When I was in high school, I remember an object lesson about prioritizing….the instructor had a giant glass jar on the table. Next, to it, he had a container of golf balls, a container of sand and a bowl of pebbles.
He put poured the sand and the pebbles into the giant jar and asked us if we thought the golf balls would all fit? We weren’t sure. He added the balls one at a time, and we soon discovered that about ten balls didn’t fit into the jar.
Next, he removed the balls, the sand, and the pebbles and emptied the jar. He then placed all of the golf balls into the giant jar, and we saw that plenty of room was left towards the top to add in the sand and the pebbles. He dumped both in, and miraculously everything fits nicely into the jar that was previously unable to contain everything on the table.
He directed our attention to a pitcher of water. He asked us if the water would also fit into the jar….he added all the water, now the jar was full.
Many have seen this demonstration, to my young impressionable mind it became a life lesson that I’ve often thought of while juggling life’s priorities.
As I’ve thought about the time sensitive projects I’ve killed myself accomplishing over the last ten years, I can’t identify a single project that would have ended catastrophically had I not completed it at that very moment. My definition of catastrophic: Did it result in loss of life, limb, or potential financial ruin? Of course, we have deadlines and due dates…In looking back at my year was the extra chaos and stress I created by choosing to prioritize one task over another meaningful enough to have justified the means?
To prioritize we need to discover our core values. There are many ways in which to trickle down and define our core values. The simplest way I think is by asking ourselves: “How do I spend my time” not How do I want to or hope to spend my time but how did I spend my time?”
Several years ago I took a corporate leadership training class by a great friend of ours. In the class, he asked us to list our goals. Then he asked us to list how much time we’d spent during the previous day, and a week is working towards those goals. I discovered that I hadn’t done a single thing to work towards my biggest goal -which was and still is to write and publish a book. His point was – it’s not a goal if we aren’t working towards it every day. Dreams and goals are different.
Priorities create the plan towards accomplishing goals.
Scan the internet, and research goals setting and then sit back and review your week. Better yet, ask your family and our your kids what they saw you doing the previous week. Often most of us project our desired results as we reminisce and ignore our actual behaviors. Family and friends can help us see those things we are reluctant to notice that are holding us back.
After we understand how we’ve spent our time…hanging out with family, running kids to activities, working out at the gym, crunching numbers at the office, stalking people on social media, watching youtube videos on how to manage my business, etc.
It’s easier to prioritize our to-do lists based off of our core values.
That being said, writing this is on my list of priorities. Asana keeps reminding me that I need to complete this. However, with all the other alerts on my calendar, this seems to get rescheduled over and over again.
What works best for me is to mentally envision the core values that correspond aka drive the priorities. This big picture approach is helpful as my attention focuses on the end goal, which makes the task easier to accomplish and something I look forward to rather than dread.
If we find that our core values are incongruent with our priorities, we will quickly be able to identify why we’re always in a foul mood, or on edge. Once we’re able to bring balance to these competing realities in our lives, we can accomplish more and enjoy the process.
When we fill our giant jars with the golf balls that represent our highest core values and fill in the rest of the space with, have to and should do’s we can accomplish the tasks that matter now and will have made a difference in our lives as we look back over the years.
