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where you’re headed.
It’s much more a matter of what
you do and why you do it, than how fast you get it done.
More than doing
things right, it’s focused on doing the right things.
And the result is the unsettling feeling that
they’re not putting first things first in their lives. THE CLOCK AND THE COMPASS
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 an...
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For some of us, the pain of the gap is intense. We can’t seem to walk our 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 our lives are being lived for us.
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.
Each generation builds on the one before it and moves toward greater efficiency and control.
values.
People in this generation achieve sizable gains in personal productivity through focused daily planning and prioritization. “First things” become a function of values and goals.
they describe the territory.
We can control our choices, but we can’t control the consequences of those choices.
we can’t control other people.
transactional. But the reality is that most of the greatest achievements and the greatest joys in life come through relationships that are transformational.
To access the transformational power of interdependent synergy is the ultimate “moving of the fulcrum” in terms of time and quality-of-life results.
paradigm. Time is something to be experienced.
We’re not asking about the amount of chronos time spent in a particular way, but about the value, the quality, of that time.
Time management is essentially a set of competencies.
The idea is that if you can develop certain competencies, you’ll be able to create quality-of-life results.
Fundamental to putting first things first in our lives is leadership before management: “Am I doing the right things?” before “Am I doing things right?”
