My six-year-old’s last soccer game was on Saturday. The entire season had – at least for me – led up to this game. My friend’s son was on the opposing team, and they’re quite good. They always had over 12 players show up each week. Plenty of kids to rotate in and out whenever they’d get tired. Our team was lucky if five showed up. But we were the underdog that kept on winning.
As my friend and I stood watching my son’s team kick his son’s team’s butt, we started talking about how much better the boys were getting. He made the comment, “If only I had more time, I would have practiced with him.” I agreed and felt the same way. “If only we had more time.”
We didn’t say much more after that. Those last few words hung in the air. And in my mind.
For some reason, I was taken back to a conversation that I had ten years earlier.
An acquaintance had met my wife and me for what we thought was going to be a dinner to catch up but ended up being a sales pitch for trying to get us to join a multi-level marketing business.
I was not interested. We were not interested. We wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. We explained as nicely as we could – multiple times – that we didn’t have enough time.
As uncomfortable and awkward as that dinner meeting was, I’ll never forget what he said next, as he tried to convince us to join his business. He said, “We all have the same amount of time. There’s 168 hours in a week. But it’s up to us to decide how we’re going to spend them.”
It’s true.
Our kids won’t be little forever. My son might not want to even play soccer next year. And there’s no guarantee that the people we love will be here tomorrow, either. We all know this deep down. We tell ourselves that we’ll spend time doing things that matter tomorrow. But like the sign in the coffee shop that says Free coffee tomorrow, tomorrow never really comes, now does it?
So how do we find more time? It’s simple. We make time.
It’s an answer that invites eye-rolls but it’s the only answer there is.
It’s like the rock, pebble, and sand experiment that my eighth grade science teacher showed us.
- The sand represents social media, phone calls, emails, and busywork that feels good in the moment but keeps us from devoting time to what really matters.
- The pebbles represent the things in our lives that have little consequence if we don’t do them right now… things that need to get done but can wait if we would just walk away.
- The rocks represent the most important things in our lives. Spending time with loved ones. Saying Yes when your six-year-old asks you to play or practice soccer with them.
- The jar represents our limited time. We can’t get a bigger jar that holds more than 168 hours a week. The only thing we can control is what we put in the jar and when we put them in.
If you pour the sand in the jar, then add the pebbles, you’ll never get the big rocks in. There’s just not enough room when we put the unimportant things in first. The sand gets packed at the bottom. We may get a few pebbles in, but the rocks won’t fit. There’s just not enough room for everything.
I still remember when my teacher showed us how to fit everything in. He put the big rocks in the jar first. Then he added in the pebbles, which found their way through some of the openings left by the big rocks to fill the void. Finally, he poured in the sand that filled up all of the remaining space left by the rocks and the pebbles. It all fit, even the big rocks. It’s all the same crap – but it all fit. As a thirteen-year-old middle schooler seeing this for the first time, it blew my mind.
There’s never enough time to get everything done. But there’s always enough time to get the most important things done.
When it comes to choosing between working a little bit longer or doing something meaningful, close the laptop and walk away without hesitation. There will be plenty of work to do, no matter how much gets done right now. It will still be there. But the things that really matter might not.
The truth is, there was always enough time for my friend and me to practice soccer with our boys. We didn’t need more time. We had the time. We just chose to spend it elsewhere.
And that’s a tough thing to admit.