The Big Rocks: How to Prioritize Your Life and Time

You lead a busy life. There never seems to be enough time to do the things you really want to do, the things that make you happy. You’re too preoccupied with work, errands, and other demands placed upon you by the outside world.

In Work Less, Live More, Bob Clyatt argues that you can make time for the important stuff. The secret, he says, is to prioritize, and he offers an analogy. (I’ve learned recently that this idea may have originated with Stephen R. Covey in his book First Things First.) Here’s how it works:

Imagine you have a jar. You want to fill this jar with some rocks and some sand. What’s the best way to do it?

One way is to add the sand to the jar first and then add the rocks. If you did this, however, you’d quickly find that it’s impossible to make everything fit. With a layer of sand at the bottom of the jar, there’s no room for the rocks.

On the other hand, if you begin by putting the rocks in the jar, when you pour in the sand it will sift downward to fill in the gaps and the cracks between the rocks. Everything fits.

Here’s a video that demonstrates this idea in action:

This same principle applies to your personal life. You can achieve well-being by prioritizing the Big Rocks in your life. This may sound elementary, and you may be tempted to ignore this advice. Don’t. This one idea revolutionized my life. It made me happier and more productive. By focusing solely on the things that were most important to me — by making room for the Big Rocks — I was able to reclaim my life and time.

A few years ago, after first reading about this idea, I sat down and drafted a list of the things that were most important to me. I decided that my Big Rocks were fitness, friends, writing, Spanish, and travel. If these weren’t in my jar, I wasn’t happy. So, I made sure to squeeze these in before anything else. Once these rocks were in place, once these things were on my calendar, then I’d fill the remaining space with the sand — television, email, errands, and so on.

During the past year, I allowed the sand to squeeze out some of my big rocks. For instance, I stopped exercising. I used to say that “fitness is job one”. I grew complacent, though, and fell out of the habit of going to the gym. Fitness was no longer a job at all! Instead, I put more sand in my jar.

Last week, I sat down to re-examine my schedule and my priorities. I realized I wasn’t spending any time on Spanish or exercise. I immediately made changes. I returned to my Crossfit gym (which has been humbling) and I set aside time to study Spanish.

How can discover your Big Rocks? To construct your ideal schedule, you have to become clear on what your priorities are. We’ll explore a couple of ways to do that in the weeks ahead.

The Search for Meaning

Note: This article was supposed to appear on Monday, but I forgot to hit “publish” when I finished it last week. My apologies!

Shifting from an external locus of control to an internal locus of control isn’t just important for happiness, but also for making meaning in your life, for obtaining personal (and financial freedom). Freedom comes from focusing no on your Circle of Concern, but exclusively on your Circle of Influence. As long as you allow yourself to dwell on the things you can’t control, you are not free.

We’ll discuss freedom at length in the months ahead; for now, let’s take a closer look at how you can create purpose in your life.

Victor Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist who survived the Nazi death camps during World War II. The extreme suffering and harsh conditions caused many inmates to lose their will, to choose death.

To be sure, prisoners often had no control over whether or not they died. But Frankl observed, “A man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him — mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp.”

When treated like an animal, Frankl said, a person can choose to be an animal — or she can choose to be “brave, dignified, and unselfish”. According to Frankl, the way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails…add a deeper meaning to his life.”

In the classic Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl states his thesis thus:

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

Frankl’s experienced served as a crucible for his theory of personality development, which he called logotherapy. Before him, Alfred Adler had argued that people possessed a Nietzschean “will to power” (more here), and Sigmund Freud had argued that we’re all motivated by a “will to pleasure” (more here). Frankl, on the other hand, believed that humans are born with a “will to meaning”, a fundamental need to find meaning in life.

The three basic tenets of logotherapy are:

The search for meaning is the primary motivation in each of our lives. This meaning is unique and specific to each individual. (If you’ve read me for a while, you’ll recognize hints of this in my maxim: “Do what works for you.”)

