Book Summary: First Things First
First Things First by Stephen Covey shares more insights and guidelines to help focus your life around one of the core principles from Stephen Covey’s first book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
Related Book Summaries:
7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen Covey – Book Summary
Getting Things Done – David Allen – Book Summary
Quotes:
The best way to predict your future is to create it.
What we believe about ourselves and our purpose has a powerful impact on how we live, how we love and what we learn.
Book Summary Notes: First Things First
- Efficiency or quickly you can do things is pointless unless you understand what you need to be directing your effort into. Your first things.
- Don’t lose sight of your values and principles in exchange for your commitments and objectives.
- If your using the urgent important matrix, spend more time on important and less on urgent.
- Busyness, being overworked, has become a status symbol for many of us. A sign that we are important. Busy does not mean effective and it means nothing if it’s not in the pursuit of your values.
- The first step in focusing on the important things is figuring out what is important.
- Happiness depends on four needs; need to live, learn, love and leave a legacy.
- A strong vision for the future helps you to know where your headed. Goals based around principles and visions are much more likely to succeed as well.
- Goals need to be driven by the right thing (what) for the right reasons (why) in the right way (How). Goals also need to be within your influence and driven by a sense of importance rather than urgency.
- Take time to develop your perspective in life. The lens you view the world through is extremely important and will affect many other aspects of your life.
