Habit 3 of Stephen Covey: Put First Things First

Summary Of Habit 3 of 7 Habits

The Habit 3 Covey talks about is the prioritization of tasks. Covey describes the importance of keeping your priority things on the top. He explains that you should be able to identify the tasks that are important and prioritize them above all. With so much happening around in your surroundings, there are chances that you miss the important ones. This is why it is vital that you create a list of high priority goals and cater to them according to their importance.

In this habit, he said “first things” are basically all those things that value the most in your life. So, you should manage your schedule according to your priorities to get all essential things done on time.

If you have mastered the first two habits described by Stephen Covey, now it’s time to move on to habit 3 Put First Things First. This habit is about setting your priorities and accomplishing the first and second habits, namely, Habit 1 - Be Proactive and Habit 2 - Begin with the End in Mind.

It demonstrates how to spend more time in Quadrant II, which includes important activities, tasks that help you live a balanced life, and avoid the burden of urgent tasks. Urgent matters require immediate attention and often dictate our reactions, whereas important tasks that aren’t urgent require more proactive efforts and discipline to prioritize effectively.

The first challenge that Stephen Covey teaches about the 7 habits of highly effective people habit 3 is to answer the following two questions:

  1. What single thing that you should be doing regularly to make a big change in your life?

  2. What things in your professional or personal life would lead to similar results?

Before moving on to the online resources, try giving these two questions a thought, even if you are not ready to provide the answers.

Ready?

What Does ‘Put First Things First’ Mean?

“Put First Things First” is a principle that emphasizes the importance of prioritizing tasks and activities based on their urgency and importance. It means organizing and executing around your most important priorities, focusing on what is truly important to you, and managing your time effectively to achieve your personal and professional goals.

In essence, “Put First Things First” is about making conscious decisions about how to spend your time and energy, ensuring that you are allocating your resources to the most critical tasks and activities that align with your personal mission and values. This principle is closely related to effective personal management, which involves being proactive, setting clear goals, and managing your time and resources to achieve those goals.

By putting first things first, you can make a tremendous positive difference in your personal and professional life. It allows you to focus on the big rocks, the high-priority tasks that contribute to your mission, values, and goals, and avoid getting bogged down by urgent but less important matters. This principle is essential for achieving effective management, which is a function of your independent will and ability to make decisions and choices that align with your values and goals.

In the context of time management, “Put First Things First” means understanding the four quadrants of time management and prioritizing tasks accordingly. Quadrant II, which includes important but not urgent activities, is the heart of effective personal management, and it requires more initiative and proactivity to tackle important matters that are not urgent. By focusing on Quadrant II activities, you can make progress towards your long-term goals and create a sense of balance and fulfillment in your life.

In contrast, Quadrant IV, which includes not urgent and not important activities, is a waste of time and can lead to procrastination and a sense of stagnation. By avoiding Quadrant IV activities and focusing on the first things, you can achieve a sense of purpose and direction, and make progress towards your personal and professional goals.

In summary, “Put First Things First” is a principle that emphasizes the importance of prioritizing tasks and activities based on their urgency and importance, and managing your time effectively to achieve your personal and professional goals. By putting first things first, you can make a tremendous positive difference in your life, achieve effective management, and create a sense of balance and fulfillment.

The Four Quadrants of Time Management

Understanding the paradigm of time management promoted by Stephen Covey is vital if you want to master the 7 habits. I suggest keeping this image or any other representation of the four-time quadrants in a place where you can see it.

What is the Connection Between Habit 1 & 2 and Habit 3?

When studying the 7 habits, it’s always important to see them as a whole rather than separate principles. The 7 habits are interdependent, especially the first three are closely related to each other as they help you achieve personal victory and independence.

Habit 3 helps manage external influences and stay focused on personal values by addressing the forces surrounding individuals and ensuring that their actions align with their principles.

Reading about the habit 3 of 7 habits is an excellent occasion to review the first two and understand how the three are intimately linked to each other:

  • Habit 1 teaches you that you are the master of your life, you are in charge, and you are responsible for what happens to you.

  • Habit 2 appeals to your imagination and encourages you to see with the eyes of the mind — what is not yet possible. It helps you to create a vision of what you could become.

  • Habit 3 is putting into practice what you have learned until now by implementing effective management of your own personality. It will help you spend more time in Quadrant II and understand why dealing with priorities, first of all, helps us achieve better results and maintain the balance between productivity and production capacity.

