Protect Work Hours, Feed Your Passion

Ever notice how a “quick” passion project steals an afternoon and your goals pay the price? We dig into the honest math of time, attention, and ambition, and share a simple framework that lets creativity thrive without hijacking your workday. The message isn’t to stifle your spark. It’s to give it a devoted home after hours so your highest-value business tasks get the prime brainpower they deserve.

We start by naming the subtle ways side projects creep in: a few minutes researching gear, a spontaneous reel, mental rehearsal for a volunteer gig. Those minutes stack into hours. From there, we walk through practical boundary-setting that feels supportive, not strict—placing passion blocks on evenings or weekends, protecting deep work windows, and using a quick capture habit to park creative ideas without losing focus. You’ll hear a candid coaching example that shows how to notice when hobbies start intruding and how to shift that energy to a better time.

Then we get pragmatic with goals. If ten hours a week are devoted to a hobby, targets must reflect that reality. We talk about keeping stretch goals while aligning inputs, or temporarily dialing back the passion hours to hit a milestone. Planning becomes the safety net: front-loading deliverables, scheduling content, and implementing simple systems so time off or creative sprints don’t derail revenue. By the end, you’ll have a clear, workable approach to balance—one that keeps joy in your life and momentum in your business.

If this helped you reframe your week, follow the show, share it with a friend who’s juggling too much, and leave a quick review with the boundary you’ll set next. Your plan might inspire someone else to protect their best work.

Chapters

• 0:00 Passion Meets Productivity
• 0:43 Set Boundaries For Creativity
• 1:35 A Coaching Story About Balance
• 3:06 Adjust Goals Or Adjust Time
• 4:18 Plan Ahead To Protect Results

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

One of the things that I routinely tell clients is that it's important to still feel creative, to still feel like you're filled with passion when you go to do something. And a lot of times what will happen is this results in clients starting a passion project that isn't necessarily connected to their business. And instead, it's taking over time within their day because they want to be creative, they want to be passionate. And instead of actually doing the work towards their business, now they're just engulfing themselves in this passion project. Here is what I'd rather you do. I want you to have a passion project. I want you to be excited and feel creative. But I need it to be outside of your work hours. If you're one that tells me I don't have enough time in the day, I'm not getting done what I need to be getting done, it's likely because your passion project is sneaking in. You feel creative, you need to do it. Instead, I want you to put that passion project on the weekends after work hours. When the instead of sitting in front of the TV watching your Netflix shows, that's when we need to be doing those passion projects. And I know a lot of people will say, Well, I want to be creative when the creativity hits me. The problem is, is it is going to take away from your business. It just is. If you're giving up 10 hours of your week to a passion project, that's 10 hours in which you're not getting stuff done for your business. So if you're not hitting your goals, you're not getting done the projects and tasks that need to go into hitting those goals, this is the reason why. So many of you have probably heard me talk about the fact that I used to play basketball in college. I have a huge passion for it. I love it. I was once a teacher. So I enjoy working with kids. Last year, my husband was coaching the boys' middle school team. So there was an opening as an assistant coach for the girls. I decided to do it. The biggest reason that I will do it again this year is because it didn't take away from my work hours. And when I noticed that it was, because I was worrying about offense, bits of plays, and what the defense should be doing, and are we gonna do full court press and all the silliness that goes into coaching? And I shouldn't say silliness, but all that goes into coaching. If it was happening during the day, I recognized it and knew I had to move it to a different time. It was fine for me to talk about on the weekends and to think and research and do the things, but I shouldn't be researching different offensive drills to be doing during practice when it's my work hours. That is allowing my passion project to sneak into my work hours and it's going to impact it. So if you are one that has a passion project, whether it's an Instagram account for your dog or it is a store where you are doing cricket, whatever it might be, I need you to make sure that it's not impacting your work hours that you have available. And if it is going to, then you need to realize that the goals that you're setting need to be scaled back for your business because you're taking time away for this passion project. I want you to be passionate. I want you to love life and have fun and enjoy the life that you're living, but you cannot in turn then turn around and be upset with the fact that you're not hitting your business goals. Because especially if you are setting large business goals that are definitely achievable but are a stretch. If you have stretch business goals written down and you get upset that you're not hitting them when you're allowing a project, project, passion project to sneak in during the work hours, then that's on you. You have to set realistic expectations for yourself. So determine do you want to travel for two weeks and be off hiking? And if you do, I love it. But you're going to have to look at your goals for that time. You're going to have to set yourself up for success. Make sure you have systems in place in order for the business to continue to run, or make sure that you're way ahead so that you can take those two weeks off. It's really starting to figure out how you can better plan for yourself so that you can continue to hit your goals while still doing these passion projects.