Knowledge Base · Time
What are "big rocks" in time management?
Big rocks are your most important priorities: the strategic, high-value tasks that match your goals and purpose. The image comes from a professor filling a jar with large rocks first, then pebbles, sand and water. Pebbles are smaller necessary tasks, sand is filler and distraction, and water is everything else. Put the rocks in first, or they never fit.
The story, often attributed to Stephen Covey in the book's telling, runs like this. A professor fills a glass jar with large rocks and asks if it is full. He then pours in pebbles, which settle between the rocks, then sand, which fills the remaining gaps, then water. His point was about order, not capacity.
- Big rocks: your most important priorities, the strategic and high-value work tied to your goals.
- Pebbles: the smaller, necessary tasks of daily life and work.
- Sand: filler, distractions and low-value activities.
- Water: everything else that can fit around the important things.
Applied to a calendar, the lesson is to name your rocks before the week fills up. The book asks leaders to be clear about the three to five most important things to accomplish this quarter, this month and this week. Without that clarity, days fill with other people's priorities and with tasks that are urgent but not important.
Naming the rocks is only half of it. They then need actual blocks on the calendar, defended like appointments, which is the subject of the time blocking advice in the same chapter.
“if you don’t put the big rocks in the jar first, you’ll never get them in at all.”
Continuous Improvement in the Workplace, Ch. 11
Related questions
- What is the Eisenhower Matrix, and how do I use it?
- How do I stop being reactive and make my calendar strategic?
- How do I prioritise when everything feels urgent?
Source: Continuous Improvement in the Workplace, Ch. 11 (Time Management).