"If you are so busy, why?"
"You can't do everything. You can't keep all the balls in the air. So what are you going to do?"
What are your life-goals? Apply the principles of 'Good, Better, Best" so that you are juggling balls that will get you to your goal.
IDEA (31 Jan 2010)
Begin with Jeff referring back to the November juggling metaphor. Then, confess that he didn't make it a high enough priority to become proficient enough at juggling to demonstrate tonight. Then introduce Randy, who is proficient enough to demonstrate. Have Randy demonstrate 3-ball juggling while Jeff reminds the audience that men and women have different ways of getting things done. Not right. Not wrong. Just different. Refer to the video that Sister Pace showed in November (A Tale of Two Brains).
Randy will demonstrate (through juggling) how women handle their tasks: many things going at once. Multi-tasking. Continual motion. Jeff will demonstrate how men handle their tasks by juggling one ball at a time but focusing exclusively on it. (Mention will also be made that these are generalizations and that everyone is different, but, they are pretty good generalizations.) Finally, Randy and Jeff will juggle simultaneously. Randy will juggle the three balls for 45 seconds. Jeff will juggle one ball at a time for 15 seconds each.
Next, audience participation. We will create and project two parallel lists, one by the sisters, and one by the brethren, of things that fill up their 'to-do' lists. We could create the two columned list on Word while projecting it on the big screen.
When the lists are finished (enough anyway), mention should be made that, while it may be more efficient to work on the lists separately, that could lead to what one author calls a "parallel marriage."
Somewhere, near the top of the priority list must be time spent doing things together.
This would be a good time to review the old metaphor of filling the jar with rocks, pebbles, and sand.
One of the big rocks should be time spent doing things together.
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I think the rocks could be personal & family prayer, scripture study, FHE, church/temple attendance as well as family/spouse planning sessions. The scriptures talk about building our foundation on the ‘rock’. We have experiences that have shown us personally that when we put these 'rocks' in first, our days go better because we are guided (whether we realize it or not) as to how to fill in the rest of our time with the pebbles/sand: the daily requirements of work, keeping up a home, feeding the family, rearing our children, the errands, the 'lessons & practices' for the kids, HT, VT, callings, grocery shopping, laundry, etc. Sometimes some of the pebbles we thought we had to do today turn into sand & take less time than we thought- a blessing for putting the rocks first, from seeking the guidance of the Lord for our day & putting Him first.
ReplyDeleteOR- using a similar idea with the balls in the air.
We already know that personal/family prayer, scripture study...see list above... should be high priorities in our lives. Juggling these balls first is like putting some helium into the other balls, they may seem to hang in the air a little longer before they slowly fall to be caught & sent back up. It is like Heavenly Father is helping us to manage what we need to do by putting Him first. Also, we need to remember that some of our balls will have a deadline & then we will be putting them down. Such as: our daughter's recent wedding, family visiting for the holidays, the school science project, our talk in church, the fundraiser we are helping with at school, the project at work, etc. When this happens, other balls may need to be allowed to drop to the floor or passed onto someone else until we are able to pick them up again.