Making Time for the Important Stuff

Time is finite – you can’t make more of it, but you can use it more wisely and spend it on the things that are important to you. If you really want to do something (start a new project, write a book, clear out your garage, make new friends) “the only way to make it happen is to do a bit of it now, no matter how many urgent tasks are pressing in”.  If you wait until you’ve done all the small stuff, there won’t be any time left for the big stuff.

A useful tool for prioritising is the urgent-important matrix – it helps you see whether your time is going where you really want it to, or whether you are being busy with trivial things.

Steven Covey has a great metaphor for prioritising and managing your time – put your big rocks in your jar first, then fit the smaller pebbles and sand around them.  In other words, do your most important stuff first (if you put the sand and pebbles in the jar first, the rocks don’t fit).

But what if you have too much big stuff and there just isn’t room to do it all, however well you prioritise?

If your rocks don’t fit, rethink your jar

Maybe you have to change your mindset and accept that you can’t always do everything you want to, however worthwhile it seems.  We have many roles in our lives, all of them with a whole raft of expectations and it can be impossible to fulfil them all.  I’ll be sharing a tool to help you “rethink your jar” in my blog in a couple of weeks.