You know that passion project you would just love to sink your teeth into, if you could only find the time? They are important to you, but not necessarily urgent, so they often get pushed to the bottom of the to-do list.
Can you find 10 hours a week to work on your passion projects? If you work a 40+ hour a week job, can you locate 1 hour each work day, and 5 hours on the weekend to practice your craft? Here’s the challenge (and it includes a free printable!)
The Challenge
Find 10 hours this week to work on your passion project. Make a plan, and act on it.
Use the printable weekly project planner (download below) and write in your work or school schedule and any other commitments. Get even more granular and write in the time you’ll spend commuting, preparing meals, homework, and anything else that you will have do.
Then see what’s left.
Often, there’s more time left in the day than we think. Can you find a free hour each day when you can work on your side hustle? If not an hour, how about two 30-minute chunks of time? Can you work on it for 15 minutes while dinner’s in the oven? Now, can you find bigger chunks of time on your days off from work? Can you say no to a social event this weekend and work on your hustle instead?
When things are important to us, we usually find a way to make time.
The problem is, many times, deep down, we don’t realize that our dreams and passion projects ARE important! Spend some time reconnecting with the passions and dreams you held in the past. By not taking action, have you inadvertently given up on something that you wanted to accomplish? What a sad thing! But you can rekindle old fires and get started on a passion project today!
Weekly Project Planner
If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. The weekly project planner (downloadable below) has everything you need to sketch out the steps for your project, schedule when you will complete those steps, and then reflect on how things went.
For example, my current side hustle is to open an Etsy shop. To use the weekly project planner, I’d write out my project goal: to open an Etsy shop for my photography, which will provide a passive income and an outlet for my creative work. This goal has a deadline of September 1st, 2016. For each week I would write out the steps I need to take to make this happen: create an Etsy account, decide on a shop name, research how to be a successful Etsy seller, take product photos, edit product photos, write product descriptions, set up a Pinterest account…the list goes on. Rather than be overwhelmed by all the little things I need to do, I would write them out, week by week, with a few steps that I can focus on that week. Rome wasn’t built in a day!
Then on the week-at-a-glance pages, I would take each week, write out my schedule (as described above), and then find available time in the week to work on the steps for my Etsy shop. I’d literally block out that time and label it “Etsy Time!” At the bottom of each day I’ll write the project actions I’m going to work on that day. (I don’t know about you, but when I suddenly find myself with free time, I’ll end up following the first whim that comes to mind! I need a plan to keep me focused, and writing down the specific thing I need to do helps a lot.)
If we treat our passion-project work sessions like actual appointments, we are more likely to follow through and get them done.
That’s it! Have fun planning – and achieving – your project goals! Leave a comment below about YOUR passion project!
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