Monthly archives: February, 2014

The Balance of Roles

Yesterday in First Things First-Keeping The Main Thing The Main Thing, I talk about the major section of Stephen Covey’s great book, First Things First and the tongue twister that is The Main Thing is to Keep The Main Thing The Main Thing!

This continues on with The Balance of Roles. It is easy to feel that the previously mentioned life roles do not overlap and that therefore there is not much time to fulfill various roles properly. According to Covey, the trick is to multitask with your roles. One activity satisfying two or three of the roles.

A bit of a mouthful I know! The 2nd section of First Things First is called The Main Thing Is To Keep The Main Thing The Main Thing. (We’ll shorten it to “Keeping The Main Thing” for now)!

Yesterday’s post looks at the first section of the book, the Clock and the Compass and the urgency and importance matrix. The book begins by having a look at classic time management strategies and concludes that most of them are built around the clock.

I’ve just read a book by Stephen Covey, author of the classic, The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People. This one is called First Things First and I highly recommend a read of it. In actual fact though, I have never read The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, so maybe I should get on to that one very soon too!

A running theme in the book is the notion that we need to distinguish between things that are just pressing and things that are actually really important in our lives. The book helps somebody to decide and identify what these important things are.