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By Schwantes Life Coaching & Training January 13, 2011
There are so many time management programs, techniques and principles out there, it's hard to keep up. Enter the Pickle Jar Theory. How it works…. To plan your day, imagine a large empty pickle jar. 1) Take three or four large rocks and add them to the jar. 2) Now take a small handful of pebbles and toss them in, jiggling it a bit to make them fit. 3) Next, add a handful of sand. 4) Now fill the remaining space in the jar with water. There's a lot of stuff in your jar. But it's not just the objects, it's the order and volume of each item. If you were to put the water and sand in first, and then your pebbles, very few of the large rocks would fit. Or if you tried to just put in 10 large rocks. they'd break the jar. Such is the case with planning your day. Identify three or four high priority items that must get done (the rocks), plus a number of smaller, lower priority tasks such as e-mails, follow-ups, etc. (the pebbles), as well as everyday routine stuff (the sand). And remember that your jar should contain room for family and personal time (the water). Why The Pickle Jar Metaphor Works Your day should be designed around the way your pickle jar was filled. The Pickle Jar Theory helps you to take control of your day by learning to make commitments to yourself–commitments you keep. In our busy lives, there are always people (and it tends to be the same people over and over) who will urgently need to put a couple of new rocks in your jar. "Dropping everything" throughout the course of the day to handle unexpected tasks can quickly mess up your overall productivity. To make matters worse, demands on the lives of busy professionals continue to grow, and experts are putting much of the blame on recent technological trends such as smartphones and social networks. Those who study such matters say much of this is the result of more time spent on your BlackBerrys, iPhones, and online social networks like Facebook and Twitter. A big downfall of time management is that by putting so many priority items and other energy drainers on your list each day, even if you cloned yourself, you couldn't do it all. This leads to frustration, worry and a constant feeling that you can't get everything done. In all likelihood, you had way too much in your pickle jar–so much in fact, that you set yourself up for failure. Here's how one manager describes changing the philosophy of his workday: Here's how one executive explains how he now plans his day. The Pickle Jar has other benefits as well. When you complete your main priorities and head home, "Your head's at home"–not back at work thinking about all the things you should have done that day. You finish the day with a satisfaction of emptying your pickle jar, as well as a sense of freedom to truly enjoy life. Your Life Coach, Marcel Schwantes 423-468-9924 www.marcelcoaching.com ...read more
By Schwantes Life Coaching & Training January 12, 2011
Safety is protection for a person or object from danger, risk or injury. Consistent patterns of believing, thinking and responding in a risk prohibitive manner denote a culture of safety. Safety rules are guidelines designed to lower the probability of danger for a person or object. The following list... ...read more
In a declining economy, enrolling in classes offered online can allow you to pursue a degree program in a different career or to supplement your current degree. What's more, online classes allow busy professionals to take classes at times more convenient to them. ...read more