I started running again last week. You probably didn’t know I stopped. Or maybe you didn’t know I run at all. Anyway, I started again. I had stopped for the summer. I love running, but running in the summer in New York City makes me realize why some people hate running. It’s humid and sticky and 85 degrees even at 6:00 in the morning which is when I would have to run when the kids are out of school before Brett leaves for work in the morning. So this year I decided I would just be a school year runner.
I think it was my friend Courtney who unintentionally helped me make that decision. Last May we were together for an early morning run in Central Park. We started talking about summer plans and how excited we were to have less on our plates and freer schedules. I was telling her how my word for the year is “Priorities”. I narrowed everything down to my top five in January and filtered everything I’ve said yes or no to through those five things. I told her that for the most part I felt like it was going well, except for all of those sneaky little things that start to edge their way in. I was keeping my top five priorities in place but couldn’t figure out how to fit in all the extra but necessary smaller priorities without feeling overwhelmed.
Laundry, PTA meetings, scheduling well child visits & dentist appointments, a coffee date with a friend, picking up that book of poetry that’s been on my shelf for two years, responding to that e-mail, making new neighbors feel welcome, watering my plants, trying a new recipe.
“It’s kind of like that story about the professor with the empty jar and the rocks and the pebbles and the sand,” Courtney said. “No one tells you that all the pebbles and sand don’t actually fit.”
I’m assuming you’ve heard the rocks and pebbles in a jar story, but just in case it’s new to you, here’s the gist. There was a college professor who brought an empty jar into class one day. He filled the jar with rocks and asked the class if it was full. They said it was. He then added some pebbles and they fell around the rocks. He asked again if it was full and they again said it was. He then dumped sand in the jar to fill the remaining spaces and told the students the jar represents their life. The rocks are the most important things, the pebbles are other important things that matter to you, and the sand is the small stuff. It’s really important to fill the jar in the right order or the rocks won’t all fit.
I’ve been thinking about what Courtney said for the past few months. I’ve looked up lots of versions of this story and in all of them the pebbles and sand all settle nicely into the cracks around the rocks. Everything fits. Nothing spills over.
I do like the picture this story is trying to paint, but if the jar represented my life, there would be a lot of pebbles and sand on the professor’s desk.
All the pebbles and sand don’t fit. At least not all at the same time. And (while this isn’t actually possible but we’re playing with words here, not real rocks) I think the rocks change size, growing and shrinking in different seasons. For instance, my top five priorities are my faith, my marriage, my kids, my health, and writing. In some seasons my marriage has to take up a lot more space than my parenting, but my kids are still a priority. If one of my children is struggling, then the rock that represents parenting might take up more space. When I’ve been training for a race, my health rock takes up more space than my writing rock. Those top five priorities grow and shrink depending on the seasons, but they always take up more space than the pebbles.
That’s easy in an analogy. It’s harder when the pebbles and sand are named.
This summer, running became sand that didn’t fit in the jar. Health could still be a rock without running being tied to it. Instead I hiked when I could, streamed workouts on a few mornings, and just spent a lot of time being active with my kids. It still takes a good amount of running to keep up with a 4-year-old.
I delegated writing to pebble status for a few months. It felt weird to not have it be a priority, but I wanted to focus on coaching so I renamed that rock for a season and put writing on hold, knowing it might not fit in the jar for a few months.
Social media fell out of the jar this summer too. I didn’t replace that pebble with anything else though. I just allowed space in the jar. Although sitting on the back porch of our cabin with a good book and iced coffee was a pebble that tried really hard to become a rock.
Obvious transitions, like the start of a school year when routines change, are a really good time to reevaluate our priorities. Sometimes transitions to new seasons give an illusion of more space, and it’s easy to just start filling it all up with pebbles and sand. But I think we have to take some time to dump it all out, see what’s there, rename the rocks if necessary and add pebbles in again slowly. We have to give the rocks and pebbles a few weeks to settle to see if there’s actually any room for sand.
This is the first year that both of my kids are in school all day. I was really tempted to take that time and fill it all up, and over time I’m sure I will. But right now, I’d rather have some empty space in my jar than fill the remaining cracks with sand.
On my run this morning, the coach on the app I use said at one point to kick a little bit of dirt up behind me as I ran. I was on the path next to the river so that dirt I kicked up was actually sand, and I had no problem leaving it behind me.
See you back in your inbox in the middle of fall,
Jodie
P.S. Here’s my favorite strategy for keeping my priorities as rocks and not letting them become pebbles:
Every Sunday night I sit down to look at the week ahead. I’m a paper planner person. I’ve tried a bunch but my current favorite is the Full Focus Planner. Each of my top five priorities has a color.
Faith = Blue
Marriage = Pink
Parenting = Orange
Health = Purple
Writing = Green
Anything that falls in one of those categories in my planner gets written in that color. I fill in all of those things first. Once those are filled in the calendar or my daily to-do lists, the pebbles get added. These are not in any color. They’re just black. It’s a quick way to see if I’m actually spending my time on the things I say are important.
P.P.S -- Here are a few of those books I read on our back porch this summer that I’m still thinking about. I’m not great at writing book reviews, but I promise I’m only sharing the ones I truly loved.
Good Apple: Tales of a Southern Evangelical in New York
P.P.P.S (or is it P.S.S.S -- I’ll have to look at my elementary school pen pal letters) -- I love when you take a minute to reply to these newsletters. Seeing your name pop up in my inbox puts a big smile on my face. I hope mine does the same for you. Let me know what you’ve been reading or what you’ve been thinking about lately. Or let me know if there’s anything else in my life I should consider color coding. ;)
Thank you Jodie! I’ve seen the rock, pebble, sand demonstration, and I appreciate the way you made it easier for me to understand how I could apply it.