Don't forget, the Year of K&E Gear is going on- yup, all year. Blankets and hoodies are already out there. This month is long-sleeve tees. Check them out.

November 1st is the Registration Deadline for these. 2027 Dates and Rates page to register.

Ok, on to big rocks and sand...

Check out this chart a friend forwarded to me a couple of months ago.

Is it a little clickbait-y and a little too neat? Sure.

The big rocks are the stuff you care about. For that chart up top, the implication might be that they’re the left column. Playing the sport instead of just watching it. Seeing your people. Making the thing.

I have to be pretty aware of this in my own life now. "Go play volleyball" goes on the calendar. "Write letters to people I care about" needs a scheduled time. Because if it doesn't, I'm going to go and fill the whole day with sand.

So far, this is standard stuff. Covey’s vase analogy is one of the most famous time management stories around. Productivity books have done many, many laps on this already. Some version of “name what matters, schedule it first.”

But Covey's story treats the sand like just some random stuff that fills in around the cracks. And I don't think that's quite right anymore.

What The Sand Is Made Of

If you think about a kid's year right now, it's easy to see a vase already full with rocks. School, and practices and music lessons and rehearsals and family time. Most kids are not short on learning, enrichment, and things all the way worth doing. Those rocks are awesome ones.

The sand is the part that's tough. And because it just looks like spare time, it's tough to guard.

The right column of that chart doesn't go after the rocks all that much, some though maybe not as much as gets let on. It lives in the gaps.

Rides home, waiting rooms, 20 minutes of "down time". If there's dopamine hits within reach, the in-between minutes are going to go there.

Mostly before, the in-between minutes were the good stuff even if we didn’t recognize it at the time. Talking to whoever was around. Making jokes. Being bored until the boredom randomly turned into something.

In the 90s, people worried that kids sat around too much. That's not the problem anymore. The hanging-out time is the rare thing now.

A lot of parents would love Waynes World happening in their basement most weekends or the Sandlot gang roasting s’mores in the tree house. Watch it, trust me nostaligia is awesome.

Put the big rocks in first. Then protect what the sand is made of.

The Carve Out

We keep coming back to the idea of a 90s summer. Not everything about it was better. The sand was, though.

Nobody is getting rid of dopamine culture. It'll be right there waiting, for the kids and for the rest of us.

Camp puts the big rocks in first by default. It's called the camp schedule. But plenty of places have rocks. What camp really has is the sand. The in-between minutes are friends and jokes and a little boredom, because for six and a half weeks the right column is just gone.

If camp gets to be a carve-out from the onslaught, one stretch of the year where even the sand stays clean, we'll take it.

Oh, and it’s worth saying here - the 2027 camp schedule is already full of big rocks. Dates and Rates page has all the details.

You got this,

Jack

114 Eagle Pond Rd, Wilmot, NH 03287
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