60 Minutes a Day: How to Find Time for All Your Goals (Part I)

Think about all the long-term accomplishments and goals you'd like to do or improve on that take only minutes a day. They might include:
  • learning or studying a language
  • exercising
  • working on creative side projects
  • flossing your teeth
  • meditating
  • helping kids with homework
  • cooking at home to eat healthier, or 
  • making lunches to bring to work to eat healthier.
Most of these can be done in just 20 minutes a day or less! Twenty minutes! What a promise! 

Okay, but even if  you want to do only those eight things I just listed, that will cost you 2 hours and 40 minutes a day. Preposterous! Who has that kind of time?

The One-Hour Pledge
I'm on a quest to make room for those 20 minutes a day.

My list of goals started long, but I've paired it down to three:
  1. study Spanish
  2. stretch
  3. read
Of course there is so much more I want to do, but even four goals -- more than an hour per day -- seems unmanageable.

To Block or Adapt?
I plan to blog about my experiences here, explaining the tools and techniques I'm using and whether they work. If they fail, I'll try to discuss why. Should I try to do all three at once in a one-hour block? Will I be more successful if I split up these tasks? Should I stick to the same time every day or change it up to adapt to my schedule?

The 21-Day Habit-Forming Myth
Many people say it takes 21 days or more to form a new habit, but that so-called fact about habit formation has been debunked just as much as it has been supported. In any event, I'll give myself until the end of September to make real progress. That's about seven weeks from now, which is plenty of time to have hiccups and for life to get in the way, which of course it will.