A new approach to unlocking the time for passions, interests and hobbies while juggling career and family. Here’s how to make passion snacking work.

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What was the soundtrack of your early childhood?

For me, it was a steady repeat of Whitney Houston, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson and Tina Turner.

My parents played their records and cassette tapes until they wore out.

Their love for music led to my appreciation for music, too.

I spent a lot of time watching MTV (remember when they actually played music videos?).

Now I’ve got two kids and we play a lot of music at House Cataldo.

Every night at dinner, we play music in the background.

Sure, our kids get a taste of their favorite music. My oldest is in her Swifty Era and while my youngest hasn’t quite developed his own musical palette, he does enjoy hip hop.

But we also spend a lot of time feeding them some of the faves from our era (and our childhood, too).

• Outkast
• Green Day
• Biggie and Tupac
• Lauryn Hill
• Michael Jackson
• Stevie Wonder
• The Beatles
• Pink Floyd
• Kendrick Lamar

But, the real magic comes after dinner.

We crank up the volume and dance around while we clean up.

Those 15 minutes are one of the highlights of my day. I imagine it’s also installing a core memory for my kids.

What if we celebrated more pockets of happiness like this every single day?

Rather than trying (unsuccessfully) to block out major chunks of time to do something you love, I’m realizing that the breakneck pace of modern day society dictates that we take a more tactful approach.

I think we can do that with this concept that I’m sharing with you today.

I’m calling it passion snacking.

It’s all about squeezing more joy out of our mundane and monotonous adulting schedules.

Today, you’re going to learn how (and why) to apply passion snacking to your busy schedule.

Let’s get into it.

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Passion snacking gives you a reason to wake up

The workweek can be absolute chaos (especially if you’ve got school-age children).

We have so many things we’d like to accomplish that we end up not doing anything because we want to do everything.

It’s too overwhelming.

Besides, taking time for yourself seems silly and almost childish when you have so many adulting things to do. So we skip it.

Another week goes by and you’ve ignored your self care, your interests and your passions.

Weeks become months.

And the cycle continues until you become bitter and you get cynical at the whole game of life.

I know this firsthand, because I’ve been there myself. Burned out and bitter that I was spending so much of my bandwidth focused on career and family and never getting time for things I enjoy (or feeling guilty for the few times I did).

I had to hit the reset button. It’s time you did the same.

Starting today, you’re going to view your personal fulfillment as a requirement.

Yes, it’s a requirement for your mental health to carve out more time for your own passions.

One of the major deathbed regrets of the elderly is living a life too focused on work and not spending more time doing things that you love and enjoy.

And this study revealed that “Individuals experiencing a fulfilled life reported a more positive attitude toward aging.”

Play, entertainment, personal fulfillment are all part of your health.

Of course, you’re probably thinking, “Yeah that sounds great, I’m on board. But, where do I find the actual time to do this?”

That’s where passion snacking comes into play.

Passion snacking is about finding intentional pockets of time for … you

How often do you get stuck in one of those in-between times: You’ve got a few minutes after a meeting before your next task or project and you don’t know what to do with that time

One of two things probably happen:

• You make bargains with yourself about a small task you’ll “just knock out really quick” before the next thing.
• OR you immediately reach for the phone and kill time by mindlessly scrolling through nonsense.

Neither feels really good.

What if we used that time more constructively?

In fact, what if we actually planned for these little in-between time gaps and did something for ourselves?

Something worthwhile and intentional that helps bring you a little bit more joy and purpose.

I like the idea of snacking (so much so, wrote an entire guide to exercise snacking).

But in the nutrition space, snacks get a bad rap because we immediately think of overly-processed junk foods.

Honestly, a snack is simply a smaller bridge meal that gets you from one larger meal to the next.

In other words, snacks can be healthy. It’s all about your intention.

For example: An apple with some cheese and a few almonds is a healthy, nutrient-dense snack that even squeezes in a dose of protein. In other words, it’s a “healthy” snack.

When our plate is absolutely full with work and kids and adulting and everything in between, we might not have the time for another big meal.

So instead break up your interests and hobbies into smaller, bite-sized snacks.

As little as 15 minutes might be all you need.

Wait … 15 minutes of passion snacking is enough?

Well yes, actually. The science is actually pretty clear on this.

This study revealed how play for adults is crucial to mental health:

“Playful individuals reported lower levels of perceived stress than their less playful counterparts, and more frequently utilized adaptive, stressor-focused coping strategies and were less likely to employ negative, avoidant, and escape-oriented strategies.”

And then this resource says that just 10-15 minutes of play is enough for adults to enjoy massive benefits.

Benefits like:

• Creative problem solving
• Adaptability in tough situations
• Play alleviates anxiety and depression and boosts mood
• And it helps you focus on where you are in the present moment

You get into what’s called a Flow State: You are so wrapped up in the project or game you are focused on that nothing else really matters. Not even time.

In other words, play helps you reset your busy, perpetually exhausted adult mind and you don’t need a ton of time to do it.

What could you possibly achieve in just 15 minutes?

