Page 83 - stephen covey The seven habits of highly effective people

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

reschedule or cancel others.
As you study the following weekly worksheet, observe how each of the 19 most important, often
Quadrant II, goals has been scheduled or translated into a specific action plan. In addition, notice the
box labeled "Sharpen the Saw TM" that provides a place to plan vital renewing Quadrant II activities in
each of the four human dimensions that will be explained in Habit 7.
Even with time set aside to accomplish 19 important goals during the week, look at the amount of
remaining unscheduled space on the worksheet! As well as empowering you to Put First Things First,
Quadrant II weekly organizing gives you the freedom and the flexibility to handle unanticipated events,
to shift appointments if you need to, to savor relationships and interactions with others, to deeply enjoy
spontaneous experiences, knowing that you have proactively organized your week to accomplish key
goals in every area of your life.
Daily Adapting: With Quadrant II weekly organizing, daily planning becomes more a function of
daily 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 the
value-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.
You may still find that the third-generation A, B, C or 1, 2, 3 prioritization gives needed order to
daily activities. It would be a false dichotomy to say that activities are either important or they aren't.
They are obviously on a continuum, and some important activities are more important than others. In
the context of weekly organizing, third-generation prioritization gives order to daily focus.
But trying to prioritize activities before you even know how they relate to your sense of personal
mission and how they fit into the balance of your life is not effective. You may be prioritizing and
accomplishing things you don't want or need to be doing at all.
Can you begin to see the difference between organizing your week as a principle-centered,
Quadrant II manager and planning your days as an individual centered on something else? Can you
begin to sense the tremendous difference the Quadrant II focus would make in your current level of
effectiveness?
Having experienced the power of principle-centered Quadrant II organizing in my own life and
having seen it transform the lives of hundreds of other people, I am persuaded it makes a difference -- a
quantum positive difference. And the more completely weekly goals are tied into a wider framework
of correct principles and into a personal mission statement, the greater the increase in effectiveness will
be.

Living It

Returning once more to the computer metaphor, if Habit 1 says "You're the programmer" and Habit
2 says "Write the program," then Habit 3 says "Run the program," "Live the program." And living it is
primarily a function of our independent will, our self-discipline, our integrity, and commitment -- not to
short-term goals and schedules or to the impulse of the moment, but to the correct principles and our
own deepest values, which give meaning and context to our goals, our schedules, and our lives.
As you go through your week, there will undoubtedly be times when your integrity will be placed
on the line. The popularity of reacting to the urgent but unimportant priorities of other people in
Quadrant III or the pleasure of escaping to Quadrant IV will threaten to overpower the important
Quadrant II activities you have planned. Your principle center, your self-awareness, and your
conscience can provide a high degree of intrinsic security, guidance, and wisdom to empower you to