Summary & Response

First Things First (1994 Article Version) Page 1 of 5

First Things First by Stephen R. Covey

I've learned that the good is the enemy of the best when the first things in our

lives are subordinated to other things. My daughter, Maria, recently had a new

baby. A few days after she delivered, I visited with her, expecting to find her

happy. Instead, I found her frustrated. She told me, "I have so many other projects

and interests that are important to me. But right now, I have to put everything on

hold. I'm spending all my time just meeting the physical needs of this new baby. I

can't even find time to be with my other two children and my husband." Seeking to

understand, I replied, "So, this new baby is consuming you?" She continued, "I

have other work to do. I have some writing projects that need my attention. I have

other people in my life." I asked her, "What does your conscience tell you to do?

Maybe right now there is only one thing that matters—your baby." She said, "But I

have so many other projects and plans." She showed me her organizer. "I schedule

time to do these other things, but then I'm constantly interrupted by my baby." I

talked to her about the concept of a compass, not a clock. "You're being governed

by your internal compass, your conscience, and you're doing something of

enormous good. Now is not the time to be controlled by the clock. Throw away

your planner for a few weeks. Only one thing is needful. So, relax and enjoy the

very nature of this interruption to your life." "But what about life balance and

sharpening the saw?" she asked, knowing I teach these principles. "Your life is

going to be imbalanced for a time, and it should be. The long run is where you go

for balance. For now, don't even try to keep a schedule. Forget your calendar; take

care of yourself; don't worry. Just enjoy the baby, and let that infant feel your joy."

I reminded her: "The good is often the enemy of the best. You won't get much

satisfaction from fulfilling scheduled comitments if you have to sacrifice first

things and best things. Your satisfactions are tied to your role expectations. Maybe

the only role that matters this entire day will be mothering your new baby. And if

you fulfill that role well, you will feel satisfied. But if you schedule other

commitments when you have no control of the demands your baby is going to

make, you'll only be frustrated." Maria has since learned to relax and enjoy her

baby more. She has also involved her husband and other children more in caring

for the new baby, sharing with them all that can be shared.

Identify Your First Things

First Things First (1994 Article Version) Page 2 of 5

What are the first things in your life? One good way to answer that question is

by asking other questions: "What is unique about me? What are my unique gifts?

What is it that I can do that no one else can do? For instance, who else can be a

father to your child? A grandparent to your grandchildren? Who else can teach

your students? Who else can lead your company? Who else can be a mother to

your baby? In a sense, we all have our "babies," meaning some demanding new

project or product. Each of us has unique talents and capabilities and an important

work to do in life. The tragedy is that our unique contribution is often never made

because the important "first things" in our lives are choked out by other urgent

things. And so some important works are never started or finished. In our new

book, First Things First, co-authored with Roger and Rebecca Merrill, we suggest

that the path to personal leadership follows the stepping stones of vision, mission,

balance, roles, goals, perspective, and integrity in the moment of choice. It's an

ecological balancing process. We invite readers to think very carefully through this

process. "What my responsibilities in life? Who are the people I care about?" The

answers become the basis for thinking through your roles. Your goals are then set

by asking, "What is the important future state for each relationship or

responsibility?" Setting up win-win agreements with people and maintaining

positive relationships is not an efficient process; in fact, the process is usually

slow. But once a win-win agreement is in place, the work will go fast. If you're

efficient up front, you might be taking the slowest approach. Yes, you might drum

your decision down someone else's throat, but whether or not he is committed to

live by that decision and to carry it out is a different matter. Slow is fast; fast is

slow. Peter Drucker makes the distinction between a quality decision and an

effective decision. You can make a quality decision, but if there isn't commitment

to it, it won't be effective. There has to be commitment to make a "quality

decision" effective. An executive may be highly efficient working with things, but

highly ineffective working with people. Efficiency is different in kind from

effectiveness: Effectiveness is a results word; efficiency is a methods word. Some

people can climb the "ladder of success" very efficiently, but if it's leaning against

the wrong wall, they won't be effective. Efficiency is the value you learn when you

work with things. You can move things around fast: you can move money, manage

resources, and rearrange your furniture quickly. But if you try to be efficient with

people on jugular issues, you'll likely be ineffective. You can't deal with people as

if you're dealing with things. You can be efficient with things, but you need to be

effective with people, particularly on jugular issues. Have you ever tried to be

efficient with your spouse on a tough issue? How did it go? If you go fast, you'll

make very slow progress. If you go slow and get deep involvement doing what is

necessary through synergistic communication based on a win-win spirit you'll find

that in the long run it's fast because then you have total commitment to it. You also

First Things First (1994 Article Version) Page 3 of 5

have a quality decision simply because you have the benefit of different creative

ideas interacting, creating a new solution that is better and more bonding.

