Table of contents
- The stone carver and the business owner
- The story of the jar and the big rocks
- Where the classic model falls short
- The stone carver's principle
- Leave room in the jar
- The black rock: you
- The revised trade-off matrix
- Your week in practice
- Stepping back: what psychology taught me
- Included in the free plan
- Frequently asked questions
The stone carver and the business owner
In Veiller sur elle (“Watching Over Her”, winner of the 2023 Prix Goncourt), Jean-Baptiste Andrea tells the story of Mimo, a gifted sculptor in a body that is too small, yet able to bring a work of art out of a raw block of marble.
Faced with a raw block, the amateur wants to carve everything at once. The stone carver studies the stone, finds its fault lines and removes material stroke by stroke until the shape emerges. For a small business owner, it is exactly the same.
This novel made me reread a short story I had found in Écoute tes émotions pour te libérer (“Listen to your emotions to set yourself free”) by Dr Marine Colombel: the big rocks metaphor, made famous by Stephen Covey in First Things First.
The story of the jar and the big rocks
A teacher fills a jar with big rocks and asks whether it is full. The students say yes. He adds gravel, which slips between the rocks, then sand, then water. His lesson: if you start with the sand, there is no room left for the big rocks.
- The big rocks: what really matters, such as family, health and long-term projects.
- The gravel: secondary obligations.
- The sand: small tasks, emails and distractions.
Where the classic model falls short
The jar story rests on a false assumption: that the jar has a fixed size and the rocks never change volume. In a small business, that is never true.
- The rocks swell. The strategic project planned for 2 hours takes 6. This is the planning fallacy described by Daniel Kahneman: we almost always underestimate the time complex tasks require (Kahneman, 2011).
- The sand is corrosive. It does not politely slip between the rocks: it takes up room and pushes the rocks out of the jar. Faced with two tasks, people tend to choose the one that feels pressing, even when the other pays off more (Zhu, Yang and Hsee, 2018).
- The jar shrinks. A tired business owner does not have the same focus on Thursday afternoon as on Monday morning.
The stone carver's principle
Do not put a raw block of marble in your calendar. If your big rock is called “Restructure the sales team” or “Rebuild the website”, it is a three-ton block that fits nowhere: it will jam the top of the jar, and everything else will turn into an emergency.
Be Mimo: one precise chisel stroke to free a single usable piece. David Allen calls this the “next physical action”: the smallest concrete step that moves the project forward (Allen, 2001).
- Not “Hiring strategy”, but “Write the job description for role X (45 min)”.
- Not “Restructure the sales team”, but “Write the team's call script (1 hr)”.
A well-carved rock always fits without overflowing. And a precisely scheduled task stops taking up our thoughts, even before it is done (Masicampo and Baumeister, 2011). To go further, see why breaking down tasks boosts productivity.
Leave room in the jar
If you fill the jar to the brim with four or five big rocks on Monday, the smallest grain of sand (a client call, a supplier problem) will make it overflow.
Put in only two big rocks a week, no more. The rest of the space is deliberately left empty. That space is not wasted time: it is where the gravel and sand will settle without crushing your priorities or eating into your personal time.
The black rock: you
In the classic metaphor, time for yourself is just one rock among others. Yet if the business owner breaks down, it is the jar that breaks.
The first rock to put in the empty jar is your recovery time: the “black rock”. This slot is not negotiable and does not move. The company's projects are arranged around it. Truly detaching from work, relaxing and doing something else helps recharge your resources (Sonnentag and Fritz, 2007).
The revised trade-off matrix
| What goes in the jar | Classic mistake | Practical small-business approach |
|---|---|---|
| The black rock (personal time) | Put in last, if there is room | Put in first, in the empty jar |
| The big rocks (long-term projects) | Too big and vague | Carved into actions of less than 90 minutes |
| The gravel (obligations) | Handled continuously | Grouped in a fixed time slot |
| The sand (interruptions, emails) | Endured as it comes | Absorbed by the empty space in the jar |
To sort what remains between urgent and important, the Eisenhower matrix takes over.
Your week in practice
- Place the black rock. On Monday morning, block your recovery time first.
- Choose two big rocks. Carve them into actions of less than 90 minutes and give each one a slot.
- Group the gravel. Set a fixed time slot for routine obligations and delegate whatever can be delegated.
- Leave the rest empty. That is your margin for the sand.
- Review on Friday. Did the rocks swell? Did the sand overflow? Adjust the size of your rocks the following week.
Stepping back: what psychology taught me
I have always been interested in psychology as a way to better understand the world and other people. As soon as you work in a team, you need to step back to see the whole picture.
A stone carver does not spend the day sweeping the workshop floor. He sweeps to keep his space clean, but his day only has meaning if a chisel stroke has moved his work forward. The sand in our days is that dust: it has to be dealt with, without letting it take the place of the work.
And like every carver, he looks after his hands and his tools: without them, there is no work. That is the whole point of the black rock.
Included in the free plan
In FluidOps, the Eisenhower matrix and the other optimization tools are available without any paid add-on. You can then track your big rocks on a Kanban board, schedule them in a Gantt chart and sync them with Google Calendar or Outlook.
The free plan costs €0 per month, the Individual plan €12 per month or €120 per year, and the Enterprise plan starts at €12 per seat per month, billed annually. Full details are on the pricing page.
Frequently asked questions
What is the big rocks method?
It is a prioritization method popularized by Stephen Covey: you put the truly important tasks in your calendar first, then fill the remaining time with everything else.
How many big rocks should you plan per week?
Two, no more, each broken down into actions of less than 90 minutes. The rest of the week stays deliberately free to absorb the unexpected.
What is the “black rock”?
It is your recovery time. You put it in your calendar first, and the company's projects are arranged around it.
Why do projects take longer than planned?
It is the planning fallacy described by Daniel Kahneman: we almost always underestimate the time complex tasks require.
Is the Eisenhower matrix available in FluidOps?
Yes, it is one of the optimization tools included in the free plan.
Sources
- Allen, D. (2001). Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. Penguin Books.
- Andrea, J.-B. (2023). Veiller sur elle. L'Iconoclaste.
- Colombel, M. Écoute tes émotions pour te libérer.
- Covey, S. R., Merrill, A. R., & Merrill, R. R. (1994). First things first. Simon & Schuster.
- Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
- Masicampo, E. J., & Baumeister, R. F. (2011). Consider it done! Plan making can eliminate the cognitive effects of unfulfilled goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(4), 667-683. doi:10.1037/a0024192
- Sonnentag, S., & Fritz, C. (2007). The Recovery Experience Questionnaire: Development and validation of a measure for assessing recuperation and unwinding from work. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 12(3), 204-221. doi:10.1037/1076-8998.12.3.204
- Zhu, M., Yang, Y., & Hsee, C. K. (2018). The mere urgency effect. Journal of Consumer Research, 45(3), 673-690. doi:10.1093/jcr/ucy008