Precedence and Prioritization

I heard a story today about a college professor who was teaching a class. I'm paraphrasing. I know normally I would follow this with my opinion and some Bible verses which either support or complicate my opinion, but I like to think this story speaks for itself.

The teacher went into the class with a large, empty, bulk mayonnaise jar. The professor had eight silver bowls sitting on his desk. From the first bowl he poured golf balls into the jar until he reached the top.

He then asked his students, "is the jar full?" They replied yes. From the next bowl he then poured pebbles into the jar, shaking it until the pebbles settled into the spaces between the golf balls, and adding all the pebbles until they reached the top. 

"Now is it full?" he asked. They replied yes again. From the next bowl he poured in sand, shaking, and pouring until all the sand was gone, filling in the cracks between the pebbles, and the sand reached the top of the jar.

"Is the jar full now?" he asked. Chuckling now, the class replied that, yes, it was.

From the last bowl on his right he picked up a glass pitcher of lemonade. He poured the lemonade into the jar, filling up all the spaces between the sand grains.

"How about now?" he asked. Laughing, and fairly certain this time they were right, they said yes.

"This jar is your life," the professor said, "The golfballs represent the important things, God, your spouse, your kids, your family, the things that are so important that even if we have nothing else in our lives, our life is full. The pebbles represent the material things that are also very important, your house, your job, your car. The sand represents everything else in your life, the unimportant things."

A girl in the third row asked, "What does the lemonade represent?" 

"I'm glad you asked, it shows that when your priorities are right, there is always time left to fill with having a cool drink with friends on a hot day."


"Ok, let's do this again." He removed the empty bowls, shifted the jar to his right, and picked another equally large jar up from under his desk.

This time he picked up the lemonade first, and poured it into the jar.

"Is the jar full?" he asked.

Because it was the same amount of lemonade as the first time, it didn't fill the jar. He then added the sand. It sunk into the lemonade and was a little less than the top of the lemonade. But it still only filled the jar about halfway.

"Is the jar full?" The students murmured, disconcerted by where they saw this going, clearly the jar was not full.

 Then he added the pebbles, and they filled up the top of the lemonade, and almost all the way to the top of the jar. This time he just looked at his students, saying nothing.

 Then he pulled out the golf balls. There was room only for one of the many golf balls which had fit in the other jar. In fact, by putting in even the single golf ball some of the pebbles were knocked out of the jar.

"This jar is your life, remember," the professor said. "If you start with the unimportant things, or prioritize fun above the important things, your life will never feel full, just like the jar was not full before the important things were added, and when you finally get to adding the important things, you will find there is no longer any room for them. Think about it, in what order do you want to fill your life?"