Put First Things First: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
To live a more balanced existence, you have to recognize that not doing everything is okay. In this episode, Traci and Rob discuss Stephen Covey’s 3rd habit of highly effective people: putting first things first. Learn about how using the time management matrix and saying “no” can help you protect yourself from burnout, build trust with others, and prioritize your goals
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Rob:
So about three weeks into my first professional job, I was working for a guy named Steve and he sat me down in his office and he was one of my early mentors, and he told me the story about how to prioritize things to do that were coming up in our jobs. And he told a story like this. He's like, "There's three kinds of tasks. There's alligators, barking dogs, and bunny rabbits." And I remember sitting there as a person in my early, early 20s, looking at this guy, thinking, "What are you talking about?"
And he said, "Let me unpack this for you. Alligators are dangerous. If you don't take care of them immediately, they'll get you, and you won't even see them coming. Barking dogs, they're noisy, there can be a few of them, but as long as you manage the barking dogs, you're okay. Bunny rabbits, however, cute, cuddly, you think they're not a problem, but they reproduce really quickly. They can get out of hand."
And I was like, "Okay, thanks." And he's like, "Okay, there's more to this." And I'm like, "Okay, go ahead, Steve. Let's finish up." And he said, "So the deal is you take care of alligators immediately, you manage the dog pound, and you deal with enough bunny rabbits to keep the population in check. And that's how you can manage your to-do list."
And that story has stuck with me for years, and years, and years. And I'll never forget that moment, but I think that there's probably a better way to think about all this in a way that's a little bit more intentional than alligators, barking dogs, bunny rabbits. And I think that brings us up to a good place to talk about habit three and The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
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Rob:
Hey, Traci.
Traci:
Hey, Rob. That's a great story because when you think about it, that's what a typical workday can feel like. It's this craziness just trying to manage the alligator, dogs, and rabbits. You're just on really tough, thick days as I call them. Sometimes that's how it can feel.
And I think one of the great things about this habit is, this chapter does a great job at picking apart that process, or that way of thinking, or that way of just trying to keep our heads above water, and gives us a framework that helps alleviate some of this pain, and structure the way we look at—particularly our weeks—so that we aren't in this crazy frantic, trying to fight off the wild animals, or control them, or keep them from barking.
But rather thinking about the Dwight Eisenhower quote that we were just talking about earlier, which is, "What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important." And Covey does a great job talking about urgent, not urgent, not important, important. And how do we manage all of that?
Rob:
Yeah. And I think that's pretty key to designing a sustainable life, is to think about things with intention and to be able to organize kinds of activities in a way that highlight what is sustainable and good and needs to be done by you as the individual, and what you can get help with.
Traci:
Yeah. And I think the first two habits that we talked about earlier, previously in our other episodes, we’re very much about leadership. He was trying to get us to really understand that leadership is deciding that you're going to be proactive—it's having self-awareness. And also visioning, deciding, what these first things that we're going to do. What's important, what are our priorities, what do we want to get after, what's our vision? And now what he is doing is shifting us into how to execute this. This is what he calls management. So if leadership is deciding what the first things are, the management is going to be putting them first.
It's discipline and carrying these things out. Just like, "There's nothing new under the sun." So he gets this whole concept. He says that from a book he read called Common Denominator of Success. And the guy who wrote that book basically boiled down that successful people put first things first. Successful people are disciplined and do things even if they dislike doing them, because they know they're important. And they're going to get the ball down the field faster, and more effectively, and efficiently.
And that's hard. There's a lot of things I don't like to do. You and I are just talking about how we both have to give presentations later this week. We know it's important and we know we need to do it, but it takes a lot of discipline. And to put that first above some of the things that can distract us or suck us into the daily whirlwind. Like how do we manage ourselves better?
Rob:
Yeah. It's such an interesting thing because I feel like there's so many different inputs from society and culture that there is this idea of motivation. And motivation is important to get things done. And motivation comes and goes, and is a fleeting feeling, and takes nothing about the intention of the results in mind when we're motivated.
