Take Control of Your Schedule

Last week we learned about the different ways that our time and effort is spent or invested. This week we will focus on how to establish your personal Roles and how to use them to plan your week.

Before we begin, please download this 7 Habits Weekly Planner in PDF.

This template will allow you lay out your weekly hard landscape at a glance.

Identifying your Roles

Every task that we address and activity that we pursue is an expression of one of the Roles that we play each day of our lives. Whether the role is basic, such as Cook when we make dinner, or more complex, like Husband when I plan and execute our weekend getaway to celebrate our anniversary, every part of our daily lives can be represented by a Role.

When you look over your To-Do list, you should be able to identify which Role each action affects. Some sample Roles:

• Spouse
• Parent
• Mentor
• Home manager
• Spiritual leader
• Office manager
• Team member
• Employee
• Business person/owner
• Writer/painter/creative artist

Each person will have their own list of Roles that they play over the course of their daily life, and the list will change over time as new commitments are added and others are completed. Note also, that the majority of the Roles are described as being part of a relationship with another person or group.

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind…”
~ John Donne

Look over your list of roles in the context of the coming week, which Roles are affected by up-coming actions? Which Roles would you like to develop or enhance? Write your own list of Roles in the boxes on the left-hand side of the worksheet.

Planning your Week Continue reading »

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Welcome to part four of the series on how to implement the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People in a Getting Things Done-style system. Because this is a fairly intensive plan to implement, I am writing a series of posts that will guide you through the stages of implementation over seven (or so) weeks. This will give you a chance to focus on each new habit in your life for one full week before beginning the next one.

Each weekly post on the habits is supplemented by a worksheet to help you start focusing on the new habit.

For those of you who may not have read Stephen Covey’s landmark book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, here is a brief synopsis of the third habit: (from Wikipedia)

Put First Things First. Here, Covey describes a framework for prioritizing work that is aimed at short-term goals, at the expense of tasks that appear not to be urgent, but are in fact very important. Delegation is presented as an important part of time management. Successful delegation, according to Covey, focuses on results and benchmarks that are to be agreed upon in advance, rather than prescribed as detailed work plans.

This habit is so important that Stephen Covey wrote an entire book about it, which I recommend to everyone that I meet! You can order it from Amazon here [link].

“Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least” ~ Goethe

The third habit is the practical application of what we learned in the first two habits. Habit 1: Be Proactive puts you in charge of your responsibilities and your environment. Habit 2: Begin with the end in mind shows you the steps that you need to follow to create a path toward completing the various tasks and activities that you are responsible for.

Putting First Things First is the habit that enables you to actualize your principles and values by prioritizing your tasks and actions. The daily exercise of assigning priorities according to your values and principles puts you in control of your current situation and points you toward advancing and achieving your long-term goals.

Ask yourself two questions

Get a piece of paper [or download the worksheet] and write down the answers to these 2 questions:

1) What is one thing that I could do on a regular basis (But I am not doing now) that would make an important positive difference in my personal life?

2) What is another thing that I could do on a regular basis (But I am not doing now) that would make an important positive difference in my work or professional life?

Remember that there is no one “right” answer. Activities that have a positive impact on your life can vary, sometimes wildly. Some folks may have a simple answer like “Lose X pounds by eating a salad and walking for 15 minutes each day at lunch.” Others may have a more complex answer, such as “Improve personal communication skills and team cohesiveness by scheduling a weekly one-on-one meeting with each of the salespeople and going out on calls with them once per month.” Whatever your answer is it likely involves something that you already know that you should do yet, for whatever reason, don’t.

“The successful person has the habit of doing the things failures don’t like to do. They don’t like doing them either necessarily. But their disliking is subordinated to their strength of purpose.” ~ E.M. Gray

Importance vs. Urgency

Take a look at the answers that you wrote down. Do they reflect an activity or practice that is important to your personal or professional development? Yes? If not, you may have a wrong answer!

Now for the tricky part: Do you consider this activity to be urgent? Most likely this answer is “No”, or you would not be neglecting it! The struggle of importance vs. urgency is one that we all face every day. The tasks and activities that we execute tend to be sorted by urgency, by the scale of their effect on our immediate situation.

I am sure that most of you reading this can recall a day when you were frantically busy “putting out fires” but nothing you would consider Important was accomplished. This is not to say that responding to a crisis is not important, and no one is recommending that you file your receipts when the building is on fire. But I would submit that taking proactive steps to avert crises is surely more important, yet considered less urgent. Whenever I am in this type of situation, the expression, “There’s never enough time to do it right, but there always seems to be time to do it over” comes to mind.

Your personal values and principles should reflect the idea that having the appropriate tools and training is not only important, but urgent, and must be acted upon.

