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First Things First: To Live, to Love, to Learn, to Leave a Legacy (Paperback)
by Stephen R. Covey
| Category:
Time management, Self help |
| Market price: ¥ 168.00
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¥ 158.00
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| MSL Pointer Review:
Profound and powerful! Stephen Covey and his colleagues show us the path and illuminate it with wisdom and insight - new ways of working demand new ways of managing our lives. |
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Author: Stephen R. Covey
Publisher: Free Press
Pub. in: January, 1996
ISBN: 0684802031
Pages: 384
Measurements: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00983
Other information: Reprint edition
ISBN-13: 978-0684802039
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- Awards & Credential -
The New York Times Bestseller |
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- MSL Picks -
Much more than just a book about time management, First Things First provides a kind of operational definition of the key principles of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
In describing what is in effect a life process of principle centered living, they begin with a compelling analogy of the clock and the compass, "Our struggle to put first things first can be characterized by the contrast between two powerful tools that direct us: the clock and the compass. The clock represents our commitments, appointments, schedules, goals, activities - what we do with, and how we manage our time. The compass represents our vision, values, principles, mission, conscience, direction - what we feel is important, and how we lead our lives. The struggle comes when we sense a gap between the clock and the compass - when what we do doesn't contribute to what is most important in our lives".
The authors propose that planning be done in a weekly cycle, with the recognition that activities fall into one of the following quadrants:
- Quadrant 1 - Important and Urgent
- Quadrant 2 - Important but Not Urgent
- Quadrant 3 - Not Important and Urgent
- Quadrant 4 - Not Important and Not Urgent
Utilizing a 6 step program, this book examines the steps needed to keep First Things First:
- Connect with your mission: What do you want to be and do? What gives life meaning?
- Identify your roles: What responsibilities and expectation come from roles at home and at work?
- Select your goals: For each role, establish what items are the most important and that will result in the most constructive impact.
- Create a weekly framework: Plan your week by placing the most important things for each role in your schedule.
- Exercise integrity in the moment: Preview, prioritize, and distinguish time-sensitive activities from others. This will ensure you maintain your perspective and use that perspective to make the tough choices that will arise from daily challenges.
- Evaluate: The process is only working if you review your week and form the foundation for the next week.
They note that most of us spend the majority of our time in Quadrants 1 and 3. However, the quadrant of quality is Quadrant 2 - those things that are important but not necessarily urgent. Examples include planning, preparation, relationship building, clarification of values, prevention activities, etc.
Covey and the Merrills go on to discuss "integrity in the moment of choice" in implementing the plan as the critical point on which ultimately quality of life depends. It is the consciousness of the proactive that each is responsible for the freedom that exists in the space between the stimulus and its response.
The final part of the book deals with the multiplication of resource and capability that follows out of embracing our interdependence through synergy, relationship building, and the cultivation of agreements with win - win outcomes.
Highly recommended for those looking to implement the Seven Habits in their daily living.
- From quoting Louise McCauley
Target readers:
General readers
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Stephen R. Covey, husband, father, and grandfather, is an internationally respected leadership authority, family expert, teacher, organizational consultant, founder of the former Covey Leadership Center, and cochairman of Franklin Covey Company. He holds an MBA from Harvard and a doctorate from B.Y.U., where he was a professor of organizational behavoir and business management and also served as director of university relatins and assistant to the president. Dr. Covey is the author of several acclaimed books, including The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which has been at the top of the bestseller lists for over seven years. More than 10 million copies have been sold in 28 languages and 70 countries. His book Principle-Centered Leadership is one fo the best-selling business books of the decade. Stephen, his wife, Sandra, and their family live in the Rocky Mountains of Utah.
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From the publisher
"I'm getting more done in less time, but where are the rich relationships, the inner peace, the balance, the confidence that I'm doing what matters most and doing it well?"
Does this nagging question haunt you, even when you feel you are being your most efficient? If so, First Things First can help you understand why so often our first things aren't first. Rather than offering you another clock, First Things First provides you with a compass, because where you're headed is more important than how fast you're going.
A revolutionary guide to managing your time by learning how to balance your life. From the author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Provides you with a compass-because where you're headed is more important than how fast you're going. Paper. DLC: Conduct of life - Time management.
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Chapter 1: How Many People on Their Deathbed Wish They'd Spent More Time at the Office?
The enemy of the "best" is the "good,"
We're constantly making choices about the way we spend our rime, from the major seasons to the individual moments in out lives. We're also living with the consequences of those choices. And many of us don't like those consequences - especially when we feel there's a gap between how we're spending our rime and what we feel is deeply important in out lives.
My life is hectic! I'm running all day - meetings, phone calls, paperwork, appointments. I push myself to the limit, fall into bed exhausted, and get up early the next morning to do it all again. My output is tremendous; I'm getting a lot done. But I get this feeling inside sometimes, "So what? What are you doing that really counts?" I have to admit, I don't know.
