The Mason Jar of Life and Tasks

You've like heard of the Jar of Life metaphor.

The idea is that the jar represents our life, limited and finite. There are only 24 hours in a day. There are only so many days/weeks/months in our life. We can only do so many things with that limited time.

The rocks, pebbles and sand, represent various features of our life, depending on how you look at it. So the big rocks can be Family, Health, Friends, Hobbies, etc. These are the Important things in life. The pebbles represent things like House, Car, Job, etc. And the sand is everything else, the small stuff.

If we fill up the jar with sand first (the unimportant stuff), there is no room for the rocks (important stuff). The trick is to place the important things in the jar firsts, then add the pebbles, then the sand... and then the beer (as some theories go - there is always room for beer with friends!).

Now, that's the fairly simple, basic version. This metaphor has been taken and used in all sorts of different contexts. And it's not quite as simple as putting big rocks in first, then pebbles, then sand. Unless the pebbles are really small, you'll probably find that the pebbles jam up against the rocks and the side of the jar and you're left with a bunch of empty holes in the bottom. Which could house pebbles, but which the pebbles can't reach. Technically, you should put some big rocks in, then some pebbles, then some more big rocks, then more pebbles, then the sand... and shake it all around!

As I was thinking about this metaphor, it struck me that it can easily be applied to my To-Do List and my Eating Plan.

Eating Plan Jar

Here's the thing... my tummy is a mason jar (a small one). I get up and I have a good breakfast (rock) and a good lunch (another rock)... but if I start snacking in the afternoon... and eating a bit of junk food or popcorn or whatever... there is no room in my tummy for dinner (another rock). And it's not like I can eat all three main meals in one go... my tummy is only so big. The meals are spread out over the day. So, it's up to me to make sure that, throughout the day, I am tending to my big rock meals first... and then... maybe add some snacks. Or maybe not.

To-Do List Jar

As for my To-Do list... my energy ration for the day is the mason jar. Or the number of hours in the day. or both.

There are days where I am so busy doing all the small things on my list. Because they are easy and they have been hanging around forever. So I am tossing pebbles and sand into that jar like nobody's business. Feeling so productive and so excited that I am getting things done!

But then... by 3 pm, I am pooped. No more energy. I've blown it all on sand and pebbles. And I look over my to-do list and see the rocks (projects) that I didn't tackle that day. I feel defeated and angry. Yes, I got a gazillion things done... but not the things that I really want to get done. I was seduced by pebbles and sand.

I know why I didn't tackle the big things... because rocks are darn heavy! And these rocks don't mean that the project is done. There is this huge boulder that is the project. Each rock is just a small part of it. Ugh. I work for a few hours, chipping away at the boulder, and I've got one lousy rock to show for it.

And not just that one project. There are other projects too! So maybe, at the end of the day, I've got 3 rocks to put in the jar. Then I can add a few pebbles - but not a lot because there is only so much time and energy in the day. Sand follows... the minutiae of life that has to happen regardless.

But... I feel like I've made a difference. I have moved three projects ahead. I haven't completed them. But I have moved them forward. Just a bit. Which makes a difference. I feel productive and satisfied.

My To-Do List is a mish-mash of rocks, pebbles and sand. If I don't plan out my day ahead of time... I can wake up and get sucked into the ease of pebbles and sand. I drift from this pebble to this pile of sand, avoiding the rocks until I have "more time" or "more energy" or "more of something... I don't know what... but something".

I often feel like I need a good 4 hour chunk of time to work away on a project, to produce a rock that is worthy! I think that I can maybe get that whole boulder broken down and cram it into today's jar. Hmmm... probably not.

I often look at my To-Do list and defer things to random days in the future. On that day, I wake up and find 40 things on my to-do list. Overwhelmed by the enormity of it, I look for something doable - usually a pebble or a pile of sand. I do that, just to gain some momentum.. Maybe just one more pebble. Oh heck, the morning's almost gone... more pebbles!!

It's like pebbles and sand are the junk food of tasks for me. They are easy. They satisfy me, at least for a while. But ultimately... the high doesn't last long. 

This all make sense to me. I see my patterns. I do tend to avoid the rocks - they are too hard, take too long, too much energy, need more work, etc. I gravitate towards the pebbles and sand - easy and quick. 

Will it change anything though? This awareness of how I hold tasks and my finite life? Well... time will tell, but I have started sitting down on Sundays and planning my week. I have started using time blocking to map out the day. By the time I've filled in appointments and health (exercise, healthy meals, journaling), I find that I usually have four reasonable chunks of time (a couple of hours or so): early morning (6-8 am), mid-morning (9-11 am), afternoon (1:30-4:30 pm) and evening (6-8 pm). That's about 9 hours total time. Broken up into chunks... but still a significant amount of time.

