, unless you decide to give up. Simply reassess your goal to be sure it is still realistically achievable and still a goal you want to achieve. You may want to adjust your goal to fit better with the demands of work. After you have reaffirmed or reset your goal, adjust your support as needed and move on.
4. Make adjustments as needed. Beyond goal and support adjustments, you may need to take a closer look at your life choices and how they may be impacting your ability to get outdoors. Family, friends, work and general lifestyle issues may be thwarting your efforts. If, after taking the first three steps, you still can’t get more outdoor time, something here is more than likely at play. You will need to decide how important getting outdoors is to you. Does it exceed your desire to maintain Facebook contact with an army of ‘friends.’ Does it exceed the desire to retain a high-paying job? Sometimes the choices are easy and sometimes tough, but they are choices nonetheless.

If all else fails, you might try a life coach. A life coach can teach you how to make more time in your day to do the things that matter most to you. Thing is, the median cost of such a coach is around $500 per hour and some can actually get up to $3500 per hour and beyond. A good coach wants to work themselves out of a job by teaching you how to coach yourself. Just like you can take a walk or a jog or do exercises at home, instead of paying for a gym membership and an exercise coach, you can learn to manage your life on your own by simply getting serious with the above four steps.