Management by Prioritising

A Time Management guru stood in front of a group of hyper-achievers and said, “Okay, time for quiz.” He pulled out a wide-mouthed jar and set it on a table in front of him.

Then he produced about a dozen fist-sized stones and placed them, one at a time carefully, in the jar. When no more rocks would fit inside the jar, he asked, “Is this jar full?”

Every one in the class said, “Yes.”

“Really?” he said reaching under the table and pulling out a bucket of gravel. Then he dumped some gravel in and shook the jar causing pieces of gravel to work themselves down into the spaces between the big rocks. He smiled and asked the group once more, “Is this jar full?”

By this time the class was onto him, “Probably not,” one of them answered.

“Good!” he replied and reached under the table once again. This time, he brought out a bucket of sand and sprinkled it in and around the spaces left between the rocks and the gravel. Once more, he asked the question “Is this jar full?”

“No!” the class chorused. “Good!” he grabbed a pitcher of water and began to pour it in until the jar was filled to the brim.

Then he looked up at the class and asked, “What is the point of this illustration?”

One student raised his hand and said, “The point is, no matter how full your schedule is, if you try really hard, you can always fit some more things in it!”

“No,” replied the speaker, “that’s not the point. The truth this illustration teaches us is: If you don’t put the big rocks in first, you’ll never get them in at all.”

In life also, there are urgent and not-so-urgent matters; there are matters that are important and those that are not. If we do not know how to distinguish between them, we cannot achieve better results in less time.