The Time Management Matrix

One of Stephen Covey’s most famous contributions to the world of Time Management is the Time Management Matrix, as shown below:

This matrix (abbreviated as: TMM) divides the way we spend or invest our time into 4 Quadrants based on a value of Importance vs. Urgency. Most of us, before we took an active interest in productivity practices, likely spent a lot of time in Quadrants 1 & 4. The diametrically opposite states of crisis management and goofing off are the most common ‘default’ states for busy people. Because we spend time goofing off instead of investing time in preparedness, we are later forced to spend time recovering from catastrophe.

Being busy, however, is not the same as being productive. I know people that can be busy all day long and accomplish exactly zero by 5:00. One can be very busy maintaining the widget machine, but if there are no widgets being cranked then your time & effort do not count as being invested (i.e., generating a return) but as being spent.

Time that is simply spent is gone forever.

Covey contends that if we consciously work toward inhabiting the Quadrant 2 portion of the TMM we can avert the crises and problems of Quadrant 1, delegate or eliminate the ‘filler’ work of Quadrant 3, and avoid the wasteful spending of Quadrant 4.

How do we get there

One of my favorite movies is “Funny Farm“, starring Chevy Chase (no judging!!). There is a scene in the movie where a couple of hard-bitten New Yorkers working for a moving company ask for directions. The man they ask, an older fellow sitting on his porch sorting apples, responds to their question with, “If I was goin’ to Redbud, I wouldn’t start from here.”

How often do you feel like that while you are coping with an environment dominated by Q1 activities - emergencies, deadlines missed, crises, employee difficulties? At times like this Q2 can seem so far away that is seems like you can’t get there from here. The secret path to Q2 lies in reducing the size of Quadrants 3 & 4.

Delete, Defer, and Delegate

Take a look at the graphic of the TMM, and the types of activities described in Q3 and Q4. The very first thing that you can do to reduce the scale of this real estate is to Delete those tasks and activities that are:

1. Not Important
2. Not Urgent
3. Can be deleted without affecting the organization

Those “Fwd:Fwd:Fwd” e-mail jokes, Minesweeper, Solitaire games and the like all need to go. Show some discipline and you can have the ‘fun’ things back when you have grabbed the reins of everything else. Be ruthless. Those stacks of magazines that you have been meaning to read? Toss’em or file’em. But get them out of sight.

Second, take a look at the tasks or activities that can be Deferred. If it does not need to get done today, file it in the Tickler File, or write it in your calendar. Get rid of it. But be careful! Only Defer the things that have survived the Deletion phase and can’t (or shouldn’t) be done by someone else. Keep in mind that some of these tasks can become opportunities for development, your own or a team member’s.

The third step is to Delegate as much as possible, but be responsible about it. This is a powerful tool for leveraging your own Quadrant 2 real estate. Is there something on your list that can’t be delegated today, but could be turned into a training and development tool for one of your team members? This is a Q2 opportunity! Embrace the change and let planning, prevention, and relationship-building become your watchwords.

Learning to say “No”

Another method of increasing the amount of time you get to invest in Q2 is by saying “No” to some of the new inputs that belong to Quadrants 1, 3, & 4. Obviously there are assignments that you cannot say no to, but generally you can apply the following criteria to new inputs and demands on your time:

1. Does this new input/demand fall into Quadrant 2?
2. Does this new input/demand match my values and principles?
3. Does this new input/demand align with my Personal Mission Statement?
4. Does this new input/demand advance any of my long-term goals?

If the answer to 2 or more of these questions is “No”, then you should seriously consider that your answer to the new demand be “No”. Taking on a new task or activity that does not meet at least 2 of the above criteria will increase your stress level and have a negative impact on your overall productivity.

You will not want to do this new task, because it does not fit into your model for achieving your purposes, and it very well may not get your best efforts.

Tune in tomorrow for Part II of this post, where we will examine methods and practices for investing more of your time in Quadrant 2, for greater returns on your productivity. Don’t forget to get the worksheet [right-click and "Save As"].

Welcome to part two of the series on how to implement the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People in a Getting Things Done-style system. Because this is a fairly intensive plan to implement, I am writing a set of seven posts that will guide you through the stages of implementation over seven weeks. This will give you a chance to focus on each new habit in your life for one full week before beginning the next one.

Each weekly post on the habits is supplemented by a worksheet to help you start focusing on the new habit.

