Whales And Minnows
I remember a while back when I was in a sales position, my manager asked me, “What do you want to do? Do you want to fish for whales or minnows?”
The idea is that there are only so many sales prospects or leads that we can engage with on any given day, and if you’re able to close a whale (a customer with deeper pockets), it leads to larger profits compared to the minnows (the small spenders).
It wasn’t a bad question. If I could land one whale, especially early in the day, then I could relax a little bit and reduce some pressure the rest of the day. If I could land a couple of whales each month, I could reap the benefits of a bigger bonus. Of course, I wanted to catch more whales.
But the minnows are so easy to catch. The minnows require less food. The minnows are everywhere.
Why not just chase and catch minnows all day?
Well, suppose you applied this thinking to your life—remove the sales example.
Pretend that you are floating around on your boat, and the boat represents the journey of life you are currently on. And on this boat, you have a finite amount of fish bait that both whales and minnows love. You don’t know how much bait you have, but you do know that you’re going to run out eventually if you keep feeding all these fish. The bait represents your time. Now the whales and the minnows represent all the different tasks, projects, and commitments you are engaged in, want to be doing, or are currently avoiding.
Some tasks and projects are whales, big enough to rock your boat and eat a lot of your fish bait. But, if you were to commit and catch those whales, you’d have enough to eat for months, if not years. The time and the effort would be worth it.
Some tasks and projects, many of them, are minnows. Small enough to not rock the boat, not requiring much bait, but you’d need to catch thousands of them to stave off hunger for the next week. And to catch thousands requires more bait than one whale. The time and effort would not be worth it.
So, when auditing your time, it’s a good idea to ask yourself, “What whales am I currently avoiding? Why? And what minnows am I currently feeding that I could stop today so I could better focus on chasing those whales?”
Happy fishing!
