I guess today he’d include text messages, Facebook and Twitter. He says these rocks represent the day-to-day time demands such as meetings, emails, distractions, etc. One of my favorite illustrations is when Covey takes a large jar and begins by filling it up about halfway with very small rocks. Many of you may have heard Stephen Covey talk about time and priority management.
Here are three tools that can help you make progress with setting your rocks: Soon, you will chip away at these seemingly unobtainable goals and get to where you want to be. The easiest way to improve this habit is to set quarterly rocks for yourself and then pick three things each day that, when completed, will help you towards accomplishing one of these rocks. This is such a simple concept, yet it’s very difficult for many to master. The difference is that highly productive people make sure that if something doesn’t get done, it’s because it was less important. What EOS and other planning methodologies stress is that your rocks are the most important things to get done and what you need to hold yourself accountable to. People often say that they are “too busy.” What that often means is that they are too busy focusing on the water, sand and pebbles, so they struggle to fit in the time to focus on their big rocks. Here is a great video depicting this concept. However, if you try and do it in reverse or out of order, then the big things will get left out. Things like watching TV, grocery shopping, paying bills, running errands, etc.īy focusing on the big rocks first, you’re still able to fit many of these other things in. The sand and water represent the smaller things that aren’t as significant, but tend to fill our time up quickly. The pebbles represent other things that give our lives meaning – job, house, friendships, hobbies, etc.
If you take actual physical rocks and put them in a glass jar, you’ll find that there’s space left over for smaller objects like pebbles, sand and water. Rocks are analogous to the big, important things in our life that give it meaning: family, partner, health, goals and dreams. The choice to call them “rocks” instead of “goals,” is intentional and has a very specific meaning that comes from a Stephen Covey analogy. It’s exciting to see everyone in 2017 planning mode, setting their business and personal goals for the year.Įach quarter, our team gets together and sets “rocks” to complete over the next 90 days as part of a planning system we use called the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS).