You’re ambitious.

You have plans. Dreams. You’re going to make a mark. In your company — in your industry. Maybe even on the world.

The world needs that ambition. We face serious challenges, in spite of all our progress — and, in some cases, because of our progress.

But if you are going to translate that ambition into results, you will need to pair your audacious goals with clarity. You have to be clear about how much time and energy your goals require and how time and energy you can afford to spare.

abundant ambition + minimal clarity = unworkable goal

An unworkable goal tries to use the same resource at the same time. Think of two different teams trying to book the same conference room for 2:00. Or trying to spend the same $30 on a night at the movies and a collector’s edition DVD. Unworkable.

Unworkable goals end badly.

We don’t reach the goal, which stirs up feelings of frustration and self-scolding.

Or we reach it, but we work too hard or too long to get there.

Or we compromise, neglecting other commitments we’ve made — in the process undermining our personal integrity (what we tell ourselves we will do) or our social integrity (what we tell others we will do).

You’ve been there, right? You make a big goal, you’re full of enthusiasm — and then you slam against the demands of everyday life and wonder how you’re supposed to find time to get there.

Close the gap

I define an agenda as a unified view of all your time commitments — calendar events plus tasks and the time needed to do them. This approach to planning helps us harness ambition and reconcile it with available resources.

Note: Whether it is your life’s ambition or just a weekly goal, the core benefit in this approach comes from figuring out where your time goes in the daily grind. For the sake of simplicity, the rest of this article will assume we’re dealing with a goal you want to finish this week.

1 How much time will this goal take? Bring that lofty ambition down into the real world and determine the time needed to accomplish it. This is important for every resource required by a project, but especially for time because it is harder to measure than money or physical goods.

If you’re like most people, this will be uncomfortable. You’ll resist committing to a specific amount of time — and, statistically speaking, you are very likely to underestimate.

Get over that fear and pick a time. It won’t be perfect, but imperfect is better than immobile. Estimating time takes practice, but you’ll learn far more by guessing than giving up. When you first start estimating time requirements, double what your instinct says, try to get it done faster, and keep track of your accuracy.

“For which of you, wanting to build a tower, doesn’t first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, after he has laid the foundation and cannot finish it, all the onlookers will begin to make fun of him, saying, ‘This man started to build and wasn’t able to finish.’ ” ~ Jesus (Luke 14:28–30, CSB)

2 How much time do existing commitments demand? In other words, how much time is available to work on your goal? To find out, survey the things you have to do while making progress on this goal.

Photo by Hope House Press

If you’ve made a work-related goal, take note of the other responsibilities you have. How much time do you need to spend answering email and phone calls on an average day? What meetings do you have scheduled? How much time do you need for meeting prep and follow-up? Do you have any upcoming deadlines that require attention?

If you’ve made a personal goal, start by identifying the blocks of time that are not available — your work schedule, class schedule, or family time. List your other responsibilities and commitments, such as household chores, homework, meal prep, exercise, plus the time needed to fulfill each. Don’t forget transit time, meals, and sleep.

As with your goals, don’t get stuck trying to perfectly estimate the time needed. Take a guess, round it up to give yourself margin, and learn from mistakes.

3 Find time leaks and patch the holes. Before you officiate the wrestling match between your goals and commitments, clear out some space by eliminating the obvious. Excessive social media, news, and entertainment are the big ones.

Photo by Luis Tosta

Track how you spend your time in detail for just one day, paying special attention to distractions and rabbit holes. Make note of the times you open Facebook, even if it was brief. Write down how many hours you spent watching or reading something that wasn’t related to a goal or commitment.

The goal here isn’t to make every second of the day “productive.” Instead, we want to increase our awareness of these time bandits. We don’t realize how much time we’re spending on Facebook, Netflix, and Reddit, in part because many of our impulses to turn to those apps are subconscious.

After struggling with distraction during work hours, I put a small barrier in place that made it slightly harder to access distractions. It worked well, and I was shocked how many times I bumped into that barrier, almost without a thought. My muscle memory was trained to respond to the slightest impulse.

Once you see how much time these small pleasures consume each week, you will also be able to see how they directly impact your ability to achieve your goals and meet your commitments. Here are a few ideas for clearing space:

Kill :: some distractions just need to die. Delete your account or block the website. Tell a friend, and tell them why. Don’t look back, except to celebrate how much more progress you made because of this decision.

:: some distractions just need to die. Delete your account or block the website. Tell a friend, and tell them why. Don’t look back, except to celebrate how much more progress you made because of this decision. Contain :: if you want to keep the distraction, put some limits on it. Set a timer for your social media scrolling, stop watching after one episode, or only indulge in a certain context. Small tweaks can pay big dividends. Experiment for best results.

:: if you want to keep the distraction, put some limits on it. Set a timer for your social media scrolling, stop watching after one episode, or only indulge in a certain context. Small tweaks can pay big dividends. Experiment for best results. Hide :: put a barrier between you and the distraction. Set your phone out of reach, delete the official app, or require a password to allow access. Make it a little bit harder to give in — you’ll be surprised how well it works.

4 Resolve the tension between what you have and what you need. Most of the time you won’t have time to do everything. Your goal might demand twenty hours of focused work, but your commitments only leave you with ten to spare. Maybe you struggled to say “no” to someone. Or maybe you scheduled too many meetings this week. Or perhaps you made plans without reviewing what was already on your agenda.

Photo by Todd Diemer

Your goal and your other commitments are at an impasse, and it’s your job to negotiate a settlement.

For your existing commitments: What things can you safely reschedule? Can someone else take a commitment off your plate? Is there any fat that can be trimmed — an extra step that you would take in a perfect world but can be eliminated in a crunch?

For your ambitious goal: How can the goal be adjusted to decrease the time required? What part of the process could you skip or speed up?

Negotiation involves give and take. Don’t merely slash your goal in half to close the gap without creatively trying to free up time to make it workable. Likewise, don’t insist your commitments pay the price to make your goal reality.

Less stress; more impact

Streamlining things and making sure you aren’t overloaded obviously reduces stress and frustration. But it does much more than that.

An agenda brings perspective to your evaluation of each individual demand on your time. A commitment might seem fine when viewed by itself — but then you see everything else in your week and realize it’s insane.

An agenda helps you prioritize the things that matter most, ranking any demands that compete for time. Some need to be deferred. Some need to be adjusted. And some need to be eliminated.

These are crucial decisions. Our fast-paced, internet-injected world has a million different uses for the next hour of your life. If you don’t intentionally choose how to spend that hour, it will go toward someone else’s goal most of the time — not yours.

Finally, an agenda forces you to compress bloated goals and commitments.In the pressure of a full week, you have to identify the true nature of each commitment. When you boil it down, what is the non-negotiable essence? What about the project makes it important enough to keep around? What secondary elements can you skip without compromising the core of it?