It is April and I’ve gotten tired of running after some of the goals that I set at the beginning of the year. The dreams have not changed, but I feel bored of repeating some of the actions. It feels like I’ve forced myself to develop habits that still don’t feel natural, even after months of repetition. I guess I am not the only one feeling like this? The excitement of starting something new has vanished and you feel like giving up.

That is what I used to do as well. But now I’ve learnt to face these situations differently. First of all, getting tired or bored of some of the tasks you set as your goals is a sign that something should be changed. This is the time to sit down, remind yourself of your dreams and then maybe:

  1. Reprioritize the goals and the actions you plan to take to get there
  2. Change the way you organise the tasks to your days/weeks or months.
  3. Find new ways of taking actions so that you can stop doing the boring stuff.

What does this reframing mean in practice? Let me share a few examples from my own recent experiences about making these changes.  

Reprioritizing the goals and the actions you plan to take to get there

At the beginning of 2024 I set a goal of travelling to Portugal for a remote work period in November 2024. I listed the things that I have to get done to make it happen. At the end of March I was already in the situation where I had organised flights, places to stay, permissions from my workplace etc. Yes sure, I could still do actions like study more of the local language. But is that something that I feel like prioritising compared to other goals I have in life like being creative, forming healthy habits or working for financial freedom?

I think that in this case it is just natural, that I think through and reprioritise my goals. I actually decided that from now on I set the main goal for only next 3 months period and then take time to reprioritise again. This way I won’t get stuck in a situation where I find myself procrastinating because the things on my “to do” list don’t feel relevant anymore. 

Changing the way you organise the tasks on the timeline

You might have heard that when setting goals you can start by thinking about your ideal day. What is it that you would fill your days with if there weren’t any limitations or obligations? I have also described my ideal dream day in one blog post.

But let’s be honest. Do we really believe that we would be happy repeating that same day over and over again? And how about the days now, can we realistically pack all the things we wanna have in our life into one day? The logical next step is to organise things we need and want to do to a weekly schedule. But what about if you have multiple interests?

I wrote down all the things I want and have  to do and realised that they all won’t fit in my weekly hours. So now I am actually trying a system where I have divided different actions to separate weeks that I keep rotating week by week. Like this:

Week 1: Blog writing, editing and organising photo and video files, accounting

Week 2: Newsletter, networking, family time

Week 3: Music playing, actions increasing incomes, taking care of home

Week 4: Making new music, Youtube, family time

This doesn’t of course mean that I spend time with my family just every second week. I just try to organise something special for those family weeks. Maybe a small trip, booking a table from the restaurant or doing something fun together.

And although it might feel like “wow, making new music only once a mont is much”, you’ve gotta remember that it is not one hour or one day that I am then concentrating on that task. We are talking about all the free hours of the week (I have a full day job, so we are talking about 5 evenings and a weekend in  my case). 

Find new ways of taking actions so that you can stop doing the boring stuff

Third way to make tasks related to goals feel inspiring again is to change the tasks. For example, I set a health goal in January and started going to the gym but now feel bored. In this case I can change the action that takes me towards the goal and start bicycling or swimming instead of gym training. 

Same thing with language training goals. If I am tired of using a language training app that teaches me a lot of unnecessary vocabulary but no grammatical instructions. Well, I can just quit using the app and book myself a course from summer university.

I think it is better to ease things than force and then disappoint yourself when you repeat skipping the steps you set at the beginning. It is ok to adjust and take smaller steps as long as you keep going.