How to Make Every Minute of Your Life Count Time is slipping away. While the days might still feel long — busy with responsibilities and obligations — the years feel shorter with each that passes. Whatever happened to those...

Time is slipping away. While the days might still feel long — busy with responsibilities and obligations — the years feel shorter with each that passes.

Whatever happened to those dreams you had? Of traveling the world, starting that business, or writing that novel? It’s always “I’d love to do that someday” until there aren’t any “somedays” left, and “I’d love to” becomes “I wish I had.”

Don’t miss out on any of your life. Don’t let the dreamer die. Live the dream by making every minute of your life count. Here’s how.

Kill Someday and Set a Date

Dreams can die as long as “someday” lives. Someday, also known as never, is insidious. It’s a false angel that preys on your aspirations. It’s a vampire that needs its victims to live so that it may feed in perpetuity. It’s the ghost of dead tomorrows.

Don’t let someday steal your dreams. Kill it off and set a date to enact your plans. You might say, “I don’t know if I’ll have enough money,” or “It’s not the right time yet.” Rarely does life provide opportunities that feel like they’ve come at just the right time. And those that do often feel like miracles.

Stop waiting for a miracle to come and take life into your own hands. Set a date to make your dream come true. If it’s a vacation you want to take, book a ticket today. If it’s a business you want to start, open an LLC in your name. Stop waiting. Open up your calendar, set a date, and start now.

Prioritize Tasks

Setting a date is a good start, but it’s not enough on its own. It’s just one motion, which won’t generate momentum on its own unless you’re rolling a ball downhill. Things naturally give way to time, just as a tidy, unattended lawn will transform into a suburban jungle. So think of achieving your dreams as playing a “keep up the balloon” game with life.

One of the best ways to do this is to start prioritizing tasks that move you closer to your goals. If you want to write a novel, schedule regular time on your calendar to sit down and type words. Don’t confuse auxiliary tasks with those that move you toward your end goal. You can watch endless YouTube videos and read endless books on how to write and never write a novel. Ultimately, the only way to write a novel is to write a novel.

The human mind has a bad tendency to get distracted, especially in the face of a daunting goal. To keep yourself on task, use your digital calendar to ping you with reminders. If you don’t already use a digital calendar, try using one online like Calendar.com, Google Calendar, or Apple Calendar if you have an iOS device. Reminders are incredibly useful for keeping you focused and moving toward making your dreams a reality.

Celebrate Progress

As you hone in on tasks that bring you toward your ultimate goals, it’s important to celebrate little wins. Milestones make the journey from where you are now to realizing a dream much more digestible. They act both as miniature goals that contribute to your overarching objective and benchmarks for achievement. So celebrate them as such.

Milestones give you something to work toward. “Start a successful business” is a lofty, far-reaching goal, however possible. What that goal even means depends entirely on what your definition of success is. So, set clear and distinct milestones, like “finish website” or “make first sale.” These stepping stones will carry you toward bigger goals and are cause for celebration.

And don’t forget to celebrate. Sometimes, milestones can still seem insignificant, and you may feel like you’re stooping below your potential to acknowledge them. Don’t let this mindset consume you. Value every step of the journey, no matter how small, as grand leaps aren’t possible without them.

Be Mindful

For many, realizing your dreams is part of what makes life worth living. It can feel amazing to finally get on the plane to take your dream vacation or submit your manuscript to the publisher. But these are just the peaks of life, so what about the valleys — the time in between? Shouldn’t life feel meaningful every day? Can it?

Yes, it can. Working toward your goals will help make life meaningful. But if you only focus on the future, you’ll miss the beauty of the present. Special moments, like blurred views out the window during a highway road trip, may slip by. Appreciate the journey and make the now moments matter more by practicing mindfulness.

There are many ways to practice mindfulness; you don’t have to train with a guru in the Himalayas. It can be as simple as putting away your devices and savoring each bite of breakfast. Or incorporate just five minutes of meditation into your daily routine. You could even add minutes of mindfulness into your shared schedule so everyone knows not to disturb you. Practice mindfulness to make even the most forgettable of days worthwhile.

Set Social Boundaries

Making the most of the every day is as much about subtraction as it is addition. When considering improving their lives, many first consider habits and goals to work toward. These are things they want to add to their lives. Many neglect to cut out unnecessary elements of their lives to make room for those additions. Setting social boundaries is one of the best ways to do that.

Social interactions are tricky to evaluate, as their nature changes over time. What a friendship meant to you at one point might not be what it is any longer. If you find that you feel like you lose energy after spending time with someone, consider ending it. This may seem harsh on the surface, but it’s your life, and you choose what you do with it. So be discerning about who you spend your time with.

Setting boundaries isn’t only about black-and-white yes-or-no’s. It’s about imposing healthy limits. Perhaps you can unwind with a particular friend, and it’s important to relax and rest. But set a limit if that friend is knocking on your door to down a beer on odd nights of the week. Consider only hanging out with them on the weekends or during times you’ve designated for rest, for example. Think about the social situations in your life and whether your current boundaries help or hinder your growth.

Understand Your Minutes

You can spend the minutes of your life in two ways: as means or as ends in themselves. Most of the minutes you spend now are likely of the first kind. They serve as stepping stones toward the highlights of your life, comprising the valleys that bridge the peaks. They are a means to an end.

On the other hand, minutes spent as ends in themselves are the peaks. They’re the unforgettable experiences you enjoy just for the sake of experiencing them. They’re also likely few and far between.

You’ll likely neglect or forget most of the minutes in your life, and that’s OK. They serve as a means to an end. But by following some of the methods on this list, you’ll increase the number of minutes that end in themselves. Whether that’s because you realize more of your dreams or just spend more mornings in quiet contemplation, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you feel like your minutes count because — they do.

Featured Image Credit: Photo by Tnarg: Pexels

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