The Full Bucket Fable - Planning Your Life Right

There is a fable that I heard a couple of years ago that really resonated with me, and I would like to share it with the readers here:

A university philosophy lecturer walked into a packed lecture theatre one day with an empty bucket in his hand. He was known for being a bit eccentric so the students thought nothing of it. The lecturer walked over to a table at the front of the theatre and proclaimed that he would teach them all a valuable life-lesson in this lecture.

He asked the students what they saw before them on the table. One student put up his hand and said “an empty bucket”. “Indeed the lecturer replied”, before taking another bucket full of large rocks out from under the table and pouring them into the original empty bucket. “What do you see now?” the lecturer asked. The students looked at each other, not quite sure where this was going, but before long someone shouted out “a full bucket!” A low chuckle went round the theatre, but this soon ceased when the lecturer shook his head and said “no, you’re wrong.” He bent down and took another bucket from under the table, this time full of small pebbles. He poured the pebbles into the bucket full of rocks and they cascaded downward, filling the gaps left by the rocks. “Now is the bucket full?” asked the lecturer. “Yeeeesss” game the choral response from the audience. “No...you’re wrong” came the rebuttal from the lecturer again.

By this stage the students didn’t really know what was going on and thought that the lecturer might be just having a laugh with them. They watched closely has he again reached under the table and pulled up yet another bucket, this time full of sand. He tipped the sand into the original bucket and it snaked and slithered in between the rocks and pebbles, filling up the bucket. “Now the bucket is full” proclaimed the lecturer, “but what is the meaning of this demonstration do you think?” The students we silent, all racking their brains to understand what the lecturer was getting at. After about a minute of everyone mumbling to each other a girl spoke up, “you’re trying to show that no matter how busy you are, there is always time to fit in some more work” she suggested. The lecturer shook his head, “good idea he said, but not right”.

The lecturer decided after a couple more incorrect suggestions that he would put them out of their misery. “What this bucket represents is your life” he said. “You can only fit so much into your life before it becomes full and that will be your lot. Think of the rocks as the most important things you want to do and achieve in your life, the pebbles as the medium sized goals and targets, and the sand as the small stuff that you shouldn’t sweat over. If I had poured the sand in first, and then the pebbles, there would not have been room for all my rocks.

So the moral of the story is, to get the most out of your life, plan the most important things to you first, then your smaller goals next, and leave the small stuff to fill in any gaps you have left.