Pebbles, Stones, & Time

How to use the Stones and Pebbles Time Management Method to complete tasks in work and life.

Too Long; Didn’t Read Cheat Sheet:

The song may say that winter is the most wonderful time of the year, but we all know it’s just snow-crusted, caffeine-fueled chaos.

Seemingly overnight there are holiday decorations up, advertisements turned up to ‘you are making me uncomfortable’ level, relatives and acquaintances I haven’t seen in years are sending me mail and messages, kids zipping along on electric scooters as if no harm will come to them if they go fast enough, and grumpy old people everywhere like night of the living dead.

Okay, so the old people may just be an Arizona Snow-bird thing, but I am pretty sure that everything else is universal.

Amongst the crazy that is the outside world, December also brings in a new panic for the personal world as well, with gifts to plan, relatives to coordinate, food to cook, and work to pretend does not exist until it really has to.

It was safe to say that I was in full preservation mode this month.

I was mid-leg day when I ended my audiobook and had to start a new one. Among those in the search results for ‘business’ and ‘self-help’ was Greg McKeown’s Effortless.

And because the tagline Make it Easier to do What Matters Most felt as though it was speaking directly to my scattered brain, I decided to give it a read.

In McKeown’s book, Effortless, he conveys a trove of examples and thoughts that challenge the concept of the phrase ‘life is tough’. It is not to say that the writer states that life is sunshine and rainbows, but he does give many ideas to make life’s hardships lighter – such as listening to your favorite audiobook while doing the soul-sucking housework or automating tasks to free up brain space.

I especially like how McKeown balances research anecdotes and personal experience to sum up and further his points – it makes the read feel more human and therefore more valuable.

If you are someone who enjoys listening to audiobooks, you will be pleased to know that McKeown recorded his own narration in a smooth, lightly accented voice. Overall, very listen-able.

I highly encourage you to read or listen to a copy of the book when you are looking for some advice on how to make the difficult things in life more enjoyable. I have an Amazon affiliate link to a copy of his book here:

https://amzn.to/4ssbayO

Anyway, let’s get back to the reason you are reading this article. In the heading, I tantalized you with the idea that you can get better results from your time by using the Stones and Pebbles Time Management Method.

If SEO would not limit me, I would have affectionately called this article How Getting Stoned Helps Manage Your Time.

But, alas, I am afraid the SEO behemoth would send readers here in search of an article related to plants, not time management. Sigh.

Back to the program:

So, how does this work – planning around your priority tasks? And how on Earth are you supposed to get the priority and non-priority stuff done within the same 24 hours?

Well, within the first hour or so of the audiobook, McKeown references a classroom lesson he once read about. In the lesson, the teacher filled a vase with stones and pebbles.

Keep in mind here that stones are larger than pebbles.

When the vase was filled with pebbles first, hardly any stones could fit in the vase. When the stones were put in the vase first, the pebbles moved to fill in the available space between the stones – allowing both the stones and pebbles to fit in the jar.

What can we learn from this classroom decoration turned life lesson?

In contrast, if you were to just focus on getting all the little tasks done before the big task, you would likely get too tired, too stressed, or too ‘over it’ to get the tasks that really mattered done.

What does this look like in real life?

Let’s use my day as an example. Today, my tasks involve writing this blog, making a phone call, coordinating family dinner, going over business finances, and making a few purchases online.

My priority tasks – the ones that are really going to move me closer to my goal – are to write and go over business finances.

My other tasks – the ones that I can do today or any this week and nothing will explode – are to coordinate dinner, the phone call, and buying what I need online.

Now picture this: the priority tasks are the stones and everything else are pebbles.

What do I do now? I get the ‘stone’ items done first, then move onto the ‘pebble’ items after.

This way, no matter what, the priority tasks are done first – so I can get to my goals no matter what. Everything else can get done after.

Thank you for reading and happy planning!