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Have you ever said to yourself, “I want to write a book?” Or how about, “I wish I could learn to sew?” “Learn an instrument?” “Work out more and lose weight?” The list goes on. Now how many things get in the way of that? “Oh, I work too much to sit down and do that.” “I don’t know where to start.” “What if I’m bad at it?” “Oh, but I have this more important obligation.” “I’m too tired.” That list also goes on.
Now, there are plenty of reasons that learning a new hobby or doing a new activity just won’t work for you. For example, instruments are expensive, so it’s not worth spending over five hundred bucks on a brand-new electric guitar and its necessary equipment, especially when there’s the risk that you may get a few lessons or jam sessions in and realize, “I really don’t like playing guitar.” Then all that money you spent is for nothing. However, renting is a much more affordable option, as are alternatives like an acoustic guitar. But I digress.
My point thus far is this: it’s so easy to say, “I want to do a project or learn this new skill,” and then just never follow through. I know I’ve done it. But then I found a trick to finally buckle down and get it done. The trick is deceptively simple: set aside thirty minutes a day to work on the project or skill. That’s it (well, not really, but I’ll get to that later). The progress may feel slow at first, but that’s okay. Thirty minutes a day is still thirty minutes more than you were doing before. And that thirty minutes will add up fast: one week is 3.5 hours of work, one month is 14-15.5 hours of work, and one year is 182.5 hours of work on a project or skill that you weren’t doing before. Of course, you can always change those numbers by making them higher or lower. For example, take holidays like Christmas and Easter off. Don’t be afraid to just take a break from something for a week once you hit a good stopping point and then pick it up again later. You can also increase the number of projects or skills you’re working on (thirty minutes for one project or skill is a good baseline that will help you build up to doing more and more). Another option is to change the amount of time you spend working on something. One variation is to choose a time and say, “that’s the cut-off.” My current cut-off, for example, is 8:30 p.m. because by then I’ve likely been doing ninety or so minutes of work, and I’m ready to just cut back and unwind. Setting a cut-off time is a valid alternative, or even an evolution, of the thirty minutes a day strategy I’m advocating for in this article.
So what does this look like? Back in 2024, I made the New Year’s resolution to spend thirty minutes a day working on a project of mine, whether it was writing and editing my own original fiction, creating tabletop roleplaying games, or any other skill I’ve wanted to pick up. I’ve stuck with this resolution for almost a year and a half, and my productivity in these projects and skills has exploded. But when I first started, I did the bare minimum: thirty minutes a day on a given project. Then a few months in, I decided to spend thirty minutes a day on EACH project I had going on. It was easy to build up, and before I knew it, I was making tangible progress on these projects that had always seemed so far off and unattainable. You know, the “I’ll get to it eventually” kind of thing. But with this system, every day got closer and closer to “eventually.” This past January, I made the New Year’s resolution not just to continue setting aside thirty minutes a day to work on stuff, but to teach myself how to use the Unity video game engine and make a game out of it. My progress has been slow but steady.
This strategy helps you avoid getting overwhelmed, too. Turning to my first example of writing a book, the average novel is 80,000 words. That’s an intimidating amount of work, and for good reason. But it’s far from insurmountable. Over the last almost two years, I’ve been tweaking my own manuscript so that I can finally start submitting it to get published. That end goal felt so far off and remote. But by dividing things into easy increments, whether it was thirty minutes of editing, reading, or writing, or more explicit incrementation of, say, reading and revising two chapters one night and three chapters the next —the end result is the same: I finished my project. With this strategy, you can too.
So what are the benefits of this increased productivity? Aside from the obvious one of just being more productive, you’ll gain a new sense of satisfaction and pride in your work and in yourself. After I got my BA and found a full-time day job, I found it so easy to come home and just spend my night playing video games. It was nice for a little while, but eventually, it got boring and I noticed a growing dissatisfaction with my station in life. I didn’t like the idea of running on the monotonous treadmill of the 9-5 (or in my case 10-6) for the next 40 years. So I started to cut back on that gaming time, repurposing it to be more productive. My happiness and satisfaction have improved significantly since then. Now, I’m not saying that leisure and recreation are bad. Far from it, actually. I know that if I didn’t spend the last few hours of every night just relaxing, I’d burn out within a few months of this regimen. And if you want to skip a day here and there, go for it. Like I said earlier, you’re probably not going to want to do this kind of work on holidays like Christmas, and that’s totally okay. In fact, if you want to take a day or a weekend off every once in a while, especially after hitting a major milestone —do it! However, I would caution against making a habit out of it just because “you don’t feel like it,” or something similar. There’s a difference between taking a night off because you had a particularly tiring day at work and it’s a Friday in the middle of April and the last day you took off was New Year’s Day, versus taking a random Monday off because you don’t feel like it even though you took three days off last week.
Now, I know that one possible justification or objection could be “I want this work to be my best, so why should I work on it if I’m tired after a long day at work?” The answer is simple: the work doesn’t have to be your best. Say you’re trying to learn an instrument. A good chunk of learning it is failing. You’re going to practice a song again and again and again until you can get through it with minimal mistakes. So who cares if the work you do isn’t your best? The quality in that moment isn’t what matters. What matters is that you’re doing something productive and building these habits. You can always set aside another day to perfect something; you can never go back and reclaim a day you’ve lost. While this situation may seem the same on paper, it isn’t because it doesn’t take into account how your skills may dull or be forgotten over time. If you’re using this thirty minutes a day strategy to learn something, a day without practice could turn into a streak of regression. So in closing, just get up and do something. Set aside a measly thirty minutes every night and do something productive, whether it’s learning a new skill, working on a project, or something else. It’s a habit worth learning, and you’ll look back in a few years and wonder why you didn’t start doing this sooner.
Jonah Wisneski is an aspiring author, game designer, and storyteller. He received his Bachelor of Arts in English and History from Hillsdale College, where he read the best books and learned from the greatest authors. He is currently polishing up his first book, making tabletop roleplaying games, and learning how to develop video games. In his free time, Jonah enjoys playing games with friends and family, going on walks, reading, building LEGOs, and learning new things
