The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

To paraphrase Peter Drucker, effective people are not problem-minded; they’re opportunityminded.

They feed opportunities and starve problems. They think preventively. They have

genuine Quadrant I crises and emergencies that require their immediate attention, but the number

is comparatively small. They keep P and PC in balance by focusing on the important, but not

urgent, high leverage capacity-building activities of Quadrant II.

With the time management matrix in mind, take a moment now and consider how you

answered the questions at the beginning of this chapter. What quadrant do they fit in? Are they

important? Are they urgent?

My guess is that they probably fit into Quadrant II. They are obviously important, deeply

important, but not urgent. And because they aren’t urgent, you don’t do them.

Now look again at the nature of those questions: What one thing could you do in your

personal and professional life that, if you did it on a regular basis, would make a tremendous

positive difference in your life? Quadrant II activities have that kind of impact. Our effectiveness

takes quantum leaps when we do them.

***

I asked a similar question of a group of shopping center managers. “If you were to do one thing

in your professional work that you know would have enormously positive effects on the results,

what would it be?” Their unanimous response was to build helpful personal relationships with

the tenants, the owners of the stores inside the shopping center, which is a Quadrant II activity.

We did an analysis of the time they were spending on that activity. It was less than 5 percent.

They had good reasons—problems, one right after another. They had reports to make out,

meetings to go to, correspondence to answer, phone calls to make, constant interruptions.

Quadrant I had consumed them.

They were spending very little time with the store managers, and the time they did spend was

filled with negative energy. The only reason they visited the store managers at all was to enforce

the contract—to collect the money or discuss advertising or other practices that were out of

harmony with center guidelines, or some similar thing.

The store owners were struggling for survival, let alone prosperity. They had employment

problems, cost problems, inventory problems, and a host of other problems. Most of them had no

training in management at all. Some were fairly good merchandisers, but they needed help. The

tenants didn’t even want to see the shopping center owners; they were just one more problem to

contend with.

So the owners decided to be proactive. They determined their purpose, their values, their

priorities. In harmony with those priorities, they decided to spend about one-third of their time in

helping relationships with the tenants.

In working with that organization for about a year and a half, I saw them climb to around 20

percent, which represented more than a fourfold increase. In addition, they changed their role.

They became listeners, trainers, consultants to the tenants. Their interchanges were filled with

positive energy.

The effect was dramatic, profound. By focusing on relationships and results rather than time

and methods, the numbers went up, the tenants were thrilled with the results created by new

ideas and skills, and the shopping center managers were more effective and satisfied and

increased their list of potential tenants and lease revenue based on increased sales by the tenant

stores. They were no longer policemen or hovering supervisors. They were problem solvers,

helpers.

***

Whether you are a student at the university, a worker in an assembly line, a homemaker, fashion

designer, or president of a company, I believe that if you were to ask what lies in Quadrant II and

cultivate the proactivity to go after it, you would find the same results. Your effectiveness would

increase dramatically. Your crises and problems would shrink to manageable proportions

because you would be thinking ahead, working on the roots, doing the preventive things that

keep situations from developing into crises in the first place. In time management jargon, this is

called the Pareto Principle—80 percent of the results flow out of 20 percent of the activities.

WHAT IT TAKES TO SAY “No”

The only place to get time for Quadrant II in the beginning is from Quadrants III and IV. You

can’t ignore the urgent and important activities of Quadrant I, although it will shrink in size as

you spend more time with prevention and preparation in Quadrant II. But the initial time for

Quadrant II has to come out of III and IV.

You have to be proactive to work on Quadrant II because Quadrants I and III work on you. To

say “yes” to important Quadrant II priorities, you have to learn to say “no” to other activities,

sometimes apparently urgent things.

***

Some time ago, my wife was invited to serve as chairman of a committee in a community

endeavor. She had a number of truly important things she was trying to work on, and she really

didn’t want to do it. But she felt pressured into it and finally agreed.

Then she called one of her dear friends to ask if she would serve on her committee. Her friend

listened for a long time and then said, “Sandra, that sounds like a wonderful project, a really

worthy undertaking. I appreciate so much your inviting me to be a part of it. I feel honored by it.

For a number of reasons, I won’t be participating myself, but I want you to know how much I

appreciate your invitation.”

Sandra was ready for anything but a pleasant “no.” She turned to me and sighed, “I wish I’d

said that.”

***

I don’t mean to imply that you shouldn’t be involved in significant service projects. Those things

are important. But you have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage—

pleasantly, smilingly, nonapologetically—to say “no” to other things. And the way you do that is

by having a bigger “yes” burning inside. The enemy of the “best” is often the “good.”

Keep in mind that you are always saying “no” to something. If it isn’t to the apparent, urgent

things in your life, it is probably to the more fundamental, highly important things. Even when

the urgent is good, the good can keep you from your best, keep you from your unique

contribution, if you let it.

***

When I was Director of University Relations at a large university, I hired a very talented,

proactive, creative writer. One day, after he had been on the job for a few months, I went into his

office and asked him to work on some urgent matters that were pressing on me.

He said, “Stephen, I’ll do whatever you want me to do. Just let me share with you my

situation.”

Then he took me over to his wallboard, where he had listed over two dozen projects he was

working on, together with performance criteria and deadline dates that had been clearly

negotiated before. He was highly disciplined, which is why I went to see him in the first place.

“If you want to get something done, give it to a busy man.”

Then he said, “Stephen, to do the jobs that you want done right would take several days.

Which of these projects would you like me to delay or cancel to satisfy your request?”

