7 Habits

I am a procrastinator. I have been my whole life, however, I’m not as bad as I used to be. Even though I am still a procrastinator, my life has gotten busier and I’ve learned a thing or two through experiences. In the book Mastery by George Leonard, it talks about the importance of finding good teachers so that we don’t have to “recreate the wheel”. Someone has already learned and can show us a skill so we can learn it, practice it and progress forward more quickly. Stephen Covey is a master teacher and even though this is in book form, and our bad habits cannot be corrected, he teaches wonderful principles we can apply ourselves. 

It is hard for me to choose one habit as a standout, but if I have to, I would choose “Be Proactive”. This is called the “granddaddy of all habits”, because without being proactive we already are behind. My tendency is to push important things off I don’t want to think about until it is either too late or needs immediate attention. If I could be more proactive and push aside my inclination to procrastinate, then there would be less fires for me to put out and my life would be more peaceful. 

In trying to apply this principle, I appreciated the idea of The Time Quadrant. This has four areas that help determine how we are choosing to spend our time. Those areas are Urgent, Not Urgent, Important and not important. There is something powerful about being able to step back and organize the value of activities we are choosing to do. 

The 7 habits can help fill my life with passion and purpose through public and private victory. For example, as I can accomplish being proactive, beginning with the end in mind  and putting first things first, I am having private victories. Private victories are building blocks for the public victories, which are win-win thinking, seeking to understand first then trying to understand and creating synergy. Public victories are ones that include others and help ourselves move forward along with others and benefits everyone. 

The following is one way these teachings have applied to my life this week. Like I said, I’m a procrastinator and in reality, I should stop giving myself that label. I do like to keep a planner and write down things that need to be done. In my planner, there is a section for daily tasks as well as a spot where it can be applied to the timeline of my day. After learning about the seven habits and especially the Time Quadrant, it helped me be more intentional while planning. Normally, I have a long wish list of things to do that are just on my mind or things I want to do. This time after writing everything down, I circled the items that would only fall into the urgent and Important column. I completed those first, and after completing those I realized I didn’t have Not Urgent but Important items on my list. All of the rest of my items fell to the Urgent and Unimportant category. As I thought about what might be on my Not Urgent but Important category, items started flowing to that list. The pool equipment needed to be fixed, the air conditioner has been making a loud noise and a call to the air conditioner company needed to be made, check-up Dr’s appt for my kids, and the list went on. Shifting my focus helped me to think about prioritizing and taking care of those things before they became urgent because of a bigger problem. They were not the fun things to add, but were the most beneficial. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the nature of the task has changed but our ability to do has increased.” Over time it will be easier to practice this skill of being proactive and the other seven habits, and it will add more control and peace into my life.