This article was inspired by a friend who was telling me about a time management seminar that he recently attended.
As my friend tells it, the instructor at the seminar was presenting and then he pulled out a large glass jar, and a bag of big rocks. He then proceeded to fill the jar with as many rocks as it could hold - about 6 or 7. He then asked the audience, "is this jar full?"
The audience said, "Yes."
He said "No," And proceed to bring out a bag of gravel. After he filled the jar with as much gravel as it would hold, he then asked, "is it full now?"
The audience said, "No."
He said, "Good, you're learning." After which he filled the jar with sand. After the sand he asked the audience, "is it full this time?". They said "No."
He said, "I can't put anything over on you guys," and filled the remaining spaces of the jar with water. He then asked, "is it full now?"
The audience said, "Yes."
He said, "Right-on. Now, what was the point of that demonstration?"
One lady stood up and said, "The point is that no matter how much you think that you have going on in your life, there's always room for more."
The answer to that was one my friend said he would never forget, "No. The point of this exercise is that if I hadn't put in the big rocks first, then I never would have fit them in."
What a brilliant demonstration. The "big rocks" in life are those things that you must do before everything else. If you could only do a certain amount of things in a day then you would be wise to ensure that you did your big rocks first. Big rocks would be things like your highest paid activities or cultivating your most important relationships.
Now although this demonstration illustrates that point exactly, there is a step before adding anything to the jar that is even more important. Imagine that you could increase the size of the jar, so that you could put even bigger rocks in? Now your highest paying activities would be even higher, and the relationships you would be cultivating would be even more important.
Sounds like a good deal right?
It is, but most people seem to forget about this all important point. The size of your jar is determined by the things that you must do on an almost daily basis for your entire life. There are only 3 (excluding breathing which is a given) activities that fit into this criteria and optimizing them is the key to increasing your jar capacity.
These 3 factors are - sleep, food, and movement. Every single person sleeps, eats, and moves on pretty much a daily basis. In fact we all spend most of our lives doing just these three things. This is the major reason why we don't think about these factors. Doing them on a daily basis means they have become unconscious behaviors, things that we don't think about, and don't really care about.
But optimizing these 3 activities is the most beneficial and crucial step to lifelong success - IN ANYTHING. These activities are what dictate the size of your jar. The bigger your jar, the bigger and more important the rocks you can put into it. Big and important rocks means big and important opportunities, activities, jobs, and relationships.
The message then is this. Time management does not begin with identifying your most important activities, the big rocks. It starts with identifying the things that will optimize your performance as an individual, the size of your jar. These 3 things are the quality of your sleep, the quality of your food, and the quality of your movement.
Optimizing these activities is what sets you up for long-term success. Whether your goal is to get bigger rocks or to get more rocks, the only way you are going to do it is by increasing the size of your jar. Sleep, food, and movement - these are the keys to that. Optimize them before you deal with your rocks, and you are sure to be surprised of the size and quantity that you will eventually be able to fit in.
