Playing in the Sand

The blog is called My Jar of ROCKS because the rocks represent the most important priorities in life, the things that need to be placed in the jar first otherwise we fill the jar with the not so important things called pebbles and sand, not allowing enough room for the rocks.

"I want to exercise but I'm too busy...."
"I want to spend more time as a family but I'm too busy...."
"I want to ______ but I'm too busy..."

It's true we can easily make ourselves too busy with all of the opportunities we have in life which is why I say choose your rocks wisely and say no to other things.  For example, our children benefit from extra-curricular activities but they shouldn't be doing baseball, piano lessons, and scouts all at the same time.  Pick one and say no to the rest.

But I haven't really addressed the other time suckers in our lives: the sand.  These are the things we do to flit away our time but that don't really add much to our lives except some mind numbing escape.

Facebook
Twitter
TV
Video Games
Gossip Magazines
Web Surfing

I haven't addressed the topic because I honestly wasn't ready to face them myself.

I LOVE talking to people. I LOVE hanging out with people. As I've mentioned before, socializing was the real reason I got up and went to school each day.

Being a stay-at-home-mom for eight years and now working from home, I am isolated and it drives me batty!  Social networking gives me my people fix and it is quite addicting.  So, I'm raising my hand and saying, "Hello, my name is Luna and I'm a social networking addict."

I can hear you answering in unison, "Hello, Luna!"

I have spent the last week working on some behaviors and here is what I have to say about the sand in our lives:

Don't feel that you have to cut out ALL sand.  There is room in the jar for it, just not first. I've mentioned that I'm an all or nothing kind of girl, but when I tell myself I can't have ANY time for sand, I balk the whole thing. But I have to be wise and choose when and how long I will play in the sand or else time can get away from me.  If I take a break to web surf, I have to make sure five minutes doesn't turn into twenty. It'd be even better if I just saved any recreational computer time for after I complete all of my tasks.  What I have given up: People magazine, reading the news, and Twitter.

When you focus on getting the rocks in first, you naturally don't have much room for the sand. My friend and I sometimes talk about TV shows after watching them and he mentioned that he had only watched one episode of anything that week. I think I had watched two hours of TV that week.  We just have been too busy! And with the wonderful invention of the DVR and On Demand we can catch up any time we want. I have found that if I save TV watching for the end of the day, I sometimes end up skipping it all together because I rather get to sleep or read a book.

Time away from sand gives you new perspective. I'm a big fan of Facebook.  I love knowing what's happening with friends from high school, my extended family, and friends from far off places.  But taking time away then coming back, I realized that most of the updates aren't about the actual person.  I don't care about memes (I still don't even know how to pronounce that word since I've only read it and never have heard it aloud), I never watch the videos people post, don't care about politics, could NOT care less about someone's dog, and spend more time reading the sentence, "Name a state that doesn't have the letter 'e' in it." than the time it takes to actually answer it (Alabama).  I'm honestly not missing much by being away.

How to handle sand:

1. Set a timer to limit how much time you are doing something that can suck up your time
2. If web browsing is a problem, have two different browsers. For example use Chrome for work and Safari for play.  This helps you be intentional about what you are doing on the computer. (Idea I heard from Augusto Pinaud on Beyond the To Do List podcast.  Awesome podcasts here: Beyond the To Do List)
3. Fast from a specific time sucker for a while and reevaluate the value of it in your life.

WHAT IS YOUR SAND? ARE YOU AT A PLACE WHERE YOU ARE READY TO CHANGE THE WAY YOU HANDLE SAND TIME? WHAT CHANGES WILL YOU MAKE?

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