Well, I didn’t want to take the responsibility for that. I didn’t want to put a cog in the wheel of

one of the most productive people on the staff just because I happened to be managing by crisis

at the time. The jobs I wanted done were urgent, but not important. So I went and found another

crisis manager and gave the job to him.

***

We say “yes” or “no” to things daily, usually many times a day. A center of correct principles

and a focus on our personal mission empowers us with wisdom to make those judgments

effectively.

As I work with different groups, I tell them that the essence of effective time and life

management is to organize and execute around balanced priorities. Then I ask this question: if

you were to fault yourself in one of three areas, which would it be: (1) the inability to prioritize;

(2) the inability or desire to organize around those priorities; or (3) the lack of discipline to

execute around them, to stay with your priorities and organization?

Most people say their main fault is a lack of discipline. On deeper thought, I believe that is

not the case. The basic problem is that their priorities have not become deeply planted in their

hearts and minds. They haven’t really internalized Habit 2.

There are many people who recognize the value of Quadrant II activities in their lives,

whether they identify them as such or not. And they attempt to give priority to those activities

and integrate them into their lives through self-discipline alone. But without a principle center

and a personal mission statement, they don’t have the necessary foundation to sustain their

efforts. They’re working on the leaves, on the attitudes and the behaviors of discipline, without

even thinking to examine the roots, the basic paradigms from which their natural attitudes and

behaviors flow.

A Quadrant II focus is a paradigm that grows out of a principle center. If you are centered on

your spouse, your money, your friends, your pleasure, or any extrinsic factor, you will keep

getting thrown back into Quadrants I and III, reacting to the outside forces your life is centered

on. Even if you’re centered on yourself, you’ll end up in I and III reacting to the impulse of the

moment. Your independent will alone cannot effectively discipline you against your center.

In the words of the architectural maxim, form follows function. Likewise, management

follows leadership. The way you spend your time is a result of the way you see your time and the

way you really see your priorities. If your priorities grow out of a principle center and a personal

mission, if they are deeply planted in your heart and in your mind, you will see Quadrant II as a

natural, exciting place to invest your time.

It’s almost impossible to say “no” to the popularity of Quadrant III or to the pleasure of

escape to Quadrant IV if you don’t have a bigger “yes” burning inside. Only when you have the

self-awareness to examine your program—and the imagination and conscience to create a new,

unique, principle-centered program to which you can say “yes”—only then will you have

sufficient independent will power to say “no,” with a genuine smile, to the unimportant.

MOVING INTO QUADRANT II

If Quadrant II activities are clearly the heart of effective personal management—the “first

things” we need to put first—then how do we organize and execute around those things?

The first generation of time management does not even recognize the concept of priority. It

gives us notes and “to do” lists that we can cross off, and we feel a temporary sense of

accomplishment every time we check something off, but no priority is attached to items on the

list. In addition, there is no correlation between what’s on the list and our ultimate values and

purposes in life. We simply respond to whatever penetrates our awareness and apparently needs

to be done.

Many people manage from this first-generation paradigm. It’s the course of least resistance.

There’s no pain or strain; it’s fun to “go with the flow.” Externally imposed disciplines and

schedules give people the feeling that they aren’t responsible for results.

But first-generation managers, by definition, are not effective people. They produce very

little, and their life-style does nothing to build their production capability. Buffeted by outside

forces, they are often seen as undependable and irresponsible, and they have very little sense of

control and self-esteem.

Second-generation managers assume a little more control. They plan and schedule in advance

and generally are seen as more responsible because they “show up” when they’re supposed to.

But again, the activities they schedule have no priority or recognized correlation to deeper

values and goals. They have few significant achievements and tend to be schedule oriented.

Third-generation managers take a significant step forward. They clarify their values and set

goals. They plan each day and prioritize their activities.

As I have said, this is where most of the time management field is today. But this third

generation has some critical limitations. First, it limits vision—daily planning often misses

important things that can only be seen from a larger perspective. The very language of “daily

planning” focuses on the urgent—the “now.” While third generation prioritization provides order

to activity, it doesn’t question the essential importance of the activity in the first place—it

doesn’t place the activity in the context of principles, personal mission, roles, and goals. The

third-generation value-driven daily planning approach basically prioritizes the Quadrant I and III

problems and crises of the day.

In addition, the third generation makes no provision for managing roles in a balanced way. It

lacks realism, creating the tendency to over-schedule the day, resulting in frustration and the

desire to occasionally throw away the plan and escape to Quadrant IV. And its efficiency, time

management focus tends to strain relationships rather than build them.

While each of the three generations has recognized the value of some kind of management

tool, none has produced a tool that empowers a person to live a principle-centered, Quadrant II

life-style. The first-generation notepads and “to do” lists give us no more than a place to capture

those things that penetrate our awareness so we won’t forget them. The second-generation

appointment books and calendars merely provide a place to record our future commitments so

that we can be where we have agreed to be at the appropriate time.

Even the third generation, with its vast array of planners and materials, focuses primarily on

helping people prioritize and plan their Quadrants I and III activities. Though many trainers and

consultants recognize the value of Quadrant II activities, the actual planning tools of the third

generation do not facilitate organizing and executing around them.

As each generation builds on those that have preceded it, the strengths and some of the tools

of each of the first three generations provide elemental material for the fourth. But there is an

added need for a new dimension, for the paradigm and the implementation that will empower us

to move into Quadrant II, to become principle-centered and to manage ourselves to do what is

truly most important.