… into the future. And one of the most counter-productive things we can do is waste the precious time we have. How many hours a day do you spend watching TV? How about surfing the internet? Wandering through a shopping mall? What could you be doing with that time to move you closer to achieving your goals?

Let’s take me for example. I already know what I want to do with my life. I want to write novels. My hope is to get to the point where I can make a living solely by writing. I’ve mostly written (about 2/3 finished) THREE novels now so I know I’m capable of doing it, it’s just a matter of, well–doing it.

Knowing what my goal is, if you were able to look at a journal of how I spent a day, you’d expect to see a lot of time dedicated to writing, wouldn’t you? Well, you’d be wrong. What I’m about to share with you is really embarassing (and I hope, eye-opening). Here’s a journal of how I spent yesterday:

6:20am: Woke up. I had planned to get up and run, but decided to go after work. (I didn’t.)
6:20-6:35am: Did hair and makeup.
6:35-6:45am: Made breakfast and packed lunch.
6:45-7:10am: Ate breakfast and read the news online.
7:10-7:15am: Dressed for work.
7:15-7:35am: Drove to work
7:35am-3:00pm: Work. (I had to leave early to take our cat to the vet.)
3:00-3:20pm: Drove home.
3:20-3:50pm: Tried to get cat into cat carrier. Failed miserably. Cancelled vet appointment.
3:50-6:30pm: Caught up on blog reading, answered email, etc.
6:30-7:00pm: Cooked and ate dinner.
7:00-10:00pm: Watched TV while playing Spider Solitaire (I know, how depressing is that?).
10:00pm: Went to bed.

Wow. There’s approximately SIX HOURS I could have used for writing (or exercising or anything else that was remotely productive). I’m allowing surfing the web and watching TV to literally STEAL MY DREAMS. That’s not what I want, so why am I living my life this way?

A big part of the answer is fear. If I don’t ever finish a novel, I can’t fail, can I? If I never put myself out there and try to get a book published, then I can always hold on to my dream of being a novelist. By filling up my days with mindless entertainment and claiming that I “don’t have time” to write, I get to stay in a safe, failure-proof zone.

“I don’t have time” is a dreadful, poisonous phrase. Yes, we do. We DO have time for our dreams. Of course, many of you have responsibilities I don’t have to deal with–children or multiple jobs or caring for a parent. And honestly, I don’t know how you keep it together from day to day, let alone find time to pursue your goals. But I guarantee that if you sat down and wrote a detailed log of how you spend your day, you’d find some small amount of time–maybe 10 minutes here and 5 minutes there–that you could reclaim.

What are your major time-wasters? Let’s make a promise to each other that we’ll spend ONE HOUR a day working on something related to one of our life goals. Just one hour. If you honestly can’t find one hour, try 30 minutes. I promise that it will be time well spent.