This week, we’re looking at the big picture, and I’m sharing with you some non-retirement tips...my personal life hacks that have helped me navigate the challenging, unpredictable, and winding path of life.

Today, I’m sharing with you a proven tip for being more productive, and focusing on the most important and impactful things you want to accomplish.

Without thought or discipline about how we spend our time, many of us give in to the default of distraction on our phone. A 2017 report from comScore found that the average US adult spent two hours and 51 minutes on mobile—per day. Yikes!

So how can we focus our attention on the important things in life, instead of distracting ourselves with email, busywork, and our phone.

One answer that I’ve found incredibly useful in structuring my day and how I spend my time lies in the concept of rocks, pebbles, and sand.

Think of your day as a jar. This jar can only hold so much. Most people fill their jars with small, unimportant things - like checking email, watching TV, or scrolling throgh facebook. If you fill your days with sand, you don’t have enough time for the bigger priority and more important tasks, which represent your pebbles and rocks. Pebbles represent medium-priority tasks, and rocks represent the 1 or 2 big things that you really want to get done that day.

The trick is to fill your jar with the rocks first, then the pebbles, then the sand goes in last to fill in the gaps and holes. So what is the one thing that you really want to accomplish today? Maybe it’s taking your kids or grandkids to the park. Or perhaps its a work presenation that needs polishing. Whatever that big rock for the day is, identify it and make sure it goes in the jar first so it gets done. Then, fill in the pebbles, and last, the sand.

Your days will be more meaningful, fulfilled, and productive, and you won’t be wasting so much of your precious life on things that aren’t important to you.

If you would like to go deeper on how you can carve out time in your life for what really matters, I recommend 2 great books:

1. Deep Work by Cal Newport
2. Make Time by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky

That’s it for today. Thanks for listening!

My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the One Minute Retirement Tip.

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