But this idea of discipline, however, is doing the things we know we need to do to achieve the end we had in mind. And I think that is why this habit builds on the previous one. We can't possibly know what we're chasing and have the ability to do those hard things—things we don't feel like, things we're not motivated to do—unless we know where we're going and why we're going there. So it's an idea of starting with the end in mind and having those principles that we're going to make decisions on.
Traci:
Yeah. And I think the framework that he uses, it's a Time Management Matrix, is what he calls it. And maybe we can put this on our website, but if you want to look at it right now, if you're at a place where you can look at it, that's the best thing to Google, which is, "Time Management Matrix Covey." And this is a very key habit. We're talking about a book called Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and this is his framework and formula for being effective.
There's four quadrants and he wants us to gravitate and spend the majority of our time in Quadrant 2, which is working on things that are important, but not urgent. And I thought that that was really a great way of looking at it because we tend to want to do the things that are important and urgent, or the things that are urgent and not important.
We tend to reside in the urgency, and the urgent things that are important are kind of the crises, and the pressing problems, and the deadline-driven projects, versus the things that are not urgent and important, which he says are quality time. These are the things where we're doing relationship building, we're doing strategic planning, we're recognizing new opportunities, so we're being innovative, we are thinking about improvements for our team or our processes. They're preventative processes and preventative ways of thinking. And they should be a place where somebody who prioritizes being effective, resides.
And I thought that that was really interesting. And he said, "The only way that we can achieve that is by scheduling that time." We're not going to achieve that quality time unless we schedule it. Otherwise, we are going to get sucked into Quadrant 1, which is basically that firefighter mode that we all are very, very familiar with, or we're going to reside in the not important, where we're wasting time or we're distracted, or we're not delegating the things that we should be delegating, or deleting the things that we need to delete.
And we need to shift from being in this whirlwind, which is a great concept that's introduced in the book. If you haven't read 4DX, The 4 Disciplines of Execution, it's kind of a companion book to this, but it's all about execution and how you can have strategy all day, but if you're not executing it, what's the difference? Chris McChesney and the people at FranklinCovey wrote this book, and it really talks a lot about how we get sucked up in this whirlwind and we're not able to execute well. So that all of our hopes, and dreams, and visions, and missions, are just ideas. They don't come to fruition. I feel like this habit is all about execution. Learning to say no to certain things and yes to others, and executing well.
Rob:
Yeah. And I think I'll take it one step further, is if you constantly are focusing on only the urgent, then you are not in the driver's seat of what gets done, because the urgent only comes from other people telling you what's important in you doing that. If you want to live with intention and achieve what you're after, you have to focus on the important. And that urgent stuff feels good, because somebody else is telling you what to do—they're counting, they're asking for it. You're saying "yes," you're getting it done. But that is a way to not make progress towards that end because that urgent is the external factors dictating where you're going.
Traci:
Yeah. And do you think that sometimes we feel like we're supposed to reside there? Because it really does feed into this problem-solving mentality. We're supposed to be solving problems all day, and if we're solving problems, then we must be really effective and valued. But I'm not sure that's really the answer. We're talking about being more opportunity-driven, more preventative in our way of thinking.
Rob:
I think that it does, it feels good. There's the hit, the oxytocin hit when I do get something done, that I do something for somebody else. And I think that there are certain roles inside our organizations that probably live more in the urgent, firefighting mode from a professional sense. And there's people that need to be there, that need to be dealing with things as they come up and being responsive. But I think as leaders, and especially as leaders who are helping set the direction of our organizations, we have to step out of the urgent to make room, to set the path for where everybody else is going, because somebody has to do that. Somebody has to be able to say, "This is the bearing we're going down. I've spent some time, we've spent some time discussing doing things." Where somebody else isn't telling us, we're looking where we want to be and where we want to go.
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Traci:
I think one of the hardest things about rereading this chapter, it made me think about my own life, and how I make mistakes in this area that, especially like a working mom and all the things that are on my plate. And I really started to examine why do I feel like I don't have enough hours in the day? Why do I feel like I'm not successful at this? And I don't think I'm wasting time and I don't think I'm constantly distracted, but then it dawned on me, the more I thought about it, it's this whole ability to learn to say "no," that he talks about in this chapter. It's this, "We can fill our lives with rather important things, and saying 'yes' to things because we feel like we should."
