Introduction
If your workdays fill up too fast, you're clearly not alone.
The good news is that it's absolutely possible to leave work at 5 or 6 PM and still hit your goals.
To get there, we'll rely on a simple and brutally effective metaphor: the rocks story.
An overfull day is not a motivation problem
In a workday, there is a lot to fit in.
Meetings with leadership, with your team, with clients. Preparing those meetings, the follow-up actions. Email, internal chat messages, writing documents, commuting, sometimes hiring interviews.
And if you work for yourself, it's the same thing in a different form: prospecting, admin, invoice follow-up, client relations.
So the problem is not lack of willpower.
The problem is the order in which you do things.
The jar metaphor
Imagine a large empty jar in front of you.
Next to it, three piles:
- a pile of sand
- a pile of pebbles
- a pile of big rocks
Your goal is simple: fit everything in the jar without overflowing.
If you start by pouring the sand, then the pebbles, you might not have enough room left for the big rocks.
But if you start with the big rocks, the pebbles will slide into the gaps, and the sand will fill the remaining space.
This metaphor applies perfectly to your work time.
What rocks, pebbles, and sand represent
The jar is your week.
- Big rocks are the truly important tasks
- Pebbles are medium-importance tasks
- Sand is all the small everyday tasks
The lesson is simple:
if you start with sand, it becomes almost impossible to accomplish your big rocks.
That's why it's crucial to identify what truly matters before getting swallowed by urgency.
How to identify your big rocks
To identify a big rock, you only need to ask one question:
If I complete this task, will I feel satisfied at the end of the week?
It doesn't have to be long, urgent, or complicated.
It's a task that, once done, creates a real sense of progress.
A difficult call with a client can be a big rock, even if it only takes five minutes.
What matters is the impact on your balance and on your goals.
The idea is to define three big rocks max per week.
No more.
This principle is what makes it much clearer to prioritize your tasks.
Prioritizing also means giving things up
Identifying your big rocks means accepting that you won't do everything.
Choosing what's essential means deciding to leave some pebbles aside... and a lot of sand.
A very effective way to make that happen is setting a time constraint.
For example, deciding the workday ends at 5 PM because you need to pick up your kids or go exercise.
Without constraints, work expands.
With a clear limit, you naturally focus on what matters.
Focus on what matters, like the ER
Think about an ER.
When a patient arrives, doctors don't start with secondary details. They first focus on vital organs.
At work, it's the same.
Dropping the tyranny of urgency helps you refocus on what actually makes a difference. And this logic is the basis of the compass system, which turns your priorities into concrete goals.
Conclusion
The rocks story reminds you of one essential thing:
the problem is not lack of time, but the order in which you use it.
Starting with big rocks gives you a real chance to move forward on what matters.
Everything else will find its place around it.
Go further
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