My Success Plan

The weekend and all its glory have a way of ruining my goals. I let the weekend ruin my goals. It’s so easy to maintain my goals (eating healthy, spending less) during the work week because I rarely go out to lunch/dinner or happy hours. I actually rarely go anywhere other than work & home.

But then the weekend comes around and my routine is busted. I am free to do anything I want without having to worry about waking up early or spending 9 hours at work pretending to be a professional.

The weekend is for relaxing & having fun, and I let myself create excuses.

For example: I have said this a million times & I probably will a million more: I want to start exercising more. But, and Kevin disagrees with this theory, I don’t get why I should start working out unless I am going to fully commit to it. Why half-ass doing something? Why wake up at 5 AM to go to the gym before work, but then get so caught up in weekend fun that you miss the gym on those days? I understand working out, even if it’s just a day or two a week, is healthy for you. But I don’t like half-assing things. I don’t want to put only 80% effort into something.  I want to put 100% effort.

Another example: I get so excited when people invite us places and I get to socialize. I love talking to Kevin, but after not hanging out with anyone else for 4+ days straight, I like to be around other people or even just go somewhere to people watch.  We’re at the age where a lot of our friends go to bars or out to happy hours for fun (and so do we. Sometimes we are the ones who invite people out). The bad thing is bars = booze and money and probably a late start the next morning. I always say it can’t hurt to just go to the bar for an hour or two… but once we get there, we get caught up in the fun and we find ourselves going home at 2 am.

Some of my favorite weekends are ones where we find ourselves waking up at 8 am. We have the entire day to do whatever we want, and we don’t have to worry about feeling sick from the night before. Those mornings tend to only happen when we spend the previous night at home watching movies.

I want to need to start focusing on my goals if I’m ever going to succeed.

My plan? Treat the weekend like it’s a workday and set an early morning alarm.  I wake up around 6:30 for the work day, so my plan is to wake up between 7- 7:30 for the weekend. The challenge is: I have to convince myself that I can, under no circumstances, turn that alarm off, even if I come home at 2 AM.

I am hoping that this will force me to prioritize my goals. Why stay out at a bar when you have to wake up at 7 am the next day? And if I’m not at the bar that long, then I’m not spending money and drinking for that long. Win!

But, like I said, it’ll be a challenge. It’ll be easy to realize that I have no real reason to wake up at 7. I don’t have work or a dentist appointment or anything. In fact, I’d probably just catch up on laundry or binge on Netflix. I have to find something to do that early in the morning (maybe the dog park? Or actually having time in the morning to read or make breakfast?)

Another plan is to spend time with people during the day.  Why not get a group together for volleyball in the park? Why not go on a brewery tour (if you feel like drinking, it’s a lot cheaper at the brewery than it is at a bar)?  Why not hang out at the pool? Why not walk around downtown or act like a tourist in our own city? Why not go have a picnic? Making day plans will not only help me wake up earlier, but it’ll probably also be easier on the wallet.

What are some things you do to keep yourself goal-oriented on the weekend?