The Life You Keep Moving to Next Week
Why the things you want are so easy to postpone — and what that costs over time.
There is a particular kind of thing that is remarkably easy to move to next week.
Your thing.
Not the dentist appointment. Not the client call. Not the school meeting. Not the deadline somebody else is waiting on.
The course you wanted to take. The idea you wanted to explore. The strength training you wanted to start. The business you keep thinking about. The book. The trip. The project. The new skill. The afternoon you wanted entirely to yourself.
The thing nobody is expecting from you.
That thing moves beautifully.
Next Tuesday. Next month. After Christmas. When work calms down. When the children need less. When the house is finished. When you have more energy.
And every time we move it, the decision seems completely reasonable. It’s only one week. And over one week, that is probably true.
Over a few months or years, it is a very different story.
Because the things in our lives that never receive a date are not really being postponed. They are quietly not happening. Nobody ever decided not to write the book. Nobody decided not to build the business. Nobody decided not to become stronger, learn Italian, change careers, make art again, travel alone, go back to university or find out what life might look like with a little more room in it.
There was no dramatic moment in which we said: No. I have decided against this.
It simply never made it onto the calendar. And this is where I think women need to pay particular attention.
Because many women are extraordinarily good at making space for what is required of them. We remember appointments. We anticipate what the family will need. We deliver the work. We notice the birthday coming up, the empty fridge, the form that needs signing, the child who needs new shoes, the friend who needs support, the colleague waiting for an answer. We are highly competent at responding to life.
So competent that we barely notice how little of our time is being shaped by the question: WHAT DO I WANT?
Not what needs doing. Not what would be sensible. Not what everyone would approve of. Not what would make you more useful, more productive or easier to live with.
What do YOU want?
For many women, that question is surprisingly difficult to answer. Not because they have no wants. But because they have spent years treating those wants as background noise. Optional. Indulgent. Too much. Not realistic. No time. And furthermore: something to come back to once everything important has been taken care of.
The problem is that everything important is never taken care of. There will always be another email. Another load of laundry. Another deadline. Another person who would happily take an hour you did not actively claim for yourself.
This is why I don't find “I don't have time” particularly useful. Most of the time, it describes the situation badly. Time is not something that eventually appears once life is finished. Life is never finished. Your To-Do list is never done.
There is no magical Thursday three months from now when the inbox is empty, everyone around you is perfectly fine and your brain announces: “Wonderful. Nothing needs me. I shall now pursue my own desires.”
That day is NOT coming.
You don't FIND time for what matters to you. You MAKE ROOM for it.
And that requires something more uncomfortable than time management: It requires taking your own wants seriously.
Because your wants are at a structural disadvantage. Nobody sends you a reminder. Nobody gets annoyed if you cancel them. There is rarely an immediate consequence.
And, very often, they involve something you have never done before — which means you are also terrible at estimating how much time they will take. Your routine work is predictable. You know roughly how long the school run takes. You know how long the weekly meeting lasts. You know how quickly you can answer ten familiar emails.
But building something new? Learning something properly? Creating a body of work? Changing direction? Becoming excellent at something? Building the business that sparks joy in you?
We underestimate them and overestimate them at the same time. We underestimate how long meaningful change takes. How many repetitions are involved. How many ordinary Tuesday mornings sit behind something that eventually looks impressive. But we also massively overestimate what we need to do today. We look at the whole thing at once. The business. The degree. The strong body. The book. The new career. The completely different life. And from where we are standing, it looks enormous. Too far away. Too complicated. Too much work. Never done it before… too many things we don't yet know how to do.
So instead of taking a small step toward it, we do nothing. Because somehow, if we cannot see how to get all the way there, beginning feels almost pointless.
But that is not how most things are built. A book is not written by writing a book today. A strong body is not built in one heroic month. A business is not created in one brilliant leap. A new life rarely arrives over night through one enormous decision. It is built through remarkably unimpressive amounts of progress, repeated for a surprisingly long time.
