PDF Summary:First Things First, by Stephen R. Covey

Do you feel like there just aren’t enough hours in the day? That you’re constantly checking things off your to-do list but still don’t have enough time for the important things? Your problem might be that you’re doing a lot, but not doing the right things.

In First Things First, Stephen R. Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, presents a time management approach that focuses on priorities, or “first things.” This approach teaches you to use your time effectively instead of just efficiently—in other words, focusing on what you spend your time on, rather than just how much time you spend per task. You’ll learn how to identify your priorities, schedule your time at the daily and weekly levels, and collaborate with others to ensure the best possible results for everyone.

In this guide, we link Covey’s ideas to books and articles about leadership, spirituality, and even biology to help you determine what’s most important to you and why. We also include connections to other self-help books and business strategy guides to help you maximize your potential, both individually and as part of a group.

(continued)...

Limitless author Jim Kwik calls these types of thoughts dominant questions: difficult or complicated questions that prime your mind to look for answers or relevant information. For instance, if you’re in the market for a new car and suddenly notice car ads everywhere, Kwik would say it’s because your mind is looking for the answer to your current dominant question (“Which car should I get?”).

Step 2: Identify Your Roles

Everyone has many different roles in life, such as spouse, son or daughter, brother or sister, father or mother, friend, professional, and individual. Covey says that when people feel dissatisfied, it’s often because they excel in one or two roles at the expense of the others. That’s why you must identify and address each of your roles as you set your personal mission and manage your time to work toward that mission.

Make a list of your roles (try to keep the number of roles to seven or fewer).

Counterpoint: Maybe It’s Not About You

For many people, envisioning and then creating the life that they want for themselves is the most powerful motivation imaginable. However, some people have trouble getting motivated while thinking only of their own benefit—something that Covey addresses in a roundabout way when he notes that our roles only exist in terms of other people (parent, teacher, employee, and so on). So, if you don’t find improving your own life to be a compelling motivation, it may help to focus instead on how you can improve others’ lives by fulfilling your various roles.

In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius asserts that each individual life is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. However, that isn’t meant to be discouraging or degrading—rather, Aurelius argues that if our own lives are insignificant, then we must exist to serve others and improve the world around us.

Step 3: Set Zone 2 Goals for Each Role

The next step of Covey’s process is to think of Zone 2 (important but not pressing) goals for each of the roles you’ve listed. Focus on goals you can do in the next seven days, but be sure that they reflect your personal mission and make a significant, long-term difference. For example, in your role as a parent, you might schedule quality time with your kids. In your role at work, you could allot time for long-term strategizing.

Once you’ve written down your goals for this week, Covey urges you to ask yourself:

• What results do you expect if you achieve all of these goals in the next week?
• How will you feel if you only achieve some of them?
• What kind of difference would you expect to see if you did these things every week?

Learn From Your Old Roles

Another word for “role” is “relationship.” With that view, by identifying each role, Covey is prompting us to think about our relationships with other people and what we hope to get out of them.

In Minimalism, Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus assert that you can improve your relationships by examining your past relationships. Each past relationship carries important lessons that you can carry with you to improve your present and future relationships. For example, if you once had a romantic partner who used you as an emotional crutch and never gave that support to you when you needed it, that’s a red flag that you now know to watch out for as you define your roles and expectations. As you set goals for your roles, consider how the lessons learned in past relationships can guide how you shape and pursue your mission.

Step 4: Schedule Your Zone 2 Goals Each Week

A key aspect of effectively setting goals and managing your time is choosing the right time frame for your planning. Covey suggests planning within the framework of a week because it balances a big-picture perspective with day-to-day actionables.

When planning your week, Covey urges you to start with important Zone 2 tasks. If you schedule Zone 2 tasks into your week first, urgent matters will fit in around them; but if you first attend to the Zone 1 (significant and pressing) and Zone 3 (pressing but not significant) activities, you’re likely to run out of room for your Zone 2 goals.

