First Things First Author: Visit Amazon's Stephen R. Covey Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0684802031 | Format: EPUB
First Things First Description
Amazon.com Review
What are the most important things in your life? Do they get as much care, emphasis, and time as you'd like to give them? Far from the traditional "be-more-efficient" time-management book with shortcut techniques,
First Things First shows you how to look at your use of time totally differently. Using this book will help you create balance between your personal and professional responsibilities by putting first things first and acting on them. Covey teaches an organizing process that helps you categorize tasks so you focus on what is important, not merely what is urgent. First you divide tasks into these quadrants:
Important and Urgent (crises, deadline-driven projects) Important, Not Urgent (preparation, prevention, planning, relationships) Urgent, Not Important (interruptions, many pressing matters) Not Urgent, Not Important (trivia, time wasters) Most people spend most of their time in quadrants 1 and 3, while quadrant 2 is where quality happens. "Doing more things faster is no substitute for doing the right things," says Covey. He points you toward the real human needs--"to live, to love, to learn, to leave a legacy"--and how to balance your time to achieve a meaningful life, not just get things done. --Joan Price
From Publishers Weekly
This is the latest time-management book from the author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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- Paperback: 384 pages
- Publisher: Free Press; Reprint edition (January 17, 1996)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0684802031
- ISBN-13: 978-0684802039
- Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
The Stephen R. Covey engine has kicked out numerous books on self-help, and they consult 200 out of the top 500 Fortune companies. After all of those books and years, they have heard enough stories and waded through enough crisis situations to get a good handle on what works and does not work in all of those environments.
Now, if you've read every book they're written, then undoubtedly you're going to begin this book and say "I've read this all before". Naturally, when they begin a book, they have to assume that some readers haven't read the other books yet. They have to catch them up on the background and basics. If you don't need that primer, then skim for a while. It's not a bad thing, it's a normal thing. It's how book writing works :) If you pick up book 5 of Harry Potter, you still have to go through a little bit of scene setting for the .00002% of the population who skipped the other books and lept into Book 5.
So now, onto the key points of this specific book. Time management is good. Organizing your goals is good. But all of these things are only good if your goals are actually valid ones. If you spend all your time creating to-do lists, and carefully plotting out weekly goals ... but your goal is to get a "bigger fur coat" while your children are starving and you're miserable at work, something is out of sync. This book is all about making sure that what you do is what you REALLY want to do. It's about a higher level of time management.
So they're not saying the other time management systems are bad. They explicitly say that each has its place in life! However, if you work very hard every day to climb a ladder, and find after many years that the ladder you've climbed was against the wrong wall, then you'll be very disappointed.
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