Simon Willison’s Weblog

The Pickle Jar theory

24th June 2002

A List Apart: Time Management—The Pickle Jar Theory. I like this concept—it’s simple, doesn’t involve long words or complex charts and makes good sense. The basic idea is that you should schedule only your high priority tasks for the day and leave the gaps in between for less important activities (email, browsing and so forth). This is supported by the analogy of a pickle jar, where you can fit more in the jar if you add large pebbles first before pouring in smaller pebbles and sand (rather than adding the largest pebbles last when they will be unlikely to fit). Jeremy Wright, the author of the article, is a regular over on the SitePoint forums.