Empty jar

Summary – Help balance between achieving life’s goal and having fun

If you read blogs on how to get things done, almost all of them will stress that to succeed you must plan and follow your plan. That you should never do other thing besides achieving your goals.

While there maybe some truth to that, don’t you think life will be very boring if you just read books, or work the whole time?

I mean, there are always other insignificant but nice things to do. They may not be contributing to your life goal, but there are what makes living feel like living. Typical examples are like playing guitar, or cleaning the house, or laughing at jokes read etc.

But how to balance the time between working on our goals and doing these trivia stuff?

I recommend The Great Jar of Life 🙂 (Yes I made that name up.. but the concept is as old as the first jar created). What you should do is to get an empty jar, preferably made of glass so that you can see the content anytime.

The next step is to sit down and write a list of all things you want to do. Put down playing guitar, dancing with the mrs, watch one movie, etc. After you finish with the list, tear each items on the list so that you will have a paper for each items. Finally fold and put them in the jar.

The list can be anything your heart desire, but you will have to abide to these rules

  • No heavy stuff – there shouldn’t be “Solve world hunger in there”.
  • The things to do must be easy to do. Do not put “investigate a murder case” on the list
  • It can be done in less than an hour. Some exception maybe for things like watching movie, but you will have to pay back the extra time by not doing anything from the jar tomorrow.

Now everyday, fix one time (preferably in the evening) to pick one paper and just do what ever written on it.

The whole idea is to make some time for our personal pleasure or interest. If you spend your whole day doing everything inside the jar, then your whole day will serve no purpose to your ultimate life goal.

Be frugal with your time, but don’t forget to have fun a little 🙂

– I wonder –
What do you like to do when you have free time

———- Personal Note ———–
I used to love playing computer games. My all time favorite game is Planescape Torment. One of the reason I bought this laptop is to play games. My old pc just cannot support the new games requirements. However, until now I still haven’t had the time to install any games.

I guess, blogging is more fun 🙂

Photo Credit – Indigo Goat<p

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This post has 7 comments.


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  1. filantera`
    13 Mar 08 10:16 am

    nice idea!

    sometime we forget how to njoy ourself other than sleeping………:D

  2. banji
    13 Mar 08 11:25 pm

    filantera – sleeping is addictively enjoying 🙂 I can’t blame anyone who sleep for fun hehe.

  3. 14 Mar 08 9:50 am

    it’s true that we must have fun with whatever we do. in fact that’s what I want to do after graduation.
    I learn from others around me. Most of them do not enjoy what they’re doing, and I don’t want to be like them because it’s tiring to do what you don’t like everyday.
    Maybe I’m lucky to know what I want, so I have my goal. Yet some of us still have no idea on what they really want, and they end up being a boring person.
    but unless s/he learns to like what s/he is doing, that’s good, right?? 🙂

  4. banji
    14 Mar 08 8:20 pm

    azuwachan – It is.. very tiring to do what we don’t like every single day. It’s just that sometimes we have no choice, but to accept what ever job offer.

    So in that special case, we will just have to find the time to do all those thing we love

    There’s a saying if I’m not mistaken, “Find a job you actually love, and you will never have to work for the rest of your life” 🙂

  5. Anonymous
    15 Mar 08 12:11 am

    I wish playing computer games is a job.

  6. 15 Mar 08 12:14 am

    i love my job, but i cannot stop complaining.lol.

  7. banji
    16 Mar 08 7:55 am

    amirahsyuhada – me too, but somehow I prefer to work with the internet for money 🙂

    I too sometimes complain about my job, we just can’t have everything now can we? 🙂

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