Time management - how to prioritize
One day an expert in time management was speaking to a group of business students and, to drive home a point, used an illustration those students will never forget. As he stood in front of the group of high-powered over-achievers, he said, “Okay, time for a quiz.” He then pulled out a one-gallon wide-mouth mason jar and set it on the table in front of him.
Then he produced about a dozen fist-sized rocks and carefully placed them, one by one, into the jar. When the jar was filled to the top and no more rocks would fit inside, he asked, “Is this jar full?” Everyone in the class said, “Yes.”
Then he said, “Really?” He reached under the table and pulled out a bucket of gravel. Then he dumped some gravel in and shook the jar, causing pieces of gravel to work themselves down into the space between the big rocks. Then he asked the group once more. “Is this jar full?”
By this time the class was on to him. “Probably not.” one of them answered. “Good!” he replied. He reached under the table and brought out a bucket of sand. He started dumping the sand in the jar and it went into all the spaces left between the rocks and the gravel. Once more he asked the question. “Is this jar full?” “No!” the class shouted. Once again, he said, “Good!”
Then he grabbed a pitcher of water and began to pour it in until the jar was filled to the brim. Then the expert in time management looked at the class and asked, “What is the point of this illustration?” One eager beaver raised his hand and said, “The point is, no matter how full your schedule is, if you try really hard you can always fit some more things in it.” “No”, the speaker replied, “that’s not the point. The truth this illustration teaches us is this: If you don’t put the big rocks in first, you’ll never get them in at all. What are the big rocks in your life? Your children, your spouse, your loved ones, your friendships, your education, your dreams, an worthy cause, teaching or mentoring others, doing things that you love, time for yourself, your health. Remember to put these BIG ROCKS in first, or you’ll never get them in at all. If you sweat the little stuff (i.e. gravel, the sand) then you’ll fill your life with little things you will never have the real quality time you need to spend on the big, important stuff (the big rocks).”
So, tonight, or in the morning, when you are reflecting on this short story, ask yourself this question: What are the “big rocks” in my life? Then put those in your jar first.
Cited from clean-funnies
For some reason, I kept on thinking about this after I read it. To be honest, I liked the eager beaver’s explanation better. “The point is, no matter how full your schedule is, if you try really hard you can always fit some more things in it.” After thinking, however, maybe fitting everything in isn’t really good idea. See the image below for why;)
I’m still stuck thinking about my big rocks. I realized that I seriously need to sort out my priorities and keep track of my time, so I am going to start a new experiment. Has anyone noticed that you could spend what you think is 15 minutes doing something, 20 minutes doing something else, and 10 minutes doing a third thing but lose 3 hours in the process. This simply doesn’t make sense to me, but it happens all the time. That’s where this experiment is going to help. In random increments, whenever this crosses my mind, I’m going to log what I’m thinking and what’s going on. Of course I’m going to write down the times for my logs too, so I can see what I’m wasting on the little things that I could be spending on the big rocks. After a couple days of logging, I’ll post my results and analysis.
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