I’ve worked on writing about time management and personal time management for so long; it seems I’m running out of ways on how to stress the important of time management skills in our lives. As I went on my ongoing research about time management, I was struck by a story I read.

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A professor came to his class with a jar, some big rocks, pebbles and sand. He stood before the class and began teaching.

He took out the jar and filled it with big rocks. He asked the class if the jar was full and the class nodded in agreement but at the same time they were confused.

He then took out some pebbles and dropped them in the same jar. He shook the jar and the pebbles rolled to the open areas between the big rocks. He asked the class if it was full and the class nodded in agreement yet again.

He then took out the sand and dropped it in the jar with the pebbles and rock. The sand covered everything else – every space left between the rocks and pebbles. He asked the class if it was full and they nodded in agreement. The class was beginning to wonder what the point of the whole experiment was to which the professor calmly explained: “This jar is your life. The big rocks are the important things in your life such as family, children, partner, health and everything else that’s important to you, the pebbles represent the things that matter on a smaller scale such as your job, car, house, etc. and the sand is everything else. If you placed the sand or pebbles first, there wouldn’t be any more room for the big rocks. In your life, if you spend too much time doing things on the small stuff, you will never have time to do the things that truly matter.”

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It led me to thinking that while we strive hard to find the best time management techniques just so we can improve productivity in our lives, we forget the simplest rule there is. We need to determine which things are important for us and set our priorities. We need to work on the big rocks in our lives. We can work on the pebbles and sand afterwards.