UNREALISTIC (adjective): Not practical or reasonable to achieve given your current circumstances, resources, time, or abilities.
The Plan Looks Good on Paper
It’s Sunday. You’ve finished your “RESET” day. The house is clean, you’ve spent time with your family, and you’re finally getting a chance to relax.
Then the motivation kicks in.
Tomorrow is Monday. A new week. A fresh start.
This is it. This is the week I’m getting my life together.
You sit down and write out your perfect routine.
You’ll wake up early, eat breakfast before work, drink more water, meal prep for the week, and work out Monday through Friday. You’ll take that one-hour fitness class every day, get enough sleep, and somehow manage to keep the house clean while still having time for your family.
Easy enough, right?
You haven’t even started, and you’re already planning like you have 30 hours in a day.
But you’re motivated. You’ve got your plan, and this time, you’re sticking to it.
What could possibly go wrong?
When Ambition Meets Real Life
Monday goes great!
Tuesday is a little harder.
Wednesday, work runs late.
Thursday, you’re exhausted and skip your workout.
Friday rolls around, and you’re running on fumes. That perfect routine you were so excited about on Sunday? Yeah, it’s not feeling so perfect anymore.
By Sunday, you’re frustrated because nothing went the way you planned.
You didn’t work out five times. You didn’t meal prep everything. Maybe you didn’t drink enough water, either.
At this point, you might as well have failed at life, right?
Except you didn’t.
You had a busy week. Things came up. You got tired. You’re human. It happens.
But instead of looking at what you did accomplish, you’re focused on everything you didn’t.
So you tell yourself you’ll take a rest day and try again next week.
Then one rest day turns into a rest week, and before you know it, you’re back to waiting for another Monday.
Sound familiar?
The Plan Wasn’t Built for Real Life
This is where you start doubting yourself.
You start thinking you lack discipline. Maybe you tell yourself you aren’t motivated enough or that you just need to try harder.
And listen, self-accountability matters. We can’t expect things to change if we’re unwilling to make changes ourselves.
But let’s take a step back for a second.
You expected yourself to change six habits at once while still maintaining your existing routine and responsibilities.
That’s a lot to take on, especially when you’re already juggling work, family, household responsibilities, and approximately 47 things you need to remember before the end of the day.
We’ve all heard the saying that it takes 21 days to build a habit. It’s repeated so often that you’d think somebody handed out a certificate on day 21.
But 21 days isn’t a scientifically established timeline for building a habit.
So why do we expect ourselves to completely change our routines overnight?
We make these big plans, expect ourselves to follow them perfectly, and forget to consider how those changes will actually fit into our everyday lives.
Then, when things don’t go as planned, we assume we’re the problem.
But what if the problem isn’t that you can’t do it?
What if the plan you created just wasn’t realistic for your life?
You created a plan for your ideal week, not the week you actually live.
Your goal isn’t necessarily unrealistic. It may just be the approach you’re taking to get there.
And there’s a difference.
Wanting More Doesn’t Mean Doing Everything at Once
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to improve your fitness, nutrition, sleep, or overall health.
In fact, I love that you’re trying to make changes for yourself.
But why do we feel the need to change EVERYTHING at once?
Why does starting a workout routine suddenly mean we also need to become professional meal preppers, wake up at 5 a.m., drink a gallon of water, and have our entire lives organized by next Tuesday?
Who made these rules?!
You can want more for yourself without expecting yourself to do everything immediately.
What if, instead of working out five days a week, you started with three?
Maybe you prep two meals ahead of time instead of trying to prepare every meal for the entire week.
Maybe you wake up earlier only on the days you plan to go to the gym instead of forcing yourself into an entirely new morning routine overnight.
These changes might seem small compared to the big plan you originally had in mind.
But they’re a starting point.
And you know what? You can build on them.
You don’t have to prove how committed you are by making your life as difficult as possible.
Your goals don’t have to change. Your approach can.
Start with what you can manage. Give yourself time to adjust. Once those changes start becoming part of your routine, you can work on adding more.
You don’t have to do everything at once to start making progress.
You just need to find a way to make your goals fit into your life instead of expecting your life to revolve around your goals.
And to do that, we need to talk about something that probably takes up more of your time than you realize.
Your actual daily responsibilities.
Build a Plan for Your Actual Life
How much time do you realistically have in a day?
Not in your ideal day, where you wake up refreshed, the kids are miraculously ready on time, traffic doesn’t exist, and nobody needs anything from you.
