Prioritizing your life: An exercise for purpose & fulfillment
As employees, as partners, and as human beings, it’s difficult to prioritize our day-to-day needs—yet alone plan for long-term priorities (both foreseen and unforeseen). In our mentoring programs, we talk about the importance of prioritization to ensure you are living a purposeful and fulfilling life.
A quick lesson on priorities
Starting with the core values exercise, we begin to see the full picture of a person—what drives them, what matters to them, and the causes to which they would choose to invest their time if they had the complete freedom to do so.
Building on those, we talk to our mentees about the “big rocks” in their lives—the relationships, causes, organizations, and principles that are foundational to their livelihoods, wellbeing, and sense of self. This could include your family, hobbies like self development or travel, religion, giving back to your community.
Then there are the small rocks, things which may enable to big rocks to function or short-term goals you may be trying to achieve. Finally, the particles of sand are the small day-to-day tasks that don’t provide fulfillment, but are sometimes essential to your day-to-day life.
Imagine a five-gallon bucket. If you fill the bucket to the top with big rocks until you can’t fit any more in, the bucket is full. But there is still room for some small rocks. (You can do this exercise yourself, if you want, with a bucket, large rocks, small rocks, and sand.)
If you then pour the small rocks and wiggle the bucket around, they will fill the crevices and the bucket would be considered full. But once again, there is still some empty space between rocks where sand can fit in. Only when you fill it with sand will the bucket be truly full.
What rocks tell us about prioritization
You can’t do this exercise in reverse order. If you fill the bucket with sand—the small, day-to-day tasks that serve no purpose and provide no fulfillment—the bucket will fill up and leave no room for the more important work of your life. For the exercise to work, you must fill the bucket with the big rocks first.
The big rocks are the important parts of your life: your priorities. The small rocks are the things we have to do every day—they are still important and sometimes even necessary, but they are not priorities. The sand is the stuff that fills up our lives: grocery shopping, cleaning, things we don’t want to do but could easily lose ourselves in if we dedicated ourselves to them wholly.
Take some time to prioritize
How do you view priorities?
How have your priorities changed throughout your life? What causes them to change?
How do you want your life to be prioritized?
What are the big rocks in your life?
Are you currently prioritizing your big rocks? If not, how could you “put the big rocks in the bucket first”? How do you think your life would be different?
What small change can you make today to better focus on your big rocks?
—
Continue the conversation in our premier mentoring group, specifically designed to find your path, identify your values, and chart a purposeful and fulfilling path forward. Learn more here.