How to Rock Your Goals and Be More Productive

I'll never forget watching a video lecture called "Big Rocks" during my training at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. The video focused on time management and prioritizing our tasks throughout the day.

The idea was that we tend to fill up our day (represented by an empty mason jar) with getting all the little, piddly-ass things done on our to-do list. Insignificant tasks (little rocks) that keep us busy, but don't move us closer to our goals and dreams (big rocks). But those larger goals seem like monstrous tasks, ones we can't even begin to think about until we get all those little things out of the way...

For example: I have been wanting to write a blog post for a week and a half now. Have I? Nope. Not until tonight. I wanted to get all the other little things out of the way first, so that I could focus entirely on writing a good blog post.

A week and a half later, the "little things" keep making their way to the top of my to-do list, despite their true insignificance and my desire to sit down and write. I let things like cleaning the apartment, food preparation, doing my nails, grocery shopping, setting up social media outreach for the week, catching up on emails, etc., rise to the top of my list and get ahead of the things I really want to be doing. The tasks that will actually propel me closer (ok, I'm talking like "baby steps" closer) to my goals and dreams.

Which are, by-the-way, to be a writer/self-empowerment guru. I'll be honest.


Back to the video lecture. The instructor filled up the mason jar with a whole bunch of pebbles (the small, busy-work tasks). The jar was full and there was no space for the big rocks (larger tasks and goals). #storyofmylife

But then he emptied the jar and began again. This time he started by placing three big rocks in the jar. They fit fine. He then poured all the little rocks into the jar, which fit snugly in the spaces not filled by the big rocks.

To someone (me) who is blazingly awful at all-things spacial/mathematic/scientific, that visual was amazeballs.

Think about it: So often we prioritize busy-work tasks and small to-do's over the "big stuff" because we assume they are easier to finish and accomplish. But they are never-ending and have a way of continuously filling up our mind...like the way popcorn fills up the bag while being cooked in the microwave. Our bigger tasks, the ones that seem too beastly or "time-consuming" to finish, are pushed further and further down our to-do list.

After a while though, we begin to tread water. We're going no where. If we don't tackle those bigger tasks, they'll just sit there and collect dust. No one likes dusty goals.

Here's the take-away:

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1) The sky won't fall if we don't get allllllll of those little tasks done in one day.
2) We can still do those little things after we finish a big rock.
3) Sometimes after a larger task is finished, you will feel so relieved and accomplished that the little things don't seem as important any more.

I find it helpful to write down everything (big and small) on a list. Then categorize the tasks by "big rocks" and "little rocks." Choose one big rock and two or three little rocks to accomplish each day. For me this was writing a blog post (huzzah!), exercising, laundry and food prep for the rest of the week. My clothes still got washed even though I was bound and determined to finish the "big rock" of writing a post.

Because in the end, we tend to spend more time thinking about those big tasks for longer than it actually takes to do them. I spent a week and a half thinking about writing and here I did it in a 26-minute wash cycle.