Who does not know the feeling of finishing a day, week, month or even quarter without really knowing whether to be happy with the achieved progress? One of the challenges is that you need something to compare the actual results to. Without that, you will never know whether you can be happy with progress or not. It is all about making yourself accountable — not to someone else, — but to yourself! And that matters even more in times where it often happens that borders between work and private life get blurry.
I personally have had the experience as a founder and CEO of a Startup that I work the entire day without really knowing what I have accomplished. That is an awful feeling.
In the book “7 Habits of highly effective people”, Convey tackles the beforementioned challenge with one of the 7 habits he introduces: First Things First.
How can you manage all the tasks and to-dos in a way that the most important ones are not lost, and the highly effective ones get prioritized? He beautifully maps tasks in a matrix of urgency and importance.
There are two areas that deserve high focus. I think it is seems obvious that tasks in Quadrant IV are tasks that we should not spend too muching time on. Quadrant I, on the other hand, is obviously necessary.
The other two need our focus. Those tasks that are either urgent but not really important or not urgent but important. The truth is that due to our psychological make-up, we overfocus on urgent things. Our brains love distraction — a short call here and a quick mail there. That is why Quadrant III gets more time than it deserves — time that is needed for truly important tasks like creating a corporate vision and establishing a great work culture that is built on trust. We know that from several long-term studies, such as the one conducted by Jim Collins, published in From Good to Great, or from Ray Dalio who describes “To get the Culture Right” in his book “Principles”.
But why do so many people and companies fail to prioritize those kinds of tasks? Well, the problem there is always day -to- day business with some urgent tasks that at least seem to be super important. But when was the last meeting you left knowing that it wasn’t a complete waste of time? At the same time, it is easy to postpone that one team event or that one vision alignment — creating a corporate vision is never urgent. Therefore, it is the easiest thing to postpone but also the last thing you should postpone.
Convey therefore provides a simple template to facilitate planning your weeks with a focus on Quadrant II tasks and only then filling in other stuff. This shall ensure that they get higher prioritized than the urgent but unimportant tasks from Quadrant III. The template is just a first small step and it takes quite some discipline to stick to it. Distraction is just around the corner. For further reading on distraction read Indistractable from Nir Eyal.
First, you define your key roles for the week with up to three goals per role (top left). Those can be business only, private only or a mixture. As an example, you can have the focus role as a team leader as well as a project manager on the business side and on the private side being a good boyfriend. I personally have my roles as startup CEO (which I most of the time split into several roles), working as Technology Consultant for other companies as well as my personal OKRs (objective key results), which I have written about earlier (LINK).
And I have more good news for you. That is just one of the 7 Habits Convey illustrates in his book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. 3 of them lead to private victory, of which “first things first” represents the second one. Another 3 lead to public victory, which is only possible after private victory. And then there is the last one: Sharpening the Saw. This last one is an ongoing generic habit that focuses on the physical as well as the mental wellbeing. This one is also included in the week planner — I use it and can highly recommend it (bottom left corner of the template). You can use that space to track how often you work out, meditate….
I read approximately 25–30 books a year and “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” makes it to the all-time top 5 — it is a recommendation for everyone.
This content is interesting for you and you want to know the other four books? — let me know and give me some claps.
Further reading:
1. From Good to Great — Jim Collins
2. Principles — Ray Dalio
3. Indistractable — Nir Eyal
