The Pickle Jar theory

The Pickle Jar theory

Me and Stephany got a task to analyze “the work life balance” concept and had to elaborate the contrast between its studies and how it effect to real life experiences. To accomplish my task I intent a theory called “The Pickle Jar theory.” It totally about, as a worker or a person how we have to manage our time, and it symbolize, if a person know how to manage his/hers time thus person can manage their work life too.

Evidently, we know that there are number of Time management theories have existence in different sources. But most of theories have failed because of the sheer amount of time needed to commit to the theory in order to save some time. The return just never seemed to justify the cost. The Pickle jar theory also practically similar to old concepts. It doesn’t emphasis anything new, but it’s quite popular to be known as one of the best time management tools. Because it is based on the idea that time, like a pickle jar is limited. How you want to fill the jar, and it is up to you.  

For a while just Imagine you have a big empty pickle jar, fill it with rocks until it is full and be sure that you can’t have any of them. And match those rocks with your bigger objects. (Such as goals, aspirations, roles and consider that how much important to you.) As an employee your rocks may be achieving set of targets, implementation of strategy action plan or etc.     

But don’t forget, your Jar is not full, you may think it is not; but it doesn’t. Reason, the rocks leave some gaps, now drop some pebbles and give the jar a shake and let the pebbles fill up the gap. Pebbles, signify the things that are less important in your life, so those significant you can have or you don’t have to.

Keep going with selected Jar, still also it is not full. So you can use sand and water to fill it full. The sand is easy to pour into the jar, meaning they are easy to do and take little time to complete it. The water is for whatever takes time but doesn’t add any value to it like spending hours to on-line, chat or anything that waste of time. Generally, the smaller and easier it is to pour into the pickle jar, the less it is important.

Try to identifying which things are your rocks, pebbles, sand and water. That means, classified your important factors and not important factors.

Ashean Mendis.

Definition -

The pickle jar theory is a time management theory based on the idea that time is a finite space, like a pickle jar, but you can fill it with things of all different shapes and sizes. Each item in the metaphorical pickle jar represents a specific priority. The jar itself shows that it is possible to balance a number of priorities in a given space. (http://www.zideate.com/definition/628/pickle-jar-theory)

For marketers, there are a number of priorities that have to be balanced throughout a workday. So, suppose that you take a pickle jar and fill it with large rocks. Once it's full, is there room for anything else? How about pebbles? Chances are you can rattle quite a few in there without overflowing the jar. Now is it full? Chances are you could get some sand in between the cracks. Finally, you can add water. In this theory, the large rocks represent priorities, the things that need to get done in a given amount of time. The pebbles represent the things we enjoy doing, or are of lesser importance. The things that are even less important, like sand, fit in around our larger priorities, while water, which represents the things that clutter up our lives, gets in everywhere.