This blog talks about setting your priorities to achieve a work-life balance. You’ve no doubt all heard of the story of the university professor who shows his students a glass jar, fills it with rocks, pebbles and sand.
I found a variation on this tale, in a book called Time Management For Manic Mums, by Allison Mitchell, called The Wine Bottle Theory of Time Management; and thought you may appreciate an extract from it. If you don’t already follow a similar technique, it could revolutionise your day. It will help you get through that insurmountable number of tasks and help you decipher where to start and what to do first. You really could make a dent in what needs to be done.
Now imagine you are opening a bottle of wine – but don’t drink it, you have a wine carafe (or a jug more likely), a bag of apples, a tub of blueberries and a bag of caster sugar. The object of the exercise is to squeeze as much as possible into your jug. How will you get the most in when faced with the empty jug? What do you put in first?
First put in the apples, then the blueberries, they will fill the gaps, then the caster sugar, which will squeeze itself amongst the blueberries. The jug will look full, but don’t be deceived, you will still be able to pour in some wine.
The jug represents our day and often we feel as though our days get full too quickly. And we have stuff we don’t fit in. And often the things that we did fit in, aren’t the things we wanted to. If you don’t put the apples in first, and start with another ingredient, you get fewer, or no apples in at all.
The apples (are both urgent and important – our A list) represent the important things you have to do in your day, and if you don’t do them, your world will fall apart, for example your tax return as the deadline is tomorrow, your health, goals, the things money can’t buy.
B is for blueberries (priority number 2) represent your things that can fit around the apples, they are important, but not urgent. Children (unless they are poorly, then they become apples) and hobbies, things that matter but they are not quite as important. If you tackle a blueberry task when it is not urgent, you can sometimes prevent it from becoming an apple. Blueberries are a super-food, so there are lots of benefits of focusing on blueberries.
And then there is the caster sugar (your C list, priority 3) which is the small things, that really don’t matter so much, but do need to be done. Picking up the phone because it rings is a C task if you are supposed to be focusing on an apple. Don’t be persuaded to pick up C tasks until you have done A and B.
And the wine (D for drink), this represents the lowest priority tasks you have on your list, the things you only do when everything else is completed – often distractions from higher priority tasks. Communicating with friends you only saw earlier today, or clearing out your purse, or watching a film you’ve seen before. All fine if you are have consciously chosen to do them, but not if you have fallen into the activity at the expense of doing other more urgent or important tasks.
If you’re like me, given the choice of an apple, a blueberry, a spoonful of sugar or a bottle of wine, there’s no competition – I’ll go for wine every time. We go for the option that gives us instant gratification. So we tackle the vino first, and sometimes fill our jug to the brim with wine, leaving no room for the apples and blueberries and these things remain on your list of Things To Do day after day. Remember, when your jug is full of apples, it’s always possible to add some wine.
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