First things first

In my previous two posts , I tried to explain 2 useful behaviors to be organized and self driven. Being proactive and thinking the end first.

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Now lets add one more supportive behavior which is identifying most important things. Have you ever heard of the story: "Big Rocks First" ? Well there are some variation on the telling. Let me throw one:

Rocks vs water

One day, a professor starts the class with a jar at hand. Places it on the table. Without a saying, he first takes some stones underneath the table and places them in the jar and asks if the jar is full. The class answers yes. He smiles and takes out the pebbles under the desk. Starts to dump on top of the jar. Since stones were big enough to create some spaces in between, pebbles easily find a way to go down through the jar. That means it was still empty. He asks again if it is full. This time a hesitation falls upon the class. But the majority answers as yes. This time he takes out a handful of sand and pours. Sand was filling up all the small pores. Sudden laugh was all over the class. They were starting to realize the concept. Lastly he shows a glass of water and spills it on top of the stack in the jar. As you can guess, the water was filling up whatever pores left inside.

Now think about the reverse. What if we had, for example, the jar filled up with sand and wanted to put stones inside. No way!

Basically, variation on the size in the story, represents the importance of things in our life. Big stones are the most important things. I find it very meaningful. First things first. Otherwise we can't find place for the important things. Of course what is important, has to be chosen with care. And depends on the person.

At the cross section

Let me tell you another view point. This one, I heard from a course I recently attended. The course was about entrepreneurship.

So imagine four categories where you classify them as being urgent and/or important. I will try to draw a simple graph below.

They say, we have to stay at "Less urgent + Most important" zone. Like this we can have time and place to focus on valuable things. That sounds logical. When something goes urgent with no importance, we can skip it. If it is not urgent and not important, it is one of the small pebbles. Urgent but important as well, may need attention right away. Nothing much to do. But at the end gold mine is, if something is not urgent but important. Where the mindfulness is.