Ep 11: Prioritize your days better with this simple trick
Episode Summary
Have you ever sat yourself down on the couch at the end of the day, feeling completely exhausted from a busy day, and yet, you couldn't quite remember exactly what you did? This is because we often fill our days somewhat mindlessly with busy activities that feel urgent (but may not be so important), and by the end of it all, you still didn't complete what you set out to do that day. And forget about personal down time!
In this episode, discover a simple experiment that can help you reprioritize your days so that you can include your self-care, family time, work, hobbies, and other activities without having to choose. This experiment is inspired by Stephen Covey, author of "7 Habits of Highly Effective People."
Key Takeaways
1:45 - Self-nurture practices are important anchors to keep us grounded, especially when we feel busier than ever
4:12 - We fill our days with tasks that feel urgent (but not necessarily important), and we spend time on busy, mindless activities
5:51 - How to incorporate self-nurture practices when we can barely catch our breaths sometimes
7:14 - Introducing the Jar Experiment on prioritizing your life
11:48 - Most of us fill our jar with sand (mindless activities), leaving little room for anything else
13:12 - Laying down the big rocks first so that everything else in your life falls into place and fits into the jar
15:31 - My personal example of my big rocks
We are busier than ever
In a previous episode, episode 3, I talked about the importance of self-nurture practice, and how essential it is to have some of these practices as anchors in place for self-nurture throughout our day, even if these anchors are just a few minutes each.
But you might ask: Elaine, I’m a mom, I work full-time, I run the household, and I volunteer on the weekends — how am I supposed to make time for myself?
It’s a question that plagues almost all of us. With advanced technology that supposedly saves us time, why do we feel busier than ever?
Today, we live with more distractions in our lives than before — think social media and 24-hr news cycle. We’re more connected than ever before, which is good, but also comes with the caveat of being too connected with our external realms. Our jobs become almost 24-hours rather than just 9-5.
We are constantly distracted by the many calls, demands, and tasks that tug at our attention, demanding our time. There’s always a sense of urgency today, whether it is to immediately reply to a client email or text a friend back.
All of these things, though each on their own take a few minutes, add up and take hours.
“How can we possibly implement self-nurture practices and rituals when we can barely catch our breaths?”
For example, on many of our smart phones now they can detect how many hours per day we actually spend on our phones. I personally don’t feel like I spend a whole ton of time, but it always ends up being 2-3 hours!
So, how can we possibly implement self-nurture practices and rituals when we can barely catch our breaths?
Become your own advocate
I’m going to get to that in just a bit, but first, I’d like for you to do a little bit of reflection:
How will having a better implemented self-nurture ritual in place transform or elevate your current life?
Instead of:
Living reactively to the demands and needs of others
You get to:
Live intentionally with purpose and on your own terms
Take a few minutes to contemplate and write down your answers.
I find that many people, myself included, tend to jump at opportunities to serve others when they call for help or need us in any capacity than serving ourselves. This is a tendency for people pleasers like myself. Overtime, however, constantly living reactively to the demands and needs of others can wear us down and even create resentment towards others, and more often, ourselves (for not advocating for ourselves and setting boundaries).
The Jar Experiment
Now, with you being your own advocate for your wellbeing, let’s run through an experiment here, inspired by Stephen Covey, (7 Habits of Highly Effective People) and also adapted by my former business coach Rachel Cook. I will describe this in as much detail as possible, or you can create your own visuals. You can also watch this demonstrated by Stephen Covey.
Start with a big jar or small bucket. Lay out big rocks, pebbles, and sand. You can try this out yourself too, and label the rocks and pebbles.
Examples
(You can also come up with your own!)
Big Rocks:
personal time - rest, enjoyment, pleasure, self-nurture practices
family
relationships
hobbies
vacation
sleep
work and career in healthy amounts, and things that actually matter, i.e., developing personal growth skills
mental health
Pebbles:
work
school
emails
urgent but not necessarily important tasks
other people’s busyness and business that don’t require your involvement (setting healthy boundaries)
household chores
Sand:
social media
TV
online shopping
everything else
Most of the time, we fill our days with sand, then lay in the big rocks and pebbles where we can. If you are following along with this exercise at home, you will soon realize that you can’t fit all of your big rocks and pebbles in there.
This represents how we spend our days and weeks most of the time, leaving no room for the important things, and having to sacrifice things like family time, or personal time.
However, what if we flip the script around. Let’s lay the big rocks into the jar first, then the pebbles, and finally sand. You’ll find that everything magically fit!
This is an example of how we can reprioritize our day so that we make sure what’s really important for our personal growth, healing, development, and relationships are the center stones. When we have those things in place, everything else will fit around these rocks, but not the other way around.
Such as, when I make sure I have some me time in the morning, even if that is 5-10 minutes, to anchor and center myself for the day, I am more able to focus on the important tasks at hand, rather than mindlessly flit from one task to another in busyness, but not really getting anything done.
“When you have these anchors in place, everything else just more easefully and naturally fit into your days.”
I encourage you to take some time to ponder, contemplate, and mull over this exercise. Better yet, write down what your big rocks are, your pebbles, and sand. Gather materials to visually see how this experiment works, and how everything does magically fit when those big rocks go in first.
LISTEN IN to what really is important to you. If you get stuck, return to these questions I posed at the beginning:
How will having a better implemented self-nurture ritual in place transform or elevate your current life?
Instead of:
Living reactively to the demands and needs of others
You get to:
Live intentionally with purpose and on your own terms
This model has been life-changing for me in how I plan my days, weeks, months, and year, because I know first-handedly, if I can prioritize my big rocks (for me — sleep, meditation/yoga, eating regular, healthy meals), everything else falls into place more effortlessly.
Let me know what you come up with as your big rocks, and after a few weeks of implementing, how your life shifts.
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About
Elaine Oyang is an IAYT-certified yoga therapist and a self-nurture advocate. Throughout her 12+ year of teaching yoga in studios and private practice, she works to help others restore balance in their bodies from their over-busy lives. She's worked many years in private practice to help clients through their journeys of chronic pain, chronic illness, anxiety, insomnia, and loss of sense of self. With her podcast, Sacred Listening, Elaine shares with a wider audience on her personal experience, and that of her clients', on how to reclaim self-care and self-love.
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This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Information contained in this episode is not to be replaced with medical advice.