By Lu Ann Brobst Staheli
“I want to spend more time in scripture study (service, church activities, prayer, etc.), but I just don’t have a spare minute during the day. I hardly have time to spend with my family. There’s just so much to do!”

If you’ve ever found yourself in a similar situation, wanting to do what is right, but not sure where to find the time, finding a solution might be easier than you think. Organizational expert Peter Walsh suggests that most of us are so overwhelmed by the stuff in our daily lives—work, bills, family commitments, demands from our kids’ schools—that we often lose focus on the essentials.

All of this clutter causes us to become out of balance. In the 1970s, the church had a program which addressed what experts call the “Six Key Areas” of our lives: Family, Relationships, Work, Health, Money, and Spirituality. The program encouraged members to work toward a balance of all that was good, instead of pouring all of our efforts into one area. Staying out of balance causes stress and unhappiness, and those factors may lead to more serious difficulties within ourselves or with our families.

If clutter—both physical and emotional—creeps into our lives and upsets the balance, we need to evaluate our activities, magnify the essentials then get rid of the rest. Often the stacks of papers sitting around the house can wear us out just as much as the work that caused those stacks to happen, and the constant worry about finding time to deal with them wears us to the point that we lose the confidence we can ever get caught up.

What steps can we take to unclutter our lives? Walsh suggests:

1 Acknowledge and address the emotional and mental clutter that holds you back from living the richly fulfill-
ing life you deserve.

2 Prioritize what matters in your life.

3 Let go of the stress and clutter, and regain your balance, focus, energy, and purpose.

4 View your life and how you spend your time and en-
ergy.

5 Live a stress-free life of balance and fulfillment—“the
life that’s been buried under all the emotional clutter for years and the one you’ve always imagined.”

Stress wears us out, making us too tired to use our time productively. But what if we don’t have physical clutter? What if everything we do is something good?
How do we decide what tasks to complete and which ones to leave out?

Stephen R. Covey has given us a time management model we might use to get started. Consider your day as a glass jar. There are lots of things ready to fill it up and most of us start the wrong direction, thinking that if we get all the little things done first, then we can tackle the big things once the little ones are out of the way. But we all know exactly what happens; the little things end up taking so much of our time and energy, slipping away from us like sand in the hourglass, that we are worn out by the time we get around to the big things.

If we look at those big things as rocks and the little things as sand, as long as we attempt to fill our jar first with sand, we will never be able to shove the rocks into place. But if we place the rocks first then add the sand around them, the jar can be filled with both vital tasks and those extras that add the spice to life.

Deciding which big rocks to put into your jar each day takes us back to the six key areas: Family, Relationships, Work, Health, Money, and Spirituality.
Brainstorm a list of things you need or want to do in each of these areas, then realize you can’t do them all in one day. As Walsh suggests, prioritize them, let go of the stress and clutter, then you’ll be ready to tackle the tasks at hand.
Place just one rock from each of the areas into your jar one day and see how much better the day goes.

If you plan right and follow your priorities, I’ll bet you’ve not only had time for the big rocks, but also found the time to spend with your family, and read your scriptures, too.