165. Why Use Time Confetti

I understand that the image above contains gems rather than confetti, but when I did an image search for "multi-sized pink glitter confetti", this was one of the images to appear. And riddle me this: why would I ever not love this image? So, it's not confetti, it should still help you understand my point in this post (and it's pretty).

I remember hearing a podcast years ago about a way to visualize how people get things done. If I remembered which podcast or which episode, I'd embed a link, but I don't. Imagine you have a bottle that represents how much time you have today. You also have rocks of various sizes (from boulders down to sand) that represent the things you hope to accomplish. You can get a little thing done and put in a grain of sand. Do another little thing, add another speck, etc. If you keep doing that until the bottle is full, you will have used up your day and completed lots of little tasks, but you won't have any room for getting the big jobs done. You're not any closer to putting your boulders, your rocks, and your pebbles into the jar. If, on the other hand, you take the time and do the work to complete a boulder of a task, you'll still be able to squeeze in a few rocks, many pebbles, and so much sand. That's not exactly the analogy, but you get the point: if you put in sand first, the jar looks full, but if you put in rocks first, there's always room for pebbles and sand in the gaps.

I heard another podcast, more recently but not recently enough that I remember which podcast or which episode (though if I had to guess, I'd go with Hidden Brain, which is awesome), about how most Americans have more leisure time overall than people used to have, but it's more chopped up.

Here's a link to a very brief article saying the same thing, in case you want to read more. People call the short, non-consecutive free time people have time confetti (reasons obvious), and they say that the fragments are hard on our mental health. On the flipside, I like the idea that if I use my time confetti to get things done, I can create more sustained leisure time for myself, thus improving my mental health. I don't have to have a boulder-sized chunk of time to start working on a boulder -- I can chip chunks off the boulder until I get all the pieces into my jar. For example, if I have a class set of papers to grade, one free period isn't enough time to complete the task; however, it's enough to start the task, and when I get back to the papers later that day, I have four or five fewer to read. This way, it's more likely that I'll get the stack back to kids the next day AND end up with more time at night to do other things.

I'm a big fan of seeing interstices as opportunities that add up over time. I've written about taking baby steps in the direction you want to go, and I see learning to use time confetti productively as part of this process. What do you think? Share your ideas in the comments below.