How Can the Habit 3 First Things First Change My Life?

Let’s go for a real-life example. For instance, you may be tempted to spend time browsing the Internet tonight and end up going to bed tired and bored. This kind of activity belongs to Quadrant IV – where unimportant and not urgent activities are found.

Imagine a ringing phone; it demands immediate attention and illustrates the urgency of Quadrant I tasks. The harm you cause on yourself for the long term by staying in Quadrant IV can be bigger.

Wasting time instead of doing something good for your body and your mind, like going to the gym or reading a good book, will result in deteriorated health and reduced production capacity.

This means that at some point you will be pushed to Quadrant I, where urgent and important activities are included. You may have to deal with an acute health problem or you may end up lacking energy so much that you will postpone your work until it becomes urgent and you have to deal with it now.

Software to Help You Focus on Your Priorities

Have you ever tried getting an accurate picture of what occupies your time throughout the day? I’ve been doing an interesting experiment in which I use an app to determine my daily computer and Internet usage habits.

RescueTime

RescueTime delivers a comprehensive analysis of your digital life and identifies those habits that ruin your effectiveness. You just need to install the app and it will run in the background on your computer and mobile devices.

It tracks time spent on applications and websites and then produces detailed reports about your daily activity. Now you will know for sure if you are interrupting your work 50 times a day to check your social media accounts or you are spending a long time on websites providing low-quality entertainment.

Pomodoro Timer

After identifying those interruptions in your daily workflow or important activities, you can apply a very simple yet effective method for eliminating them – the Pomodoro Timer.

There are many apps based on this Italian time management method, but in order to familiarize yourself with it, you can try this simple website that doesn’t require you to install any piece of software on your computer.

In short, the idea is to break down your work into intervals, traditionally 25 minutes in length, and separate them by short breaks. During the 25 minute intervals, you will ignore any possible interruption – an excellent exercise for getting that stay-in-Quadrant II mentality.

Going back to the two questions formulated by Stephen Covey, you may find it easier to provide some good answers.

Week Plan

RescueTime and the Pomodoro Timer are great productivity tools. The former is perfect for tracking your productivity at work while the latter keeps you focused on specific tasks.

But if you want to take things to the next level — from productivity to effectiveness, then you need more than just a productivity app. Maybe Week Plan is your answer. Among many apps that boost productivity, the platform tops the charts.

Week Plan is a priority planner that helps you do the right things — the things that truly matter. It lets you prioritize tasks according to urgency and importance while allowing you to set high-impact tasks (HITs).

But Week Plan is not just a productivity Swiss Army Knife, it also has a vision planner, goal tracker, journal, roles management, calendars, and more. Check out the full features:

  • Quadrant View Prioritization Tool (Eisenhower Matrix)

  • Schedule High Impact Tasks (HITs)

  • Roles Management

  • Goals Tracking

  • Weekly/ Monthly Calendar

  • Journaling

  • Coaching Emails

  • Time Tracking

  • Pomodoro Timer

  • Google Calendar/ Outlook Integration

  • File Attachments

  • iOS and Android Apps

  • And More!

There you have it. Good luck in mastering Habit 3 of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People methodology.

Key Takeaways Of Habit 3

Ideally, when you start working, your focus should be more on the tasks that are important. You shouldn’t be wasting too much time on tasks if they are not important. By putting first things first, you can accomplish all your key goals easily because they will be on top of your schedule and their chances of being missed are minimized.

  • Keeping all your essential goals on top provides you an extra added advantage of allocating more time because if you start your day with the most important task then you have ample time to deal with it.

  • Meeting deadlines becomes easy because setting key tasks on top helps you finish them before time otherwise; missing targets becomes a common thing because keeping important tasks for the end will leave you with little time to cater to that task.

  • It also helps you identify all your essential tasks so that you can put all your focus towards achieving them first, then the rest of the things. If you don’t plan things this way, then you get involved with doing tasks that are urgent but not that important.

  • You can also have complete control over your work schedule if you know what your main tasks are for the day and plan your time accordingly.

  • Putting first things first makes you accountable for your time because when you set a specific amount of time for your essential goals, then you definitely like to get them done in the planned time otherwise; you have to provide reasons for not accomplishing them.

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