Rock On!

Things in my life have been, shall we say, a bit topsy turvy. With so much upheaval and change it's a wonder I can find any time or motivation to exercise at all. When I stop to think about everything that goes on in my day, it's hard to imagine breathing let alone breathing heavily for 30 minutes or more. As hard at it is to find time though, it would be even harder to see myself falling victim to not making the time and watching all my progress fly straight out the window yet again. Sometimes it is so hard to wrap my head around managing my time, I just kinda give up and trudge forward, clinging ever so tightly to the hope I can make it through the day with out losing it completely and employing the way of the ostrich. Head fully buried in the deepest hole I can find.

In the 80's and 90's, there was a huge boom in the field of time management. The names Franklin and Covey became synonymous with taking the old minute hand by the horns and initiating a managerial beat down on it's ass. Lots of people got caught up in it. The wave of empowerment it brought to even the most disorganized life was intoxicating. Even my dad, probably one of the most unorganized people I know, jumped on the bandwagon. He spent a pretty penny getting his handy little binder with calenders and tools to tame his savage and timely beast. He even went so far as to dub it his "Brain".

The "Brain" held every bit of information that was important to my dear ol' dad. It was awesome to see the change it made on him at first. He was damn near religious about writing everything he could in that 5 x 8 leather time capsule. Every item entered meticulously between its tiny lines. His life neatly divided by seconds, minutes, hours, days and months. It got to the point where it seemed like he spent more time filling it in than actually doing the things he was entering in it's pages.

It seemed he was on his way to making a permanent change for the better, until the unthinkable happened. You guessed it...he lost it. I don't mean mentally lost it, as in went rubber room batty, huddled in a corner writing in his "brain" obsessively. I mean he physically lost every single page and bit of information he had spent hours writing down. I guess I don't have to tell you how devastated and panicked he was. His entire life was in that thing. From that moment on, he could never really recover. While he tried his best, it was just never the same. The next time I saw him, the dashboard of his car was covered with sticky notes, and his arms were tattooed with various "to do" items and phone numbers.

I have told my children more than twice to learn from their parents mistakes. So I employed my own advice and looked at my father's situation, then began the process of trying to understand what went wrong with his best of intentions. There was nothing wrong with what he was doing per say. His process was actually right on the mark as far as how he set about getting his life organized. I guess it's not so much the method as the sheer amount of things he was trying to juggle. It was multi-tasking mayhem! Much like his bank account, he would perpetually over extend himself in the time commitment department. The fatal flaw in his well meaning plan, was that he had forgotten to identify the things that were the most important in his life.

Unfortunately, his plight has become mine lately. With two bands, a wife, two kids, a full time job, part-time teaching job, freelance design business, packing to move and training for a Triathlon, I'm just waiting for my shaky ass house of cards to fall and scatter like dust in the wind. The rub in all this is the fact that all these things hold importance in my life. There aren't too many of them I can or want to cut. The question for me, is how to fit them all into a 24 hour time span. As I thought back to the simpler days of my life, I remembered a story I had heard, that brought the solution to my scheduling conundrum into serious focus.

A philosophy professor stood before his class with some items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with rocks, rocks about 2" in diameter. He then asked the students if the jar was full? They agreed that it was.

So the professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles, of course, rolled into the open areas between the rocks. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He then asked once more if the jar was full. This time the students were sure and they responded with a unanimous "YES!"

The professor then produced two cans of beer from under the table and proceeded to pour their entire contents into the jar - effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

"Now," said the professor, as the laughter subsided, "I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The rocks are the important things - your family, your partner, your health, your children, things that, if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, your car".

The sand is everything else. The small stuff. "If you put the sand into the jar first," he continued "there would be no room for the pebbles or the rocks. The same goes for your life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you".

"Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out dancing. Do something for the community. There will always be time to go to work, clean the house, give a dinner party and fix the disposal."

"Take care of the rocks first - the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand." One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the beer represented. The professor smiled. "I'm glad you asked.' With a wry smile on his face he said, " It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of beers."

So the plan is to really do the hard work of putting a value on the things that occupy my days, with my health being the biggest freaking boulder I can possibly fit into the jar of my life. This is the rock that was never made a priority in my life before. A life that was not the happiest for me because of that very fact. Fortunately, through perseverance and hard work, it is now a rock that has become the foundation of my happiness. With it occupying the most space in my jar, everything else will undoubtedly fit into place. Beer and all!