Time blocking from ToDoist

I spend the early morning creating... writing this blog and a couple of my other blogs. This is my time, to do what I love... to write. Mid-morning is usually work time - the contract work that I do. Afternoon is time for projects - right now, developing a direct booking system for our Airbnb which involves a number of different facets. I've been dragging my heels on this for months... so this is the biggest difference for me. Actually blocking these hours off to get this boulder tackled! The evening time is not my best time so I tend to use that for down time - listening to podcasts while I do puzzles, maybe mowing the lawn or putz-ing in the yard.

Sometimes the day goes sideways and I have to adjust my expectations. Maybe there's another rock (like a vet appointment for the cat) that nudges its way into the day. Or there is something urgent that drops into my day. Either way... I can adjust (re-calculating) and go with the flow. 

Just knowing that I have reserved time for the rocks in my life makes a huge difference. I don't feel like such a junk-food tasker! Binging on the simple/easy carb tasks of life!

Always, I am reminded that life is full of small steps. I can't cram that boulder/project into today's jar. Not a hope in heck. I can only tackle it in small steps, one rock at a time.

Covid Cravings

Have you gotten the Covid Cravings yet? The Meltdown Munchies? The irresistible craving for something salty, sweet or just plain fatty? Please say "Yes", so we know we aren't alone!

With the world upside down and our regular routines flying out the window, it's really easy to slip into old habits. Particularly when things go sideways. A friend and colleague for over a decade suddenly decides to unfriend, and even block, you over a disagreement on Facebook. A contractor says he'll be a week (or two... or three...) late in starting a project that you've been looking forward to for months. On a shopping expedition (and they are now "expeditions) to Superstore, where face masks are "mandatory", you see five naked-faced people within the first two minutes. People who aren't even trying to maintain social distancing either. An unexpected expense pops up on the radar. The phone company is overcharging your monthly bill. And... to top it all off... Halloweem AND Remembrance Day AND Christmas AND New Years (and any other holiday in the next few months) are likely to be very limp affairs. And let's not even mention the election south of the border. I could go on, but you get the idea.

It's just one thing after another... a never-ending supply of curve balls coming out of left field and... it's completely natural to crave just that little bit of food comfort. Chips. Chocolate. Ice Cream. Pick your poison. Just a little bit of normalcy in a world that seems to be slowly going off the rails. So nice to close the drapes, turn on the TV, find a movie and snuggle in for some good old snack time. For a few brief hours we are cocooned away from the world. But then... the world crashes right back in. The same things that were there yesterday... are there today... and tomorrow... and the next day. On top of that... you've now added a bit of weight gain to the mix. And the cycle begins again.

Cause, let's face it... there's always something. Some curve ball. Some monkey wrench. Something that just didn't go right. Your plans for the day are blown apart by a sick child or a vehicle that won't start or an appliance that goes on the fritz. Or maybe it's just the never-ending tedium of trying to work from home surrounded by all of the home distractions. A novelty for the first week and now a hard, long uphill slog. Maybe it's the subtle pressure of girding your loins to go out on a shopping expedition: Face masks - check. Lysol wipes - check. Hand sanitizer - check. Shopping list - check. And then the continual dodging around naked-faced people who seem oblivious to the reality of the world. I guess we all deal with stress in different ways and denial is not just a river in Egypt but one way that people handle the relentless pressure of a pandemic.

And all of this seems quite mild compared to other historical events: bombings, famine, earthquakes, hurricanes, war. A pandemic should seem like a minor blip in the grand scheme of world disasters and yet... this blip is affecting the entire world. Every single person on earth, except maybe Kim Kardashian (and her little birthday party flit to a private island so they could all feel "normal"), is affected by this virus. It is a relentless, every-present stressor - just enough to trigger our instinctive fight/flight/freeze response. Trigger our adrenal glands and get some cortisol flowing through the system. It triggers our "danger, danger" instincts and... it makes sense that some part of us thinks... danger - better stock up on some energy (eat) while we can because we might need to fight (be big and strong), flight (run like hell) or... if those two fail... freeze (and who knows when we'll be able to eat anything).

And so... we eat... we bake... we shop... we stockpile dried legumes and canned tomatoes. Still not sure what all the TP hoarding is about except... if you're gonna go whole hog on the eating front, it stands to reason that what goes in must come out too... 

