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We need to constantly be asking ourselves, “What is needed out there, and what is my unique strength, my gift?”
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 essence of kairos time is how much value you get out of it rather than how much chronos time you put into it.
The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.
if we keep doing what we’re doing, we’re going to keep getting what we’re getting.
Anything less than a conscious commitment to the important is an unconscious commitment to the unimportant.
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.
the more urgency we have in our lives, the less importance we have.
Quadrant I represents things that are both “urgent” and “important.”
we also need to realize that many important activities become urgent through procrastination, or because we don’t do enough prevention and planning.
Important to understand
Quadrant II includes activities that are “important, but not urgent.” This is the Quadrant of Quality. Here’s where we do our long-range planning, anticipate and prevent problems, empower others, broaden our minds and increase our skills through reading and continuous professional development, envision how we’re going to help a struggling son or daughter, prepare for important meetings and presentations, or invest in relationships through deep, honest listening.
Quadrant II does not act on us; we must act on it. This is the Quadrant of personal leadership.
Quadrant III is almost the phantom of Quadrant I. It includes things that are “urgent, but not important.”
Quadrant IV is reserved for those activities that are “not urgent and not important.”
They don’t act on you. You have to act on them.
If we see our spiritual need as separate from all other needs, we may not realize that what we believe about ourselves and our purpose has a powerful impact on how we live, how we love, and what we learn.
By seeing the interrelatedness of these needs, we realize that the key to meeting an unmet need is in addressing, not ignoring the other needs.
This is one of the strengths of personal leadership. While management is problem-oriented, leadership is opportunity-oriented.
“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
Self-improvement “movements” often recognize these endowments, but tend to segment them and to address them in isolation. Self-awareness is the focus of the recovery movement, as well as psychoanalysis and most psychotherapy. Conscience is the focus of religion—the world of morality, ethical thought, questions of meaning and right and wrong. Independent will is the will power, the “man on the street” approach—white-knuckle your way through life to get what you want. “No pain, no gain.” Creative imagination is the focus of visualization and mind power movements such as Positive Thinking,
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• What’s most important? • What gives your life meaning? • What do you want to be and to do in your life?
List the three or four things you would consider “first things” in your life. Consider any long range goals you might have set. Think about the most important relationships in your life. Think about any contributions you’d like to make. Reaffirm the feelings you want to have in your life—peace, confidence, happiness, contribution, meaning. Think about how you might spend this week if you knew you only had six months to live.
What difference would a clear vision of my principles, values, and ultimate objectives make in the way I spend my time? How would I feel about my life if I knew what was ultimately important for me? Would a written statement of my life’s purpose be valuable to me? Would it affect the way I spend my time and energy? How would a weekly reconnection to such a statement affect the things I choose to do during the week?
Roles represent responsibilities, relationships, and areas of contribution.
Balance among roles does not simply mean that you’re spending time in each role, but that these roles work together for the accomplishment of your mission.
• Do I often find that I’m consumed by one or two roles in my life, and that the others do not receive the time and attention I’d like to give them? • How many of my “first things” are in roles other than those that receive most of my time and attention? • Do the roles I’ve selected work together to contribute to the fulfillment of my mission? • What difference would it make in the quality of my life to consider these roles on a weekly basis, and ensure that my activities are appropriately balanced?
What is the most important thing I could do in each role this week to have the greatest positive impact?
• What would happen if I did these things during the coming week? • How would I feel about the quality of my life? • What if I did only some of them? • Would it make a positive difference in my life? • What if I did this every week? • Would I be more effective than I am now?
The key, however, is not to prioritize your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.
How do I feel about my week as I have it planned? • What difference would it make if I planned Quadrant II goals in each role (either as appointments or as daily priorities) each week, and carried them out? • Do I see the logic in putting the “big rocks” in first? How will this help me to get those important things done? In Chapter 8, we’ll take a closer look at three “operating perspectives” we gain as we move from the daily to the weekly focus.
1. Preview the day. This is a much different process from the “daily planning” of traditional time management. It’s spending a few moments at the beginning of the day to revisit your schedule, enabling you to get your bearings, check your compass, look at the day in the context of the week, and renew the perspective that empowers you to respond in a meaningful way to unanticipated opportunity or challenge. At this point, some people prefer the room for greater detail available on a daily page.
Prioritize. Before you begin to prioritize in the traditional sense, you may find it helpful to identify your activities as QI or QII. This gives you an additional opportunity to ensure that Quadrant III activities haven’t slipped into your schedule in disguise. It also helps you keep a kairos or compass context to the day—which is normally more chronos or clock-focused. And it helps reinforce the importance paradigm and make you more aware of the nature of the choices you make.
3. Use some form of T planning for the day. On the daily sheet, the basic structure allows you to list “time sensitive” activities on the left and activities that can be done at any time of the day on the right. This technique is often called “T planning.” By separating the time-sensitive activities from the rest, you’re able to make more effective scheduling decisions and remain sensitive to important commitments. The more condensed Weekly Worksheet puts these same areas above and below.
It’s the blueprint before the construction; the mental before the physical creation.
We can live out of our imagination instead of our memory.
The basic paradigm is that without some form of tight control, we’ll mess up.
But the passion of vision releases the power that connects “discipline” with its root word, “disciple.” We become followers of our inner imperatives, voluntarily subordinating the less important to that deep burning “yes!” Instead of “control,” we’re focused on “release.”
The balance of nature itself teaches us the principle of times and seasons. There are times in our lives when imbalance is balance, when a short-term focus contributes to our overall mission in life.
QUADRANT II ORGANIZING NURTURES BALANCE Natural balance is a dynamic equilibrium that manifests itself in three important ways in our lives. • Primary balance is the inner balance between our physical, social, emotional, and spiritual dimensions. There’s no balance in life without balance in our inner life—without the synergy created when living, loving, learning, and leaving a legacy coalesce. • Secondary balance is in our roles. It’s a synergistic balance, a sometimes seasonal imbalance, as the parts work together to create a greater whole. • The P/PC balance is the balance between
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QUADRANT II GOALS TO CULTIVATE THE BALANCE OF ROLES • Evaluate your mission statement and your roles to make sure that your roles grow out of your mission and that your mission includes all the important roles in your life. • Analyze each of your roles in terms of relationships, and stewardships. • Organize your planner or organizer around your roles. • Organize your file or computer screen around your roles. • Work on mission statements or stewardship agreements for each of your roles
What’s often missing in the goal-setting process is the power of two other endowments: • conscience—the deep connection of goals to mission, needs and principles; and • self-awareness—the accurate assessment of our capacity and the balance in our Personal Integrity Account
One of the best ways to access this power is to ask three vital questions: what? why? and how?
Goal setting and power of passion
What do I desire to accomplish? What is the contribution I want to make? What is the end I have in mind?
Why do I want to do it? Does my goal grow out of mission, needs, and principles? Does it empower me to contribute through my roles?
The key to motivation is motive. It’s the “why.” It’s what gives us the energy to stay strong in hard moments. It gives us the strength to say “no” because we connect with a deeper “yes!” burning inside.
The stronger the connection, the stronger and more sustained the motivation.
How am I going to do it? What are the key principles that will empower me to achieve my purpose? What strategies can I use to implement these principles?
A principle-based goal is all three: the right thing, for the right reason, in the right way.
What are the one or two most important things I could do in this role this week that would have the greatest positive impact?
