7 Weeks, 7 Habits - Week Two - Begin with the End in Mind [HD BizBlog- The Blog: Productivity in Context]
Welcome to part two of the series on how to implement the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People in a Getting Things Done-style system. Because this is a fairly intensive plan to implement, I am writing a set of seven posts that will guide you through the stages of implementation over seven weeks. This will give you a chance to focus on each new habit in your life for one full week before beginning the next one.
Each weekly post on the habits is supplemented by a worksheet to help you start focusing on the new habit.
For those of you who may not have read Stephen Covey’s landmark book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
The Seven Habits
The chapters are dedicated to each of the habits, which are represented by the following imperatives:
- Be Proactive. Here, Covey emphasizes the original sense of the term “reactive” as coined by Victor Frankl. You can either be proactive or reactive when it comes to how you respond to certain things. When you are reactive, you blame other people and circumstances for obstacles or problems. Being proactive means taking responsibility for everything in life. Initiative and taking action will then follow. Covey also shows how man is different from other animals in that he has self-consciousness. He has the ability to detach himself and observe his own self; think about his thoughts. He goes on to say how this attribute enables him: It gives him the power not to be affected by his circumstances. Covey talks about stimulus and response. Between stimulus and response, we have the power of free will to choose our response.
- Begin with the End In Mind. This chapter is about setting long-term goals based on “true north” principles. Covey recommends formulating a “personal vision statement” to document one’s perception of one’s own vision in life. He sees visualization as an important tool to develop this. He also deals with organizational vision statements, which he claims to be more effective if developed and supported by all members of an organization rather than prescribed.
Each Monday we will look into how to apply each of the Habits in a meaningful way that you can incorporate into your own personal productivity practice. At the end of the week we will re-group to discuss how we did. Each week you will be able to download a PDF worksheet for use as an aid to starting this new habit.
[Right-click this link and “Save As” to download the study guide]
I ask you to take on three simple activities that will help you administer and adjust to your new habit.
These activities are:
1. Create a Weekly Plan
Take some time at the end of your Weekly Review to plan your activities for the coming week. If you are not familiar with the Weekly Review, click here for more information. One of the basic principles that Covey teaches is that of the Big Rocks. These are the vital commitments that you need to put into your agenda first. Then you have room for the smaller stuff, the “pebbles and sand”. Your big rocks for this week include practicing one of the Sample Activities found at the end of this article.
The weekly planning is a big part of being proactive (Habit 1). A weakness of David Allen’s GTD system is that there is no mechanism for the items on your Next Action list to get pulled into the hard landscape of your calendar. This is where the idea of ‘Big Rocks’ and Most Important Tasks come in.
Each week, during your Weekly Review, you should look over the Next Action list with the purpose of ‘promoting’ some of these NAs to Big Rocks or MITs. These items are, by their nature, limited in number so as not to create a burden in your hard landscape.
2. Make a Personal Commitment
Commit yourself to adding one simple activity each week to implement and practice the new habit. Most new learning is lost the first week. Guard against this by sharing. If you have trouble keeping appointments with yourself, get a friend, partner or co-worker to hold you accountable. A burden shared is a burden eased.
You can also share the worksheet with your accountability partner. [Right-click this link and “Save As” to download the study guide]
3. Teach to Learn
One of the best ways to establish your own understanding of a new topic is to explain it to another person. Pick someone that you can teach the new habit to, it can be your accountability partner or someone else.
Now you are ready to get started!
Habit II - Begin with the End in Mind
“To begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination” (Stephen Covey).
How you envision the outcome of your activity is essential to its final success. If you have a clear vision of exactly what you are working to achieve you can then create the list of action steps needed to get there. Every goal is created twice, first in your mind, second in reality.
As discussed in the e-book Project Planning in Context, visualizing the outcome of your project is the vital first step. Without having a firm grip on the outcome, it is impossible to know when you can stop. “Busy-ness” for the sake of being busy in not productive, it’s spinning your wheels. When your goal is clear in your mind, and the project has been determined to be worth doing, i.e. you have outlined the “Why†of the goal, your next step is to set the conditions that define its successful completion.
Here is a short list of questions that can help create the vision of a successful outcome:
(more…)
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Original post here: Stephen
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