For those of you who may not have read Stephen Covey’s landmark book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, here is a brief synopsis of the first two habits: (from Wikipedia)

The Seven Habits

The chapters are dedicated to each of the habits, which are represented by the following imperatives:

1. Be Proactive. Here, Covey emphasizes the original sense of the term “reactive” as coined by Victor Frankl. You can either be proactive or reactive when it comes to how you respond to certain things. When you are reactive, you blame other people and circumstances for obstacles or problems. Being proactive means taking responsibility for everything in life. Initiative and taking action will then follow. Covey also shows how man is different from other animals in that he has self-consciousness. He has the ability to detach himself and observe his own self; think about his thoughts. He goes on to say how this attribute enables him: It gives him the power not to be affected by his circumstances. Covey talks about stimulus and response. Between stimulus and response, we have the power of free will to choose our response.
2. Begin with the End In Mind. This chapter is about setting long-term goals based on “true north” principles. Covey recommends formulating a “personal vision statement” to document one’s perception of one’s own vision in life. He sees visualization as an important tool to develop this. He also deals with organizational vision statements, which he claims to be more effective if developed and supported by all members of an organization rather than prescribed.

Each Monday we will look into how to apply each of the Habits in a meaningful way that you can incorporate into your own personal productivity practice. At the end of the week we will re-group to discuss how we did. Each week you will be able to download a PDF worksheet for use as an aid to starting this new habit.

[Right-click this link and "Save As" to download the study guide]

I ask you to take on three simple activities that will help you administer and adjust to your new habit.
These activities are:

1. Create a Weekly Plan

Take some time at the end of your Weekly Review to plan your activities for the coming week. If you are not familiar with the Weekly Review, click here for more information. One of the basic principles that Covey teaches is that of the Big Rocks. These are the vital commitments that you need to put into your agenda first. Then you have room for the smaller stuff, the “pebbles and sand”. Your big rocks for this week include practicing one of the Sample Activities found at the end of this article.

The weekly planning is a big part of being proactive (Habit 1). A weakness of David Allen’s GTD system is that there is no mechanism for the items on your Next Action list to get pulled into the hard landscape of your calendar. This is where the idea of ‘Big Rocks’ and Most Important Tasks come in.

Each week, during your Weekly Review, you should look over the Next Action list with the purpose of ‘promoting’ some of these NAs to Big Rocks or MITs. These items are, by their nature, limited in number so as not to create a burden in your hard landscape.

2. Make a Personal Commitment

Commit yourself to adding one simple activity each week to implement and practice the new habit. Most new learning is lost the first week. Guard against this by sharing. If you have trouble keeping appointments with yourself, get a friend, partner or co-worker to hold you accountable. A burden shared is a burden eased.

You can also share the worksheet with your accountability partner. [Right-click this link and "Save As" to download the study guide]

3. Teach to Learn

One of the best ways to establish your own understanding of a new topic is to explain it to another person. Pick someone that you can teach the new habit to, it can be your accountability partner or someone else.

Now you are ready to get started!

Habit II - Begin with the End in Mind

“To begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination” (Stephen Covey).

How you envision the outcome of your activity is essential to its final success. If you have a clear vision of exactly what you are working to achieve you can then create the list of action steps needed to get there. Every goal is created twice, first in your mind, second in reality.

As discussed in the e-book Project Planning in Context, visualizing the outcome of your project is the vital first step. Without having a firm grip on the outcome, it is impossible to know when you can stop. “Busy-ness” for the sake of being busy in not productive, it’s spinning your wheels. When your goal is clear in your mind, and the project has been determined to be worth doing, i.e. you have outlined the “Why” of the goal, your next step is to set the conditions that define its successful completion.

Here is a short list of questions that can help create the vision of a successful outcome:

• What do I want the future to be?
• What benefit do I want to give to my __________? (family, company, career, etc.)
• What returns do I seek?
• What standards am I aiming at?
• What values do I believe in?
• What are my strengths, and how can I leverage them to success?
• What weaknesses do I have in approaching and overcoming obstacles?
• Are there potential opportunities for changing the plan to meet changing conditions?
• How might this affect the outcome?
• What might prevent me from reaching the best result?
• What will the success of this goal mean in a year? In three years?
• What is the best possible result of my activities?

Once you have completed a realistic analysis of the opportunities for change, the next step is to decide precisely what the aim of your plan is. Deciding and defining an aim sharpens the focus of your plan, and helps you to avoid wasting effort on irrelevant side issues.

Ready, Fire, Aim, Fire

The aim is best expressed in a simple single sentence. When the goal of a project is clear and sharp in your mind it is that much easier to communicate with the decision-makers and those who will be implementing your project.

Your description of the outcome is the final mark on the yardstick that you will be using to measure your progress through the plan’s stages. When you have properly defined the outcome of the project you can then create and define specific activities and sub-goals to reach your objective.

You can present this aim as a ‘Vision Statement’ or ‘Mission Statement’. Vision Statements express the benefit that an organization will provide to its customers. Mission statements give concrete expression to the Vision statement, explaining how it is to be achieved.

Write Your Own Mission Statement

How different would your life be if you had had a clear understanding of what was truly important to you five or ten years ago? Some of you reading now may have performed an exercise like this back then, and have gone on to create wonderful things. Others may never have heard of this process. We will work through it together and be better for it.

