The Marble Trick: How to Prioritize
A few months ago, I hosted an event at Honeycomb, a store and play space for kids in Saint Louis. The goal was to create an open dialogue for parents to share their challenges with prioritizing while parenting. Since the arrival of my daughter, Fiona in June of 2018, I have noticed how much of of my life has needed to change to embrace her presence. I suddenly realized I couldn’t just add something as large as a child to my life, without reallocating my time and energy. To reach balance, and sanity, I had to relinquish what wasn’t working or a priority to make space for my new priority, my daughter. But, this can be really tricky.
Because when we’re being pulled in too many directions, and our priorities are unclear, we don’t definitively know what to say yes and what to say no to. This leads to feeling overwhelmed, overextended and burnout. Whether it’s in your office, as a parents, or with friends, when you’re feeling disconnected to how you’re spending your time, apply the marble analogy. The marble analogy looks at assigning our time and energy spend to a limited amount of ten marbles, so we can see where we are spending our time and compare it to where we would like to be spending our time.
Step 1: Assess how you are currently spending your time and energy. While the categories of our priorities are generally the same, they can vary on a daily basis and each day it will vary slightly. These categories are things you do consistently, even daily. These categories can look like working, being a parent, self-care, exercise, volunteering, knitting, tending to your home. If you’re using this analogy exclusively for your worklife, they may include team management, email correspondences, networking or meetings.
Step 2: Assign the marbles to each category based on how much time and energy we dedicate to them.
If I apply marbles to my life pre-baby, it would look like this: 4 marbles to work, 2 to my husband, 2 to family and friend relationships, 1 to keeping the house in order and 1 to self-care. Post-parenthood, it looks something like this: 4 marbles to parenthood, 1 to my husband, 2 to work, 1 to keeping the house in order, 1 to self-care, and 1 to family and friend relationships.
As you can see, I couldn’t add parenthood to my life without reducing the role of some other elements of my life. When we add something to our life, whether it’s baby or a stronger dedication to our self-care regimen, time can quickly pass until suddenly we realize: I haven’t had dinner with my girlfriends in weeks or I can’t find time to go to the gym. We realize we let go of something we love. and were completely unconscious to it. When we’re not giving attention to areas that fulfill us, it leaves us feeling drained. With women, I often see that we become ‘yes’ people while not saying yes to the things that feed our soul. But, this overwhelmed emotion can lead us to learn a necessary life lesson: how to say no so we can say yes.
What do you want to say no to? What do you wish you had time to say yes to?
We need to uncover our priorities so we can follow what feels good, gives us joy, and understand our prioritizes change depending on the season of life. Currently, my season of life is pregnant with my second and living during a pandemic. Before this pregnancy, my evenings were full with movement, yoga, and self-help workshops. But, this season of life has called for spending extra time with my daughter, giving myself lots of breaks to rest as I grow my second, and releasing judgement for all the things I am not doing. When allocating our marbles, it’s important not to judge where we’re currently at, or what we ‘should’ be doing, but rather be honest with ourselves in the present moment.
Let’s take a closer look at how we’re prioritizing our time by applying the marble analogy to your life. Below is a journaling exercise intended to help you be honest with yourself on where you’re at, get a clear picture of where you want to be, and have courage to make the necessary changes. I suggest writing for a minimum of ten minutes, because it’s the amount of time it takes for us to exit our conscious mind and act out of our subconscious. Light a candle, pull out your journal, and dig it.
Journaling Activity
What area of your life are we looking to prioritize better: work, home, or parenthood? Take a few moments to look at how you’re currently spending your time in one of these areas and allocate ten marbles in your journal.
Now, write out your marble allocation for how you would like to spend your time. Where can you invite in more joy? What do you feel you want to say no to and release from your priorities list?
Let’s take a look at our current priorities alongside our ideal priorities.
What do you need to let go of so you can have more joy?
Do you need to let go of a time scarcity mindset?
Do you need to let go of being a people pleaser?
What feels good and how can you fit more of it in?
Who can you ask for support?
What is your biggest challenge when it comes to time?
photo: Katie Lawson