Life has meaning under all circumstances, even the most miserable ones. What matters most isn’t the meaning of life in general, but the meaning of each person’s life in each moment.

Humans are self-determining. That is, we don’t just exist, but choose what our existence will be. We have freedom to find meaning in what we do and what we experience — or at least in how we respond to each situation.

Frankl’s argument that you’re always free to choose your attitude is echoed in Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi‘s statement that “how we feel about ourselves, the joy we get from living, ultimately depends on how the mind filters and interprets everyday experience”. It also echoes Johnstone’s Impro: “People with dull lives often think their lives are dull by chance. In reality everyone choose more or less the kind of events that happen to them.”

Accepting responsibility for your own fate and attitudes can be uncomfortable and intimidating. There’s a kind of solace when you can attribute your situation to the winds of fate, the will of god, or the workings of the universe.

But recognizing that you’re a free agent can also be liberating. When you take matters into your own hands, you shed your fears, create your own certainty, and discover that you’re freer than you ever imagined possible.

Becoming Proactive

Julian B. Rotter developed the locus of control concept in 1954 as part of his social-learning theory of personality. Stephen R. Covey popularized the idea in 1989 with his best-selling The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

Like Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, Covey believes that we filter our experiences before they reach our consciousness. “Between stimulus and response,” he writes, “man has the freedom to choose.” Our self-awareness, imagination, conscience, and independent will give us the power to select how we’ll respond to each situation in life.

Covey says there are two types of people: proactive and reactive.

Proactive people recognize that they’re responsible for how they respond to outside stimuli. In Rotter’s terms, they have an internal locus of control. They don’t blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their state. They believe their existence is largely a product of personal choice derived from personal values.
Reactive people believe their condition is a product of their physical and social environments. They have an external locus of control. Their moods are based on the moods of others, or upon the things that happen to them. They allow the outside world to control their internal existence.

To illustrate the difference between proactive and reactive people, Covey discusses how we focus our time and energy.

We each have a wide range of concerns: our health, our family, our jobs, our friends; world affairs, the plight of the poor, the threat of terrorism, the state of the environment. All of these fall into what Covey calls our Circle of Concern.

Within our Circle of Concern, there’s a subset of things over which we have actual, direct control: how much we exercise, what time we go to bed, whether we get to work on time; what we eat, where we live, with whom we socialize. These things fall into what Covey calls our Circle of Influence, which sits inside our Circle of Concern.

Graphic by James Clear after Mr. Money Mustache.

According to Covey, proactive people focus their efforts in the Circle of Influence. They spend their time and energy on things they can change. This has two effects. First, proactive people actually do affect change in their lives; and as they do so, their Circle of Influence expands.

On the other hand, reactive people tend to focus on their Circle of Concern. They spend their time and energy on things they’re unable to influence (or can influence only with great difficulty). They try to change other people, to correct social injustices, to shift thought patterns of states or nations. Their efforts are largely frustrating and futile. What’s more, as they focus on their Circle of Concern, their Circle of Influence begins to shrink from neglect.

Any time you shift your attention from your Circle of Influence to your Circle of Concern, you allow outside forces to control you. You place your happiness and well-being in the hands of others. If you don’t act for yourself, you’re doomed to be acted upon.

But what about about luck? Aren’t there times when we really are at the mercy of the world around us? Of course. But our responses are always our own. Eleanor Roosevelt said, “No one can hurt you without your consent.” Covey agrees:

It’s not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts us. Of course, things can hurt us physically or economically and can cause sorrow. But our character, our basic identity, does not have to be hurt at all. In fact, our most difficult experiences become the crucibles that forge our character.

Shit happens. Shit happens to everyone. Ultimately, who we are and what we become is determined not by the shit that happens to us, but how we respond to that shit. Remember Reinhold Niebuhr‘s famous serenity prayer:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Most people are reactive. It’s likely that you’re reactive too — at least to some degree. Don’t fret. I’m reactive also. But with time and effort, I’ve managed to shift from an external locus of control to one that’s primarily internal. You can too.

