Have you ever heard that analogy asking how many stones you can fit into a jar? First you put in a couple big stones, and it would seem the jar is full. But soon you realize that you can subsequently fit many small pebbles in the jar around those big stones. Again it seems that the jar is now full. However you can still fit a couple scoops of sand around the small pebbles. And then lastly, you can still fit water in the jar.

The point of the story is that if you start with your “big stones” and focus on them, and then add the smaller items later, you can easily fit the big stones and a number of smaller items into the jar. But if you started with the sand and pebbles, and then tried to put the big stones in, it’d never work. Big stones can’t fit around the cracks of pebbles as easily as pebbles can fit around the cracks of big stones.

The same goes for our lives and how much we do and accomplish in a given day/month/year. The stones are like tasks we are trying to accomplish, and the jar is our time. Focus on the big tasks, and you’ll get them done. Focus on the small tangent tasks and they’ll eat up so much of your time that you’ll never get the big tasks done.

I had heard this analogy so many times in the past, that it was almost getting to the point of being cliche for me. However, the analogy took on a whole new meaning when I actually started asking myself what the “big stones” in my life were, and if I was actually focusing on them or letting little pebbles run the show.

Back in January of this year, I decided to get proactive about my big stones, and selected 10 Key Result Areas (KRAs) for the year. These were nothing more than my carefully thought-through, carefully prayed-over chief goals for the year – the things that I absolutely had to accomplish by December 31, 2006, no questions asked.

A few of my 2006 Key Result Areas:

1. Get involved in a local church, stay involved, and join a worship band there. Check.

2. Become competent at scoring movies with Logic Pro, my music composition program of choice. Check.

3. Create a rock-solid financial budget which I abide by. Check.

4. Spend quality time with life-long friends on a regular basis. Continually making this a priority.

There are many more KRAs that I had for this year, covering all aspects of life (mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, recreational, relational, etc.), but this is just a small sampling of them. The main theme of my 2006 KRAs was simply to find balance and a degree of structure in my life. 2005 was a year of flying by the seat of my pants as I traveled all over the world, and pulled endless all-nighters at the office. 2006 has intentionally been a more low-key year in order to build a more solid foundation moving forward. In 2007, I will begin traveling a lot again, but I will be more grounded and effective this time around.

All in all, it is amazing to see how many “big stones” I have actually accomplished by carefully choosing my big goals for the year, by regularly referring to them, and by having several people hold me accountable to them. My KRAs just become a natural grid through which I view any task that comes before me – “Does this fit into my KRAs or not?” If it does, I jump into it with full abandon – if it doesn’t, I simply don’t make it a top priority. Do that for 10-12 months, and you’ll be amazed how many of your big goals you actually start accomplishing.

If anyone is interested to learn more about my approach to KRAs, feel free to shoot me an e-mail, and I can let you know more about them.

-Dave