Put first things first – a concept we often misunderstand

Hello my fellow bloggers! Today I want to talk about our most precious assets: time and efforts. There is no doubt we all want to spend them effectively. For this, we need to focus on important things, but what priorities we should set to live a successful and balanced life? Let’s discuss this together.

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Put first things first – this is the most basic concept of organizing your time and efforts. Yet most of people often misunderstand this short concept. As the result, one can find himself drawn in pressing problems and live in constant crisis. Despite of all efforts spent, we don’t achieve our life goals. So what does this concept really means? I want to start with the words of Dr. Stephen R. Covey:

“Putting first things first means organizing and executing around your most important priorities. It is living and being driven by the principles you value most, not by the agendas and forces surrounding you.”

All the tasks you have can be divided into 4 groups as sown below (by Dr. Stephen R. Covey):

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The quadrant Q4 is the most easy to understand, I will not cover it. We will start with Q1. This is the most dangerous quadrant in our table. We all have tasks from Q1. However, some of us sink in it. These are crisis-managers, people who are concentrated on the problems and are problem-minded. The result of focusing on Q1 is self-draining, burning out, constant stress and endless war with problems.

There are people who spent most of their time on Q3. They react on urgent tasks, confusing them with important. These people often consider themselves a victim of circumstances. It is hard to build stable relations with business partners, colleagues and clients if you focus on Q3.

Effective people stay away from Q3 and Q4 and always try to focus on Q2. Q2 stands for all tasks you need to complete to achieve your long term goals. It includes studying, working on your skills, building relationships with others, planning and recreation. A good example of focusing on Q2 is what project Hope founder

@crypto.piotr is doing. He is focusing on building influence on the platform for himself and Project Hope, rather than wasting time and energy on Q1 and Q3 items. I don’t need to cover results of this approach. If you are here and reading this, you know how successful Project Hope is. How many this community has already achieved and how many things are yet to come. Learn from it. Learn to focus on long term goals. Learn to think big, learn to be creative, learn to proactively plan your future. Make sure you focus your efforts to build foundation of you future success.

This is it for now. You’ve spent around 5 minutes reading this. To make this time matter, spend another 10 minutes to thinks about tasks you have for this week. Take a sheet of paper, right down your tasks and distribute them between Q1-Q4. Try to answer the question if you are satisfied where your focus lies.

This post was partly inspired by @josevas217 recent post on Optimal use of our time. Automation is a good way to cover tasks from Q1 and Q3 to let you focus on Q2.

Disclaimer

I’m not a financial of any kind. I encourage you to check all information yourself and make decision only based on your own opinion. All articles are created for solely entertainment purpose.

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Put first things first – a concept we often misunderstand | Ecency