569 – Big Rocks
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Welcome to the How of Business with your host, Henry Lopez, the podcast that helps you start, run, and grow your small business. And now, here is your host.

This is Henry Lopez and welcome to the Howa Business Podcast. On this episode, I'm going to highlight and introduce, for those of you who maybe are not familiar with it, a very powerful time management concept called Big Rocks. If you've ever felt like you're always busy and not making meaningful progress, you're always working your to-do list,

then I think this episode might help. This is one component of time management techniques that I think combined can help us as small business owners be that much more effective and productive and efficient and actually grow a small business to be profitable and allow us that freedom of time that I think is so important for us as small business owners. Learning how to identify, in this case,

what I'm looking at as weekly big rocks will definitely help you get to what matters most because you're going to be purposeful about what you work on next or certainly what you focus on and allocate time to on a weekly basis and not just what's next on your list.

So that you don't end up at the end of the week feeling like you were busy, extremely busy, exhausted, overwhelmed. But did you make any progress on the most important things? Did you move the needle? Did you really work on the things that moved the business forward or that solved the big problems? That's the big question. And often we come to business ownership by being great salespeople.

task managers, by being people that get everything done on the list. The reality is, though, that as small business owners, for most of us, there's a lot of chaos. And we could work seven days a week, 24 hours a day, and not get through the entire to-do list. There's always something getting added to the to-do list, not to mention the day-to-day fires that come up, the challenges of a business that come up every day that we cannot anticipate. So

all of that can create tremendous chaos, but we have to manage where we focus our time so that we get the most important things done on a weekly basis.

Now, this concept of the big rocks originally comes from the teachings of the late Stephen Covey. He was the author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And his time management metaphor, this concept of big rocks or the metaphor of big rocks has really become a staple for entrepreneurs and leaders and other time management experts. And I love using it because I think it's a great metaphor and a great way to think about how to prioritize your tasks.

Here's a quote related to this from Stephen Covey. I think that summarizes it beautifully because part of what goes hand in hand with big rocks is time blocking. You might call it something else, but allocating and protecting as much as possible your

blocks of time on your schedule. And in my case, what works for me are one hour blocks. One or two of those a week is where you would start. Don't try to overdo it. But during those blocks of time, it's when you're most productive. So some people it's in the morning. For me, it tends to be more in the evening and that you're least likely to be interrupted. And so often in the morning before everybody comes into the office, let's say, or into the shop, that sometimes is the best time for small business owners.

But it's during those allocated periods of time that you will work on your big rocks. Now, often that's not enough time to get it all done, but it's enough time to get considerable work done that is the deep work, the work on projects, on tasks, on big rocks that require the best of you, that require you to do some thinking, that require you to be concentrated and not have interruptions.

So let's further understand this metaphor of big rocks. Picture this, a jar, ideally a glass jar that you can see through, or some sort of a vessel, a vase made out of a glass. And that jar is filled with rocks and pebbles and sand.

And those rocks and pebbles and sands represent everything that you have to get done. With the rocks being the most important things that you have to get done. The sand being the noise, everything else, all the other little things on your to-do list. And the pebbles as well. And maybe some of those are fire. So they become big rocks for the day or for the moment. But the big rocks are the things that if we get those things done, we improve the business. We move the business forward.

We make those changes or implement those projects or make those shifts in our business that are critical to us achieving or continuing to achieve profitability, that lead us to further revenues, that help us significantly reduce expenses. Those are the big projects, the things that us as the CEO of the business, the business owner, need to be focused on, the things that I as the owner add the

the most value through performing. Those are what we call big rocks. Now, typically what we do, continuing with the metaphor, is we just put everything into the vase, everything into the glass jar. And if you do that, actually physically, if you try it as an experiment, you run out of room.

and hence why we never get everything done on our to-do list. That's just the reality about all that we have to get done as a business owner. So the idea is to place your big rocks first into that jar, into that vessel, that again represents the total amount of time that you have available in a week, even if you're working 80 hours a week or whatever you might be working.

that constraint is real. We only have so many hours in the day, so many hours in the week. And even if we were to try to work 24 hours a day, there's a limit. There's a reality there. So if we place the rocks first, and this ties back to the point I made

about allocating time throughout the week to work on those big rocks, then it's much more likely that I'm going to get to them or at least get some time dedicated to completing those big rocks. So that's the idea is big rocks should be no more than two to five of the most important tasks

tasks or parts of a project, or it could be an entire project if it's small enough, that you want to accomplish this week. So that is the definition of it. Think of it that way. You place the rocks first and then everything else around it. Your to-do list in this way gets prioritized. You're not going to go to what's next on the list.

or what might be easiest, or what's more fun to do, although that's certainly something we all do, I make sure that I am going to get to and allocate enough time to get to the most important things, the big rocks. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today.

I'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile.com slash switch.

