Here is how I have come to think of this: Understanding progress vs activity, and 3 types of effort. Rock metaphor: The goal is to deliver a big, shiny rock t

Here is how I have come to think of this: Understanding progress vs activity, and 3 types of effort. Rock metaphor: The goal is to deliver a big, shiny rock to the top of the mountain. You can (1) move the rock, (2) polish the rock, and (3) other distractions. * Push the rock up the hill. You have to keep pushing until you get to the next flat land. If you stop whenever you’re interrupted, the rock will roll back down to the bottom of the hill. Requires a chunk of undistracted time (Cal Newport Deep Work, etc). * Polish the rock. You can engage in this type of effort well, even with frequent interruption. Polish for 10 minutes, answer a phone call, polish another area, go to lunch, polish more, repeat until finished. * Other stuff. Sometimes required maintenance (paying bills, paperwork, etc), but often unhelpful distraction. Getting more tactical: * Bucket selection - pick the right buckets, and right number of buckets (not too many, you can only move a few rocks each day) * Move rocks in each bucket consistently (no starved buckets) Summarized: Move rocks, in a few areas, that are important to you (not to other people) To illustrate, my buckets are: day job, freelance work, trading, family, and health. Every time I’ve been “off” in life, one of those buckets has been starved (workaholic, neglect family), or I’ve had too many buckets, or one bucket explodes (family health crisis, newborn child, etc), or efforts become distracted and while much activity happens, no rocks move. Most of this I derived from The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker, originally published in 1966 (so nothing new since 2015).