[NeedAdvice] How do I focus on different aspects of my life at the same time?

I've tried the change-everything-at-once method of progression and have found that I always fail. For me, the most effective strategy has been to master one skill, incorporate it into my lifestyle, and then move onto the next. So for you I would:

1: Nutrition: Learn how to eat right and cook. Even if you don't incorporate exercise this is still a wonderful skill to have that you can utilize while learning anything else. Plus the more you do it the better you get at it, so you'll waste less time cooking and tracking calories. I've tracked/looked up the nutritional info of so much food that I can go to a restaurant and guess how many calories my meal has within 100-200 calories. I don't even think about it anymore and don't use a tracker anymore since since I can keep a running total in my head.

I'd also recommend not killing yourself over the macro-nutrients unless you're not losing weight. Figure out how to cook around calories first and avoid the stuff you know is bad (i'm assuming you're past the stage of over-researching and can spot these pretty well).

Once you've got this down to the point where you notice you have more free time move on to a small amount of exercise.

2: Exercise: start with something easy that doesn't require money. Push ups, sit ups, pull ups, walking, jogging, etc. This can be done while learning nutrition, but please, please focus on nutrition first. Too many people think exercise is the key to fitness so they spend hours in the gym and forget to prepare meals/learn to cook.

Once you've got a routine down to the point where you notice you have more free time and don't need to force yourself to go to the gym, rather it's an auto-pilot thing, move on to learning guitar. Remember though, you should actively plan your day around exercise and nutrition since it's by far the most important skill you'll ever have (since it affects your health).

3: Learning something fun: Learning the guitar is cool, fun, and you can watch yourself progress. See it as a reward that you've mastered the previous two skills and are ready to launch into a another skill set. You'll have to trust the guitar teaching experts here but I'd recommend mastering the basics, then a few easy songs to the point they're so ingrained into your head that even if you don't play/practice for awhile you'll remember them. That way the basics are never far outside of your reach and you can learn challenging songs at your leisure.

Once you've learned a few songs and/or are at the point where guitar is a hobby you'll always want to stick with, move on to programming.

4: Learning a challenging life skill: I know this one may seem like the most important since you can earn money doing it, but remember that you're still learning the basics of life (exercise and nutrition) that will reap ENORMOUS benefits throughout your lifetime. Again, trust the experts here on the best way to learn programming, but make sure you're not sacrificing others skills for this one unless you deem it more important than another skill. To make it more fun, try and incorporate programming into your other hobbies so that you're more motivated to go back to them.

/r/getdisciplined Thread