How often do you get to the end of a day only to discover that you have been busy all day without getting any of the important things completed? Worse yet, in reflecting on the day it is difficult (almost impossible) to actually remember what your time was spent doing.
If you could master this one habit in your life I can promise that days like that described above would be a distant memory. Today I am talking about the habit of “Putting First Things First”.
If you have been following my articles related to “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” you will remember that habits one and two were in support of habit 3. Habit 1 was all about you having independent will, imagination and being self-aware. As such you are in charge of your life. If you don’t like the way things are going, change them. Habit 2 was all about the fact that we have imagination, can envision the potential that exists in the future with our active participation.
Habit 3, “Putting First Things First”, is about the activities required to create what we have envisioned in our minds. Without living a principle centered life and thereby taking control of our time, achieving our hopes, dreams and ambitions becomes a major challenge if not impossible. E. M. Gray, author of “The Common Denominator of Success” spent his life searching for the one thing common among all successful people. What he found was that all of these people “Put First Things First”. It wasn’t hard work, good luck, uncommon intelligence or who they knew.
If we compare management and leadership we find that management is about putting first things first and leadership is about putting the right things first. How often have we heard or read about how important the skills are in building a successful business? If you have not mastered these skills prior to starting your business, I strongly suggest that you start today. There are literally thousands of resources on these subjects at your figure tips. As a matter of fact many of them are simply a mouse click away.
The root cause for the loss of much of our time is simply a function of time management or should I say the lack of time management. Additionally if we step back and look at this problem from a different angle we can easily see how this all ties back to our ability to apply goal setting to our lives. Many times I had heard the statement that if we fail to plan, we plan to fail. I am very certain that no one reading this woke this morning with the intention of failing at anything. While we do not intentionally want to fail at anything, all too often we are not willing to put forth the efforts that will almost assuredly ensure our success.
While I am not going to attempt to write a complete article regarding time management, below you will find a very effective means getting a better handle on your days.
On any given day we will have a range of matters that we must address. All of these can be place into a grid that will categorize these as Important or Non-Important and Urgent or Non-Urgent. As we all know Urgent matters demand our attention, almost to the point of being a unrelenting pressure. Think of a fire alarm that has been set off. However, Important items are those activities that are tied directly to our principles, our goals and support the accomplishment of our mission statement.
In the top left quadrant we find the things in life that are both Important and Urgent. Unfortunately many of us live in this quadrant much of our lives. By living in this quadrant we find ourselves constantly reacting, jumping from one fire to the next. A great way to classify the activities that we deal with in the first quadrant is as crises or problems.
The top right quadrant deals with the Non-Urgent, but Important things in life. By spending our time in the second quadrant our overall effectiveness and success takes a quantum leap. One thing that we need to understand is that through planning, goal setting and making sure that we are putting first things first, far fewer things make their way to the first quadrant. As you can imagine, by keeping activities out of the first quadrant we are much better equipped to work on the important things in life and business that will lead directly to our success.
The most successful people in life make sure that they never find themselves in quadrants three or four. Quadrant three are all of those things in life that are Urgent and Un-Important. In short these are the things that take our time because we are reacting to something. These activities take our time with no benefit, no reward and to make matters worse do nothing to support our mission.
Lastly those activities in the fourth quadrant are Non-Urgent and Un-Important. I am not going to spend anytime addressing these activities as I think the description of the quadrant itself says it all. Additionally, I would recommend that you don’t let this quadrant steal any of your time.
Life will always present its challenges, but by following a principle centered life with a clear focus on what is truly important to us, where we are going and what it will take to get there, we will be much better equipped to handle those little challenges. Remember to “Put First Things First”, because after all we now know that regardless of everything else the truly successful people in life have all demonstrated that this is the most important denominator. To Your Success!
Chase Your Passion: Personally, I enjoy working w/ Small Biz Owners & Independent Business Professionals to attract new clients. 
