The Big Rocks, Part IV: the Point!

I wrote this in my first post, where it was already 9 am and I "hadn't even gotten anything done," but I decided to reframe:

It's not even 9 am, and I helped the kids get up, get dressed, eat a healthy breakfast, brush teeth, wash faces, and get to school on time, all with a largely positive attitude, little nagging, etc. Then I took a short walk...I would say that those are some REALLY IMPORTANT things that you have done already today.

Well, when I look back at my day at the end of each day, I tend to see Important Things from the To Do List that I didn't do, like organize the office or update my will. And then I see lots of sand and pebbles that I used to fill up my jar. Little, urgent things, like cleaning the kitchen and doing the laundry and making dinner, that couldn't possibly count as Big Rocks. And I feel like once again, I have failed. I have let the big rocks slide and have only wet sand to show for it. 

So I am taking a stab at reframing this. Taking Gretchen Rubin's idea of a chart where I can compare how I did today, but replace resolutions with, I don't know what to call them. Goals? Big rocks?

Is this possible? Can I stop to reframe at the end of each day, and maybe see that all this sand really builds up into these hugely important rocks?

I made a draft of a list of Big Rocks so that at the end of the day, or maybe even throughout the day,  I can go over my day and say, this thing that I did that seemed like an inconvenience and a distraction? This was part of a huge rock. Instead to going down a list of resolutions and checking off things I did, and seeing where I've failed, I'll go through my day and see how the little things were actually part of bigger things.

The list needs work. But here are a few Big Rocks that I think may help me see things differently:

• Look for opportunities to create a network of local friends. Example: The phone rang just before I was about to start my exercises, and I answered it, even though I had just enough time to exercise before preschool pickup. Mistake? No! I was able to talk to my neighbor about keeping an eye on her house while she's out of town, and she also asked me over for coffee another day. I took an opportunity to create a network of local friends, and that is very important!
• Take care of my physical, mental, and emotional needs. Example: I was feeling like I was catching a cold, so I didn't do all my exercises, and I didn't walk. Giant failure? No! I was taking care of my physical needs.
• Help the kids learn how to take care of their toys and books/themselves/their home. Example: I spent 10 minutes working with the boys to clean up a plant they knocked over. Waste of time? Inconvenience? No! I was helping them learn how to take care of their home, and that's very important!

I tried this last night, and it sort of worked, but I think my list of Big Rocks needs work. I'll let you know how it goes. Feel free to comment and let me know what you think. And, boy, am I relieved to finally finish this train of thought!

The Big Rocks, Part III

I think I'm really going to get to the point this time. I have a good feeling about it.

Part of Gretchen Rubin's Happiness Project is/was keeping a resolutions chart. Like Ben Franklin and his  famous resolutions, she makes a list of resolutions, and scores herself on them daily. She explains pretty succinctly at that link why they work so well for her. I read the Happiness Project over New Year's weekend, and, though I think a Resolutions Chart would probably be useful to me, I did not make one.  I've never believed in New Year's resolutions, particularly, because I have always felt that I tried my best to do what I thought I should be doing all year round (not that I succeeded, but that I was trying) so there was no reason to make New Year's resolutions that, like diets, seem to be made to be broken.

So I continued my policy of not making resolutions, but I was obviously very inspired by what I read in her book (she appears in probably 1/3 of my posts, and a lot of what I write about has resulted from trying her suggestions), and I did jot down a list of things I thought of while reading that I thought would make me happier in the new year. It said:

• plenty project
• * time--slow down
• create at will
• be open to earning $$
• find people to play music with
• call friends; spend time with local friends; look for opportunities to create a network
• call not email
• reframe

In one of my first posts, I talked about reframing so that I would feel good about the few important things I had gotten done in a morning rather than focusing on the things I wasn't getting done. So this is where I am about to tie in the big rocks, but I have to stop for now. I'll try again later.

The big rocks, Part I

I keep starting posts but not having time to finish them. My goal is to write a little on the blog every day, even if it doesn't result in something actually being posted every day. I'll just keep plugging away and hopefully more things will get posted soon.

Years ago, back before we had kids or were even married, when my husband, Dr. J, and I lived in temperate Northern California, we thought we were busy. Once you have kids, you just shake your head and laugh because you thought you had no time before. Hahaha! Anyway, we both read a book by Stephen Covey et al. called First Things First. In it, Covey suggests identifying what is important in your life and identifying specific goals and activities related to these important things. The idea is that these important activities are often of a non-urgent nature, so they are always getting pushed aside by urgent-but-not-really-important things. For example, you would like to take your kid to the zoo, which is important because spending time with your kid is important to you, but since it's not urgent,* you keep putting it off so you can deal with other, non-important tasks that are urgent. You may even feel, as I would, that SOON, I will catch up on all these little tasks, and THEN I will have all the time in the world to spend some real quality time with my kid. Exercise could be another example. You feel it's important, but it CAN be put off for a day. But if you put it off for one day every day, it never happens.

The idea that you should identify what is important and do those things before all the little things on the list are done? That's golden. I have talked about that before on here and elsewhere, but not in a Covey way. 

So what you do instead, Mr. Covey says, is when you are scheduling your week, you put in these important-but-not-urgent activities into your schedule first, and then squeeze in the little things around them. Because once your schedule is full of little things, you can't fit in the big ones. His analogy is filling a jar with rocks and sand: if you put in the sand first, then the little rocks, the big ones don't fit, but if you put in the big rocks first, all the little stuff will fit in around them. Here's a YouTube video demonstrating this with actual rocks and sand. There are a million videos of it, but this one was short, if not very neatly done.

Gotta move on to another big rock. I'll continue this soon, I hope...

*unless you have this guilt-inducing song running through your head all the time, as I often do