In my 1st (and maybe only) attempt to get a little control of my schedule I am examining the principal of rocks.
Do you know that one? The one that talks about rocks. big ones, little ones. jars full of them.
Stephen Covey first introduced me to the idea of “First Things First”, or as i call it big rocks first.
Imagine there is a jar and the jar represents your life. It is big and wide and has tons of room. You look at the jar and dream of the possibilities. My jar holds so much promise. Opportunities, lives to impact, relationships to be had, delicious coffee to drink. oooh!! I get excited just thinking about the jar. big, empty and inviting. that is how i see my jar!
Imagine sitting beside the jar hundreds of rocks. All shapes and sizes. smooth, rough, jagged and pretty. lots and lots of rocks. The rocks represent all the things you need to do. Fun tasks, hard tasks, easy tasks, pretty tasks, ugly tasks, ignored tasks, exciting tasks, lots and lots of tasks. My rocks look like calls to return, emails to answer, decisions to make, conversations to have, exercise to do, lunches to eat, bibles to read, songs to sing, you get the general idea…
My general habit has just been to dump all those rocks into my jar and go on my merry way. That is, until my way wasn’t so merry anymore. It was a jar full of rocks and it was heavy and overflowing and could no longer fit any more rocks. and it made me grumpy. and mildly nuts. (ok-maybe more than mildly…) And then came the brick wall and somehow my jar shattered and all my rocks were on the floor. read about that here.
The basic rock principal is that you need to fill your jar with big rocks first. The big, important, must-do rocks go in the jar first. Then we can add all the smaller little rocks and pebbles. Seems to make sense, right?
So now I am examining all my rocks sitting here in this pile and figuring out what goes where. What are the big rocks that need to go in first? What are the little pebbles that will go in only after the big ones are taken care of?
What are YOUR big rocks? What do you think should go in the jar first?