The munchies seem to come in waves too. One week I'll be good and able to resist the siren call of salt, sugar, fat... but the next week is more of a struggle. Although, now, it seems like it's almost a daily thing. Good for a day or so and then ready to collapse and embrace chocolate like life-preserver. And maybe that's just the way it is right now. This virus has really fogged the future. We don't know what next month is going to look like, let alone 2021. It's really a matter of focusing on the here and now... or as Ram Dass liked to say - Be Here Now. Right here... right now. And take each moment as it comes, one small step at a time.

The Benefits of Breakfast like a Princess, Lunch like a Queen, Dine like a Maid

Cover - Change your Schedule,
Change Your Life by
Suhas Kshirsagar

Back in September, we turned our eating schedule upside down. We were reading a book called: Change Your Schedule, Change Your Life, a blend of Ayurvedic wisdom and cutting edge science.

One of the suggestions in the book was to eat the largest meal of the day at lunch time and a much smaller meal at dinner/supper time. The benefits were weight loss, better sleep, more energy, etc.

This was rather a radical concept to us. I mean, we knew that it was a common practice in Europe where lunch was often a hot meal and dinner was a bit of soup or an open-faced sandwich.

We'd never even heard of the idea of Breakfast like a King/Queen, Lunch like a Prince/Princess, Dine like a Pauper/Maid.

After much discussion, we decided to give it a try. We would eat a large, hot meal at lunch time and a much smaller meal at dinner time. Not just that, we would finish eating the evening meal four hours before bedtime. Apparently our bodies do not handle evening meals all that well and the later we eat, or the closer to bedtime we eat, the more likely that all those calories will get packed on as excess poundage. Given that we normally are in bed before 10 pm... this meant that our evening meal needed to happen before 6 pm!

We both work from home, so we had some flexibility in our schedules but, still, this switch required that we handle some big logistical hurdles. The first few weeks were a bit bumpy, but we've worked out most of the kinks. Some of the key steps were preparation and planning.

We started meal planning for the coming week so that we knew what we needed to buy at the grocery store. There's nothing worse than looking at recipe at 10:30 am, ready to get cooking, and realizing that we were missing some key ingredient.

We also knew exactly what we would be cooking the next day and what might need to come out of the freezer the day before. I can't tell you how many times we would miss that step in the old days and realize at 5 pm that we had nothing to eat and would then default to eat-out or take-out... not good for the health of our bodies or our budget! It's a bit harder to use that default when you're cooking in the mornings and most pizza places don't open that early!

The trickiest bit was getting used to the idea of cooking in the mornings. It felt really weird and threw a lot of monkey wrenches into well-entrenched habits and routines. We learned that cooking every single morning of the week was no fun... far better to make a big pot of something on the weekend and be able to eat that for several days before then having to cook something else mid-week.

We also learned that having frozen leftovers was non-negotiable. There are some days when we'd wake up and not feel like cooking but... we had something in the freezer that we could pull out and defrost quickly.

The importance of meal timing for our circadian rhythms

Now, has it made a difference for us? Absolutely. We are definitely eating less which means we have both lost weight. We also have more energy in the afternoons and sleep better at night. And, honestly, there are some evenings where I don't feel like eating anything and so I don't. It's actually a good thing to go to bed a bit hungry. This also means that when I wake up, I am quite hungry and so breakfast has gotten a bit bigger. It used to be that I would only eat a couple of peanut butter & jam sandwiches in the mornings. But now... it's a bowl of oatmeal with berries and walnuts, a bowl of meat-free baked beans and a peanut butter & mushed berries pumpernickel sandwich. I have tried various combinations of those three but, if I didn't have all three, I would often find myself hungry again at 9:30 am. This is the problem when you get up early and eat breakfast at 6 am! But... a solid breakfast now tides me over until lunch time.

But here's the thing... I would say the lunch meal is still the biggest meal of the day... not breakfast. So, for me, it's really Breakfast like a Princess, Lunch like a Queen and dine like a Maid. And for my partner, it's different. Breakfast fell off the radar a few months ago and she now starts her day with a big lunch, and then has some soup and a berry bowl in the evenings. The common theme is... biggest meal at lunch.

It's all tied in with our circadian rhythms... there are many, many studies that have shown the benefits of eating most of our calories earlier in the day. And, on the flip side... the harm that comes from eating a lot of calories in the evenings...

Flipping our meal timing so that our largest meal is at lunchtime was a small step in our road to physical wellness. It wasn't an easy step by any means but... having done it for over six months now... it was a very worthwhile step and one that we have now integrated into our lifestyle.