In this article, you’ll learn how to manage multiple passions with limited time.
If you have multiple passions you feel like you have limited time for them, this article is for you.
From Coronavirus to Too Many Hobbies
It was 2020.
Coronavirus had just been announced a pandemic in the US.
It was a Friday in 10th grade. I was in my AP World History class and my teacher was talking about this whole COVID-19 thing.
We were worried about AP tests and how we’d study with this pandemic.
My teacher was saying something along the lines of: “I don’t know how things will change, but it could take a very long time for this pandemic to be over.”
A student said: “Do you think it will be gone in a few months?”
My teacher said: “No, it’ll take at least until late 2021 and probably well into 2022.”
I remember it was a rainy day and I was looking out the window and thinking “What? No way. 2022 is so far away. This whole thing should be gone before that.”
The next day, Saturday, I found myself home and I remember seeing the announcement from the school, saying that they were going to be closed “indefinitely” and all learning will happen asynchronously.
The previous Friday was the last time I saw my teacher in person in 10th grade.
The Virtual World
A little after, everything went virtual, including AP exams, homework, assignments, passions, hobbies, jobs, business; just about everything.
After a few days of staying home, I found all of this new time. I was no longer forced to be in school and had all the time I needed to do everything I could possibly want.
Here’s all of the hobbies I was involved with at the time:
- Learning to play the guitar
- Learning to play the piano
- Learning to draw
- Learning to write cursive
- Working on my Roblox game, Elemental Adventures (unreleased)
- Learning Japanese
- Posting consistently on my instagram
- Posting Roblox YouTube videos
- Reading books
And here’s all of the classes I was involved in:
- AP World History
- Digital Electronics
- Spanish
- Physics
- Geometry
- Physical Education
- College classes: Microeconomics and Macroeconomics
- English Honors
I had so much time.
I wanted to do so much with it.
But it wasn’t working.
In the beginning, I would work on one or two things, feel burned out, and watch videos until I felt better. I realized this, and went down the productivity spiral of YouTube, watching creators like Ali Abdaal and Thomas Frank.
I watched sooooooo many videos on how to do more with my time.
Eventually, things worked out and I was able to make time for everything.
Yes. Everything.
Straight As in my classes.
I went from only being able to play with my right hand on the piano to being able to play many songs with both hands.
Here’s everything I learned about how to manage multiple passions with limited time.
Figure out Your Why
The first step is to figure out why you want to do all of these things.
- I wanted to play piano because I really liked the soundtracks from Sword Art Online and I wanted others to enjoy the calm and soothing music that I felt.
- I wanted to get good grades in school so that I would have a better shot at getting into a good college for my future. At the time, my mind was set on MIT, which is what I focused on. This ended up changing later on, and I wasn’t as interested in going to MIT as much.
- I wanted to work on my game because I dreamt of a world and I wanted others to experience my dream.
- I wanted to learn Japanese so that I would understand the meaning of songs that I listened to without relying on any translations. Also, the thought of being able to just fluently speak in Japanese out of nowhere… I wanted that badly for myself. I wanted to be able to just bust it out fluently. I didn’t care as much about reading or writing in Japanese, but speaking and understanding.. That was a really big dream that I had.
Manage Multiple Passions with Limited Time By Using Visualization
And I wrote these things down.
But I wrote them in the present tense.
I wrote them down in Notion, in the version assuming that I worked on all of these passions for the next 5 years.
How would life be like in 5 years if you continued doing the thing you want? Assume you are living that accomplished life, and write about how it feels.
Here’s the exact Notion page that I wrote in 2021:
You can use this as a template:
I’m <emotion> that in <current year> I did <desired hobby>.
Remember that you are writing this out in the present tense, assuming that it’s 5 years from now.
Close your eyes. How do you feel because you did the thing that you really wanted to do consistently? How are your accomplishments are impacting other people? What are other people saying about you? What kind of house do you live in? How do you behave? How do your family members introduce you? Etc.
Now, it’s currently 2025. I definitely wasn’t always consistent with everything I wanted to do. I didn’t reach all of the goals on the notion page, but that’s okay because I’m a lot farther ahead than I used to be.
Now,
- I’m able to play multiple piano pieces with both hands.
- I received straight As throughout high school. At one point, I had a quarter grade average of 100.3.
- I can understand little parts of Japanese music. I can hold a basic Japanese conversation.
- I worked incredibly hard for a year and released my Roblox game, played 1.5M+ times.
- I’m not a good singer yet, but I’m wayyy better than I used to be.
Start with visualization.
Manage Multiple Passions with Limited Time By Turning Goals into Systems
It’s important to know what you want to do.
If you do the exercise in the previous section, you’ll know what you want to accomplish (your goals).
Now, we have to take this set of goals and turn it into systems.
Goals vs Systems
A goal is something that you are looking to achieve sometime in the future.
A system is something that you can do every single day to help you achieve that goal.
| Goal | System |
| I want 100,000 YouTube subscribers. | I will upload one video a week. Every Monday, I will plan out the video. By Friday, I will have finished editing the video. On Sunday, I will have the thumbnail ready and will publish it. |
| I want to release 3 Roblox games. | From January – March, I will focus on developing Game #1. From April – July, I will focus on developing Game #2. From July – December, I will focus on developing Game #3. Every day, from 12 PM – 3 PM, I will devote my time to developing whatever game I’m focused on. |
| I want to be able to play song X on the piano. | I will print out the sheet music for song X. Every Monday, Wednesday, Friday from 10 AM – 11 AM, I will practice this song. |
| I want to get straight As this semester. | On Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I will focus my studying on class A and class B. I will make sure that each class receives 3 hour of studying on those days. |
Goals are just an imaginary tomorrow.
Systems are habits that we can form to ensure we get that imaginary tomorrow.
So, write down your goals, and then turn them into systems.
Then, focus on staying consistent with your systems.
Whenever you lose motivation, look at your goals. That’s why you’re doing your systems.
If you are into this kind of thing of how you can turn your goals into systems, James Clear wrote a whole book on it, which you can check out by clicking me.
How to Make Time for Everything
Here’s how you can make time for everything, so that you can manage multiple passions with limited time.
Every single person has 24 hours in their day.
You do. I do. Jeff Bezos does. Elon Musk does. Everyone does.
No one has more than 24 hours.
It isn’t about getting more hours.
It’s about how you use those hours.
You get 8 hours for your job. You get 8 hours to sleep. Then, you get 8 hours to do whatever you want.
So, in those 8 hours of “everything else”, we have to fit the things we want to do.
8 hours is a long time.
If you’ve ever spent 8 hours doing what you don’t want to do, you’ll know what I mean.
So, in that 8 hours, you should schedule those aforementioned systems.
Maybe your schedule is something like this:
- Go to work 9-5
- Sleep 11-7.
Then, between 7 AM and 9 AM and 5 PM and 11 PM, you should schedule your habits.
Once again, if you’re interested in this kind of thing, I highly recommend you check out Atomic Habits.
My Results from Consistency
Whenever you feel a loss in motivation, think about why you started the system in the first place — your goal.
Set the right systems, and then, consistency is all that matters.
You wanted to play the song on piano because it meant a lot to you.
You wanted to get fit because you wanted to live longer.
You wanted to get good grades because you wanted to get into a really great college.
Here, I’ll share my results from doing these things consistently.
I hope that my results from taking my life into my own hands can motivate you to do the same.
These pictures were taken at different times of my life, but all around 2022, with a consistency of about 2 years.
Working out
Piano
Web Design and Development (2020)
Web Design and Development (2022)
Roblox Game (2024)
It’s all about consistency.
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Hope this helps!
