What it reveals about the life you're actually choosing
Your calendar doesn't reveal your intentions.
It reveals your priorities.
Stephen Covey’s ‘big rocks’ principle explains why…
Imagine a jar representing your limited time. If you fill it first with sand and small pebbles, there won’t be enough room for the big rocks. But when you put the big rocks in first, the smaller things can fit around them.
Our calendars work the same way.
The sand and pebbles are the small, urgent things that quickly fill our days: emails, errands, non-stop meetings, notifications, and requests. Left unchecked, they crowd out the things that matter most.
It shows up on both sides of one unavoidable tension:
Work AND Home
At work, the big rocks are often the activities that create the most meaningful long-term value but rarely feel urgent.
For me, that includes writing, investing in client relationships, and continually improving my keynotes. These are essential to the future of my business, but they can easily get pushed aside by calls, meetings, and email.
That’s why each big-rock activity has a weekly recurring block on my calendar. These appointments move around week to week depending on travel and speaking, but they don’t get deleted.
I’ve also created boundaries around meetings and calls. Mondays are generally meeting days, and my online calendar only offers specific windows each week for outside calls. That keeps meetings from scattering themselves across every day and consuming the time I need to do my best work.
But the big-rock principle matters just as much at home.
Every Sunday, I look at the week ahead and schedule my runs and workouts. I know how important they are to my health and energy, but if I wait to exercise “when I have time,” it rarely happens.
At the beginning of each month, I block off a fishing day with friends. Scheduling it ahead of time means it actually happens.
Some big rocks require even more planning. Years ago, our family decided to spend an extended season living in New Zealand. That experience didn’t happen because we unexpectedly discovered several empty months on the calendar. We planned it years in advance and made the decisions and sacrifices required to protect it. It became one of the defining experiences of our family’s life together.
The lesson is simple:
Your calendar doesn’t reveal what you say matters. It reveals what you have decided matters.
Managing Work AND Home isn’t about finding a perfect 50/50 balance. Different seasons will require different levels of energy and attention.
The goal is to ensure that meaningful work and a meaningful life aren’t forced to compete for whatever time happens to be left over.
So, take a look at your calendar.
What are the biggest rocks in your work right now?
What are the biggest rocks in your life beyond work?
And most importantly, where have you made room for them?
Because if something genuinely matters, it deserves more than good intentions.
It deserves a place on your calendar.
The “big rocks first” concept is credited to Stephen R. Covey, A. Roger Merrill, and Rebecca R. Merrill in First Things First (1994).
Work AND Home is one of five tensions at the centre of my upcoming book, Winning Culture: The 5 Tensions to Manage for Excellence and Engagement.
The first chapter is free now:
Winning Culture – out November 16th.
timarnold.ca/winning-culture