Here's another quote from Cubby. It's a paraphrase quote about this as well that I think applies here. Quote, if you don't schedule your big rocks, your life will fill up with gravel. I think about that. I think I could expand that to your life will fill up with sand and gravel. In other words, every week you're going to feel extremely busy, exhausted, but what have you gotten done that really moves the needle? And if that's you, then I implore you to try to apply this approach of prioritizing

prioritizing what's most important by defining your big rocks. And those are two to five at the most. If you've got 10 big rocks on your list, it's probably too much. If you've got one, sometimes that makes sense. That's the only thing that really is most important that week. There might be some weeks when you have no big rocks. I doubt it. But certainly the thing is to limit it to what really are the most important.

things. If you've got too many big rocks, 10, 15, you need to reprioritize it. Maybe you've got too many things going on. You need to focus so that you can actually do something well and to make progress as opposed to trying to spin too many plates. Now,

when do we plan for, when do we schedule these big rocks? Well, depending on how your week works and how your schedule works, I've seen people do it on Sunday night. I like to do it Monday morning, but you must have some time to plan. And it doesn't take that long once you start doing this on a regular basis. This might take five minutes. This might take 15 minutes, but you're looking at your week. What commitments do I have, both personal and business? What's already on my calendar?

Hopefully, as I get more disciplined with this, I have a recurring block, recurring time blocks on my schedule when I work on the big rocks or when I do deep work. So that's already there. But I may have to adjust because I may have a sales call or a meeting or whatever the case might be, or I might be traveling. So I'm adjusting my week and seeing what's coming up, what's already on the schedule. And when am I going to work on the big rocks? And of course, at that time, I'm also identifying what is most important.

Now, of course, the weak is going to then come at you and dictate that things might have to change. I get that. But I will tell you that if you're operating in the mode of you just wait to see what comes at you every day, you are operating in chaos and you're allowing that to happen.

Now, certainly, there are periods of times in our business when chaos is inevitable, often during startup where you're trying to do everything and you have to do everything. But if that continues, if your environment, if your business environment is always chaotic, I would submit to you that something is wrong.

wrong. And it might well be you that are fueling that environment because if we stop and we're honest with ourselves, it feeds our ego to be that person that has to make all the decisions, right? We love being the firefighter in chief, as I say. We got here in part because that's who we are. We love to charge in and make decisions. We love to come in and take over.

But if we're running our business the right way, especially if we have people that are working on our team, then we should be delegating and we should have systems in place and we should have some level of organization. I hear you if you tell me that your business just doesn't allow for that. Okay. But I would challenge you that in my experience, the vast majority of businesses do not need to operate that way.

And I will also ask you to think about that the only path to success I've been able to see from my own experience and from my clients is that you take a methodical, organized, planned approach. That you're working on a weekly basis on what's most important. Not every hour of the day, but enough hours in your week that you get the most important things done. The big rocks.

Another tip is what is a big rock? In other words, how do we define it? Well, a project, the entire project isn't usually a big rock. You want to get more granular. So the definition I like is a big rock is a task or a project that you can complete in anywhere from 30 minutes to maybe two hours at most.

Another quote here from Stephen Covey that I love, quote, schedule the big rocks, don't sort gravel. Let me say that again. Schedule the big rocks, don't sort gravel. What he's saying there, I think, is you want to focus on allocating time, those time blocks to work on your big rocks. Remember, that's maybe two to five big rocks. And that's what's most important as opposed to continuously working down through your to-do list, trying to get everything done.

And I covered this subject in a lot more depth on episode 434. I called that episode Deep Work based on a book by Cal Newport called Deep Work. And it's about this concept of how important it is to allocate time to do deep work, to work on our big rocks. And so the idea is that your calendar has to allow for time to

when you are most productive and least likely to be interrupted so that you can work on your big rocks. Remember, this isn't about doing more. This is about doing what matters most, which therefore will have a bigger impact. The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities. And that again comes from Stephen Covey.

So here's what I would ask you to do. I want you to start small. Start small as far as time blocking. If you've never done this before, if you can't imagine that this is even possible, start with one hour a week. That's all I'm asking you to do. One hour a week on your calendar at a time of the day when you are at your best and or when you're least likely to be interrupted.

And what you do in that hour is you work on your big rocks. So the second call to action here is to define those big rocks every week. Do a little bit of planning, Monday morning, Sunday night, whatever works for you, and then execute on that. Those are your top priorities on your to-do list.

and respect that time block, it is not when you're going to get caught up. It is not when you're going to go through your emails and see what's urgent. In fact, you're going to shut down email. You're going to turn off all of the alerts. You're going to put your phone on silence, and you're going to close your door, and you're going to focus on making progress on the big rocks.

If you have any ideas on how maybe you do this now or tips and thoughts or any questions on this, I invite you to reach out. You can either comment on the show notes page for this episode or submit a comment or question through the contacts page at thehowabusiness.com.

This is Henry Lopez, and thanks for listening to this episode of The How of Business. I release new episodes every week, and you can find a podcast anywhere you listen to podcasts, including The How of Business YouTube channel and at my website, thehowofbusiness.com. Thanks for listening. Thank you for listening to The How of Business. For more information about our coaching programs, online courses, show notes pages, links, and other resources, please visit thehowofbusiness.com.