Page 77 - stephen covey The seven habits of highly effective people

THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE Brought to you by FlyHeart

with only negligible attention paid to Quadrants II and III. That's how people who manage their lives
by crisis live.

There are other people who spend a great deal of time in "urgent, but not important" Quadrant III,
thinking they're in Quadrant I. They spend most of their time reacting to things that are urgent,
assuming they are also important. But the reality is that the urgency of these matters is often based on
the priorities and expectations of others.
People who spend time almost exclusively in Quadrants III and IV basically lead irresponsible lives.
Effective people stay out of Quadrants III and IV because, urgent or not, they aren't important.
They also shrink Quadrant I down to size by spending more time in Quadrant II.
Quadrant II is the heart of effective personal management. It deals with things that are not urgent,
but are important. It deals with things like building relationships, writing a personal mission
statement, long-range planning, exercising, preventive maintenance, preparation -- all those things we
know we need to do, but somehow seldom get around to doing, because they aren't urgent.
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.
With the Time Management Matrix in mind, take a moment now and consider how you answered
the questions at the beginning of this chapter. What quadrant do they fit in? Are they important?
Are they urgent?
My guess is that they probably fit into Quadrant II. They are obviously important, deeply
important, but not urgent. And because they aren't urgent, you don't do them.
Now look again at the nature of those questions: 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 asked a similar question to a group of shopping center managers. "If you were to do one thing in
your professional work that you know would have enormously positive effects on the results, what
would it be?" Their unanimous response was to build helpful personal relationships with the tenants,
the owners of the stores inside the shopping center, which is a Quadrant II activity.
We did an analysis of the time they were spending on that activity. It was less than 5 percent.
They had good reasons -- problems, one right after another. They had reports to make out, meetings
to go to, correspondence to answer, phone calls to make, constant interruptions. Quadrant I had
consumed them.
They were spending very little time with the store managers, and the time they did spend was filled
with negative energy. The only reason they visited the store managers at all was to enforce the
contract -- to collect the money or discuss advertising or other practices that were out of harmony with
center guidelines, or some similar thing.
The store owners were struggling for survival, let alone prosperity. They had employment
problems, cost problems, inventory problems, and a host of other problems. Most of them had no
training in management at all. Some were fairly good merchandisers, but they needed help. The
tenants didn't even want to see the shopping center owners; they were just one more problem to
contend with.
So the owners decided to be proactive. They determined their purpose, their values, their priorities.
In harmony with those priorities, they decided to spend about one-third of their time in helping
relationships with the tenants.