An hour every Friday. Three training sessions a week. Ten pages. One conversation. One decision. One application. One class. One small thing that exists this week because last week it didn't. And small things add up. Consistency is key. Small steps being done each day, each week, each months.
We overestimate the power of one big effort and underestimate the power of small actions that keep happening.
And that matters, because the gap between who you are and who you want to become may be large. But today's step usually isn't. You do not need to be able to do the whole thing. Or already know every step towards your goal or dream.
BUT: you need to be willing to keep giving it a place in your life.
So your own project has two problems at once: It has the least external pressure and the most uncertain time requirement.
Of course it is the first thing to disappear when the week gets crowded. And perhaps that doesn't matter this week. But zoom out…
That is where things become interesting.
One missed training session changes almost nothing. Months or years of repeatedly putting your body last do. One month without working on your idea changes almost nothing. A few weeks, months, suddenly years of giving every productive hour to somebody else's priorities do.
Skipping the course this autumn is insignificant. Except that perhaps the knowledge you would have gained becomes the skill you never develop, which becomes the work you never do, which becomes the version of your professional life you never discover.
This is how lives become smaller without anybody deciding to make them smaller. Not through one enormous choice. Through hundreds of entirely reasonable little ones.
I'll do it next week… next month…
And I want to be very clear about something. This is NOT an argument for cramming more into your life. I am deeply uninterested in turning you into an optimisation project. You do not need another morning routine. You do not need to monetise your hobby. You do not need to be perpetually improving yourself.
Your want might be ambition. It might also be less. More space. More sleep. Stronger legs. Wednesdays without meetings. A garden. Piano lessons. Better sex. A qualification. A month abroad. Going back to work. Leaving work earlier. Starting a business. Writing for no reason whatsoever.
Wanting more does not mean your current life is not enough. You can love what you have and still be curious about what else might be possible. Those two things are not opposites.
But curiosity needs somewhere to live. A want that exists only in your head is very easy for the rest of life to overpower.
So here is the very unglamorous thing I suggest:
Take one thing you genuinely want for yourself that has no deadline imposed by anybody else.
Then ask: What would moving this forward actually require?
Estimate the time. Then double your estimate. (Not because everything needs to take twice as long, but because new things almost always contain work you cannot see yet.)
Then put that time in your calendar. Not as a vague intention. Not as “if I get through everything else.” Not as a hopeful note on a to-do list. Not on a someday list. Not in a note called Things I really want to do this year. Not in the vague category of when I have more time.
Give it an actual time. Tuesday, 10:00–11:30. Thursday, 7:00–8:00. Saturday morning before everyone else gets up. Give it a beginning and an end.
Plan it when you are calm. When you can look at your week as a whole. When your prefrontal cortex is online and you can make a sensible decision about what matters, what is realistic and where it fits.
Do not make an absurd plan. Do not schedule twelve hours for your new business into a week that already has no oxygen in it. Do not create a fantasy calendar for the woman you imagine you should be. Plan for your actual life.
But once you have made the plan: honor your calendar. Treat it with the same seriousness you already give appointments with other people. This is the part we are strangely good at doing for everyone except ourselves.
When the time comes, do not reopen the decision. Do not sit there at 10:02 and start asking: Do I feel like doing this? Wouldn't it make more sense to quickly clean the kitchen first? Maybe I should answer those emails. The laundry really needs doing. My child might need me. I could probably use this time for work.
No. You already decided. The decision was made by the version of you who could see the whole week, remember what mattered to you and think beyond the mood of one particular moment. Now your job is to follow through. Honor the decision of your past-me and honor your future-me who will love you for doing it today.
And notice how differently we treat commitments to other people. You do not usually wake up on Wednesday and think: Hmm. I'm not really feeling my 9–5 today. You do not cancel a client meeting because the laundry basket suddenly feels very compelling. You do not message a friend ten minutes before dinner and say: Actually, I think I would rather reorganize a cupboard.
We understand that those commitments are real because another person is involved. Your commitments to yourself need to become real too.
That does not mean becoming rigid. Of course there are genuine emergencies. Children get sick. Life happens. Plans sometimes need to move. But there is a huge difference between changing a plan because something genuinely requires it and abandoning a plan because, in the moment, something else feels louder.
