Setting your Boulders and Intentions

A great analogy to help you think about setting targets and prioritising them effectively is to use Stephen Coveys “Boulders” model. Covey wrote one of the most definitive Leadership books ever, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. Often, as part of his motivational speeches, he would bring a large bucket onto the stage. He would put 4 large rocks (aka boulders) into it and the bucket then looks full. But then he pours gravel and pebbles which fills around the boulders and then tops up the bucket with sand. Now it is full!

Now what if you used the same sized bucket but this time you put the sand in first then the gravel/pebbles. As a result, you can only get 2 of the boulders in and the other 2 are left on the side. However, these boulders represent the important things in your role – things that really add value, align to the strategy, make a difference to you, and hence the boulders really need to be in the bucket – not the gravel nor the sand. The gravel can be seen from a work perspective as attending meetings, responding to requests, and maybe from a personal perspective as catching up with friends, etc. The sand can be viewed as things that do not add value eg, admin, washing up etc! We can’t change the size of our bucket but we do need to identify our priorities, i.e our boulders, and make sure they go in our bucket each day, each week, each month, each year. Then let some of the gravel and sand fill in around those boulders, so that you balance the variety of what you are doing, as it’s also not healthy to only focus on your Boulders exclusively! 

Don’t be afraid to reflect and clarify what those boulders are for you over the next few weeks, so that you are comfortable about what you are working towards and, while it may sound obvious, set goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time Specific i.e. SMART. The key is to ensure you are putting your energy and time into the things that really make a difference to you.

Working out what your Boulders are is an exercise that you can do from a work or a home perspective. In fact, given the blurring of lines due to world we are living in at the moment, it may be valuable to look at both together, reflect on what maybe you are not doing as often as you used to do and would like to reset now you are looking forward to 2021. For example, one of my own Boulders is to ensure I continue keep those work and home boundaries more distinct. You could use the template above to define your Rocks and Measures of success. The template proposes a timeline of 6 months, but you can adjust this as you see fit, and may want to give yourself some shorter timeline goals, as well as longer term goals.