Prioritize Your Rocks Each Day

What is the Jar-Rocks-Pebbles-Sand all about?

The Jar-Rocks-Pebbles-Sand tale is a powerful and visual analogy that speaks volumes about the importance of prioritizing our daily tasks and activities. I.Liv brings the concept to our daily life.

In addition to helping us define and visualize our PRIORITIES, we use the size of the rocks and pebbles to help us QUANTIFY our daily intentions. Let’s step through each key element of this powerful analogy:

The Jar represents our day. Like the jar is fundamentally limited in capacity to hold its contents, our days are fundamentally limited with time. Simply put, we can only get so much done each day! We cannot do it *all* and trying to do so (consciously or subconsciously) sets us up for failure, by design.

The Rocks represent daily priorities and key accomplishments we aim to get done today across all aspects of our life. For example: time with VIP people in our life, maintaining proper health, top work priorities that drive value, personal replenishment activities.

Pebbles, like smaller Rocks, also represent the things that matter and that we want to accomplish, but are less important and/or require less energy. For example: regular work tasks, household tasks, hobbies, and time with friends.

Sand represents the general filler tasks, minutiae we do that don’t drive real value in our life.  For example: watching television, browsing through your favorite social media site, or running small errands.

The analogy, of course, compares the Jar, Rocks, Pebbles, and Sand with how we spend our days to teach us: 

• When we prioritize, the ‘right’ things get done in our day AND there will still be room for the little things! In loading the jar with big Rocks first, even when the jar seems full, we can fit more of the smaller Pebbles. Once no more Pebbles fit, we can still pour in the Sand to fill the gaps.  Even once Rocks are loaded, there is room for Sand to fit into the jar.
• It is easy to fill our days being busy, but it might cost us what matters most.  If we started by filling the jar with Sand, it will take up all the room and there is no way to add the Rocks and Pebbles after. 

How do we use the Jar-Rocks-Pebbles-Sand concept in I.Liv?

The concept and benefits of daily prioritization are easy to understand, yet difficult to master and practice consistently. The I.Liv mobile app brings the powerful, visual analogy of the Jar-Rocks-Pebbles-Sand to life, helping us put its wisdom into action regularly. Let’s work to develop our personal practice of loading our days with Rocks, unlocking boundless benefits in the process.