If you need to move the block, move it. Put it somewhere else. But DO NOT let it dissolve.
But notice the crucial difference: Move it to another time. Don't move it to someday!
And perhaps that is one of the most important forms of self-trust: You stop making decisions for your future self that your present self is allowed to casually overrule.
You planned it. You decided it mattered. Now honor the decision.
And yes, life will occasionally happen. A child gets sick. A deadline explodes. Somebody needs you. Then you move the block! But notice the crucial difference: Move it to another time. Don't move it to someday! Because a project with a date can be delayed and still exist. A desire permanently waiting for spare time eventually disappears from view.
And perhaps before any of that, there is an even more important question:
If nobody needed anything from you for a moment… If there were nothing to take care of… If wanting something did not need to be justified by productivity, money, usefulness or anybody else's approval…
What would you want?
Because the future is not only shaped by the things we decide to do. It is shaped by the things we keep meaning to do. The things we keep moving. The things that never quite become important enough to deserve Tuesday at 10. Until one day we realise they were important after all.
And I don't actually think your wants should simply be given a polite little corner somewhere in your life. I think they matter enormously.
Because what is your life supposed to be built around if you are never part of the equation?
Your wants are information. They tell you what draws you forward. What gives you energy. What you care enough about to work for. What kind of work you want to do. How you want to spend your days. Who you want in your life. What you want your body to be capable of. What you want to create, contribute, experience, learn and become.
And when you begin taking those things seriously, something interesting happens: You start building a life you actually want to live. You create a career you enjoy showing up for — and become exceptionally good at creating value because you actually care about the work. You can pursue financial success not because money is the point of everything, but because money creates freedom, possibility, generosity and choice. You build a family life you genuinely love instead of constantly sacrificing yourself in the name of your family and quietly resenting the life you created. You can be a partner who has something to bring into the relationship because you have a life, interests, ideas, energy and desires of your own. You can show your children what it looks like to be a woman who remains curious, brave and alive. Someone who loves deeply without disappearing. Someone who takes responsibility for her happiness instead of expecting the people around her to provide it. Someone who tries things. Changes her mind. Fails. Starts again. Wants things. Builds things. Enjoys things. Becomes more herself.
That is not selfish. Selfishness is not wanting meaningful work, money, strength, adventure, intimacy, rest, achievement, beauty, freedom or whatever else genuinely matters to you.
Taking responsibility for creating a life that feels like yours may be one of the most generous things you can do. Because the people in your life do not only experience what you do for them. They experience you. Your energy. Your aliveness. Your resentment or your joy. Your courage or your fear. Your uniqueness. Your brilliance. Your genius. The way you participate in your own life becomes part of the environment everyone around you lives in. When you are deeply engaged in your own life, you enrich theirs too.
You bring more to your relationships because you have more of yourself to bring. You become more interesting, more generous, more present, more alive. Your partner does not only get your love or attention. They get your enthusiasm, your growth, your stories, your perspective, your desire. Your children do not only get your care or what you organise for them. They get to grow up around a woman who shows them what it looks like to keep growing, striving, becoming. Your friends get someone who is engaged with life. Your clients get someone who is lit up by what she creates and gives.
A life that is truly yours does not make everyone else’s life smaller. It can make theirs richer too.
And you get to experience the extraordinary privilege of being here and actually being in your own life.
And maybe this is where the question gets bigger than calendars and time blocks.
What if you actually became the person you want to be?
Not the person you think would be acceptable. Not the person who asks for a reasonable amount. Not the person who has carefully adjusted her desires to fit what seems realistic.
The person you actually want to be.
We are living in a historically extraordinary moment for women. For so much of history, the shape of a woman’s life was largely decided for her. Where she could go. What she could learn. Whether she could earn money, own property, leave a marriage, build something of her own, choose motherhood or not choose it, speak publicly, lead, create, travel, train, study, reinvent herself.
And while freedom is still very unevenly distributed around the world, many of us now have possibilities that generations of women before us could barely have imagined. We can ask: Who do I want to be?
