Read, execute, profit: ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’
“Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.” — Attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe by by Johannes Falk in Goethe aus näherm persönlichen Umgange dargestellt, 1832
Effective management involves getting things done first and not doing what other people want to do. That’s a key teaching of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey’s wildly influential 1989 book on personal organization in pursuit of goals.
Covey describes four levels of time management:
- Notes and checklists (currently reducing your cognitive burden)
2. Calendar and appointment books (look forward to arranging better times in your future)
3. Daily planning using goal setting and prioritization (most people never progress beyond this level)
4. Classification of activities and deliberate focus and exclusion of certain activities
An effective time manager spends as much time as possible in Quadrant II. They do things that are important before they become necessary
Breaking it down further, Quadrant II involves four key organizational activities.
Identifying Roles: The first task is to write down your key roles. If you haven’t really given serious thought to the roles in your life, you can write down what immediately comes to mind.
Selecting Goals: The next step is to think of two or three important results you feel you should accomplish in each role during the next seven days. These would be recorded as goals. At least some of these goals should reflect Quadrant II activities.
Scheduling: Now you look at the week ahead with your goals in mind and schedule time to achieve them. For example, if your goal is to produce the first draft of your personal mission statement, you may want to set aside a two-hour block of time on Sunday to work on it.
Daily Adapting: With Quadrant II weekly organizing, daily planning becomes more a function of daily adapting, or prioritizing activities and responding to unanticipated events, relationships, and experiences in a meaningful way. Taking a few minutes each morning to review your schedule can put you in touch with the value-based decisions you made as you organized the week as well as unanticipated factors that may have come up. As you overview the day, you can see that your roles and goals provide a natural prioritization that grows out of your innate sense of balance.
How will you make the most of Quadrant II? Tell us in the comments below!
