A strong-structured schedule can offer plenty of opportunities for freedom and spontaneity.

Like a hug jar, your schedule can be filled with the biggest stones first. These are your non-movable items throughout your day. Whether that’s your Monday morning meeting with your staff, your entire workday or must-have appointments with clients. These will take blocks of time out of your schedule in order to begin filling with the next tier of tasks important to you.

These can be such tasks as working our and exercising during the day, reaching out for new business or wrapping up past job for the week. These are not “less” important activities, but they become smaller stones fitting into your jar because of the amount of time needed to accomplish these, because they don’t take precedence for that day or because they can be shifted around to another avaible time slot.

Once we have filled in our first two sizes of stones, we can now place the pebbles into the remaining available time slots. Maybe you have 45 minutes on Tuesday to sneak in a quick lunch with your spouse at a mutual meeting spot. You have set time aside for the things that are important to you, so you know where you stand for the week. Now you can enjoy your time with your wife and remain present with her, knowing your other tasks will be completed all in due time.