Do You Have the Time?

Do you guys all know that object lesson involving rocks, sand, and a jar? Or I've also seen it done with marshmallows, sugar and a jar (yummier that way)? You know the one that's supposed to teach you the importance of prioritizing your time, and if you get the big stuff in the jar first, all the little stuff fits around it?

I hate that object lesson.

Because, unfortunately, time doesn't actually work that way. If I spend 22 minutes writing in my journal, I don't have those 22 minutes to watch a sitcom on Hulu. I can't go back and fill in the cracks of time when I was staring at my journal page deciding what to write with the sitcom. Or say I go to work for eight hours, and of those hours there are 22 minutes that I was doing something other than working. I can't compile those into a sitcom either. You get 24 hours and it passes you in a linear fashion, you don't get to go back an fill in the cracks.

I mention this, because I have not been able to do all the things that I want to do every day, and so I've been thinking about time management a lot lately. Here is a list of things that I would do every day in an ideal world.

• Work out for an hour
• Shower and dress 
• Sit down and eat three meals a day
• Go to work (well, this obviously would only be M-F)
• Write in my journal
• Seriously study the scriptures
• Spend quality time on my knees in prayer
• Visit with friends
• Read
• Watch a TV show
• Practice the piano
• Start practicing the viola again
• Clean my house for 5-15 minutes
• Call a family member
• Find an opportunity to serve someone 
• Sleep for eight hours

And that list doesn't even include all the things I would like to be engaged in that are not daily things, such as finding a guy, planning a menu and preparing food, budgeting and balancing the checkbook, attending Church and church activities, post entertaining things on this blog for your entertainment, and so on.

I've never been able to do all of the things on that list in a single day. Minutes slip by you while you're driving to and from places, they get lost in the walk from the car to the house and all of the coming home rituals (hang keys, take off shoes and coat, stash the purse, etc), they get used on other things like going to the bathroom. And even more than all the minutes that you spend transitioning between activities or whatever, there's the mental fatigue. I don't think I could be "on" enough to stay focused and actively engaged the entire 16 hours I'm awake.

So everything becomes a tradeoff. Do I practice the piano, or do I go to bed on time? Do I call a family member, or do I read a novel?

I think overall, I've figured things out and I lead a pretty balanced life. I look for opportunities to serve others, I schedule time with friends, I get to the gym, and I make sure that I get some down time. And I feel like I make sure that I'm getting the most important (to me) things done. But I can't help but be a little sad about all the things that I just don't have the time to be doing that I'd like to be doing (e.g. I would totally be a way better housekeeper if I didn't also have a full time job). 

So how do you do it? How do you decide which things are the Best Things and which are the Good Things that can get cut off the to do list when time runs out?