Big Rocks Fill the Jar First

“company. He used a metaphor called the Big Rocks Theory, which was popularized by Stephen Covey. Say you have some rocks, and a bunch of pebbles, and some sand, and your goal is to fit as much of everything as you can into a wide-mouth, one-gallon jar. If you start with the sand, and then the pebbles, the jar will run out of room for all the rocks. But when you start with the rocks, add the pebbles, and save the sand for last, the sand fills the spaces between the rocks—everything fits. In other words, the most important things need to get done first or they won’t get done at all.”

“habitually underestimate how long it takes to get things done. I’d lived through this at Product Search, where they’d insist: “Come on, I’m a smart person. I can surely get more done than that.” It took discipline for people to narrow their lists to three or four objectives for their team, but it made a huge difference. Our OKRs became more rigorous. Everybody knew what counted most. After I took responsibility for search and discovery at YouTube, it only made sense to do the same thing there.”