Focus on the things you can control. Use that control to remove constraints and complications from your life. Strengthen and stretch your Circle of Influence. This is the only path to changing your Circle of Concern. You have no control over the hand you’re dealt, but you can choose how to play the cards.

Here’s a simple exercise from Seven Habits: For thirty days, commit to working only on your Circle of Influence. How? Keep your commitments, to yourself and others. Don’t judge or criticize other people, but turn your attention inward. Don’t argue. Don’t make excuses. When you make a mistake, accept responsibility and fix it. Don’t blame or accuse. When you catch yourself thinking “I have to…” or “If only…”, stop yourself and choose to reframe the thought in a more positive light. As far as possible, accept responsibility for your circumstances, actions, and feelings.

What’s Your Very Best Life Advice?

Over the last couple of months, I’ve begun to use Reddit as my morning wakeup site. Over a cup of coffee, I scroll through pages of funny photos and interesting links until I’m fully functional and ready to work. One popular feature at Reddit is the AMA (Ask Me Anything) interview series, where famous folks (and not-so-famous folks) answer questions from the Reddit community.

A Reddit user named uberlad always asks the same question in these interviews: “What’s your very best life advice?” Many of the answers sound as if they’d fit perfectly with our current year-long exploration into fear, happiness, and freedom.

Here are some notable responses to “What’s your very best life advice?” (Apparently, uberlad likes to ask this question of comedians.)

Norm Macdonald: “Let what you have make you happy. But never let what you don’t have make you happy.” In other words, be happy with what you have, and don’t covet what others have.

Alex Filippenko: “Find a profession that you really love, that you’re passionate about…To the degree possible, do something that brings you happiness and fulfillment.”

Skrillex: “You are the company you keep. If you surround yourself with creative, hungry, and productive people, it will make you step up your game. If you’re around lazy people who complain, then you’ll never grow as a person. Keep good people close!”

Ken Burns: “This [too] will pass. Get help from others. Be kind to yourself.”

Geoff Rowley: “Always get back up.”

Piper Kerman: “Know that you can learn more from your failures than your successes.”

Jon Lovitz: “Happiness is a choice…Are you willing to do what you have to do to get what you want?”

Drew Carey: Learn how to set goals. That’s the key to everything. That includes designing your own success. You define what the goal is, it’s not somebody else’s goal, it’s yours…All goal setting is figuring out what you want to do with your life.”

I shared my own “very best life advice” with you last month:

Now it’s your turn. What is your very best life advice? If a young person were to come to you and ask bout the keys to success and happiness, what would you tell her?

Garbage In, Garbage Out: The Importance of Focus and Attention

The objects and events around us exist in an objective world. They are what they are. Yet each of us experiences these objects and events in a different way. What happens outside must pass through the filter of your subjective mind before it enters your consciousness. You control what enters your consciousness (and, thus, what enters your awareness and memory).

You and I go to the movies. We watch the same film in the same theater at the same time. You enjoy it. You’re wrapped up in the story and moved by the performances. I leave the theater unhappy. “The kid in front of us coughed the whole time,” I complain as we walk to the car. “The seats were uncomfortable and the volume too loud. Plus, I don’t like Nicholas Cage.”

We shared the same experience — and yet we didn’t.

“Consciousness corresponds to a subjectively experienced reality,” writes Mihály Csíkszentmihályi in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. “A person can make himself happy, or miserable, regardless of what actually happens ‘outside’, just by changing the contents of his consciousness.” We choose what we experience, and we choose how we interpret those experiences.

This idea can be challenging to people who possess an external locus of control, those who believe that their decisions and life are controlled by chance or fate or greater environmental factors. (We’ll discuss this in greater detail in the weeks ahead.)

Csíkszentmihályi says that in order to achieve flow and happiness, we must actively create the conditions that lead to it. That means we must learn to direct our focus:

[Happiness] is not the result of good fortune or random chance. It is not something that money can buy or power command. It does not depend on outside events, but, rather, on how we interpret them. Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person. People who learn to control their inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any one of us can come to being happy.

