We are constantly saying we don't have time for things we "really" want to do. Or we say we can't "find" the time to do the things we need to do. "Life does happen," but it's up to you to make the time to make things happen.
Life doesn't have an easy button, but things can be less difficult when set your priorities.
Enjoy this great story by Harvey Mackay on managing your time.
I’ll never forget an important time management lesson I
learned in a seminar many years ago… especially how the instructor
illustrated the point.
“Okay, time for a quiz,”
he said, as he pulled out a one-gallon wide-mouthed mason jar and set
it on the desk in front of him. Then he produced about a dozen
fist-sized rocks and carefully placed them, one at a time, into the
jar.
When the jar was filled to the top and no more rocks would fit inside, he asked, “Is the jar full?”
Everyone in the seminar 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. This caused pieces of gravel
to work themselves down into the spaces between the big rocks. Then he
asked the group again, “Is the jar full?”
By this time the class was on to him. “Probably not,” we answered.
“Good!” he replied as he
reached under the table and brought out a bucket of sand. He started
dumping the sand in 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 he
looked up 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 really try hard, you can always fit some things into it.”
“No,” the instructor replied. “The point is if you don’t put the big rocks in first, you’ll never get them in at all.”
So, today, tonight, or in
the morning when you are reflecting on this story, ask yourself: What
are the ‘big rocks’ in my life or business? Then, be sure to put those
in your jar first. And by the way, you get the same size jar as
everyone else. No exceptions.
What changes from person
to person is the size of each rock. I’ve got a couple boulders in my
jar: family first, always. Things like friends, my company, my speaking
and writing “hobby,” maintaining my network, my volunteer commitments,
my health, and my religion all take up a lot of space. The gravel is
all the stuff that takes up more than a few minutes but doesn’t
necessarily happen every day, like a committee assignment, a vacation,
learning new software… you get the idea.
And now, the sand. You
can decide whether to be that 98-pound weakling who gets sand kicked at
him, or the creator of a spectacular sand castle. The sand is the
yes/no stuff that absolutely has to fit around everything else after
it’s in the jar. A little piece of sand in your eye is a big pain, and
those are the ones that get the no-thank-you right off the bat. A little
sand on an icy street is one of life’s little pleasures when you live
in snow country as I do. You choose the sand. It’s your jar.
In other words, it’s your
time. Change the rocks, gravel and sand into hours, minutes and
seconds. Then decide what your priorities are and how much time you’ll
spend on them. If you don’t, someone else will decide for you and
you’ll end up with a jar full of heavy, jagged, nasty shards that nobody
could touch without getting stabbed by another rock. Do you really
want to spend your time working on other people’s priorities?
As
Benjamin Franklin said, “If we take care of the minutes, the years
will take care of themselves.” Good time management is taking care of
the things that matter most to us first and keeping that jar of rocks
in sight all the time.
My friend Lou Holtz has a great formula:
W.I.N.—What’s Important Now? Use some of your precious time to figure
out what’s important in your life and you will win.
