When I launched my consulting practice more than 20 years ago, I established an annual ritual: every January I would send all my clients, present and past, the classic story “Big Rocks.” I was as happy to see that so many of them benefited from tightening up their priorities to kick off the year as I was surprised that so few of them were familiar with the story.
Two decades later many of my clients still struggle with prioritization. It’s no surprise: high-achievement people always think we can accomplish more than we really can; that we can add on just one more goal; or that we can do one more thing before the end of the day/week/month/year. I’m often reminded of the Danish proverb “If you want something done, give it to a busy person,” but my own experiences and struggles with over-commitment want me to learn that sometimes it’s actually preferable to do fewer things, and do them better.
High-achievement people always think we can accomplish more than we really can.
I regularly use prioritization tools and practices in coaching my clients as well as in trying to coach myself. Some favorites are The Eisenhower Matrix, Triaging, and Timeboxing. But “Big Rocks,” a timeless parable popularized by Stephen Covey, is one of the simplest and most powerful of all these frameworks. Once you’ve heard “Big Rocks” you will always find it easier and more intuitive to keep your critical priorities front of mind.
“Big Rocks”
An expert on the subject of time management was lecturing to a group of business school students, and to drive home a point he used an illustration those students will never forget.
Standing in front of a classroom filled with self-motivated over-achievers, he pulled out a one-gallon, wide-mouthed Mason jar and set it on a table. Then he produced a half-dozen fist-sized rocks and carefully placed them, one at a time, into the jar.
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When the jar was filled to the top and no more rocks would fit, he asked, "Is this jar full?"
Everyone in the class said, "Yes."
He said, "Really?"
He then reached under the table and pulled out a sack of gravel. He slowly began dumping the gravel in, pausing to shake the jar as he did so the gravel could work itself down into the spaces between the big rocks. Then he smiled and asked the group once more, "Is the jar full?"
Some of the class were starting to catch on. "Probably not," one of them called out.
"Good!" he replied. Next he reached under the table and brought out a bag of sand. He started shaking the sand in, and it sifted down into all the spaces left between the rocks and the gravel. Once more he asked the question, "Now is the jar full?"
"No!" the class shouted.
“Excellent!" he said, and finally he grabbed the pitcher of drinking water off the desk and began to pour it in, until the jar was filled to the brim.
Then he looked up at the class and asked, "What is the point of this illustration?"
One eager student, a real go-getter, raised his hand and said, "The point is, no matter how full your schedule is, if you try really hard, you can always fit some more things into it!"
"Nice try," the speaker replied, "but that's not really the point at all. The truth this jar illustration teaches us is simple but powerful: If you don't put the big rocks in first, you'll never get them in at all."
You are busier. But are you more productive?
Simply put, your Big Rocks are your priorities. They are the tasks, projects, or goals you absolutely must accomplish. They are your mission-critical objectives—not a bunch of items on a messy, sprawling to-do list.
People tend to run into three problems when they think about their priorities:
1. They have too many priorities.
2. They do not or cannot differentiate the truly important priorities.
3. For any number of reasons, they let other less-important things get in the way of focusing on what really matters.
30 priorities may make you feel really ambitious, but if you have 30 priorities in fact you really have no priorities: no one can even remember 30 things, never mind focus on them all to get them done.
Getting prioritization right means ensuring that you have a small number of clear goals, and that you are ruthless in focusing your time, energy, and other resources on accomplishing those goals—while at the same time not getting distracted by less important things.
However, it turns out that prioritizing can really hard.
The trick is to set clear goals for your true Big Rocks: the 4-5 (maximum) things you and your organization need to accomplish over the next 12 months. And be honest about how you will measure success, with clear not fuzzy metrics. (As a check, ask yourself “What are the handful of things I’ll get done this year that will make everyone say ‘this was a great year!’ when December comes around?”)
Share your Big Rocks with your team and all your important stakeholders. Be politely firm about turning down or removing yourself from projects or tasks that will not advance your critical priorities. Use your Big Rocks list as a regular guide for where you (and your team) must be focusing the majority of effort and energy.
(Hint: if someone asks you what your Big Rocks are and you can’t answer immediately, you’re not doing this right.)
I feel so strongly about prioritization that I dedicated a whole chapter of my latest book to the topic—and titled the chapter, with deliberate irony, “Hamster on a Wheel.” If you have felt like a hamster sometimes, or if you want to read more on staying focused, I also recommend Greg McKeown’s short and highly readable book Essentialism.]
Good luck, and I’d love to hear how it goes.