The shape and content of your life depends on how you use your attention. People who master what happens in their heads tend to be happier than those who don’t — or won’t.

“While we are thinking about a problem we cannot truly experience either happiness or sadness,” writes Csíkszentmihályi. “Therefore, the information we allow into consciousness becomes extremely important; it is, in fact, what determines the content and quality of life.”

The bottom line? Garbage in, garbage out. If you allow yourself to think negative thoughts, your experience will be negative. If you want a positive experience, you have to accentuate the positive in all that you see and do.

We can make flow moments more common and become happier people by structuring our focus and attention to bring long-term improvements to the quality of our daily life. There are two primary ways to do this:

Change external conditions.
Change how you experience external conditions.

Each strategy is sound. But one is generally easier than the other. Which path you choose depends upon the situation. Next week, we’ll look at changing the world; in two weeks, we’ll talk about changing yourself.

How to Be Happy

Overcoming fear is one part of living life without regret. You do that by being open to new people and new experiences, and by acting even when you’re afraid. Another aspect of a rewarding life is learning to find happiness in your daily existence — and building upon that happiness to construct a meaningful life.

More than two thousand years ago, the Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote, “All knowledge and every pursuit aims at…the highest of all good achievable by action.” What is that good? “Both the general run of men and people of superior refinement say that it is happiness, and identify living well with being happy.”

Happiness, he said in the Nicomachean Ethics, is “the meaning and purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”

To some extent, a good life requires good fortune. Happenstance can undermine the well-being of even the most virtuous person. But Aristotle held that ultimately happiness isn’t a product of chance. You can allow misfortune to crush you, or you can choose to bear the blows of fate with “nobility and greatness of soul”. Although fate may play a role in your affairs, Aristotle believed that in the end, happiness depends upon yourself.

Modern psychologists agree.

In The How of Happiness, Sonja Lyubomirsky shares the results of years of research into what makes people happy. Studies with twins indicate that about half of human happiness comes from a genetic setpoint. We’re each hardwired for a certain baseline level of contentment.

Other studies have shown that roughly ten percent of happiness is determined by our circumstances. Some of these conditions — such as your age or eye color — cannot be changed. But some of these external factors — such as your job, income, or marital status — can be changed.

But the surprising part of Lyubomirsky’s research is that the remaining forty percent of happiness comes from our intentional activity, from our attitudes and actions. It’s a by-product of the things we think and do.

Because circumstances play such a small role in your well-being — and because many of your circumstances are unchangeable — it makes more sense to boost your bliss through intentional activity, by controlling the things you can and ignoring the things you can’t.

I’ve been reading and writing about money for nearly a decade. I’ve been reading and writing about happiness for nearly as long. The subjects are deeply intertwined. Based on my research and experience, I’ve developed not only a philosophy of well-being, but a short summary of the research into how to be happy. This hundred-word piece is a sort of personal roadmap; whenever I sense I’m drifting off course, I re-read it, and I find my way again.

My friend Lisa is a graphic designer. Recently, for kicks, she and I collaborated to create a print based on my summary of how to be happy. It looks like this:

That’s dozens of books about meaning and happiness compressed into one hundred words. Notice that none of this advice involves waiting for someone or something to make you happy. All of it requires intentional activity on your part to increase your well-being. Happiness isn’t something that just happens; happiness is a byproduct of the the things you think and say and do.

We’ll talk a lot more about happiness in the months to come. Stay tuned!

A Summary of My Philosophy on Action and Fear

Note: Today, as with every Monday during 2014, I’m publishing a short “chapter” from my unpublished ebook about fear, happiness, and freedom. Today marks the conclusion of the first section, the section on fear. Here’s a summary of everything we’ve discussed so far.

During the past three months, I’ve written a lot about the relationship between action and fear.

