Habit 3 - First things First

Quadrant II


Urgent matters are usually visible. They press on us; they insist on action. They're often popular
with others. They're usually right in front of us. And often they are pleasant, easy, fun to do. But so
often they are unimportant!

TIME MANAGEMENT MATRIXfrom Stephen Covey’s book “First Things First”

	Urgent	Not Urgent
	I (MANAGE) Crisis Medical emergencies Pressing problems Deadline-driven projects Last-minute preparations for scheduled activities	II (FOCUS) Preparation/planning Prevention Values clarification Exercise Relationship-building True recreation/relaxation
	Quadrant of Necessity	Quadrant of Quality & Personal Leadership
	III (AVOID) Interruptions, some calls Some mail & reports Some meetings Many “pressing” matters Many popular activities	IV (AVOID) Trivia, busywork Junk mail Some phone messages/email Time wasters Escape activities Viewing mindless TV shows
	Quadrant of Deception	Quadrant of Waste

To paraphrase Peter Drucker, effective people are not problem-minded; they're opportunity-minded. They feed opportunities and starve problems. They think preventively. They have genuine Quadrant I crises and emergencies that require their immediate attention, but the number is comparatively small. They keep P and PC in balance by focusing on the important, but not the urgent, high-leverage capacity-building activities of Quadrant II.
What one thing could you do in your personal and professional life that, if you did on a regular basis, would make a tremendous positive difference in your life? Quadrant II activities have that kind of impact. Our effectiveness takes the quantum leaps when we do them.
I believe that if you were to ask what lies in Quadrant II and cultivate the proactivity to go after it, you would find the same results. Your effectiveness would increase dramatically. Your crises and problems would shrink to manageable proportions because you would be thinking ahead, working on the roots, doing the preventive things that keep situations from developing into crises in the first place. In the time management jargon, this is called the Pareto Principle -- 80 percent of the results flow out of 20 percent of the activities.
The enemy of the "best" is often the "good."
Keep in mind that you are always saying "no" to something. If it isn't to the apparent, urgentthings in your life, it is probably to the more fundamental, highly important things. Even when theurgent is good, the good can keep you from your best, keep you from your unique contributions, if you let it.
A Quadrant II organizer will need to meet six important criteria.Coherence: Coherence suggests that there is harmony, unity, and integrity between your visionand mission, your roles and goals, your priorities and plans, and your desires and discipline. In your planner, there should be a place for your personal mission statement so that you can constantly refer to it. There also needs to be a place for your roles and for both short- and long-term goals.
Balance: Your tool should help you to keep balance in your life, to identify your various roles and keep them right in front of you, so that you don't neglect important areas such as your health, your family, professional preparation, or personal development.
Quadrant II Focus:. You need a tool that encourages you, motivates you, actually helps you spend the time you need in Quadrant II, so that you're dealing with prevention rather than prioritizing crises. In my opinion, the best way to do this is to organize your life on a weekly basis. You can still adapt and prioritize on a daily basis, but the fundamental thrust is organizing the week.
A "People" Dimension: You also need a tool that deals with people, not just schedules. While you can think in terms of efficiency in dealing with time, a principle-centered person thinks in terms of effectiveness in dealing with people. There are times when principle-centered Quadrant II living requires the subordination of schedules to people. Your tool needs to reflect that value, to facilitate implementation rather than create guilt when a schedule is not followed.
Flexibility: Your planning tool should be your servant, never your master. Since it has to workfor you, it should be tailored to your style, your needs, your particular ways.
Portability: Your tool should also be portable, so that you can carry it with you most of the time.You may want to review your personal mission statement while riding the bus. You may want tomeasure the value of a new opportunity against something you already have planned. If yourorganizer is portable, you will keep it with you so that important data is always within reach.
Quadrant II organizing involves four key activities.
Identifying Roles: The first task is to write down your key roles.
Selecting Goals: The next step is to think of two or three important results you feel you shouldaccomplish in each role during the next seven days. These would be recorded as goals.
Scheduling: Now you look at the week ahead with your goals in mind and schedule time toachieve them. For example, if your goal is to produce the first draft of your personal missionstatement, you may want to set aside a two-hour block of time on Sunday to work on it. Sunday (or some other day of the week that is special to you, your faith, or your circumstances) is often the ideal time to plan your more personally uplifting activities, including weekly organizing. It's a good time to draw back, to see inspiration, to look at your life in the context of principles and values.
Daily Adapting: With Quadrant II weekly organizing, daily planning becomes more a function ofdaily adapting, or prioritizing activities and responding to unanticipated events, relationships, and experiences in a meaningful way.Taking a few minutes each morning to review your schedule can put you in touch with thevalue-based decisions you made as you organized the week as well as unanticipated factors that may have come up. As you overview the day, you can see that your roles and goals provide a natural prioritization that grows out of your innate sense of balance. It is a softer, more right-brain prioritization that ultimately comes out of your sense of personal mission.
Habit 1 says "You're the programmer" and Habit 2 says "Write the program," then Habit 3 says "Run the program," "Live the program."
Again, you simply can't think efficiency with people. You think effectiveness with people andefficiency with things. I've tried to be "efficient" with a disagreeing or disagreeable person and itsimply doesn't work. I've tried to give 10 minutes of "quality time" to a child or an employee to solve a problem, only to discover such "efficiency" creates new problems and seldom resolves the deepest concern.
Remember, frustration is a function of our expectations, and our expectations are often a reflection of the social mirror rather than our own values and priorities.
We accomplish all that we do through delegation -- either to time or to other people. If wedelegate to time, we think efficiency. If we delegate to other people, we think effectiveness.Many people refuse to delegate to other people because they feel it takes too much time and effort and they could do the job better themselves. But effectively delegating to others is perhaps the single most powerful high-leverage activity there is.
Management is essentially moving the fulcrum over, and the key to effective management isdelegation.
Stewardship delegation is focused on results instead of methods. It gives people a choice of method and makes them responsible for results. It takes more time in the beginning, but it's time well invested. You can move the fulcrum over, you can increase your leverage, through stewardship delegation.Stewardship delegation involves clear, up-front mutual understanding and commitment regarding expectations in five areas.Desired Results: Create a clear, mutual understanding of what needs to be accomplished, focusing on what, not how; results, not methods. Spend time. Be patient. Visualize the desired result. Have the person see it, describe it, make out a quality statement of what the results will look like, and by when they will be accomplished.Guidelines: Identify the parameters within which the individual should operate. These should beas few as possible to avoid methods delegation, but should include any formidable restrictions. You won't want a person to think he had considerable latitude as long as he accomplished the objectives, only to violate some long-standing traditional practice or value. That kills initiative and sends people back to the gofer's creed: "Just tell me what you want me to do, and I'll do it."If you know the failure paths of the job, identify them. Be honest and open -- tell a person wherethe quicksand is and where the wild animals are. You don't want to have to reinvent the wheel every day. Let people learn from your mistakes or the mistakes of others. Point out the potential failure paths, what not to do, but don't tell them what to do. Keep the responsibility for results with them -- to do whatever is necessary within the guidelines.Resources: Identify the human, financial, technical, or organizational resources the person candraw on to accomplish the desired results.Accountability: Set up the standards of performance that will be used in evaluating the results and the specific times when reporting and evaluation will take place.Consequences: Specify what will happen, both good and bad, as a result of the evaluation. Thiscould include such things as financial rewards, psychic rewards, different job assignments, and natural consequences tied into the overall mission of an organization.