He has a great example in the book about his wife saying "yes" to serving on a board. And that's a hard thing because you feel like, "Oh, I want to make a difference, and I should be volunteering my time." And there are phases of our lives where we should be leaning into that. But then there are phases of our lives where we need to say "no" to certain things, even the things we really want to do and we know are going to be enjoyable, but it's just not the right time. We just don't have enough time and we need to be focusing on different phases for different times.
And I think that if I were to look at my life as a whole, especially my working career, that's one thing looking back I can see, that there are certain times of my life, especially when my kids were younger, where I had to say "no" a lot. But if I didn't, I burnt out. Just sheer exhaustion, illness, all of that stuff. And now that my kids are older, I can find that I have a little bit more capacity, or I could say things because they don't need me in the same way they needed me when I was young.
And I think that that's a real breakthrough concept to just say, "Look, here's your life as a whole, there's going to be phases. It's going to ebb and flow. But if you can learn the art of saying 'no' to the right things and 'yes' to the right things, you're not going to feel like you're going to topple over. This matrix will work for you if you're doing that. It's not going to work if you've overcommitted."
Rob:
And I'll take it one step further and say, the more successful you become professionally, the more you will have to say "no." There is an infinite amount of good things in the world that we could use our time for that objectively may line up with our values, maybe good things we want to see in the world, but we can't do them all.
And I think that the best way that I like to talk about this is, everything that I say "yes" to, there are hundreds of unknowns that I'm implicitly saying "no" to, because I filled that slot. And if I want to leave room for the right opportunities, one that really line up with my end in mind, my purpose, my goals, my values, then I've got to be really selective and say "no" to a whole lot more so that I'm not overburdened if the right, perfect opportunity comes along.
And I'm with you. This is something that I had to learn the hard way. When we were first getting this business going, it was really easy to say "yes" to everything. I could, I had the capacity to say "yes" to everything. And I got in that habit of saying, "Yes, yes, yes." And I ended up in a place where I wasn't doing most of them really well anymore. And I had to start saying "no" first.
And that's one of the things that, if I get asked to do something, I have to start in a place of "no," instead of "yes." And then convince myself by going through all the things to get to a "yes." And I think that's probably the right place to start, and I realize that sounds pretty selfish, but so much of the things we're talking about, being effective, is making sure that we leave capacity for where it's important, where it needs to be, so that people get what they need.
Traci:
And I think you just hit on what the key ingredient is, which we talked about in the first two habits. If you don't have that filter, if you don't have that sort of… personally, which is what I do most days in helping people have a personal strategic plan, if you don't have a personal mission and vision and values for your life, and if your company and team doesn't have a mission, vision, and values, then there's no filter. So you won't have this sort of litmus test for saying "yes" or "no." And what you just described is saying "no" first and convincing yourself of the "yes,” it goes through that filter. Does this align with our mission and vision and values? If it doesn't, then no matter how fun it sounds, or how shiny it looks, or how good it might feel to do, it doesn't align with what I really have outlined, as where I want to go and how I want to get there. So I'm going to have to say "no" for now.
And that's the filter, that's the key, and that's leadership. Leadership has to, leading our lives, leading our teams, leading our companies, that has to proceed the execution, the deciding what we're going to put first. If you don't have that filter... Maybe you should hit pause on the podcast right now and figure that out first, because this is going to be really, really, really hard to live out.
And there is a part where he talks about unless you've identified your priorities deeply into your heart, and unless you've been transformed by those things, you're not going to live this out, you're not going to be disciplined. You may for like a week or two, but then it's going to fall by the wayside. You really have to own this and embed it in your soul, and commit to your mission, vision, and values, if you want this to stick. Otherwise, it's just one of those good ideas you can try, and it's probably not going to last.
