Unless your day job completely encompasses your dream, the biggest challenge you will face is finding time to make your dream work. Your dream could be a variety of things: running your first 5k, rebuilding a motorcycle, writing your first book, starting your own business, or fill in the blank. Regardless, most of the best dreams you have will take time. They do not happen overnight. Running a 5k means you have to find time to actually go out and run or train. Rebuilding a motorcycle is going to take an extensive amount of time in finding the parts and putting in the work to make those parts actually fit together and run. Writing a book means that you need to sit down and put your fingers on the keyboard for extended periods of time. Starting your own business will involve significant time investment in developing your business model, filing the proper paperwork, recruiting clients or customers, and investing in your inventory.

Dreams are like a relationship. A relationship suffers if you do not give it time and attention. Your dream will require both of those from you: time and attention. We all work busy schedules. Many of us work more than eight hours per day. When you add in getting ready in the morning, your commute, sleep, preparing dinner, and getting your kids ready for bed, the amount of time you have remaining is minimal. Therefore, you have to be judicious with your time. You have to choose what is actually worth your time. You have to learn it’s okay to say no to the things that do not really matter.

When I was writing my book, I learned that I had to craft time for dream. I had to create time and opportunities to work on my dream. For me, I set a goal of working at least 30 minutes every day on my book. Usually, I spent more than that. I developed a plan that my “free time” would become my “dream time.” My lunches or early mornings consisted of me reading scripture and conducting research for my book. After work, I would eat with my family, workout, and then I would spend time when everyone was in bed typing away at my book. While most of the world was asleep, I was trying to make my dream a reality.

If you speak to many of the most successful people in the world, they will tell you that you have to craft time to be successful. That may mean waking up early when your kids are still asleep to work on you for a little bit. That may mean staying up late to work on your dream. What I learned is that I could still spend time with my family and still have the opportunity to work on my dream if I slept a little less. Arnold Schwarzenegger once said that if you think you need eight hours of sleep, sleep a little faster, and sleep six. I am not saying throw out good solid sleep. There’s lots of studies to suggest how beneficial a good night of sleep can be, but there’s a difference in seven hours of sleep and 12 hours of sleep. Make the most of your hours in the day.
Beyond sleeping a little less, I also learned that I needed to prioritize a little more. When you are dedicating a half hour or an hour each day to a dream when most of your hours are already taken, you have to be selective about what you choose to do. This means giving up some things that are not as important. I enjoy a little video games as much as the next guy my age, but I cannot spend hours on video games if I want to make a dream happen. You have to make sacrifices. You may have to sacrifice a television show so that your business dreams can become business realities. You may have to sacrifice 30 minutes of social media swiping for 30 minutes of working on your resume, your blog, or your website. You have to choose what is important to you.

Finally, you have to stop being your own enemy. A lot of us don’t have time to chase our dreams because we lack preparation. We can’t find the time to go run because we didn’t get our clothes ready the day before. We can’t find the time to work on a project because we procrastinated on something else in our life. Roadblocks and interruptions are going to happen, it’s life. However, you need to try to make sure those roadblocks and those interruptions are things that could not be foreseen, such as an injury, a flat tire, or some family emergency. Do not let the reason that you failed to get your time in that day be because you were unwilling to put in the prep work. I’m always amazed at people that prep their meals for an entire week. They spend an entire day cooking food, packaging it, and planning out an entire week of meals. It seems crazy to some, but those people have eliminated excuses. They have eliminated the ability to say they did not have time to prep their meal that day. They have eliminated their ability to think the drive-thru is more convenient because they already have a meal prepped and ready to go.

Be like the meal preppers. Prep for your time, prep for your dreams. Go ahead and set your shoes and clothes out for that morning workout. Go ahead and make sure your laptop is fully charged for working on that book. Make sure you have all the tools you need to work on that motorcycle. Turn your phone on silent and work on that business. If you want your dream to become a reality, then actually mean it and make the time for it.

On the next post I plan to talk about one of the most difficult things you have to do to make a dream work: seek feedback from others.