Are you the type of person who maintains a bucket list or fond of listing goals? If so, have you been in a situation when you look at your list and ask yourself, “It’s almost 2022, when will I ever have the time to start working on these goals? Or probably say “Before I can do this, I need to do this first” or “This list is just too big for me. I just can’t do it!”. Frustrating, isn’t it? And did you hear all the “I” in there?

If this is you, don’t worry because I have found out that we simply cannot just do it all. Look, we all have the same time budget for every year that we are alive- 24 hrs a day, 365 days a year!

Research tells us that we should not shy away from getting everything done by us. Why? because if we try to, it’s either we will only get a few things done or worse case, everything will just be half-baked. Certainly, not how you would want your beloved list to be, right?

I came to this realization more than year back. I found myself looking at my bucket list while isolating alone at my room in Singapore in the middle of a pandemic. Two people close to me recently died that time. One was my colleague who died from Covid and the other was my ex-husband who died from an accident. I was not able to attend either funeral because of the pandemic. They both died so young, one in his early 40s and the other in his early 50s. For sure they still have a lot of goals and dreams to achieve and unfortunately, their time is over. Their deaths reminded me that life is too short and made me look at my bucket list differently that time. So, I looked at my goals and realized that some of the goals have been there for years and few was even a decade now! But what I have been doing to them? NOTHING. Because I have a lot of excuses. I don’t have time, or I should say I am trying to do everything at once so nothing gets done. And most of which, I try to do everything on my own. 

Just like the blogsite and portfolio sites that I have been planning to build from 2017. It’s been on the list since then and 2 years ago, I thought of going for it. I sat down and learned how to code to develop my blogsite from scratch. Man, it was hard! With the demanding day job that I have, I could only clock an hour or two few days a week to learn how to code. And the farthest I reached is printing “Hello World” as the header of my page! And so, I left my blogsite goal hanging. 

And then I also have this thing on my bucket list of jumping into deep water. But guess what, I do not know how to swim though I already did some beginner’s group swimming lesson many years back so at least I know how to float. I just went to You tube and watch instructional swimming videos and tried teaching myself how to swim. I tried hard but progress was too slow, and I just looked stupid! It just got me frustrated and I stopped.

So, going back to my realization a year ago, I told myself that I must go back to achieving my goals. Life is too short, and my list of goals is long. Time is of the essence here, so what can I do? I remember when I was just a budding Project Manager, and I was trying to do everything on my own so as not to risk quality. I was told by my mentor then that if I don’t learn to delegate, I will be the risk to my project myself. And so, I changed, and it worked! I had more time to do other important tasks! And so, I thought of applying this to my personal life too.

I then went back to my list, prioritized it, and came up with a plan. For my blogsite and portfolio sites, I hired a freelance developer to do it for me. It is still based on my vision but at least I do not need to code from scratch. Now I have more time to spend to learn how to swim. For that I hired a swimming instructor as well. She was immediately able to correct my swimming and after each lesson I became more comfortable in the water and became a better swimmer. And same goes to my other goals. I started to either delegate, outsource or hire a coach. Now I do not need to spend long hours reading a book or watching instructional videos when I can tap on the skills and expertise of others and even download their decades of experience for me to achieve more goals.

Now, I am about to launch my blog site and portfolio site in a few weeks or so. I also can do 10 laps continuously in our condo’s pool. For sure, in no time I will be jumping in deep water!

But remember, it’s not just about paying people to do the job for you or teach you how to get your goals done. It’s all about not doing everything on your own. You can also ask your family or friends to help and pitch in for free. Just like how I asked my friends early this year to teach me how to ride a bicycle safely on the street. Guess what, I was able to do Round The Island (RTI) Singapore at 120+ km mid this year!

Epiphany de Leoni: Do not be a superman or superwoman by trying to do it all. Know what you want to do in life, whatever brings you joy and just go for it. If you don’t have the time, make time for it and consider to delegate or ask for help. Remember, you can do ANYTHING, if you STOP trying to DO EVERYTHING.