The Big Rocks

We always have 3 types of tasks – big rocks, small rocks, and minutiae.

The minutiae are the easiest to get done. We get checks on our checklist for sending our email, following up on something, and cleaning something else. We face the resistance when we do minutiae but only at about 20% of it’s strength. The resistance doesn’t mind the minutiae much.

The small rocks are those tasks that need a bit of thought and effort. They’re more or less in our comfort zone. We need to get these done and we face the resistance at about 50% of it’s strength.

The big rocks are where we face the resistance at full strength. The resistance conjures up excuses the moment we think about them. At our end, we KNOW it is these tasks we must tackle. But, the resistance convinces us that it is better to direct our energies into the small rocks and minutiae because we know we’ll get those done. There are no guarantees we’ll get the big rocks done. The resistance paints these frightening prospects – most of them involve us unable to deal with the debilitating failure.

You know what the big rocks are. You have the big rocks in order for your day, your week, your month, and perhaps even for your year. There aren’t resistance or procrastination hacks that can help us get through to our big rocks. We just have to make the decision to not tolerate the resistance and procrastination. We only get what we tolerate.

Our efforts at plugging away on our big rocks may not work. We just need to suck it up and get on with it.