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Achieving your goals with the rocks, pebbles and sand mindset

Anna Stubbs • July 6, 2023

Have you ever found yourself struggling to achieve your goals because you just don’t have enough time to commit to them? Chances are, you’re doing things back to front.


Rocks, Pebbles and Sand is a simple, yet crucial, planning concept depicting that we’ll achieve more if we set our annual goals (or ‘rocks’) first, then our 90-day goals (‘pebbles’) and actions (‘sand’).


If we had a jar and first put in some sand, then added pebbles, then tried to put the rocks on top, not many rocks would fit. If you start with the rocks, we can fit the pebbles in, then the sand will filter through the gaps and we can fit more in.


For a lot of business owners, the day-to-day tasks fill up most of their day. In other words, their jar is filled up with sand, not leaving much room for the rocks and pebbles.


If they were to start with their annual goals and break these into 90-day goals, their daily actions will be driven by their goals. That means their daily tasks are helping to achieve their goals.


For example, if your annual goal was to increase sales by 10%, your 90-day goal might be to have completed training for the sales team. The sand might be designing a sales training programme, finding someone to deliver the sales training, and training each salesperson.


If you didn’t have the ‘rock’ of increasing your sales by 10%, it’s likely that your sales team would be too busy in their day-to-day tasks to stop and spend time undertaking training. If you didn’t have the ‘pebble’ of completing the training within 90 days, the training would be pushed to the bottom of the list for your sales team.


By structuring our planning and goals in the right order, we can more easily keep our focus on the things that matter the most. We can be very clear about the things that we are doing on a day-to-day basis, since they will be driven by those annual goals that we have set. Following the Rocks, Pebbles, and Sand mindset will help us achieve our goals more effectively.


Need help with achieving your goals? We can help!

Making Tax Digital to be extended to more sole traders and landlords

By Anna Stubbs • April 9, 2025
Hiding in the HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) announcements published on 26 March was a technical note entitled ‘Modernising the tax system through Making Tax Digital‘. This note announces that the income threshold for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax & Self Assessment (or MTD for ITSA) is to drop to £20,000 per annum for sole traders and landlords. If you fall into this category, this means moving your tax completely over to digital by April 2026. But don’t worry, let’s see what MTD for ITSA is all about.

Reducing the uncertainty: financial forecasting and planning

By Anna Stubbs • April 9, 2025
Uncertainty can be a major threat to your strategic financial planning. Being unsure of what lies around the corner makes it difficult to make those important financial decisions around operational budgets, investment and growth funding. But by using forecasting and scenario-planning, you make it easier to manage your finances and reduce some of the financial uncertainty.

What's new in Xero (Spring 2025)

By Anna Stubbs • April 9, 2025
Some great new enhancements have come to Xero in the first few months of the year, here's some important features that have been released: Enhancements to the new invoicing Keyboard shortcuts. Drag and drop attachments. Date Picker quick select. Exchange rate adjustments in the invoice. Tracking categories for invoices. Automated bill entry The ability to upload bills directly to Xero, create one or many bills by dragging and dropping multiple files. Xero creates draft bills with the key details, and the original document is attached. Other important features (region dependent) Bank feed updates (Australia adds Suncorp Bank, United States gains PNC Commercial). Simplified whole operations with improved sales orders (United States). Easier 1099 reporting and filing (United States). Streamlined tax workflow and compliance (United Kingdom). Easier reporting (United States Schedule C compliance report, New Zealand not-for-profit tier 3 & 4 PBE reports). For the full breakdown read Xero's update .
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