Time Management: How Do You Eat an Elephant?

It is hard for me to squeeze time into my already overloaded schedule to write a story, chapter, article, or coherent sentence.

Last Tuesday I attended a meeting where the topic was time management.  The speaker, Jo Perusich,  presented a humorous, yet practical, approach to managing ourselves rather than time.

The two tips she had that made the biggest impression on me was (a) eat your spinach first and (b) the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.

Jo said that she learned early in life that when her mother put spinach on her plate, she expected Jo to eat it. Jo finally learned that if she ate the spinach first, she could thoroughly enjoy the macaroni and cheese or other good food on her plate. She uses that method with work by doing the unpleasant task first. Once, the spinach is out of the way, the rest of the day is enjoyable.

When you are working on big project, you might think it is as big as an elephant. If you break the task down into small bites, and grab up your spoon, you’ll cut the elephant down to size. And, according to Jo, it’s easier if you invite all your friends over to help you eat the elephant.

The thing about time is it just keeps right on ticking, and we can’t slow it down or speed it up, but we can eat our spinach first and then take a bite out of the elephant.