In this short YouTube monologue, Mark Reynolds tells a parable about two miners to illustrate a productivity principle for knowledge workers. Miner 1 works long hours, hauling only low‑value stone, while Miner 2 works fewer hours but extracts high‑value diamonds and rubies, then enjoys rest, family, and personal time. Mark argues that modern workplaces should value the "diamond" output rather than the sheer volume of work. He connects the story to the common problem of the "work whirlpool"—the pull of urgent but unimportant tasks—and urges viewers to audit their schedules, eliminate low‑value activities, and deliberately create blank calendar space for high‑impact work. He offers two concrete tactics: leave empty slots to learn to tolerate unfilled time, or replace rock‑digging tasks with diamond‑digging tasks. Finally, he invites anyone feeling stuck to reach out for help, emphasizing that constant toil without breaks leads to long‑term disaster.
Chapters
Hey, everybody, good morning, this is Mark. Today I want to tell you a little story, a parable, if you will, about two workers working at a mining company. And our first worker arrives bright and early at the crack of dawn before any of the other workers arrive, and picks up his axe and diligently heads down into the mine shaft where he spends the rest of the day, sunrise to sunset, toiling in the mine, hot, sweaty, dirty, filling mining cart after mining cart with stone and pebbles, rocks and sand until he can work no more. And he arrives out of the shaft exhausted, only to head home too tired to spend time with his family or to enjoy any of the hobbies that he's been dreaming of for way too long. Now there's another miner, and he arrives rather leisurely to the mineshaft each day. And today he heads on into the mineshaft, only to emerge an hour, maybe two hours later with small pouch on his belt. And in that pouch it's revealed that he has a couple diamonds, maybe some rubies that he's managed to extract from the mine today. And it's getting rather hot and so he decides to find a nice spot of shade near a tree, maybe it's even an oasis, right? And pulls out his lunch, nice sandwich and a tasty beverage, and relaxes and pulls a book out and reads some uplifting love literature, enjoys it. Besides, he's a little tired. I mean, he was down in the mine earlier today and takes a little nap, siesta, wakes back up, decides to head back into the mine for just a bit more, and lo and behold, manages to extract a few more diamonds and rubies along with some excess stone and gravel, which he doesn't really bother to throw into the mining carts, but he just collects the jewels and heads up the shaft and heads on home where he has a wonderful evening with his family and friends and shares his stories of the day of what he found in the mine. Now, when you think about those workers, who do you think the mining company is going to value the most? You see, because how you answer that question says a lot about how you're thinking about work and how we value others at work. And I would argue in the new economy and the way things are going, Miner one is really the model for success moving forward. You see, with just a couple hours of work, he was able to extract jewels where the other workers were extracting rocks, filler sand, very low, low value commodity items where he's extracting jewels and the mining company isn't going to really care that he's working less hours or that he's less stressed or less tired or less exhausted at the end of the day because he's producing jewels. He's producing the most valuable resources that the mine could produce. Because the mining company definitely wants a gold mine, a diamond mine, a jewel mine, not just a rock quarry that's full of potting sand and filler rocks. And that's a good way to think about how you're going about your work and how you're thinking about your schedule, especially if you're a knowledge worker, If you have a deliverable, if you have projects, if you have results that you're being asked to deliver. Deliver diamonds, not filler rock. You see, even you know that, like, you don't care how long it takes me to do this video. If I can do it in five minutes, great. But if I spend a week on this, that's not any more valuable to you. You just don't care. So look at your schedule for the rest of the week. It's a Tuesday. There are probably things that are on your schedule now that you wish weren't that you could look at them today and know mining for rocks and gravel there. And you should eliminate them. You absolutely should eliminate the lowest value tasks. I shared yesterday the concept of the work whirlpool, right? And that we get caught in the urgent. And the busier we get, the more we feel pulled to do urgent, urgent but unimportant tasks. And the only solution to that is to consciously slow down and get anchored on a point of value. Right? And so I would highly recommend you take a look at your schedule and find some places where we've allowed urgent but not unimportant tasks to get filled in. And then I would do two things. I would either one, fill it with nothing and learn a valuable, valuable lesson, which is how to create space on your calendar. Too many of us have gotten so used to being perpetually distracted, fully booked from our childhoods up into adulthood, we don't know what to do with blank calendar space anymore. If you can't do that, then at least put down the shovel that's digging for rocks and gravel and go and dig for a diamond. And you know what those are? You know what the most valuable results that you can deliver for your company are that you can deliver for yourself. That's a better use of that hour. And that really has to be doable for you. You really have to be able to take at least an hour a week and reprioritize it. And if you can't if your schedule has gotten so out of whack that you just can't even imagine how to do that, I hope you'll reach out. Really, I honestly do. Because you need some help. That's okay. I was there, too. But, man, you just can't go into the mine and toil every day from sunrise to sunset without breaks, without joy, without relationships. That's a recipe for disaster on the long term. Seen it too many times. Anyway, that was it for today. Just a quick video message and a quick tip. So hopefully that served you, and I look forward to talking to you real soon. Okay, bye.
