The Container

I am a day planner, time management, scheduling app junkie.  Promise to help me tame my to do list and you have my attention.  Give me a calendar and a method and I will dutifully follow it – for a few weeks.  And then?  Well, I’ve yet to find the perfect system and that “to do” list?  It returns to an unruly, guilt-inducing catalog of tasks.  What to do?

One of my favorite Steven Covey quotes is: “The key is not to prioritize your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”  Simple and profound.  All of my time management efforts were focused on prioritizing my schedule which meant planning from my list.  Then one day I stopped looking at my list and started looking at my time. 

The time in my day (and yours) is fixed and finite - it doesn’t expand because I have a new project or double-booked meetings on my calendar.  No.  The day stubbornly remains 24 hours.  My list on the other hand can expand and grow seemingly without limits and already exceeds the capacity of my day, every day.    

Our day is the container that holds our life – our whole life.  Everying we are, do, share, and experience occurs within the walls of that 24-hour day.  We can pack the container full, but we can't enlarge it, so it pays to be picky about what goes in.

Try this experiment: draw a circle and divide it into 24 sections.  Jot down how you used each hour yesterday.  Does it reflect a container filled with your priorities or a full container?  What choice will you make for tomorrow?