Take the goals you listed in Step 3 and schedule them into your week. Then, start adding in the Zone 1 tasks you need to accomplish. As you’re doing this, be sure not to schedule every minute of each day. Covey’s method of time management requires you to maintain flexibility in your schedule for unexpected events and opportunities that will inevitably come up.

Evaluate Your Progress

In The 12 Week Year, CEO Brian P. Moran also pushes for weekly schedules as crucial steps toward long-term goals. However, he adds two more steps to ensure that your weekly plans are effective and get carried out properly:

• A weekly meeting—Set a time each week to meet with people who know or are directly involved in your plan. Talk about what you did in the previous week to work toward those goals and make the next week’s plan.

• A scoring system—Each week, look at how many tasks you were supposed to complete and how many you actually completed. Score your achievement for the week; for example, if you had 20 tasks planned and accomplished 10 of them, your score for the week is 50%.

Step 5: Tackle Each Day Within the Context of Your Weekly Goals

As you move through your week, Covey warns that you’ll face unexpected changes in your schedule and will need to make decisions in the moment about how to proceed. He offers a few things you can do to help you stay in line with your weekly goals and priorities.

1. Start each morning by reviewing what’s on your schedule for that day.
2. As you preview the day, prioritize the tasks you have scheduled. Evaluate which are Zone 1 (significant and pressing) and Zone 2 activities, and look out for Zone 3 (pressing but not significant) activities that have made it into your schedule.
3. Go through your day’s activities and look for time-sensitive commitments. Tasks that aren’t time-sensitive can be rescheduled if unexpected emergencies come up.

(Shortform note: In The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, Robin Sharma provides us with a useful image that highlights the importance of these morning check-ins: Sharma says that purpose is like a lighthouse guiding you through dark and dangerous waters. Much like Covey, Sharma believes that a clear purpose in life will guide you to the right decisions in uncertain situations. Your daily and weekly goals are like that lighthouse guiding you through the choppy waters of day-to-day decisions.)

Step 6: Review and Learn From Your Week

At the end of the week, Covey says to stop and consider how the week went. Did you achieve your goals? How did you handle spur-of-the-moment decisions? Did you keep your first things first?

He also suggests that at the end of each month or quarter, you reflect on patterns in the weeks that have passed. Reflecting on your patterns of success or failure and whether your expectations are realistic helps you make and achieve your goals more effectively going forward.

Learn How to Learn

These weekly and quarterly reflections require you to learn from your experience. In Limitless, Jim Kwik describes three crucial components of learning (no matter what it is you’re trying to learn):

• Mindframe—In order to learn, you must first believe that you can learn, and be open to new ideas.

• Drive—You must be motivated to learn, and interested in what you’re studying (in this case, your own life and experiences).

• Techniques—You use specific methods to learn.

Finding Win-Win Solutions

Covey’s time management approach can also help you set goals and create management systems as a team. However, developing a vision and establishing priorities for a group has unique challenges. This is, in part, because most people approach group work and negotiation with a “win-lose” mindset—if you win, someone else must lose.

Covey says that to reach your goals in our modern interdependent world, you need to change how you think about winning. Winning doesn’t mean someone else loses—winning means accomplishing your goals, and you can accomplish more if you cooperate rather than compete.

The Infinite Game Mindset

If you are stuck in a “win-lose” mindset, you’re thinking in what Simon Sinek would call “finite game” terms: For you to win, someone else must lose—and if someone else wins, that means you’ve lost. In The Infinite Game, Sinek discusses the difference between finite games (games that end when somebody wins) and the titular infinite games (games that never end).

Sinek believes that things like your career, your family, and your romantic relationships are infinite games: For example, there’s (hopefully) no point where you declare that you’ve “won” a relationship and end it. Instead, the objective in an infinite game is to do as well as possible, and to keep playing for as long as you can.

