What rocks are in your bucket? If you are walking along the beach, hopefully, the answer is none. If you are trying to decide between different courses of action, you may want to consider what’s in your bucket. It may alter how you evaluate your next life-changing decision.

If we view our time like a bucket, as some time management gurus would suggest, then the rocks, stones, sand, and water are the things that we value or endure and demand some of our time. The biggest rocks such as faith, family and friends, and finances go in first; followed by smaller-sized rocks like work, hobbies & interests, diet, exercise, and health care. The sand represents the mundane but necessary activities, grocery shopping, chores, errands, etc. Finally, the water represents compaction needed to fit everything into the bucket.

This ends my time management lesson for today. I am certain that at least one guru would say that I misapplied this concept, but it’s my blank page and therefore my application. If you feel the need to call me a heretic, there is a place for comments at the end of this post. I will respond in due time.

When its Time to Change the Rocks

Everyone, at some point in their life has to change out a big rock in their bucket. Marriages, additions to a family, the loss of a loved one, all require that rocks are added, at times replaced, and still other times removed altogether.

How do you remove just a single rock? The short answer is that you can’t without first removing the water, sand and the smaller rocks. Once you are able to remove the rocks and replace them with new rocks, you’re still not done. With the new big rocks in place, there may not be room for all the smaller rocks and the sand.

How do you decide what gets left behind? Over time people become attached to their rocks, in many ways their rocks become a part of their identity.

Filler From the Past

It will be six years this fall since my diagnosis with Parkinson’s. At the time, it instantly became a big rock because it was all-consuming. My wife and I dumped out our bucket, put in a big rock that represented PD and slowly added the rocks and sand back in. We came to the realization that not everything fit in the bucket no matter how hard we tried. Frustrated and angry, we left some of the stones and sand behind.

During the years that followed, I have been able to remove the big rock representing PD and replaced it with smaller rocks and sand because how we dealt with it changed. PD is still a part of my life given that it touches almost every aspect, but it no longer demands that I lug it around in full form. It no longer carries the same weight and no longer has the status to be the deciding factor in my everyday life.

Time to Change the Rocks

Recently, I have come to the realization that it’s time for a career change. In the coming weeks, I will be transitioning out of my role as a CFO to explore the unforeseen. This action is one of my choosing, at the time of my choosing, and not driven by the will of another. Still, it represents a change that will require my wife and I to draw strength from those big rocks in the bucket; our faith, family, and friends.

I started my current job only three months before my diagnosis with PD. Although they are unrelated, there is a coexistent relationship between the two. They always existed together but did not significantly impact each other. Now as I close this chapter and start a new one, the question becomes how will this new yet-to-be identified endeavor impact my disease and vice verse? Will it once again become a big rock?

When a Leap is a Step

In the movie Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, “Indy” is standing in an opening in the side of rock overlooking a seemingly bottomless cavern, holding a book that gives clues that are ambiguous at best instructing him to take a leap of faith. With great apprehension, he takes not a leap, but a step.

Out of nowhere, a “bridge,” a very narrow walking bridge appears. I suspect Indiana Jones would have preferred a well-lit divided highway, complete with clean and well-stocked rest areas and, of course, DOT approved directional signage and guard rails. But that isn’t what he got. What he did get was sufficient to take the next step and the next.

Like Indiana Jones, often we are only asked, and can only see, the next step. No road map provided, no destination given, just that inner calling to take the next step. In my first career, back in the days when I was a self-employed contractor, it was second nature to act when only “the next step” was apparent. Seldom was I paralyzed by fear that there wouldn’t be a bridge and that my next step would take me directly into the abyss.

The First Step

Since I began working as an employee for someone else, I bought into the notion that job security is real. I could not be more wrong; job security is an illusion. To go to work each day under the pretense that someone else can better act in my best interest than I can is naive, to assume that their decision-making process is more developed than mine is foolish.

So here I stand, at the edge of an opening in a wall, below me a cavern that undoubtedly contains the carnage of so many that tried but fell short. What draws my attention? The endless possibilities to be the person, the accountant, the financial advisor, the car salesmen, the truck driver, or the writer I was destined to be. All that I hear are these words, “Are you ready to take the next step?”

Revisiting the Bucket

So, what rocks are in your bucket? Do you see rocks that hold you down or do you see rocks, stones, sand and water that will become the building materials that you need for the bridge you will build that will take you where you want to go?

Thanks for reading, liking, and sharing,

Ivy’s back! I gave her a rock of her own; she’s been carrying it around for the last hour. She doesn’t quite understand the analogy. To her, it’s just a rock; I guess I will have to make her watch “A Bug’s Life.” Maybe Flick will do a better job of explaining the metaphor than I.

Al and his faithful, and studious sidekick, Ivy the wonder pup.