And then actually build a life that expresses some version of the answer. That is extraordinary. And yet so many of us have all this possibility available to us and immediately start negotiating ourselves down. I’d love to do that, but… I’d love to become really good at this, but… I’d love to build something big, but… I’d love to be strong. I’d love to make more money. I’d love to create something exceptional. I’d love to change my life.
But what if I can’t? What if it’s too hard? What if I fail? What if I want it badly and don’t get it?
So we decide that perhaps it would be safer not to want it quite so much. And I think that is such an enormous loss.
Because allowing yourself to want something changes you long before you ever get it.
Someone who allows herself to want more from her life begins to live differently. She starts asking what fully alive means to her. What kind of life would feel unmistakably hers. What she would attempt if she stopped requiring certainty first. What she might create, learn, build, change, leave, begin or become if she allowed herself to aim higher than what currently seems reasonable. She begins to wonder what her own version of ambition looks like. Her own version of happiness. Her own version of meaning.
Maybe she wants a big dream. Maybe she wants an almost impossible goal. Maybe she wants to become visible. To make something and let people see it. To risk being judged. To fail at something that mattered enough to fail at — and then get up and try again.Maybe she wants to become stronger, braver, calmer, more capable. Maybe she wants more adventure. More influence. More beauty. More rest. More depth. More freedom.
Maybe she simply wants to find out who she is when she stops organizing her entire life around what is expected of her.
Because the moment you let yourself want something, you begin noticing what that want asks of you. You notice possibilities you would otherwise dismiss. You make different decisions. You become willing to learn things you do not yet know. You tolerate being a beginner. You take yourself more seriously. You become more willing to be seen.
And perhaps most importantly, you stop treating your own life as something that is simply happening to you. You begin participating in it. Your create your life on your terms.
Wanting is not a guarantee that you will get what you want. Of course it isn’t. But that is not the point. The point of wanting is not only the end result. It is what the pursuit reveals to you. Who you become when you take yourself seriously. What you are capable of when you stop assuming you already know your limits. What happens when you try something difficult, fail, recover, learn, change direction and keep going. What you discover about your courage. Your ambition. Your discipline. Your creativity. Your capacity for joy. Your ability to surprise yourself.
Sometimes the thing you want becomes real. Sometimes you get there and realise it was not what you wanted after all. And sometimes the pursuit takes you somewhere far more interesting than the original goal ever could have.
And sometimes you fail. But even then, you have lived differently because you allowed yourself to try.
A big want gives you somewhere to grow toward. It gives you a reason to expand beyond the version of yourself you already know. To learn. To risk. To become visible. To tolerate uncertainty. To do things badly before you can do them well. To discover strengths you had no reason to develop before. To blow your own mind.
That is why I think we miss the point when we ask only: What if I don't get it?
A much more interesting question is: Who might I become by going after it?
Because perhaps the real reward of wanting something deeply is not simply having it one day. Perhaps it is meeting versions of yourself you would never have encountered otherwise. Perhaps it is building a life that feels more vivid, more expansive, more fully yours. Perhaps it is discovering what you are made of.
That is part of being alive.
But sometimes we seem to think the alternative is emotionally safer: If I don't let myself want it, I can't be disappointed.
Really? So the plan is to avoid the possibility of disappointment by disappointing yourself in advance? By failing ahead of time? To decide something isn't possible before life gets a chance to answer? To make your world smaller so you never have to experience the pain of reaching for something beyond it?
You are going to live with disappointment anyway.
That is not optional. The question is whether you want the disappointment that sometimes comes from trying for a life you genuinely want or the quieter disappointment of looking back and realizing you never really let yourself find out.
Maybe you won't get everything you want. That was never the point. The point is what happens when you stop treating your own desires as dangerous, embarrassing, unrealistic or inconvenient. When you let yourself say: I want this.
And then you give that want room in your actual life. Because perhaps becoming the woman you want to be doesn't begin with achieving something enormous. Perhaps it begins much earlier. With allowing yourself to want her in the first place.