Schedule your week like a teenager

Blogging, learning a new language, starting a side-hustle, going to the gym …

Levered Letter
5 min readAug 2, 2021
Foto von Bich Tran von Pexels

Hello there. Having many goals to reach an ideal version of yourself can be really distressing. For me, usually, setting goals and a schedule mostly works for 1–2 weeks. After this short period of focus, I usually fold and turn back to old habits until I am sick of myself and start new goals (this time for real … I swear). I have read many books, articles, blogs, etc. on the subject and while some of them were fantastic in theory none of them worked for me. I usually ended up sitting on the couch rewatching Friends or How I Met Your Mother or another show I have seen literally 100 times.

Now, finally, I have found a solution that works for me: a schedule for a child or teenager. Probably, your reaction is similar to mine: Hogwash! Great stuff, setting a calendar, why did nobody think of this before? However, there are many things you can do wrong when setting up a structure for your endeavors. I used my schedule in the past to enforce what I was considering a healthy lifestyle to reach my goals by strictly setting times in my Google Cal. This is a trap. Not only did I start missing the “meetings”, but I also started to feel really bad about not being able to keep up with my own expectations which then demotivated me with ever starting again. So horseshit.

So what did I do wrong? Well, nearly everything.

For starters, when I was feeling motivated once a quarter to set up a new schedule I often used a “go hard or go home” approach. Which made sense because unlikely the 15 times before this time I was really going to get my life together (Ha!). The result, as you can imagine, was an overly eager setup in terms of timing (when I scheduled something) and length (how long I scheduled something). Moreover, I barely used reminders let alone enforcement and punishment rules.

And this is the root of the problem. When I am thinking back to when my life was most organized it would have to be high school. Obviously, next to the time I was spending in all the different courses in school, I was playing and learning four instruments with teachers in bands and orchestras. I played tennis, golf, and football and still had plenty of time for my friends. Back then my mum and dad did plenty of the reminder, enforcement, and punishment work, but it worked. So if a teenager can make it work, why do I suck so much doing this in my 20s?

So lets pull the trigger..

I noticed that the easiest way to make myself stick with my calendar was by tying it to direct pass or fail goals. For instance, I changed my “reading more” goal into “read 12 books and listen to 12 audiobooks per year”. This makes a ton of sense because you actually have a goal and a timestamp where you can determine if you passed or failed. And even more importantly, you can actually break the goal down into the effort (time) you need to put in. So I actually know how much I need to read a week in order to keep up with my goal. In conclusion, the path is laid out before your feet to take baby steps until you reach your destination.

Wow. What a metaphor Max. Applause will come by mail — Sam (the voice commenting my life).

PS: I even wrote down the exact books I want to read in every reading session in my calendar.

Additionally, Moreover, Furthermore…

doing only the minimum can work too. Obviously, there are certain goals like academic success, etc. where you should definitely put more effort than the minimum. But for your private life and smaller goals, this is actually a viable option. For example, I used to set 30 minutes a day each morning for reading newspapers, finance papers, etc., and obviously, I did it only once or twice and then ignored the meeting for the rest of my focus period. Since being informed a little bit is still better than having no clue, I searched for the minimum acceptable route in order to ensure that my pursuit to be better educated is secured. For me, this was simply watching a 15-minute news summary every morning and on top of that installing WSJ and FT to read their push notifications instead of whole articles. Better. than. nothing. Huh?

Great. But now what?

I mean, this is all good fun but what does this have to do with a schedule of a child or teenager? Good question, you. Well, the key is enforcement habits, and since I am an adult (at least according to the vast numbers of insurances and taxes and whatever tf I am paying) I have nearly no external power which enforces my habits outside of my career. So what to do? I recommend the following: Act like you are a teenager AND your own parent.

If you are anything like Max, you will probably act like a teenager already… — Sam

Foto von kat wilcox von Pexels

It is a really simple but highly effective solution. Mum, can I go hang out with George? No. You have to do your homework and you have piano lessons at 3. Afterward, I can drive you. This or similar occurrences can be replicated easily by yourself. Feel free to make exceptions for extraordinary events. Feel free to move the schedule around (learn Spanish at 5 instead of 8). Feel free to allow yourself as much as you would allow your own child. BUT also make sure that most of the time you stick to the schedule and do something productive before rewarding yourself as you would do as a real parent.

Closing words:

What I want you to remember is that you will screw up for sure. But that is okay, a teenager doesn’t feel bad if he misses a piano or Spanish class from time to time. Hence, don’t be too hard on yourself.

M

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Levered Letter

A finance guy who lives for numbers and has the sudden urge to express himself in the form of hasty written short online posts.