A personal mission statement is similar to that for a company or organization, in that it defines the values and principles that will be followed in the everyday activities and long-term planning. Having a written set of core values can be a very helpful tool in planning and executing your activities.

Think about the things that are important to you. Make a list of how you perceive or handle obstacles and opportunities in the following categories:

• Family
• Spouse
  
• Work
• Career
• Money
• Possessions
• Comfort
• Friendships
• Conflicts
• Faith
• Personal development

It’s all connected

Keep in mind the 3 types of impact that we discussed in the first post of this series. They are:

1. Direct - situations involving your personal behavior
2. Indirect - situations involving the behavior of others
3. and some are Beyond our control

Look at how each category affects the others. For example, your relationship with your family may be impacted by your current financial situation (for good or ill).

How you handle conflict with your friends, family, and adversaries can impact your work and career.

The way that you perceive comfort may be different from the way that your spouse or co-workers do (have you ever worked in a sweltering office and the person next to you keeps complaining how cold they are?)

Take some time to flesh out this list, considering the inter-connected nature of these principles. Write down how each category impacts the others, and how others may view them differently. Note that family and spouse are separate categories, as your relationships with them are likely to be very different. Likewise work and career are separate, as how you make a living may not necessarily be what you want to do in the future.

Sample Applications

Stephen Covey has a list of recommended activities for implementing this habit. Two of them are:

1. Look carefully at your list of values and principles. Does a pattern emerge? Is this really the person that you are? Or want to be?
2. Identify a project that you have coming up. Apply the principle of visualizing the final outcome. Write down the results that you desire and the steps that you need to take to achieve those results.

I would also recommend:

1. Look at every task you have this week with a new perspective. Visualize the best end result, and decide if this action will get you there.
2. Use the worksheet to create your own personal mission statement. Keep it handy and be prepared to revise it if necessary. Watch for opportunities to incorporate this mission statement into your daily interactions and decisions.

Thank you for participating, we will check back with you on Saturday for a review of how you did. Be sure to download the PDF for your own tracking here (link).

For those of you who may not have read Stephen Covey’s landmark book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, here is a brief synopsis of each of the habits: (from Wikipedia)

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

The chapters are dedicated to each of the habits, which are represented by the following imperatives:

1. Be Proactive. Here, Covey emphasizes the original sense of the term “reactive” as coined by Victor Frankl. You can either be proactive or reactive when it comes to how you respond to certain things. When you are reactive, you blame other people and circumstances for obstacles or problems. Being proactive means taking responsibility for everything in life. Initiative and taking action will then follow. Covey also shows how man is different from other animals in that he has self-consciousness. He has the ability to detach himself and observe his own self; think about his thoughts. He goes on to say how this attribute enables him: It gives him the power not to be affected by his circumstances. Covey talks about stimulus and response. Between stimulus and response, we have the power of free will to choose our response.
2. Begin with the End In Mind. This chapter is about setting long-term goals based on “true north” principles. Covey recommends formulating a “personal vision statement” to document one’s perception of one’s own vision in life. He sees visualization as an important tool to develop this. He also deals with organizational vision statements, which he claims to be more effective if developed and supported by all members of an organization rather than prescribed.
3. Put First Things First. Here, Covey describes a framework for prioritizing work that is aimed at short-term goals, at the expense of tasks that appear not to be urgent, but are in fact very important. Delegation is presented as an important part of time management. Successful delegation, according to Covey, focuses on results and benchmarks that are to be agreed upon in advance, rather than prescribed as detailed work plans.
4. Think Win/Win describes an attitude whereby mutually beneficial solutions are sought that satisfy the needs of oneself, or, in the case of a conflict, both parties involved.
5. Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood. Covey warns that giving out advice before having empathetically understood a person and their situation will likely result in rejection of that advice. Thoroughly reading out your own autobiography will decrease the chance of establishing a working communication.
6. Synergize describes a way of working in teams. Apply effective problem solving. Apply collaborative decision making. Value differences. Build on divergent strengths. Leverage creative collaboration. Embrace and leverage innovation. It is put forth that when synergy is pursued as a habit, the result of the teamwork will exceed the sum of what each of the members could have achieved on their own. “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
7. Sharpen the saw focuses on balanced self-satisfaction: Regain what Covey calls “production capability” by engaging in carefully selected recreational activities.

Each Monday we will look into how to apply each of the Habits in a meaningful way, to synchronize with your own, personal productivity practice. Then on Saturday we will re-group to discuss how we did. Each week you will be able to download a PDF worksheet for use as an aid to starting this new habit.

[Right-click this link and "Save As" to download the study guide]

I will ask you to take on three simple activities that will help you administer and adjust to your new habit.
These activities are: Continue reading »