First Things First

by Stephen R. Covey

While we do control our choice of action, we cannot control the consequences of our choices. Universal laws or principles do.

Thus, we are not in control of our lives; principles are.

because more important than how fast you’re going, is where you’re headed.

Yet quality of life cannot be achieved by taking the right shortcut.

There is no shortcut. But there is a path.

If there is one message to glean from this wisdom, it is that a meaningful life is not a matter of speed or efficiency. It’s much more a matter of what you do and ...

To get the most out of this material requires that you become involved with it in a deep way—to be willing to examine your life, your scripts, your motives, your “first things,” and what you represent.

We are convinced that this material can empower you to close the gap between what’s deeply important to you and the way you spend your time.

We’re convinced from our own experience that principles produce both personal peace and dramatic results.

“There is a time and a season for everything under the sun.

the challenges you face cannot be solved simply by increasing your ability to get more things done in less time.

More than doing things right, it’s focused on doing the right things.

We guarantee that understanding and applying the three fundamental ideas in this chapter will have a dramatic impact on your time and the quality of your life.

constantly

So often, the enemy of the best is the good.

We need to constantly be asking ourselves, “What is needed out there, and what is my unique strength, my gift?”

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 problem wasn’t how much they were getting done. It was where they were trying to go, and what they were trying to accomplish.

Most of us feel it would be great to be in “control” of our lives. But the fact is, we’re not in control; principles are. We can control our choices, but we can’t control the consequences of those choices.

To think we’re in control is an illusion. It puts us in the position of trying to manage consequences.

But the underlying assumption is that “more” and “faster” are better. Is that necessarily true?

While you can be efficient with things, you can’t be efficient— effectively—with people.

Our values drive our choices and actions.

When what we value is in opposition to the natural laws that govern peace of mind and quality of life, we base our lives on illusion and set ourselves up for failure.

But the reality is that most of the greatest achievements and the greatest joys in life come through relationships that are transformational.

The essence of kairos time is how much value you get out of it rather than how much chronos time you put into it.

But personal effectiveness is a function of competence and character.

Management works within the paradigm. Leadership creates new paradigms. Management works within the system. Leadership works on the system. You manage “things”; but you lead people.

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?”

“From the state of a man’s heart proceed the conditions of his life; his thoughts blossom into deeds, and his deeds bear the fruitage of character and destiny.”

So if we want to create significant change in the results, we can’t just change attitudes and behaviors, methods or techniques; we have to change the basic paradigms out of which they grow.

The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.

“The unexamined life is not worth living,”

One thing’s for sure: if we keep doing what we’re doing, we’re going to keep getting what we’re getting.

One definition of insanity is “to keep doing the same things and expect different results.”

There’s clearly a need for a fourth generation—one that embraces all the strengths of generations 1, 2, and 3, but eliminates the weaknesses... and moves beyond.

We need to move beyond time management to life leadership—to

Anything less than a conscious commitment to the important is an unconscious commitment to the unimportant.

The fourth generation is based on the “importance” paradigm. Knowing and doing what’s important rather than simply responding to what’s urgent is foundational to putting first things first.

Urgency addiction is a self-destructive behavior that temporarily fills the void created by unmet needs. And instead of meeting these needs, the tools and approaches of time management often feed the addiction. They keep us focused on daily prioritization of the urgent.

It’s important to realize that urgency itself is not the problem. The problem is that when urgency is the dominant factor in our lives, importance isn’t.

And the more urgency we have in our lives, the less importance we have.

If we ignore it, we become buried alive.

But we also need to realize that many important activities become urgent through procrastination, or because we don’t do enough prevention and planning.

Increasing time spent in this quadrant increases our ability to do.

Planning, preparation, and prevention keep many things from becoming urgent.

Quadrant II does not act on us; we must act on it. This is the Quadrant of personal leadership.

The noise of urgency creates the illusion of importance.

Of course, we really shouldn’t be there at all.

Quadrant IV is not survival; it’s deterioration. It may have an initial cotton candy feel, but we quickly find there’s nothing there.