I have been very interested in self improvement lately as well with the Carnegie class I took. There is a lot of overlap.

I think there is some power in what you are suggesting here. The relaxation and rest part is a difficult thing for me. What is the proper roll of wholesome recreation and liesure? How and where does one draw the line of healthy rest and irresponsible lazyness and waste. I don’t always know.

I very much agree with this. This issue is not so much with putting first things first as it is with really deciding what the “first things”, or most important things, really are. This then gets back to my biggest gripe with the 7 Habits model — Habit 2 seems impossible to really pull off fully. I mentioned this in my post on Habit 2. It seems to me that Habit 2 says “figure out life the universe and everything and then set some goals”. Ummm… that’s asking a bit much.

I also agree with you when you say we often have goals that we really don’t know to achieve so we do have to wing it along the way. I think you are right that using some spiritual promptings becomes a major help as we improv our way through life — God always seems to know what is most important.

Nevertheless, one still can and should set short term and long term goals and so Habit 3 is useful in determining if we are using our time wisely in achieving our goals or not. We can always shift goals along the way and Habit 3 is still useful when we set new goals.

Of course things that are not important should be ignored, but who’s to say what is and is not important in a given moment. While figuring out some complex problem for work or going on a date with your wife may seem very important, it may turn out that those moments missed with your child were critical in her development.

So the question is not the validity of the proposition, which seems obvious to me, but it is in deciding what ultimately is or is not most important. I think this is where we hae to rely on spiritual gifts to help us discern before we make a decission, and on the atonement to clean up our mistakes after we make a decission….

Actually, taxes in January is a textbook example of a quadrant II activity. It is important but not urgent. Going to worthless meetings all day or getting bogged down with unimportant emails and other things like that are what make up quadrant III.

In my experience most complaints people have with organizing activities along the importance vs. urgency axis stem from miscategorization.

let’s face it, Covey wrote this while Sandra was raising their children.

Hmmmm… that may be true but I pretty sure it is irrelevant even if it is. Does it matter that he wentto work to write a book instead of to be an attorney or something? Either the principles he describes are true or they aren’t.

And it is really a tough call to figure out what is Quadrant III and what is Quadrant II.

This is a legitimate complaint. But I don’t know that the idea of the quadrants was designed to free us from any difficult judgment calls like the birthday dilemma you mentioned. Those calls need to be made one way or the other. I think the quadrants are supposed to help us have better visibility into to the consequences our proximate choices will have with regard to our long term goals. (For what it is worth, Kristen and I decided to go with the every other year B-Day party thing and it has been great for us and no problem for the kids.)

In a sense, this quadrants concept is very much like a set of accounting principles for our time. Not many people like to keep a budget with their money but those who do are almost always much better managers of money. I think the same idea applies to our time.

And it becomes a millstone when you feel guilty all the time that all you do is put out fires

I agree that having everything in life be a real emergency is a major millstone. But I have experienced a reduction of the frantic mania that occurs when living in quadrant I (and by being addicted to busy-ness) by doing things like taxes (quad II activities) in place of things that seem urgent at the time but really aren’t important (quad III activities). The key skill to learn is to just say no to things that will steal our time away from actually important activities. As I said, it is as painful to budget ones time as it is to scrupulously budget ones money, but the results have been just as striking when I’ve done it right in my life.

It is not as applicable to every job as Covey makes it out to be.

I don’t think I agree with this. To me it is like saying that the principles of budgeting finances are not applicable to all families or businesses. It is true that implementing a budget will vary from situation to situation but the principles apply universally. I think the same applies to these principles of time budgeting Covey outlines. The issues are with implementation and not the universally applicable principles themselves.

A mother of toddlers and teens lives in Quadrant I. There is little proactivity and few choices. Everything is a crisis. It is extremely stressful.

And it is really a tough call to figure out what is Quadrant III and what is Quadrant II. Can we blow off a birthday party this year and declare we will do parties every other year? Or will the child be scarred for life?

And it becomes a millstone when you feel guilty all the time that all you do is put out fires.

This may be a great system for people who go to an office every day and work with sane adults. It is not as applicable to every job as Covey makes it out to be.