Putting Things in Order
The famous “filling a jar with rocks, pebbles, and sand” example teaches us something about order, but it is incomplete.
A professor placed a large Mason jar on a table in front of her students. She then put rocks into the jar until no more would fit. She asked an apparently rhetorical question, “Is the jar full?” Everyone said, “Yes.” She reached under the table and produced a bucket of gravel, dumped some in, and shook the jar, allowing the gravel to settle into the spaces between the big rocks. Again, she asked, “Is the jar full?”
The class reluctantly answered, “Yes.” The professor brought out a bucket of sand. She dumped the sand in, and it filled the spaces between the rocks and the gravel. Once more, she asked, “Is the jar full?” The wise students answered, “No.” She grabbed a pitcher of water and poured it into the jar until it was filled to the brim.
The students thought the illustration proved that you can always fit more in. The professor told them that the order of filling was most important. The big rocks (the most important ones) will not fit if you start with the sand or pebbles (the less important ones).
Oliver Burkeman, in Four Thousand Weeks, tells us there is more to learn. The experiment focuses on how we maximize the fill, but it does not instruct us on how to make crucial decisions about what a rock is. We spend time thinking about fitting more in rather than what we should fit in. We should redirect our focus to what we are investing our time in, rather than the amount.
Optimization is distracting; redirection requires…
Acceptance
No matter how much we have done and how efficiently we do it, we want more, but we remain unavoidably time-constrained. Therefore, we must accept that we will not do everything we want and value.
This realization does not mean we should abandon hopes of doing more, faster. No, it means we need to add another perspective to our approach. Accepting that we cannot do it all opens the path to making more deliberate decisions about how we use our time.
Once we accept that we cannot gain more time or use it perfectly, we can live in the present.
Exemplars
My wife, Cathy, alternately frustrates me and sparks envy with her in-the-moment disposition.
While I prudently explore options for our 2029 trip to Asia, she does not offer tomorrow’s dinner plans a single thought. Her simple explanation, “I will worry about it when it affects me.” It does mean she does not act in advance; she buys the waterproof shoes we need for next month’s trip today because she knows it may take a while to find the right ones.
On the other hand, I am unbelievably jealous that her mind is free of concerns she cannot do anything about presently. I do not know the peace of being free of worry about how I will celebrate my birthday in 2028 while on a long-distance bike trip. If some friends do not join me, I will be alone with my newly minted Medicare card.
Maybe we should take the recommendation from the best-selling book of all time. It says, “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.”
The wise words of two Italian women who lived into their 90s, my Nonna (grandmother) and Leda, a dear family friend, resonate with me (even though I do not follow them). I can still hear them say, “If you have one good day, don’t say tomorrow.”
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We will not vanquish the enemies of the present, but we can subdue them so we can experience more peace and magical moments. You might tell me, “Physician heal thyself.”
