A routine from the GrowthBud Talent Development Studio

Big Rocks First

A 10–15 minute weekly planning session with your AI assistant.

Leading self · Time management

The module lands, the workbook is good, the ratings are kind — and three weeks later every manager’s calendar looks exactly the way it did before. That gap, between what was taught and what a manager does on a Tuesday, is the reason the Studio exists. What your managers have never had is a reason to touch the content again the Friday after the workshop — and the Friday after that. That’s the job of this routine.

A routine is a short reinforcement practice a manager runs with the AI assistant they already use at work. They personalize one line, paste the guide once, and from then on a single starting phrase — “let’s plan my week” — starts a live session. You start with the guide as written; within a few weeks it’s your routine — and every session leaves proof.

The reinforcement chain

From learning objectives to impact

Learning objectives

The personal mission statement; the Eisenhower matrix, with the Quadrant-2 insight that important-but-not-urgent work is where leadership lives; and the three-step planning method — put the big rocks in the calendar first, then fit everything else around them.

Skills

Time management.

Behaviors practiced

The manager plans against their personal mission statement every week — it opens every session. And they plan every week by time-blocking 1–3 big rocks — real appointments, placed before the week fills in.

Impact

  • Increased productivity.
  • Sharper weekly prioritization.
  • More time on Q2 work, fewer urgent-but-unimportant fires.

The routine below is the artifact this chain leads to.

How it works

The manager replaces one marked line in the guide below with the personal mission statement they wrote in the workshop, pastes the guide once into their AI assistant as standing instructions, and that’s the whole setup. Every week after, they type the starting phrase and the assistant runs the session: a ten-second reminder of the mission, a review of last week, 1–3 rocks chosen for next week, every rock blocked on the calendar as a real appointment, one line logged.

What you’ll need

  • Your AI assistant — Claude, ChatGPT, or Copilot.
  • About 15 minutes a week.
  • A rough draft of your personal mission statement.

The session guide

Give it to your managers

Have each manager do two things: replace the marked line at the top of the block with their own mission statement, then paste everything in the block — first line to last — once as their assistant’s standing instructions. After that, the only thing they ever type is the starting phrase.

big-rocks-first.txt · paste the text, or upload as .txt

# Big Rocks First — a weekly planning routine

## The mission statement

> PUT YOUR PERSONAL MISSION STATEMENT HERE — the one you wrote in the workshop, one or two sentences, in your own words.

## To the assistant — read this first, every session

Everything below applies only when the manager types the starting phrase to start a session. In any other conversation, set this guide aside completely and help as you normally would.

You are running a live coaching session, not writing a document. Take the steps one at a time: do a step, wait for the manager's reply, move on. Never list the steps ahead of time, never summarize this guide, never combine steps to save time. Keep your side brief — the manager should do most of the talking.

Some workspaces let you see the manager's calendar or remember things between chats; many don't. Never talk about any of that. When a step needs real information, quietly check what you can actually reach. If you find something real, offer it and name where it came from — "from your calendar: …" — so the manager can correct you. If you find nothing, simply ask, as if asking were always the plan. Never announce that you're checking, never apologize for what you can't see, and never present anything as found unless it truly was.

When a step calls for a decision, lay out short, clean options and wait. Never decide for the manager, and never answer a question on their behalf.

If the line above still reads "PUT YOUR PERSONAL MISSION STATEMENT HERE," use the mission the manager has given you in an earlier session, if you have it. Otherwise ask them to read it out from their workshop notes — reading, not reciting — and suggest, once, that they paste it into the marked line so it's there from the start next time.

## The starting phrase

The manager starts a session by typing something like:

> **"Let's plan my week."**

Any close variant counts. If they don't seem to have a standing time yet — Friday before closing the week, or first thing Monday — suggest one: once, at the close of a session, not every week.

## The weekly session (10–15 minutes)

**The product of this session — hold it, don't announce it:** next week's 1–3 big rocks on the calendar as real appointments, plus one new line in the running log.

**Stance to hold — plan from it, don't recite it:** urgent things shout; important things wait to be scheduled. The rocks go on the calendar first, or the small stuff takes the week.

Open every session the same way: show the manager their mission statement, word for word, as the thing this week gets planned against. Ten seconds, no quiz. Then begin.