You must break free of the all or nothing mindset and dare to dream a little bigger my darling (or I guess, smaller in this case).

Read
You can read 5-10 pages of a book in about 15 minutes.

Learn a new language
You can tackle a couple of Duolingo sessions in 15 minutes. Come up with your own little weekly set up where one day you’re watching YouTube videos in your target language, the next day a couple of songs, the third day, researching vocab words.

Have more sex
About 60-percent of married couple enjoy sex one time per week. And sex therapists surveyed say the desirable length of sex should be about 7-13 minutes. In other words, the perfect amount of time for a quick passionate passion snack if ya ask me.

A few other ideas:

• Build Legos
• Play video games (I do this)
• Watch a MasterClass
• Dance party with your kids (I do this, too)

But let’s be honest, 15 minutes is enough to do just about anything you want, but it’s not enough to do everything you want. There’s a subtle difference.

You’ll need to be intentional (otherwise, you’re going to snack on junk … like your phone).

For that, we’re going to schedule your passion snacking commitment for at least one time per day.

Yes, we’re going to schedule fun.

How to make passion snacking work

It will feel strange, lame and awkward at first, but eventually, you’ll start to look forward to your little time-blocked passion snacking ritual.

Otherwise you’ll continue to find excuses to put it off and ignore your mental health and personal fulfillment as you continue to view it as some kind of luxury.

It shouldn’t be the heaviest lift in the world to block off 15 minutes here or there in your day.

Some CEOs will schedule their entire days in 15-minute intervals.

Side note: Here’s the newsletter breaking down my own productivity workflow for how I get things done as a former stay at home dad while running my own business to help you do just that.

Remember, 15 minutes compounded over the course of a year is 91 total hours. You can be a completely different person with that kind of dedication.

Maybe spend 15 minutes learning a language in the morning.

Then block off another 15 minutes to listen to an audiobook during your post-lunch walk.

When you get home and put the kids to bed, there’s another 15 minutes for self-care.

Much more manageable than blocking out 45 minutes to an hour of your time all at once, right?

If you can’t do 15 minutes, do 10 minutes.

Can’t commit to 10 minutes? Do five minutes in between meetings.

This is your life and you must prioritize and make time for yourself … otherwise someone else will (or you’ll waste it away staring at your phone instead).

What do you want to actually do with your passion snacking commitment?

Get creative.

Think about some of the bigger life things you want to do outside of career and family. And think about ways you can turn that full meal into a bite-sized snack.

What does 5, 10, 15 minutes look like for your passion?

For me, I shut down my work every day and play a few minutes of a video game of my choice.

Some days, I have time for a full side quest.

Other days, it might just be a quick race or two on MarioKart.

Get really clear on some of the hobbies, passions, interests that light you up.

Because your time is limited, you cannot achieve everything at once so sometimes I like to view this as a college course.

Think of the next 12 weeks as a semester and you’re going to really focus on this one course (hobby or interest).

Whenever you have a few minutes of downtime, instead of killing that time with a task or by doomscrolling, you’ll do a little passion snacking instead.

Next semester, you can choose to go even deeper into that topic and level up to an advanced class (add more challenges to your goal) or you switch up course topics altogether.

Maybe you can take on a few little passion snacks per day.

For others, a worthy goal is a few per week to start.

Pick one focus this month or quarter and make that your passion snacking season.

This month I will:
Spend 15 minutes (or whatever time I have available) practicing guitar or learning how to write fiction storytelling.

Or this quarter I will:
Spend 15 minutes a day learning a foreign language or shutting off my phone, blocking out time to take a warm bath at the end of my day.

Your journey … your call.

My goal is for you to start making you more of a priority, no matter how that looks.

Make your new passion snacking hobby stick

None of this will matter if you just get distracted by life and end up forgetting your passion snacking commitment.

One way to ensure you remember is to group this new desired behavior with an existing habit.

We call this habit stacking (I wrote more about making habits stick in this previous newsletter).

A few examples:

• Add the language learning session to your brief morning coffee ritual.
• Listen to an audiobook about that thing you’re learning while commuting to/from work.
• Crank up the volume to your favorite music after dinner and dance with your family … just like we do at House Cataldo.

Now you have a powerful reminder to keep you consistent.

Look, this is your life and your passion. And you owe it to your future self to carve out the time.

There is no right or wrong answer.

Figure it out.

As you get started, you’ll learn new things and realize you’d like to tweak and adjust accordingly. Awesome.

The mind starts making connections and you experience the worthwhile dopamine for taking care of yourself.

That’s when you’ll really start feeling at least a tad more fulfilled through this grind we call life.

I hope you found this useful. If so, I’d appreciate it if you sent this newsletter to one person you think would benefit from my writing today.

And if you’re new here and enjoyed this newsletter, I’d be honored if you subscribed for more at this link.

And as always, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out.

I answer all of my emails at pete [at] petecataldo [.] com … Hit me up with the subject line “passion snacking” and I’ll answer any questions you have to make this work for you.

Until next time,
Pete