Last week I wrote about the Pickle Jar Theory of time management, which is a riff on Stephen Covey’s "Big Rocks" theory.  It involves labeling all you have to do as a rock, a pebble, sand or water, the rocks being the highest priority tasks and the water being the lowest priority.  I mentioned it to my friend Mark on Sunday and he pointed out that people don't necessarily know what their rocks are, or how to tell them from the sand. 

Hence, the next few posts will define those terms as I see them, which is by no means the only interpretation, and correlate them to Covey’s quadrant theory.

Rocks
Rocks are things to do related to your ongoing projects and big picture goals.  Rocks have potential for very high payoff, yet not taking them on may have no discernable downside (lack of urgency).  I would call rocks Quadrant II items.  For project rocks, choose one or more tasks that will further the project along, a la GTD next actions.

Goal rocks are similar, but usually they’re more inner-directed.  Say you have a goal of being promoted to a certain job in two years.  What can you start doing now to reach that goal?  Maybe it’s passing a proficiency exam (rock: get the study guide).  Maybe it’s getting certain experience (rock: ask supervisor for project managing assignment).  Maybe it’s transferring to a different part of the company (rock: find someone over there to do an informational interview with).

Obviously, you can’t shove all the rocks you have into the jar at once.  Rock selection needs to be balanced by deadlines (external and internal) and available time.

Tomorrow: Pebbles.