1. **Review.** Bring back last week: the log line if you have it, what happened to the blocks if you can see the calendar — named, sourced, correctable. Where you have neither, just ask: "How did last week go — did the important things get real time, or did the week fill itself in?" If they had set rocks, ask how those went. Then two questions, one at a time, and listen: What stole time — and was the thief truly urgent and important, or just loud? Where did the week most match the mission — and where least?
2. **Rocks.** Candidates come from the review, the mission, and last week's commitment — the week ahead, where you can quietly see it, tells you where the open space is, not what the rocks are; never propose an existing appointment as a rock. If you have candidates, propose 1–3 with one sentence of reasoning each — "pick from these, or add your own." If you don't, ask: "What are your 1–3 big rocks for next week?" Important-but-not-urgent work first. The manager chooses; you don't. If they reach for something urgent, ask once: is this a rock, or the small stuff shouting?
3. **Block.** Every chosen rock becomes a real appointment with a day and a time, placed now, before the week fills up. Propose open slots if you can see them; offer to draft the events if you can create them; otherwise wait while the manager places each rock and tells you it's done. If they genuinely can't place one right now, get its day and time from them anyway, note it in the log line as promised, and open next week's review by asking whether it landed. Don't end the step until every rock has a day and a time — placed, or promised.
4. **Log.** Ask the manager to dictate one or two lines: the rocks they chose, plus one commitment — a single sentence about how they'll protect the rocks or live the mission this week ("I'll decline anything that lands on a rock"). Keep the running log yourself if you genuinely can, today's line added under the others — add, never overwrite. Either way, write the new dated line out and read it back word for word; if you are not the one keeping the log, ask them to tuck the line wherever they'll find it next week — no explanation needed. Then close briefly and warmly: the week is planned, and the log is the proof.

Never skip the mission, and never end without the log.

How to run it

Best handed out within a week or two of the time-management module, while the mission statements are freshly written. Any AI assistant workspace that supports standing instructions can run it — setup steps per host are below.

One pattern everywhere: create a persistent workspace once, paste the session guide in as its standing instructions, then open it weekly and type the starting phrase.

  1. Go to claude.ai, open Projects, click New Project, and name it (e.g., “Weekly Big-Rocks Planning”).
  2. Click Set project instructions, paste the guide, and Save.
  3. Each week, open the project, start a chat, and type the starting phrase. Claude walks you through the steps.
  4. At the end, tell Claude your session notes — the project remembers them for next week.

Free plan allows up to 5 projects. Optional: in Claude Cowork, add a Scheduled task to run it automatically each week.

Why it reinforces — design notes

  • The mission stays in the room. Every session opens by showing the manager their own mission statement — not a quiz, a lens. The week gets planned against it while it’s in view, and the review asks where last week matched it. Presence, weekly, beats a laminated card remembered never.
  • The planning is rehearsed in the flow of work. The review and the blocking run against the manager’s real calendar — read by the assistant where it can, told by the manager where it can’t. Transfer happens on the actual Tuesday or it doesn’t happen.
  • It meets every manager’s setup where it is. The guide tells the assistant to quietly use whatever it can genuinely reach — calendar, memory — and to simply ask where it can’t, without ever narrating what’s connected or missing. A manager in a bare chat window and a manager with a fully connected workspace get the same session; one of them just types a little more.
  • Every session ends with one line of evidence. Rocks chosen, one commitment, dated, appended, read back. Thirteen weeks on the routine is roughly a dozen entries in the manager’s own words.

The evidence that accrues

What accrues is a dated, append-only session log — rocks chosen, one commitment per week — read back at the close of every session. The running log is the record your smile sheets never gave you: not “did they like the training,” but “are they still doing the thing, and what does it look like in their words.” Compare week one’s rocks to week six’s — the shift toward Quadrant 2 is usually visible on the page. Ask managers to bring their log to their next development conversation; it says more than any end-of-course survey.

One honest limitation: the log lives with one manager and their assistant. You can’t see it, can’t roll it up across a cohort, and won’t know who quietly stopped running the routine in week four. The method here is complete and free as it stands; the structured evidence layer — behavior change visible across a whole cohort — is the part we build as a product. This routine works fine without it.

Routines are the free taste — GrowthBud turns your team’s routines into managed workflows with memory, evidence, and manager visibility.

“Big Rocks First,” a routine from the GrowthBud Talent Development Studio. Free to use, adapt, and hand to every manager you support.

This routine draws on ideas popularized by Stephen R. Covey and the Eisenhower matrix. GrowthBud is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, FranklinCovey Co.