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Put First Things First

Key Points:

  • Habit 3 is the personal fruit, the practical fulfillment of Habits 1 and 2.  It is the exercise of independent will towards becoming principle-centered. The basic of Habit 3 is this; if you are an effective manager of yourself, your discipline comes from within; it is a function of your independent will. 
  • "The successful person has the habit of doing the things failures don't like to do. They don't like doing them either necessarily. But their disliking is subordinate to the strength of their purpose.

Organize and Execute Around Priorities:

  • There are 4 quadrants where our time is divvied up. The first quadrant is important and urgent and must be dealt with. The second is important but not urgent. The third is urgent but not important. And the fourth is neither important or urgent. 
  • We must try to live our lives in the second quadrant; important and not urgent. The challenge is not to manage time but to manage ourselves. Satisfaction is a function of expectation as well as realization. Importance has to do with results while urgent has to do with our immediate attention.
  • You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have courage-- pleasantly, nonapologetically, smilingly- 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."
  • Effective people are not problem-minded; they are opportunity minded. 
  • The way you spend your time is a result of the way you see your time and the way you really see your priorities. The key is not to prioritize what is on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.
  • Returning once more to the  computer metaphor, if Habit 1 says "You're the programmer" and Habit 2 says "Write the program," then Habit 3 says "Run the program." When it comes to planning your day on your highest priorities you have to remember that people are more important than things. 

Delegation:

  • There are two types of delegation; gofer delegation and stewardship delegation. 
    • Gofer Delegation says, "Go for this, go for that, do this, do that, and tell me when it's done." In gofer delegation, it is more about telling someone how to do something and guiding them along. 
    • Stewardship Delegation is focused on results instead of methods. It focuses on the what, not how; results, not methods. Stewardship means a job without trust. I trust you to do the job, to get it done, there is no need for me to tell you how to do it.
  • Trust is the highest form of human motivation. It brings out the very best in people. But it takes time and patience, and it doesn't preclude the necessity to train and develop people so that their competency can rise to the level of that trust. 

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