Subordinate Clock to Compass

For many executives, the dominant metaphor of life is still the clock. We value

the clock for its speed and efficiency. The clock has its place, efficiency has its

place, after effectiveness. The symbol of effectiveness is the compass—a sense of

direction, purpose, vision, perspective, and balance. A well-educated conscience

serves as an internal monitoring and guidance system. To move from a clock to a

compass mindset, you focus on moving the fulcrum over by empowering other

people. But the empowerment process itself is not efficient. You can't think

control; you think of releasing feelings seldom expressed and interacting with

others until you create something better and you don't know what it is at the

beginning. It takes a lot of internal security, a lot of self-mastery, before you can

even assume that risk. And the people who like to control their time, money, and

things, tend to try to control people, taking the efficiency approach, which in the

long run is very ineffective. Effectiveness applies to self as much as to other

people. You should never be efficient with yourself either. For example, one

morning I met with a group in our training program. Someone said, "Creating a

personal mission statement is a tough process." And I said, "Well, are you

approaching it through an efficiency paradigm or an effectiveness paradigm? If

you use the efficiency approach, you may try to bang it out this weekend. But if

you use the effectiveness approach, you'll carry on this tortuous internal debate on

every aspect of your nature, your memory system, your imagination system, your

value system, your old habits, old scripts. You'll keep this dialogue going until you

feel at peace." Why do executives find it easy to schedule and keep appointments

with others, but hard to keep appointments with themselves? If people can make

and keep promises to themselves, they will significantly increase their social

integrity. Conversely, if they learn to make and keep promises to others, they will

have higher self-discipline. The private victory of keeping appointments with

ourselves doesn't just mean that we spend some private time alone it might also

mean that we promise ourselves not to overreact, or to apologize in the middle of a

mistake. Keeping these promises enormously increases your sense of integrity. For

example, I saw my son the other day chewing out his little sister for rearranging his

office. He had everything laid out to work on his project, but she thought it was

messy and she wanted to help her brother. In the middle of his tirade, he caught

himself and said, "I apologize. I'm just taking my frustrations out on you, and I

know you meant to do well." He did it right then. He kept an appointment with

himself to live by his values even in the heat of the moment. I admired him

First Things First (1994 Article Version) Page 4 of 5

enormously. Knowing that people and relationships are more important than

schedules and things, we can subordinate a schedule without feeling guilty because

we superordinate the conscience, the commitment to a larger vision and set of

values. We subordinate the clock approach of efficiency to the compass approach

of effectiveness. When using the compass, we subordinate our schedules to people,

purposes, and principles. The "mega priorities" of the compass subordinate the

"mini priorities" of the clock. When your projects are worthy ones, then your

purpose will transcend petty concerns and matters of secondary importance. What

Charles Dickens learned from writing A Christmas Carol is that a transcendent

purpose subordinates the old scripts of scarcity and independence. It may not

totally erase them, but at least it subordinates them. Dickens got a strong sense of

purpose about writing a story that would bless the lives of families, particularly

children, when he reflected on the time when he worked in the factories 12 hours a

day, every day of the week, and his father and other members of his family were in

debtor's prison for several months. He remembered those times of scarcity and

recognized them as scripts. And as he combined the images of the present with the

past, he experienced an enormous burst of creative energy that subordinated all of

his present problems, his depression, and the possibility of financial ruin, to get out

this magnificent story.

Without valuing interdependence and abundance thinking, you won't be able to

keep first things first. Some people never understand these realities. They fall back

into independence and scarcity thinking. Those perspectives are more a function of

scripting than of anything else. But we can change the script.

From Urgency to Importance

When we are guided by an internal compass, a highly educated conscience, we

may decide to dedicate an entire morning to one person or to focus on one project

and subordinate an earlier schedule we'd set up, unless we have strong

commitments to meet with certain individuals, then we work around those. Or we

may decide to set aside an afternoon to keep an appointment only with ourselves.

During that time, we might sharpen the saw by exercising one or more of the four

dimensions of our personality physical, mental, social, and spiritual. We use self-

awareness to know what to do and when. I recommend a time management credo

that says: "I will not be governed by the efficiency of the clock; I will be governed

by my conscience. Because my conscience deals with the totality of my life. And

since it is well educated from study and from experience, it will help me make

wise decisions." Under the influence of a well-developed conscience, you make

decisions on a daily, hourly, and moment-to-moment basis to be governed by

First Things First (1994 Article Version) Page 5 of 5

principles. If you are immersed in an extremely productive or creative work, don't

let anything interrupt. Can you imagine a surgeon taking a telephone call in the

middle of surgery? Most people are buried in urgency. Most production and

management jobs call for quick reactions to what is urgent and important. The net

effect of a reactionary, urgent lifestyle is stress, burnout, crisis management, and

always putting out fires. If you're into daily planning and prioritizing, then by

definition you live with urgencies and crises. Important but not urgent activities are

easily pushed out by daily planning. When you are guided by an internal compass

or set of principles, you begin to see that the idea that I am in control is an arrogant

concept. You have to humbly submit yourself to natural laws that ultimately

govern anyway. If you internalize those laws and principles, you create a highly

educated conscience. And if you are open to it, you will keep first things first.

© 1996, 1998 Covey Leadership Center and FranklinCovey. All rights reserved.

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