Hedgehog and Fox is an old and useful concept for strategy and time/effort allocation.
The first recorded instance is from the ancient Greek poet Archilochus: “A fox knows many things, but a hedgehog knows one big thing.” This cryptic comment inspired Erasmus’ “Adagia”, Isaiah Berlin’s famous essay “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” and Jim Collins wrote a chapter about it in in his excellent book “Good to Great.”
Most of our days naturally fit the fox model – many things, leaping from one to another, managing the unexpected and unplanned but necessary stuff of the day.
The key is to plan for hedgehog days: Intense focus on one big thing. That kind of day doesn’t happen by default, it must be planned. It must be guarded.
Practical reality is that with all our obligations we’ll need to do more than just one thing during an entire day. Don’t let that be your excuse. Go hedgehog on a 4-hour block of focused time and accomplish those big things!
