How to manage your To-do list with Covey's Jar
Am I the biggest geek ever if I admit I love a list? If I am then I’m joined by millions of others as despite many approaches to getting all our ‘stuff’ done the to-do list prevails year after year.
The to-do list can help us take pressure off the memory section of our brains simply by committing to paper (or in digital form if you’re not spurred on by your love of stationery too). For years I have created long lists of everything I need to do, but I’m not certain it’s got me any closer to feeling like I’ve actually achieved everything I need to do. But day after day I’d return to my list, write more things on, cross some out – it was like Groundhog Day. I’d work hard all day only to find my list hadn’t diminished so would start the next day with a mountain the same size as the day before. How depressing is that?
This spurred me on to find new approaches and I wanted to share with you some techniques I’ve adopted that have made me feel more in control and actually make progress week to week.
Firstly I section my to-do list into different topics. I work in Learning & Development so my list looks a little like this:
Creating Training Workshops
Supporting individuals
Client Management
Growing the programme’s content
Misc Admin
I then write down everything I have to do under these headings. And I mean everything, whether it is something I’m really thinking about now or something that is months away.
The next stage brings in the teaching of Covey’s Jar – which has been doing the rounds on social media recently so you might know how it works! Covey described time as a glass jar. It is fixed and you cannot make it any bigger or smaller- so instead you have to think about how to use the jar. This is a key principle as it moves our brains into deadline mode. It works well if you can think about the jar as either 1 week or 1 day so as to be able to make progress and monitor as you go.
Covey then said there were 3 types of tasks. We have our rocks, our pebbles and our sand. Our rocks are important tasks that we really need to be getting done in order to move forward. They’re usually urgent or really important to us. So these are the first to go into the jar. Next we have our pebbles. These are tasks that are important, but not on the same scale as the rocks – and perhaps don’t even need to be done by us. Where you have space in the jar you start slotting in 1 pebble at a time, any pebbles left over you’ll need to move to another jar in the future, or find someone else with a jar that has space. Lastly we have Sand tasks. Sand often happens to us – they’re the kind of tasks that sap a lot of time such as replying to emails, general admin etc. The sand gets poured into the jar and settles in the gaps between rocks and pebbles.
Now imagine I had started with the sand, then slotted the pebbles on top. I’d be left trying to squash the rocks on top of them all – and rocks are so big that sometimes they just can’t fit. So you end up in a situation where all your Sand fits – and all your pebbles and the really important stuff gets left behind for another time. That’s bonkers! Covey’s solution is to always start with your rocks as the pebbles and sand will slot in around them – and if you don’t have space for it all – don’t let it be a rock that gets left behind
So now let’s think of this with our to-do lists in mind. I have 1 jar (mine’s a week) and nothing I can do will stretch this. I have to make the most of the jar I have. I look at my list and see if there’s a topic that’s really important this week and look at the individual tasks that I really must get done. These are my rocks so I highlight them. I then immediately look at my calendar and decide when the best time to do them would be. If I can, I’d do them all right away but if not timeblocking where I will do them is still a good solution. Next I look at the other areas that I’d like to get done if possible. I go back to my calendar and see if I have any gaps, and again start actually scheduling time. Those I can’t do, I either leave for the future or see if I can delegate to someone else. Then lastly there’s all the other stuff that needs to be done but isn’t really that urgent or important right now. I leave it on my to do list so if I have time I’ll get to it, but if I don’t – hey it’s only sand.
By the end of the week the only progress that really matters to me is that I’ve finished those rocks. The earlier I get to them the more chance I have to get through pebbles and sand too, but it’s ticking off the rocks that actually makes me move forward in life.
Every week I work on 3-5 rocks, and it’s rare I get to the end of the week and haven’t finished them. What’s really helpful is sharing this technique with your colleagues – someone in my team will ask if I’m working on any rocks and that helps stop me veering off into pebble and sand territory. I tend to focus on different topics each week too so I feel I can make some real progress. This week it was Supporting individuals and I managed to get 3 rocks in that 1 topic completed and feel so much more positive about that area. Next week I’ll add some variety by looking at 3 rocks in the Client Management topic area. By opting to increase focus on 1 particular topic it helps to really get into the detail and I find that really rewarding.
When I first came across Covey’s Jar, I didn’t feel like I’d be able to just focus on a handful of things when I had so much to do. What about the sand – it still has to be dealt with! What I have found through practice though is that the sand takes care of itself more that I ever expected it to and there is still space in-between the rocks for me to do some, but my time is all about me deciding that the rocks come first. I am able to spend time on the tasks that give the best return – both to my business and to me personally – and I genuinely feel that moves me forward week to week.
If we only have 1 jar, really think about what you want to add to it.