So there's a method to this madness. And until our mission, and vision, and values take root personally in our hearts and then for our teammates—we talk about this all the time with leadership, that the reason why we're communicating things seven times, the reason why leaders, when they get up in front of their teams need to be enthusiastic and own this first, before they can get their entire team on board, is because transformation has to happen for us as a company, and for us as a team, in order for us to scale, in order for us to... because this is all about scaling. If we can get our teams into a place where they are really working in quality time, where they're really working on the important, not urgent, they're minimizing the firefighting, and they're really tackling their days in efficient and effective ways, we are going to be able to scale our company. Otherwise, we're not, we're just going to live in the whirlwind, and we're just not going to be able to scale.
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Rob:
Yeah. And I think that on this particular one, people need a lot of coaching. This is one that I find myself repeating time after time, after time, with our employees, because of the same kind of thing. There is an infinite number of good things Sparkbox can be involved with, and they will show up, but you have to be willing to do this over a whole bunch of others. And I see this a lot with, especially younger employees, who get really excited about having an opportunity. And I'm always like, "You can say 'no'." I make it a point to give them the express permission to say "no,” and to tell them reasons they may do so. And it's not because of the quality of the opportunity or that this would be a good thing, because both those things can be true, and we can still say "no."
But they really struggle with that concept, especially if it's something like, "Oh, this could be interesting or I've not had this opportunity yet." And it's like, "Be careful, make a good judgment here. And if you do decide to say ‘yes,’ I would encourage you to timebox your ‘yes.’” To say, “I will be involved with this volunteer opportunity, this other good thing we're going to see in the industry,” whatever, for six months. And make sure you say it that way, because you don't know where you're going to be in six months. You don't know exactly what it's going to be like, what the time commitment is. Give yourself an out.
Traci:
Yeah. I think some of the cool tools that he talks about towards the end of the chapter, I think can help in training our teams like you're talking about, really giving them a framework. And he talks about looking at your entire week.
And it's kind of a two-step process.
First, he has identifying all the key roles in your life, like writing down—for me it's running my company and what my roles are within that company. And then, being a mom, and then being a wife, and being a daughter, and being a sister—writing down your roles.
And then identifying some key results you want to achieve for each of those roles, and planning, setting time aside for these goals. I think that's interesting in sort of painting a big picture, in sort of saying, "What is it that I need to achieve? What are the goals that I want to get to?" And writing things down will make them more likely to happen.
And then looking at our entire week, which is something I'm really in the habit of doing on a Monday, is like sitting down for 30 minutes and saying, "Okay, what is it going to take for me to kind of win the week this week, what are the things that I need to get done?" And for me, the way I look at it, the way I've created it for myself, is I try to have the little to-do list, which is the not important but kind of urgent list that I just need to get through, like setting up a dentist appointment for my kids or something like that.
But this is different. This is a list of the things I need to do to achieve my goals. And that's the quality time Quadrant 2 that we're talking about, and if we can get in the habit of every Monday or Sunday night or whatever, sitting down for 30 minutes and writing out our Quadrant 2 goals for the week, the things that are going to help us move the needle closer to our mission and vision, and make it a doable list, something that you can get done that week.
It's a different way of thinking than your normal everyday to-do list that you're going to do. But I think that's a helpful framework to teach our teams as well. We do that with strategic planning and thinking about the rocks, and the goals, and the things that you need to get accomplished that are above and beyond. Like the big picture items that are above and beyond, like project work and those to-do lists.
But when we can give our team that type of guidance and tell them it's okay to spend time in this Quadrant 2, because I think sometimes they need to hear it's okay. Like, "I want you to reside in this for some of your week." That gives them purpose, and it gives them ownership, and it gives them a little more kick in their step to get out of bed in the morning and come to work, because it's really hard and soul-sucking to spend all of your time in the other three quadrants. But if you're pushing your team, you're actually saying, "No, no, I really want you to spend time in this quadrant to be innovative, to build relationships, to think about new opportunities, to collaborate, and innovate, and work on improvements on the whole, in the big picture." That, to them, is purpose. That, to them, is exciting.
Rob:
And that's one of the most important things I think we can do in our business when helping mentor and coach new leaders, is especially if somebody has moved up from the individual contributor role into a leadership role, is to stress that a part of your job is now strategic rather than tactical. It's thinking about where we're going and doing that work instead of the doing. And I need you as a leader to get out of the mode of, "You can do it better than anyone on your team. Now, that may be true for the short term, but that won't be true for long. And as your attention gets divided, that will stop being true. And if you have to allow some percentage of your time to work on those strategic things, those Quadrant 2 things.”
