Last week’s editorial was the second in a series reviewing Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. To summarize, Habit One, “Be Proactive”, tells us we have the power to determine our own lives. Habit Two, “Beginning with the End in Mind,” is the habit of personal leadership. Through this habit, Covey urges us to create a blueprint for our lives – a mission statement – so that we can begin each day with a clear understanding of our desired direction and destination.
Habit Three, “Put First Things First”, involves organizing and managing around this mission statement. To master Habit Three, take the plans and goals you created under Habit Two and execute around them in an organized way.
Creating a plan for your life through Habit Two is ‘leadership.’ Working around that plan in an organized way through Habit Three is ‘management.’ As an effective manager of your life, you take your first priority, you organize your life to put that first priority first, and then you carry it out first.
Covey explains that there are two ways to successfully organize around your priorities: 1. organize yourself; 2. delegate. In other words, do it yourself or have someone else do it.
Whether you are organizing yourself or delegating tasks, Covey suggests dividing things into four categories: 1. Urgent, Important; 2. Not Urgent, Important; 3. Urgent, Unimportant; 4. Not Urgent, Unimportant. Something ‘urgent’ has the appearance of requiring immediate attention, but may or may not be important. Something is ‘important’ if it contributes to your mission and goals. An effective manager concentrates on what is important (Categories 1 and 2) disregarding the urgency of matters.
A phone call, for example, is urgent. It has the appearance of needing immediate attention, but until it is answered, you will not know if it is important. Instead of letting yourself be constantly interrupted by the phone, you have the option of delegating the phone answering to an answering machine or to someone else. By delegating the phone calls, you are then able to take or respond only to the important calls.
Unopened mail is another urgent matter. Again, unopened mail has the appearance of needing immediate attention, but until it is opened, its importance is unknown. Delegating the task of opening and organizing the mail is something that can give you time to work on things that you already know are important.
Delegating is not always an easy thing to do, however. Opening mail, for example, is one of my favorite things to do. Silly as it may sound, I enjoy ripping open the envelopes to discover what is inside. It feels a little like Christmas. But because of the numerous pieces of mail received each day by my office at the Ardmore Village, spending my time opening the mail is not the best use of my time. Thus, this task has been delegated.
Delegation not only saves time, it can also create impressive results. Many times, those that have accepted my delegated tasks have thought of things that I never would have thought of on my own. For instance, this past weekend Ardmore Village, a senior citizen residential community, hosted one of the booths at Ardmore’s Earth Expo 2005. This booth demonstrated how styrofoam cups could be recycled into fun crafts. When painted and melted down, a syrofoam cup looks like a miniature hat. The Ardmore Village’s staff managed this booth on the day of the Earth Expo, but the Ardmore Village senior residents and off-campus members were the ones that decorated and prepared these styrofoam cups for the event. The creative artistry of the senior citizens was overwhelming. Working for hours, these creative seniors treated the cups like artist’s canvas. The cups were decorated with trees, houses, stick figures, animals, cars, and even math equations. How darling they were when these cups became miniature hats in the heat of the oven!
Learning to say “no” to unimportant things in your life, no matter how urgent they are, and learning to say “yes” to the important things, no matter how non-urgent they may be, is the essence of good personal management. This takes a commitment and may involve letting go of some things that you enjoy doing. The outcome is worth it. I guarantee it.
Next week, Habit Four, “Think Win/Win.”
|