I feel like I'm being torn apart. My family is important to me; so is my work. I live with constant conflict, trying to juggle the demands of both. Is it possible to be really successful - and happy - at the office and at home?
There is simply too little of me to go around. The board and shareholders are on me like a swarm of bees for our declining share prices. I'm constantly playing referee in turf wars between members of my executive team. I feel tremendous pressure to be leading our organization's quality improvement initiative. The morale among out employees is low and I feel guilty for no/ge/ring out with them and listening more. On top of all this, despite our family vacations, my family has all but written me off because they never see me.
I don't feel in control of my life. I try to figure out what's important and set goals to do it, but other people - my boss, my work associates, my spouse - continually throw wrenches into the works. What I set out to do is blocked by what other people want me to do for them. What's important to me is getting swept away in the current of what's important to everybody else.
Everyone tells me I'm highly successful, I've worked and scraped and sacrificed, and I've made it to the top. But I'm not happy. Way down inside I have this empty feeling. It's like the song says, "Is that all there is?"
Most of the time, I just don't enjoy life. For every one thing I do, I can think of ten things I don't do, and it makes me feel guilty. The constant stress of trying to decide what I should do in the middle of all I could do creates a constant tension. How can I know what's most important? How can I do it? How can I enjoy it?
I feel like I have some sense of what I should do with my life. I've written down what I feel is really important and I set goals to make it happen. But somewhere between my vision and my daily action, I lose it. How can I translate what really counts into my daily life?
Putting first things first is an issue at the very heart of life. Almost all of us feel torn by the things we want to do, by the demands placed on us, by the many responsibilities we have. We all feel challenged by the day-to-day and moment-by-moment decisions we must make regarding the best use of our time.
Decisions are easier when it's a question of "good" or "bad." We can easily see how some ways we could spend our time are wasteful, mind-numbing, even destructive. But for most of us, the issue is not between the "good" and the "bad," but between the "good" and the "best." So often, the enemy of the best is the good.
Stephen: I knew a man who was asked to be the new dean of the College of Business of a large university. When he first arrived, he studied the situation the college faced and felt that what it needed most was money. He recognized that he had a unique capacity to raise money, and he developed a real sense of vision about fund-raising as his primary function.
This created a problem in the college because past deans had focused mainly on meeting day-to-day faculty needs. This new dean was never there. He was running around the country trying to raise money for research, scholarships, and other endowments. But he was not attending to the day-to-day things as the previous dean had. The faculty had to work through his administrative assistant, which was demeaning to many of them who were used to working with the person at the top.
The faculty became so upset with his absence that they sent a delegation to the president of the university to demand a new dean or a fundamental change in his leadership style. The president, who knew what the dean was doing, said, "Relax. He has a good administrative assistant. Give him some more time."
Within a short rime, the money started pouring in and the faculty began to recognize the vision. It wasn't long until every time they saw the dean, they would say, "Get out of here! We don't want to see you. Go out and bring in more funds. Your administrative assistant runs this office better than anyone else."
This man admitted to me later that the mistake he made was in not doing enough team building, enough explaining, enough educating about what he was trying to accomplish. I'm sure he could have done better, but I learned a powerful lesson from him. We need to constantly be asking ourselves, "What is needed out there, and what is my unique strength, my gift?"
It would have been easy for this man to meet the urgent expectations of others. He could have had a career at the university filled with many good things. But had he not discerned both the real needs and his own unique capacities, and carried out the vision he developed, he would never have achieved the best for him, the faculty, or the college.
What is "best" for you? What keeps you from giving those "best" things the rime and energy you want to give them? Are too many "good" things getting in the way? For many people, they are. And the result is the unsettling feeling that they're not putting first things first in their lives.
THE CLOCK AND THE COMPASS
Our struggle to put first things first can be characterized by the contrast between two powerful tools that direct us: the clock and the compass. The clock represents out commitments, appointments, schedules, goals, activities -- what we do with, and how we manage our time. The compass represents out vision, values, principles, mission, conscience, direction -- what we feel is important and how we lead our lives.
The struggle comes when we sense a gap between the clock and the compass -- when what we do doesn't contribute to what is most important in out lives.
For some of us, the pain of the gap is intense. We can't seem to walk out talk. We feel trapped, controlled by other people or situations. We're always responding to crises. We're constantly caught up in "the thick of thin things" -- putting out fires and never making time to do what we know would make a difference. We feel as though out lives are being lived for us.
For others of us, the pain is a vague discomfort. We just can't get what we feel we should do, what we want to do, and what we actually do all together. We're caught in dilemmas. We feel so guilty over what we're not doing, we can't enjoy what we do.
