First Things First

” I’m getting more done in less time, but where are the rich relationships, the inner peace, the balance, the confidence that I’m doing what matters most and doing it well?”

• Does this nagging question haunt you, even when you feel you are being your most efficient? If so, First Things First can help you understand why we so often prioritize things that are unimportant to both our larger goals and our inner happiness.
• Another terrifically helpful book from the pen of Stephen Covey. You will find especially useful the two-by-two matrix he discusses as a way to organize yourself. The four resulting quadrants include:
  1. Important and Urgent
  2. Important, Not Urgent
  3. Urgent, Not Important
  4. Not Urgent, Not Important
  
• Simply put, most people spend far too much time in quadrants 3 & 4. We also spend too much time in quadrant 1, not that those issues are unimportant, but because we don’t manage our priorities well.
• The goal is to gradually focus more and more of our time and energy in quadrant 2, thus reducing the amount of energy necessarily directed to quadrant 1.
  
• Having been disappointed by too many time-management books in the past, which primarily purport to show one how to cram more into the limited amount of time we have, another epiphany for us from Covey’s book was that the issue isn’t time management, but rather priority management.
• This would be worthwhile reading for most people, but probably most especially, young adults.