First Things First

by Stephen R. Covey

QUADRANT II IDEAS TO NURTURE THE POWER OF GOALS • Use the what/why/how format to set context goals in each of your roles. • Set up a “perhaps” list under each role in your organizer. During the week, write down ideas that come to you for goals you may want to set under the appropriate role. Notice how you feel about putting these ideas on “perhaps” lists. As you plan your next week, refer to the lists for goal ideas. • As you set your weekly goals, pause and connect with conscience. Act on what you feel is most important for you to do in each role. • Think about how you’re using each of your endowments as you set and achieve goals for the week. • Identify each of your goals for the week as a “determination” or “concentration.” At the end of the week, analyze how this differentiation affected your attitude toward the goal, your progress in achieving it, and the balance in your Personal Integrity Account.

Quadrant II organizing is not prioritizing what’s on the schedule; it’s scheduling priorities.

The successful experiences most of us would like to have in life are rarely an accident. They are almost always an achievement, the result of careful planning and thorough preparation.

Quality of life depends on what happens in the space between stimulus and response.

HOW WE CAN IMPLEMENT THAT CHOICE

1. Ask with Intent

It is to ask our conscience, not out of curiosity, but out of commitment to act based on the wisdom of the heart.

“What’s most important right now?” “What is life asking of me?” “What’s the right thing to do now?”

Is this in my Circle of Influence? Is it in my Center of Focus? Is there a third-alternative solution? What principles apply? What is the best way to apply them?

The point is that instead of reacting based on your own needs and what you feel are time pressures, you’re pausing to think about principles and connect with conscience in a way that empowers you to put first things first in the moment of choice.

2. Listen without Excuse

The key to acting with integrity is to simply stop playing the game. Learn to listen—as well as to conscience, to our own response. The instant we feel ourselves saying, “Yes, but” change it to, “Yes, and.” No rationalizing. No justifying. Just do it. Look at every expression of conscience as an invitation to create greater alignment with the fundamental Laws of Life. Then listen, respond . . . listen, respond.

3. Act with Courage

It takes courage to realize that you are greater than your moods, greater than your thoughts, and that you can control your moods and thoughts.

“That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do,” said Emerson, “not that the nature of the thing has changed, but that our ability to do has increased.”2 As we learn to ask with intent, listen without excuse, and act with courage, we build our ability to live a principle centered life.

When we’re tired or ill, we often tend to be more reactive.

The Mental Dimension Quality mental renewal gives us added knowledge and perspective in decision-making moments.

We don’t really learn from our lives. We don’t stop to ask: What can I learn from this week that will keep next week from essentially being a repeat of the same?

EVALUATION: CLOSING THE LOOP The value of any week is not limited to what we do in it; it’s also in what we learn from it and become as a result of it.

As we organize, act, evaluate . . . organize, act, evaluate . . . and organize, act, and evaluate again, our weeks become repeating cycles of learning and growth.

Real learning gets to the heart of what it means to be human.

Through weekly evaluation on a personal basis, we increase self-awareness, educate our conscience, and build effective habits of the heart.

HOW TO EVALUATE YOUR WEEK

• What empowered me to accomplish these goals? • What challenges did I encounter? • How did I overcome them? • Was accomplishing these goals the best use of my time?

• Connect to mission empowers you to access the deep burning “yes!” created by the awareness of first things in your life, the “yes!” that generates passion and energy and makes it possible for you to say “no”—with confidence and peace—to the less important. • Review your roles enables you to reconnect with the avenues through which you can do first things in a balanced, synergistic way. • Identify your goals empowers you to focus effectively on the most important thing you can do in each role each week to accomplish your mission. It enables you to set principle-based Organize the week enables you to put the “big rocks”—your important Quadrant II goals—in first, and to schedule other things around them. • Exercise integrity in the moment empowers you to pause in the space between stimulus and response and act with integrity to first things in any moment of choice in your life. • Evaluate empowers you to turn your weeks into an upward spiral of learning and living.