Do Your Big Rocks Fit on a Post-It?
The idea of big rocks is simple: If you were on the beach with a pail and you filled it up with sand and insignificant pebbles, you wouldn’t have room for cool beach rocks. If you put your big rocks in first, you will likely have space left over for some smaller stones and sand to fit as well.
Big rocks are the day’s most important tasks. They need to be completed. The sand represents time wasters or things that don’t aide productivity and the pebbles are more significant but not time sensitive or red flags.
It takes some practice to determine how many of each will fit in your daily pail. The 99 Per Cent recommends this interesting experiment: take a 3X3 Post-It note and write down your big rocks first. Then fill up the rest of the paper (one side only!) with other things that will accentuate your day but could also be done tomorrow. You should feel good about leaving work when that list is completed at the end of the day.
In their post, Mark McGuiness says he used to use digital to-do lists but they allowed him too much flexibility with the limitless space for tasks and he wound up with a wish list instead of a daily plan. “The solution turned out to be counterintuitive: I got more done by making my to-do list shorter.”
We offer an InviCoach Expander session to help you identify your priorities at the beginning of each day in a way that gets a lot accomplished instead of checking your email to see what’s on fire from last night and getting to important things later.
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Image source: Pixabay