I’m talking about your actual day.
If you’re a parent, you already know how quickly your schedule can fill up. Between work, school drop-offs, appointments, household responsibilities, family time, and everything else, sometimes getting five uninterrupted minutes feels like winning the lottery.
And sometimes, finding extra time really is difficult.
But before we decide there’s absolutely no room for something new, I want you to take a closer look at what your day actually requires of you.
Because there’s a difference between having no time and feeling like you have no time when you’re trying to do everything at once.
And yes, sometimes the answer really is that you’re stretched too thin. We’re not going to pretend you can magically create three extra hours in a day.
But we can start by figuring out where your time goes.
Give Yourself 22 Minutes.
Yep. Twenty-two.
Set a timer and write down what a typical day looks like for you.
Start with the things that absolutely have to get done. The responsibilities that happen at specific times, the things your household depends on you for, and the daily tasks that genuinely need your attention.
We’re talking about your NO EXCEPTIONS TASK LIST.
But before you start writing down every single thing you think you need to accomplish, let’s get one thing straight.
Not every household chore is a non-negotiable.
I know. Shocking.
The laundry might need to get done eventually, but does it have to happen today?
The floors might need sweeping, but will the world fall apart if you wait until tomorrow?
Will the dishes still be there in the morning?
Okay, that last one was probably a bad example.
But you get my point.
Sometimes, we put so much pressure on ourselves to keep everything running perfectly that we forget some things can wait.
We create these invisible deadlines and then feel guilty when we don’t meet them.
Suddenly, the laundry, the dishes, the groceries, the errands, and approximately 15 other household chores have become urgent.
And somewhere in the middle of all that, we wonder why we don’t have time for ourselves.
So for this exercise, I want you to separate what genuinely needs your attention from what can wait.
Think about your work schedule, caring for your children, appointments, preparing meals, and the responsibilities that keep your household running.
Include your own basic needs, too.
Then look at everything else on your mental to-do list.
Does it absolutely have to happen today?
Or is it something you feel like you should be doing?
There’s a difference.
Your goal isn’t to fit every responsibility into one day. It’s to get an honest picture of what your day actually requires so you can stop expecting yourself to do everything at once.
DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE NO EXCEPTIONS TASK LIST HERE
Once you’ve identified your true daily responsibilities, the next step is figuring out where you might realistically fit something in for yourself.
Maybe you have a couple of hours on good days. Maybe you only have 45 minutes another. Maybe your schedule changes from one day to the next.
That’s okay.
You don’t need to fill every available minute with something productive, either. Rest is allowed. Sitting on the couch without trying to justify it is allowed. You’re a person, not a machine.
The point is to work with the time and resources you actually have.
You can’t build a sustainable routine around time you don’t have.
You Don’t Have to Do It All to Move Forward
Here’s where I want you to start changing the way you look at progress.
We have a habit of thinking that if we can’t do something the way we originally planned, there’s no point in doing it at all.
We miss the hour-long workout, so we skip exercising altogether.
We don’t have time to prepare every meal, so we abandon the plan.
We fall behind on one habit, and suddenly the entire week feels like a failure.
But why?
Why do we treat an imperfect attempt as if it doesn’t count?
If you planned to work out for an hour but only had 20 minutes, couldn’t you use those 20 minutes to move your body?
If you couldn’t prepare meals for the entire week, could you prepare a couple instead?
If you had a rough day and didn’t get everything done, could you pick up where you left off tomorrow?
Of course you can.
And no, this doesn’t mean you need to turn every spare minute into an opportunity to work harder. Sometimes, what you need is rest. Sometimes, you need to adjust your expectations. And sometimes, you need to accept that today simply didn’t go as planned.
That’s life.
The goal isn’t to force more into an already full day.
It’s to stop expecting yourself to follow a routine that was never designed for your real life.
Start with what you can manage. Give yourself time to build consistency. Adjust when you need to.
And when life gets in the way, remember that adjusting your plan isn’t the same as abandoning it.
You don’t need to wait for Monday.
You don’t need to start from zero.
And you certainly don’t need to punish yourself for being a human being with responsibilities, emotions, and a life outside of your goals.
Give yourself a little grace.
Hold yourself accountable, yes. Make the effort, yes. But stop making perfection the requirement for progress.
You need a plan that gives you room to be human.
Start where you are. Work with what you have. Build from there.
And when your plan needs adjusting, adjust it.
You don’t have to start over every time life gets in the way.
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