And that's been something that I found that I have to continually remind those people that I've given leadership roles to, oversight roles too. It's like, "I'm no longer paying you and compensating you to do all the things, I'm compensating you to help us make sure things are going well in the long term, and that we're making the right decisions today, that keep things from becoming urgent and important tomorrow. Because when those pop-up, everything stops and we all have to jump on them." Those are the live grenades, as we like to call them, where your job as a leader is to be the first body on it. Jump on it. Let's prevent those. And we do that by focusing on that second quadrant of thinking about what's the important direction before those things become urgent.
Traci:
Yeah. And I think that's a really hard thing for somebody moving into a leadership role, like a new leader in your company, is letting go the reins of some things and delegating. It's scary. It's scary to them to trust somebody else to carry out that task because they really don't want it to fail. Telling people like, "Look, you need to trust the person to carry it out. They might not do it the exact way you did it, but that's okay. We don't need to think our way is the only way or the perfect way. And plus, how are we growing up future leaders if we don't entrust them?"
But it is the hardest thing. Letting go, delegating. But there's a reason why that popular phrase, "The best leaders are the best delegators." It's true because it's not just that they can delegate tasks, it's that they trust the people that work with them to delegate the task.
Rob:
Yeah. I'm reminded of this quote that I've fallen in love with, which is, "You could either try to control things or you can trust people. There is no middle ground.”
Traci:
Yeah.
Rob:
And I think that so much of this, especially when we're leading leaders, is leading that by example. Is the things we say and the things that we do, is they're going to model some of that behavior after their leader, their manager. And I think that we have to start with that. And that gets back into this whole goal-setting stuff that we talk about, and what good delegation looks like.
He goes into a lot of that, Stephen Covey goes into a ton of what delegation looks like, the difference between a gofer delegation, which is, "Go do this, go do that, go do that," and stewardship, which is giving you ownership over something, as well as the implementation and how to set those goals for results, guidelines, resources, accountability, and consequences, and defining all of those. But so much of that is internalizing that as leaders first so that people can see that in us. And then they will turn around and see that in others.
Traci:
Yeah. What a freeing thing to be able to let go of some of these things. And I love the concept of stewardship because that whole idea of, "I'm going to give you responsibility and authority." It really helps our team to feel valued. And that is one of the number one things that people want today. They want to feel valued. We all, as humans want to feel valued in all aspects of our lives. So this is a win-win. This is an all-around win for leaders if they can adopt and be transformed by these principles and live them out. And it's good for them. And it's good for the future leaders of your company.
Rob:
Yeah. All right, Traci, what's your takeaway for this week?
Traci:
My takeaway is going back to that 30 minutes to plan your week. Just try it, try to sit down Sunday night or Monday morning, and put it in your calendar. That's the other thing. You have to literally schedule it for 30 minutes and that's all you put in the block, schedule your week. And sit down and think about all the things in Quadrant 2 that you can do just that week that are doable. Write them down and set that as your goal for the week, and then go back on Friday and see if you did it. You are going to see, I guarantee, the needle move for yourself.
Rob:
Yeah. I like that. My takeaway for this week is I would encourage everyone, if you're not already, to start with "no." Start with "no," like you don't have to even say it out loud first. I would say, give yourself time to consider when being asked about doing something new, that's going to require some time commitment. Start, but in your brain, start with "no" and work towards "yes" if it lines up. I've never been given an opportunity where I've had to make a decision right then and there. And I think it's always appropriate to say, "That sounds like a great opportunity, if you'll allow me a little couple days to consider it so that I can make sure that I'm fully in before committing." I've never had a problem where somebody has said, "Well, no, I need to know right now." And you work towards "yes" if you get to "yes." And it's okay, I promise, it's okay to stay at "no."
Traci:
Yeah. Oh, that's good. Good tips today. Another good one.
Rob:
All right. Thanks Traci.
Traci:
Thank you.
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