Nov 27, 2001 04:43 AM
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(Updated Nov 27, 2001 04:50 AM)
“I’d love to spend time with you, but I have to work. There’s this deadline. It’s urgent. Of course you understand.”
“I just don’t have time to exercise. I know it’s important, but there are so many pressing things right now. Maybe when things slow down a little.”
“I have too much to do and not enough time to do it all.”
“A personal life? What’s that?''
Written by Stephen R. Covey (of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People fame) and his associates, Roger and Rebecca Merrill, First Things First teaches a whole new way to look at time management. It was written in response to the findings from a research project done by the Covey Leadership Center. They evaluated thousands of people who’d completed their 7 Habits of Highly Effective People course and found that the habit that people had the most difficulty implementing in their lives was, Put First Things First. So they wrote this book and developed a one-day course to help people be more effective in this area. Their philosophy is that you can't lead others unless you can lead your own life first. The authors promote that when a person aligns his or her life with internal principles, then that person is able to focus on what's important, not what's urgent. Why? Because many times things become urgent due to a lack of prioritization in our lives
If you’ve attended any of the time management seminars offered by other groups or if you use a daily planner, there is a good chance that your are wonderful at scheduling the urgent things in your life, and that you get a lot done. There is also a good chance that important things like exercise, sleep, time with family,goal setting, and self education get squeezed out of your schedule. This book and the tools that support it are what is referred to as a “fourth generation” time management system.
It transforms bland time management techniques into tools for re-examining your life in terms of personalized mission statements. In this rushed world, the idea of deeply knowing what you want out of life and making sure that your activities fit in with that knowledge is radically different.
The underlying principle is that the things that matter most in your life should never take second place to the things that matter the least. Most time management systems have you make a list of the tasks that you need to accomplish and then prioritize your tasks. In First Things First you identify the most important and highest payoff areas in your life and place them into your schedule first. They call it, “Scheduling your priorities rather than prioritizing your schedule.”
Balance is emphasized, with that balance organized around your roles in life and real human needs, ''to learn, to live, to love and to leave a legacy.'' Covey divides all activities into four quadrants:
1.Important and Urgent (crises, deadline-driven projects)
2.Important, Not Urgent (preparation, prevention, planning, relationships)
3.Urgent, Not Important (interruptions, many pressing matters)
4.Not Urgent, Not Important (trivia, time wasters)
The authors provide a series of exercises which help you sort the important from the urgent in your life. The chapter on “Urgency Addiction” is particularly relevant to those of us who are in the line of customer service, medicine or crisis management or anyone with deadlines to meet. Some of the soul searching questions are like:-
• What is the one activity that you know if you did superbly well and consistently would have significant positive results in your personal life?
• What is the one activity that you know if you did superbly well and consistently would have significant positive results in your professional work life?
• If you know that these things would make a significant difference, why are you not doing them now?
Next, they provide you with tools that you can use to make time in your life to do those things that really matter, that take care of you for the long term.Covey and the Merrills write an inspirational book that should be used as a resource to refer to time and time again. The insight embodied in their work transcends much of the consumerism and materialistic values of modern life and reconnects us with the wisdom literature of the ages. If you’re interested in some tools and perspectives that will help you take control of the time in your life and how your spend
it, this book contains lots of answers.
For me, undoubtedly the best book on Time Management and Personal Leadership. I would strongly recommend this book to all, old and young alike.