To begin, I talked about the regrets of the dying. On their deathbeds, people generally regret the things they did not do rather than the things they did. They also regret having spent so much time seeking outside approval instead of focusing on their own feelings, values, and relationships. In short, at the end of their lives, people regret having been afraid.

Where does fear come from? Some fears are physical. Others are psychological. Some fears are rational. Many are not. Healthy, rational fears keep you alert and alive. Irrational fears and anxieties prevent you from enjoying everything life has to offer.

In part, our irrational fears are fueled by the mass media. We’re bombarded by news of the exceptional and the unusual, so that we come to believe life is more dangerous than it actually is.

A mighty weapon in the war against fear is the power of yes. By teaching yourself to accept opportunities in life, you can gradually overcome your irrational fears. You can teach yourself to become bold, to try new things, to meet new people, and to enjoy a more rewarding existence.

This is one of the secrets of lucky people. What we think of as “luck” has almost nothing to do with randomness and everything to do with attitude. Everyone chooses more or less what kind of events happen to them. You make your own luck.

It can help to imagine that life is a lottery. Any time you do something — especially something new — there’s a chance that your life will be vastly improved in the long run. When you say yes, you’re given a lottery ticket. Often that ticket won’t pay off. But sometimes you’ll win the jackpot.

But saying yes isn’t enough by itself. To cure fear, you must take action. Action cures fear. Action primes the pump. When we’re prepared, we feel competent. When we feel competent, we feel confident. When we’re confident, our fears fade into the background.

More than that, action is character. If you always do your best and you do what’s right, then you needn’t fear the results. Sure, bad things will happen sometimes. But if you’ve done well and done what’s right, the negative outcome isn’t your fault — it’s just how things are. If you’re unprepared, however, you must own the negative consequences.

You are defined by the things you do — not by the things you think or say. The bottom line is that you are what you repeatedly do. If you don’t like who you are, you must choose to be somebody new.

What have action and fear to do with personal and financial independence? Everything.

The first step toward freedom of any sort is facing and fighting your fears. “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face,” Eleanor Roosevelt once said. “You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”

From these humble beginnings, you can progress to greater things.

Next, we’ll explore personal well-being. For the next few months, we’ll talk about what happiness is, how it’s achieved, and what you can do to maximize happiness in your life. Happiness, too, is an important part of achieving personal and financial freedom.

We Are What We Repeatedly Do

We are what we repeatedly do — not what we once did, and not what we did only once.

One mistake does not define you, nor does a single act of kindness. These events may provide glimpses of a potential you, but who you really are is revealed by what you do on a daily basis.

You can say that health is important to you, but if you don’t eat and act healthfully, it’s just not so.
Thinking about writing doesn’t make you a writer; writing makes you a writer. If you’re not writing, you’re not a writer.
You can say your life’s too busy and you want to slow down, but so long as you keep scheduling things, you’re showing that you value your busy-ness more than the downtime.

I’ve self-identified as fit for almost five years. For most of that time, I have been fit. I’ve eaten well and exercised often. But during the past year, my attention has been focused elsewhere. My priorities have shifted. As a result, I’ve allowed my diet and exercise regimen to slip until today they’re average at best. I can see it in my body and feel it in my mind.

Talking about fitness and having been fit in the past won’t make me fit today. To be fit, I have to be fit. Fitness will return when I choose to eat right and exercise once again. Not just once, but every day.

If you don’t like who you are, choose to be somebody new.

We are what we repeatedly do.

Note: This quote — “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit” — is frequently attributed to the philosopher Aristotle. However, Aristotle never wrote this. Instead, the quote is Will Durant’s summary of Aristotle’s philosophy.

Action is Character

A decade ago, I was full of hot air. And I was lazy. And depressed. This wasn’t a good combination for getting things done. I talked a lot about the things I wanted to do, but I never did them. I found reasons not to. I even had trouble keeping up my end of the household chores, which frustrated my wife.

I was a Talker.

