Khrushchev, the former leader of the Soviet Union, used to tell a story about a factory guard who was posted at a lumber mill in Leningrad to guard against employee theft. One day, a worker came walking out of the factory with a wheelbarrow containing a sack. The guard asked the worker what was in the sack, assuming that it was something the worker was stealing. The factory worker explained that it was a bag of sawdust, which he had permission to take home. The unconvinced guard searched the bag and found it to contain nothing but sawdust. Day after day the same scene played out, with the worker wheeling out a giant sack of sawdust. The guard believed the employee was stealing, but couldn’t figure out what he was taking. Finally, he promised the worker he wouldn’t arrest him if he would just tell him what he was stealing. The factory worker replied simply: “I am stealing wheelbarrows.” The guard had been so busy looking at the sawdust, he was distracted from the actual problem. Khrushchev’s story bears a striking moral: It is easy to get distracted by details and miss the big picture. Our society lives in a constant state of over-busyness. We have long task lists that need to be checked off. We become so enthralled in checking our boxes or accomplishing things that don’t matter as much, and we end up missing the important things. One common example is in our relationships. We can get so busy making sure the kids are fed, washed, entertained, enrolled in extra curricular activities, and working on school work that we can easily forget to spend quality time playing or talking with them. The same happens in marriages, where we get so busy building a life, paying bills, or fighting about getting our way that we can easily forget the things that made us fall in love and enjoy each other’s company so much in the first place. We pay so much attention to the things that seem so urgent at the moment, that the things that are more vital fall to the wayside. The time we have to be together easily slips away while we are busy with tasks that will be there tomorrow. The way to overcome this tendency is to intentionally prioritize the important over the urgent or the easy. There are a million things that vie for our attention, but many of them just don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. They make no noticeable impact on our happiness when compared to a date night with your spouse or taking your kids to the park. We must take time to ask ourselves if the things that are demanding our attention are vital and what would happen if we just didn’t do them in favor of investing in things that make our lives better or enhance our relationship. The challenging thing about relationships is that they grow with time and attention. Marriages and kids need time and attention the way plants need sunshine and water. Unfortunately, our time is always leaking away because we get busy focusing on the things that aren’t as important. We must ask ourselves every day what is important and where our time is going.
