Put First Things First

Bailey Sergott (751)

Putting the first things first is extremely important but in order to do that, you must know what the first things are. Identifying the most important tasks of the day is not as easy as it seems. If you have a busy life then you probably use some sort of calendar to sort out your daily agenda. It is important to prioritize your agenda based on the most important stuff first. Identifying the most important tasks and separating them from the most urgent, can be difficult because sometimes what is the most important is not always the most obvious. Importance deals with results. If something is important to you then it should go along with your high priority goals, your mission and values.

Quadrants

In The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Covey talks about the different quadrants managers and people use in their everyday life. In the first quadrant, it is labeled important and urgent, and it is things such as crises. In the second quadrant it is labeled as important but not urgent and it is filled with activities such as relationship building, planning, etc. The third quadrant is labeled as urgent but not important which are things such as phone calls and mail. The fourth quadrant is labeled as not important or urgent activities such as meetings, popular activities, time wasters, facebook, etc. The difference in the first and second quadrant is that urgent things cause reactions. We will react to urgent things but the important non-urgent activities are what requires more initiative to get it done. If we have a deadline to meet then we are going to react in advance to getting the deadline met. Something like relationship building is incredibly important but often overlooked because it is not urgent. People will often live their lives in quadrant three, thinking they are in quadrant one. They spend their time reacting to urgent things, assuming they are important when in reality they are not.

Importance

When you are given the option between doing something that you enjoy, like watching a movie and doing something you do not enjoy, like chopping wood, we often choose the one we enjoy. Now, if it was the winter time and you and your family relied on the wood burning to heat your home, then you might decide to chop some wood. In The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Covey says that, “It’s almost impossible to say “no” to the popularity of Quadrant 3 or to the pleasure of escape to Quadrant 4 if you have a bigger “yes” burning inside. Only when you have the self awareness to examine your program- and the imagination and conscience to create a new, unique, principle-centered program to which you can say “yes”-only then will you have sufficient independent will power to say “no,” with a genuine smile, to the unimportant.” He is saying that if you have something much more important to do, and you can realize that, then it is much easier to say no to the rest.

What Is Productivity?

Imagine if you had to fill up a very large bucket of water and instead of using a hose, you grabbed a small glass and started running from the sink to the bucket. As you run back and forth the cup is spilling water over the sides, and the bucket is taking many trips to fill up. Most likely, while you are running back and forth, you would feel very productive but in reality there are much better ways to fill up the bucket. Sometimes we spend our time doing things to keep us busy and confuse that with productivity. Many times managers spend their time taking calls and emails and then go home feeling a sense of accomplishment, when in reality nothing they did that day goes along with their deeper goals.

The Different Types of Management

There are three different types of management with the first being generation of time management, second generation managers and third generation managers. The first generation managers simply react to what grabs our awareness and what we believe needs to be done. Second generation managers take a bit more control. They often schedule and plan in advance and are typically seen as responsible, but their tasks have no correlation to their deeper values. Third-generation managers are the ones who take a large step in the right direction. They clearly identify their values and goals. They prepare for each day and prioritize their activities.