Maybe you know somebody who’s like this. A Talker seems to know the solution to everything, has great plans for how she’s going to make money or get a new job. She can tell you what others are doing wrong and how she could do it better. But the funny thing is, a Talker never acts on her solutions and her great plans. She never gets that new job. She’s out of work or stuck in a job she hates.

To everyone else, it’s clear that the Talker is full of hot air, but he believes he’s bluffing everyone along — or worse (as in my case), isn’t even aware that he never follows through on his boasts and promises. Sometimes a Talker conflates talking with doing. When confronted, a Talker has excuses for not getting things done: He doesn’t have time, he doesn’t have the skills, the odds are stacked against him. When a Talker does do something, he often takes a shortcut.

That, my friends, is the man I used to be.

Something changed in the autumn of 2005. I began to read a lot of books. Not just personal finance books, but self-help books and success manuals of all sorts. As I read the books, I discussed them with my cousin, Nick. During our conversations, I’d sometimes lament that X was a priority in my life — where X might be exercise or getting out of debt or reading more books — but that I never had time for it. Instead, I “had to do” a bunch of other stuff instead.

“Well, then X isn’t actually a priority,” Nick would say, which made me angry. I’d argue, but Nick would point out that the things we actually do are the priorities in our life. What we say doesn’t matter; it’s what we do that counts.

It took me a long time to learn this lesson, but eventually I began to align my life with my stated priorities. Instead of just talking about doing things, I did them. I stopped looking for shortcuts and started doing the work required to get things done. Unsurprisingly, this worked. When I did things instead of talking about them, I got better results.

Today, I am a Doer.

In his notes on The Last Tycoon, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “Action is character.” Fitzgerald meant that what a fictional character defines who that character is.

The same is true in real life: You are defined by the things you do — not by the things you think or say. If you never did anything, you wouldn’t be anybody.

Action Comes First: Coping with Fear and Procrastination

Every morning, Kim wakes at five o’clock to get ready for work. Most days, I just lie there. “I don’t need to get up,” I think. “I’ve nowhere to go.”

But I’ve learned that if I don’t get up, I regret it. If I stay in bed, I don’t make it to the gym. I miss work deadlines. I have less time to do the fun stuff, like hiking, and reading, and riding my motorcycle.

So, I get out of bed. I get dressed. As unappealing as it sounds, I go outside for a walk or a run — even when it’s raining (as is frequently the case here in Portland). The first few minutes suck. I’m tempted to go back to bed. Before long, however, I find I’m actually enjoying myself. I return home invigorated, eager to get things done.

If I were to wait for motivation, I’d sleep all day. By forcing myself to take action, I find the motivation that was missing before.

Feeling Good is a popular self-help manual by David Burns. The book helped a younger me through an extended bout of depression. Part of the solution was to overcome my chronic procrastination, procrastination brought about by fear. In Feeling Good, Burns describes the problem.

Individuals who procrastinate frequently confuse motivation and action. You foolishly wait until you feel in the mood to do something. Since you don’t feel like doing it, you automatically put it off. Your error is your belief that motivation comes first, and then leads to action and success. But it is usually the other way around; action must come first, and the motivation comes later.

Action primes the pump.

Anxiety is largely self-doubt and insecurity — an underlying belief that you cannot handle whatever is before you. Anxiety often causes fear and procrastination. Because of this, preparation plays a key role in mitigating fear.

When you prepare — to speak to a crowd, to hike through a bear-infested forest — you decrease your doubt. You can’t eliminate the possibility of failure, but you can drastically reduce the odds against you. You rehearse possible situations. You practice the required actions. You allow your imagination to explore (and cope with) worst-case scenarios. In short, you prime the pump, which prepares you to do your best.

And that’s the important thing: If you always do your best and you do what’s right, then you needn’t fear the results. Sure, bad things will happen sometimes. But if you’ve done well and done what’s right, the negative outcome isn’t your fault — it’s just how things are. If you’re unprepared, however, you must own the negative results.

When we’re prepared, we feel competent. When we feel competent, we feel confident. When we’re confident, our fears fade into the background.

Photo by Antony Mayfield.