How to Create a Solution Where Everybody Wins

There are three steps to Covey’s “everybody wins” leadership process:

1. Approach the problem with a group-based mindset: Covey’s first step is actually a way of thinking rather than a specific action. To create wins for everybody, you need to first acknowledge that individual success at the expense of the group isn’t true success.

(Shortform note: It’s an oft-cited fact that any percent of zero is zero. If the group as a whole fails, it won’t matter what percentage of the effort you contributed or what percentage of the rewards you think you’re entitled to—you’ll still end up with nothing.)

2. Listen first, then speak: Covey’s second step involves listening and seeking to understand the other person’s point of view. Don’t speak until you understand all the sides of the issue, and until others in the group are satisfied that you understand.

(Shortform note: In Difficult Conversations, the authors argue that listening is often an active process: A good listener is someone who observes the speaker’s tone and body language as well as the words, and asks questions as necessary to make sure he understands.)

3. Collaborate: Covey’s last step is to create a list of alternatives that are better than the solutions that any individual could come up with herself.

(Shortform note: Effective collaboration doesn’t just produce a better solution, it also inspires people to work toward that shared vision. In The Leadership Challenge, the second principle of leadership is “Be Inspirational,” because engaging people’s emotions and imaginations ensures the best results. So, when collaborating, don’t just brainstorm—get people excited about the shared solution you come up with.)

Making Shared Responsibility Agreements

Once your group has a win-win solution in mind, a shared responsibility agreement will help establish priorities and keep group members working effectively toward the same goals. When creating the agreement, you and your group have to address five elements. Covey acknowledges that dealing with these elements thoughtfully and collaboratively takes time, but he says that this process will save you time in the long run because it will limit problems arising from miscommunication, as well as unclear expectations and objectives.

Covey’s five elements of shared responsibility agreements are:

1. Desired Outcome: What result(s) do we want to achieve?
2. Parameters: What values, legalities, and limits do we need to be aware of?
3. Assets: What money, people, and technology do we have to work with?
4. Criteria: How will we know when we’ve reached our goal? What criteria will we use to measure our success?
5. Stakes: What will happen if we achieve our goals? What will happen if we don’t achieve our goals?

Go Beyond the Letter of the Agreement

The Harvard Business Review explains why all five parts of this shared agreement are necessary:

• Desired outcome: If everyone involved doesn’t agree on the group’s goals specifically and explicitly, the project can fall apart as people unknowingly work toward different ends.

• Parameters and assets: The shared agreement needs to make clear what each person can contribute, is willing to contribute, and is expected to contribute. Without these guidelines, the group can end up working with far fewer resources than expected.

• Criteria and stakes: The agreement must make it clear what each person can do without consulting the others, and what the chain of command is (if any). Muddled leadership structures, unclear expectations, and vague methods of accountability can quickly destroy an otherwise promising agreement.

The article says that most common issues with shared agreements come from misunderstandings and “benign neglect.” In other words, people have different understandings of what they’ve agreed to, and they don’t realize that until it’s too late. That’s why it’s crucial to make sure that everybody’s clear on the spirit of the agreement, not just the terms of it.

The Final Word: Listen to Your Conscience

Covey ends by saying that learning to listen to your conscience—and act on its guidance—is the single best thing you can do to manage your time well, live a higher-quality life, and find lasting peace. He asserts that one of the most powerful questions you can ask your conscience is, “What can I do to make a difference?” The answer to this one question may dramatically alter how you invest your time.

(Shortform note: If “making a difference” seems like a hopeless endeavor, consider what Jack Canfield has to say in The Success Principles: Even small improvements can have enormous impacts over time. For example, just by swapping your sugary Starbucks drink for a cup of coffee made at home, you could save yourself hundreds of dollars and thousands of calories over the course of a year. Now apply that same principle to the world around you. What small change, sustained for a long time, would have a large impact? What can you do right now to start making that change?)