The Big Rocks

By Thomas Ott

I’m back in Silicon Valley for a few days to attend our yearly Sales Engineering (SE) training. It’s a great way for the growing SE team to get together and talk shop. I find these yearly meetings very useful but they’re hectic. Fun but hectic.

I love being on California. It’s such a wonderful place for the outdoors and ‘chilling’ in cities like San Francisco. I’m a big fan of the SoCal desert areas and Joshua Tree is one of my favorite destinations. Ever since I life in Albuquerque, I’ve had a pull toward the mountains and deserts. Yet it seems that I won’t get away this time for much needed fun out in those mountains.

There’s always time for work, but never enough time for yourself or loved ones.

I pondered this as I was flying 36,000 feet over the United States and it reminded me of Franklin Covey. I’ve learned that YOU have to make the time for yourself. You have to make it point to go work out, hike and have fun. It’s those “Big Rocks” that Franklin Covey once wrote about. The Big Rocks are those important things in your life. Family, love, personal care/growth, etc/ Put those in a jar and you’ll see that space is still there. Then you add sand, and the sand fills everything up. The sand is your work life. There’s always time for work, but never enough time for yourself or loved ones. 

…noise robs you of your precious time.

It’s easy to lose track of this habit and I’ve been guilty of this for sure. Still, it’s not a bad thing to lose your way from time to time, the real bad thing is not to course correct. 

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To achieve this I plan on digging out my old 7 Habits for Highly Effective People and give it another read through. I’m going to focus on all the habits but I’ll spend time revamping my Google Tasks to accommodate something called “[quadrants]."(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_7_Habits_of_Highly_Effective_People) Covey broke down tasks into four sub categories and when you do that you identify the tasks that are noise.  This is important because noise robs you of your precious time. Spend more time on important tasks and don’t do the unimportant ones.

What legacy am I leaving behind?

Once you do that you can free up your time to focus on those Big Rocks, and that’s what’s important. In the end, it’s those Big Rocks are the legacy you leave behind. What legacy am I leaving behind? What legacy are YOU leaving behind.