If you’re feeling stressed out or “discombobulated,” then the following story may help you quickly move out of that state. I heard it in delivered by a British man at a conference in Toronto.

An instructor stands in front of her class on their very first day of _______ class (fill in the blank with your favorite subject). The students are all bright-eyed and bushy tailed.
She says, “I know you’re expecting me to talk to you about _______ since that’s the title of this class. But I’m going to teach you the most important lesson, something that will help you in school and in life.”

She brings out a large glass jar and places it on the table in front of her, and proceeds to put several large rocks in it until she can’t put any more in.

Then she asks the class, “Can anything else fit in this jar?”

The class says, “No, those rocks fill the jar.” The instructor then reaches down, lifts a jar filled with smaller rocks, and puts them in the jar with the big rocks, filling it to the top.

She asks, “Can anything else fit in this jar?” The class says, a bit more tentatively now, “No, the little rocks have filled the jar completely.”

The instructor then reaches down and grabs a jar filled with sand and proceeds to add sand to the jar. She shakes the big jar and continues to pour more sand into the jar until she can get no more sand in the jar.

When asked if any more things can fit in the jar, the class yells, “No way! Now it’s really full!”

The instructor then adds water to the jar. She stands back from the jar and asks, “What’s the moral of this story?”

One bright student yells out, “You can always fit in more stuff into your day. You can always find room.”

The professor shakes her head and says, “The moral of the story is you need to find and put your big rocks in first. If the sand, the water, and the smaller rocks went in first, there would not have been room for the big rocks.”

We need to identify our “Big Rocks” and make sure we focus on those. Otherwise, our jars—our LIVES—are filled up with little rocks and sand, and we never get around to those big rocks.

In business, our “Big Rocks” are our objectives. Create no more than 3-5 each quarter and then focus, focus, focus.

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This entry was posted on Friday, November 6th, 2009 at 1:54 pm and is filed under Personal Development, Solo Entrepreneur Challenges, Solo Entrepreneur Work Habits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.