Some of us feel empty. We've defined happiness solely in terms of professional or financial achievement, and we find that our "success" did not bring us the satisfaction we thought it would. We've painstakingly climbed the "ladder of success" rung by rung - the diploma, the late nights, the promotions -- only to discover as we reached the top rung that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall. Absorbed in the ascent, we've left a trail of shattered relationships or missed moments of deep, rich living in the wake of the intense, overfocused effort. In out race up the rungs, we simply did not take the time to do what really mattered most.
Others of us feel disoriented or confused. We have no real sense of what "first things" are. We move from one activity to another on automatic. Life is mechanical. Once in a while, we wonder if there's any meaning in our doing.
Some of us know we're out of balance, but we don't have confidence in other alternatives. Or we feel the cost of change is too high. Or we're afraid to try. It's easier to just live with the imbalance.
WAKE UP CALLS
We may be brought to an awareness of this gap in a dramatic way. A loved one dies. Suddenly she's gone and we see the stark reality of what could have been, but wasn't, because we were too busy climbing the "ladder of success" to cherish and nurture a deeply satisfying relationship.
We may find out our teenage son is on drugs. Pictures flood out minds - times we could have spent through the years doing things together, sharing, building the relationship... but didn't because we were too busy earning a living, making the right connections, or simply reading the newspaper.
The company's downsizing and our job's on the line. Or our doctor tells us we have just a few months to live. Or our marriage is threatened by divorce. Some crisis brings us to an awareness that what we're doing with our time and what we feel is deeply important don't match.
Rebecca: Years ago, I was visiting with a young woman in the hospital who was only twenty-three years old and had two small children at home. She had just been told she had incurable cancer. As I held her hand and tried to think of something to say that might comfort her, she cried, "I would give anything just to go home and change a messy diaper!"
As I thought about her words and my experience with my own small children, I wondered how many times both of us had changed diapers out of a sense of duty, hurriedly, even frustrated by the seeming inconvenience in our busy lives, rather than cherishing precious moments of life and love we had no way of knowing would ever come again.
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| View all 8 comments |
A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-05-11 00:00>
This is the best book on time management I have ever read. "First Things First" puts "Seven Habits" into action. It takes the "Habits" principles - sometimes a bit too abstract (and obtuse) and shows you how to put them to work. If you find you don't have time for the people and things that are really important in your life, read this book. If you take the suggestions seriously, you will never again short-change what you love. And, if you do, you will be at least be aware of your choices. A word of warning, though: Covey has an entire catalogue of products to sell you to support "First Things First," but the company does seem to be committed to "principle centered" business |
Kent Holland (MSL quote), USA
<2007-05-11 00:00>
Having read more than a dozen books on the subject of mission statements, goal setting and time management, and also having taught workshops on the subject myself, this is the one book that I find most useful. As some other reviewers point out, it may seem a little heavy in parts, but the details are well worth studying.
As the authors emphasize, time management doesn't begin with managing time, it begins with finding our own individual purpose, establishing our mission, and setting our goals to achieve that mission. This is more than a "how to" book. It is a "why to" book. It has the ability to persuade people that they need to set written goals. In teaching young adults, I have found some that insist they don't need written goals and that they certainly don't need a mission statement. My response is to encourage them to read this book.
I appreciate how persausive the authors are in encouraging the reader to find the "main thing" without getting trapped into becoming a success in just one small area rather than fulfilling four areas of the "quadrant," including physical, social, mental and spiritual. Moreover, they bring home the necessity of finding balance and staying balanced in the different roles we have in our lives. After you read this book, I recommend that you consider reading "The Power of Full Engagement" by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, and "Finding Flow" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. You won't be disappointed. |
Tejani Hitesh (MSL quote), India
<2007-05-11 00:00>
A valuable book. This is a must read for any one who wants to be effective in life. The 7 habits author - Stephen Covey - effectively describes this 4th generation time management tool to help us lead a fulfilling life. This book is a practical book, gives tables and charts to be useful on a daily basis. Briefly it talks about our (Life's) Mission statement, the roles which we need to play and the goals in each of our roles. It uses a weekly format instead of a daily or monthly format. A gem of a book, not to be missed. |
David R. Bess (MSL quote), USA
<2007-05-11 00:00>
As someone who juggles many different responsibilities and a crowded calendar, I approached this title with high expectations. I was not disappointed! Covey here offers a revolutionary resource for time management. Rather than following the standard theme of how to do more in a given period of time, the author emphasizes the importance of setting priorities and planning ahead. His analogy of the clock and the compass is priceless in describing the two elements that should both be balanced in our prioritizing and scheduling.
I've been exposed to many varied techniques of time management, but have not experienced anything as revolutionary and life-transforming as this title. For anyone who can't find enough time to "get everything done that needs to be done," I highly recommend this book. It's been a huge help to me! |
View all 8 comments |
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