Rocks in the jar: what are yours?

How often does your week seem to disappear down the sinkhole of time passed and you look down into that black hole and see your good intentions spinning rapidly round and round into that vortex and you wonder what on earth just happened?

You look back and see multitude rabbit holes down which you trot which are ultimately pointless and fruitless. The week has been jam-packed-busy with all that is urgent….but the important?

What are the rocks in your jar?

You might recognise the reference to a very famous analogy of a professor teaching his class about priorities. It is used much in time management teaching, and remains a powerful visual prompt. Take four minutes to watch the wee video at the bottom to spur you on.

This is something I have spoken about here often (more here and here). So why revisit these rocks in the jar?

Let me ask you this by way of an answer – if you hear something once, is that enough to enable you to fully understand and implement it?

Hmmm, no thought not.

Me neither.

I – like you – need regular reminders of the importance of prioritising the important over the urgent. Why? Because we forget, because we need to re-write deeply scripted inner thoughts, because we need to break established habits.

Because this so often feels counter-intuitive and counter-cultural.

Urgent versus important – another way of looking at the same principle – has been around for decades as a concept. And in our quest to give up busyness for Lent, it remains as relevant and pertinent as ever.

We are not of course going to stop being busy. What we are seeking to do instead is to reset our mindsets to live a busy and grateful life not a busy and distracted one. Key to this is understanding the importance of the rocks in the jar. So whilst this is far from rocket science, let’s together revisit some simple practices that facilitate living according to what is most important to us

• Each week, ask yourself: at the end of this week, for this to have been a good week, what will have happened? What would you do more of? Less of? This is not just about prioritising that which is important to us. It is also about recognising how we measure our ‘success’ in terms of what was a good or bad week. Do we measure how good a week has been by how much we have achieved? Or by how others have experienced us: busy and distracted or busy and present to them? Grateful for what we get to do? Take that and work backwards, prioritising in your week what is most important. This will vary – that is where this works so well because we give ourselves grace to recognise different times and seasons.
• Each day, list the top three things to get done that day in any area of life. Prioritise these, seeing everything else as a bonus. At the end of the week – what I have I achieved, what am I thankful for, where did I get distracted or lose focus, what therefore are my top priorities for next week.
• Make note of both time drainers and time enrichers. For time enrichers, prioritise them and stick to them. Self care is included here [more on this in a couple of weeks]. And stop calling time for you selfish – see it as restorative instead.
• For time drainers, as best as possible try to deal with, delegate or eliminate. A great idea from the I’m Not Busy people is to have a Don’t Do list: things that are time drainers that you check yourself against before being sucked into those endless fruitless pointless rabbit holes
• Have regular planning days to book in holidays, lunch/evening dates with loved ones or friends, regular catch up and planning time, and time to revisit goals and dreams for the year. See here for a fantastic template to enable you to do this!

As I have to remind myself, if I do nothing, nothing will happen. We can continue to live consumed by busyness, distracted and preoccupied and frustrated.

Or we can take time to work out the rocks in the jar, put them in first, and live accordingly.