I received an email the other day which shared a story used by Dr. Stephen Covey (author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) in his seminars. I found the message so important that I thought I would kick off my contributions again with it:
I attended a seminar once where the instructor was lecturing on time. At one point, he said, “Okay, time for a quiz.” He reached under the table and pulled out a wide-mouthed gallon jar. He set it on the table next to a platter with some fist-sized rocks on it.
“How many of these rocks do you think we can get in the jar?” he asked.
After we made our guess, he said, “Okay. Let’s find out.” He set one rock in the jar . . . then another . . . then another. I don’t remember how many he got in, but he got the jar full. Then he asked, “Is this jar full?” Everyone looked at the rocks and said, “Yes.”
Then he said, “Ahhh” He reached under the table and pulled out a bucket of gravel. Then he dumped some gravel in and shook the jar and the gravel went in all the little spaces left by the big rocks. Then he grinned and said once more, “Is the jar full?”
By this time the class was on to him. “Probably not,” we said. “Good!” he replied. He reached under the table and brought out a bucket of sand. He started dumping the sand in and it went into all of the little spaces left by the rocks and the gravel. Once more he looked and said, “Is this jar full?” “No!” we roared.
He said, “Good!” and he grabbed a pitcher of water and began to pour it in. He got something like a quart of water in that jar. Then he said, ” Well, what’s the point?” Somebody said, “Well, there are gaps, and if you work really hard you can always fit some more things into your life.”
“No,” he said, “that’s not the point. The point is this: If you hadn’t put these big rocks in first, would you ever have gotten any of them in?”
So what’s the moral of the story??
We have so many things going on in life that sometimes we need to remember to sit back and prioritize. There are many “big rocks” to consider but we need to make sure to create time for them first. Whatever your highest priorities are, don’t let the little stuff shove things out of the way because time starts getting away from you. It may not seem likely but the little things usually do still manage to get done, regardless of what bigger things stand before it. But the big things (which may be your health, family, home or anything else important to you), may not as easily fall into place if you don’t put forth the effort to make it happen.
