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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, here is a brief synopsis of the first two habits: (from Wikipedia)

The Seven Habits

The chapters are dedicated to each of the habits, which are represented by the following imperatives:

1. 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.
2. 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:

• What do I want the future to be?
• What benefit do I want to give to my __________? (family, company, career, etc.)
• What returns do I seek?
• What standards am I aiming at?
• What values do I believe in?
• What are my strengths, and how can I leverage them to success?
• What weaknesses do I have in approaching and overcoming obstacles?
• Are there potential opportunities for changing the plan to meet changing conditions?
• How might this affect the outcome?
• What might prevent me from reaching the best result?
• What will the success of this goal mean in a year? In three years?
• What is the best possible result of my activities?

Once you have completed a realistic analysis of the opportunities for change, the next step is to decide precisely what the aim of your plan is. Deciding and defining an aim sharpens the focus of your plan, and helps you to avoid wasting effort on irrelevant side issues.

Ready, Fire, Aim, Fire

The aim is best expressed in a simple single sentence. When the goal of a project is clear and sharp in your mind it is that much easier to communicate with the decision-makers and those who will be implementing your project.

Your description of the outcome is the final mark on the yardstick that you will be using to measure your progress through the plan’s stages. When you have properly defined the outcome of the project you can then create and define specific activities and sub-goals to reach your objective.

You can present this aim as a ‘Vision Statement’ or ‘Mission Statement’. Vision Statements express the benefit that an organization will provide to its customers. Mission statements give concrete expression to the Vision statement, explaining how it is to be achieved.

Write Your Own Mission Statement

How different would your life be if you had had a clear understanding of what was truly important to you five or ten years ago? Some of you reading now may have performed an exercise like this back then, and have gone on to create wonderful things. Others may never have heard of this process. We will work through it together and be better for it.

A personal mission statement is similar to that for a company or organization, in that it defines the values and principles that will be followed in the everyday activities and long-term planning. Having a written set of core values can be a very helpful tool in planning and executing your activities.

Think about the things that are important to you. Make a list of how you perceive or handle obstacles and opportunities in the following categories:

• Family
• Spouse
  
• Work
• Career
• Money
• Possessions
• Comfort
• Friendships
• Conflicts
• Faith
• Personal development

It’s all connected

Keep in mind the 3 types of impact that we discussed in the first post of this series. They are:

1. Direct - situations involving your personal behavior
2. Indirect - situations involving the behavior of others
3. and some are Beyond our control

Look at how each category affects the others. For example, your relationship with your family may be impacted by your current financial situation (for good or ill).

How you handle conflict with your friends, family, and adversaries can impact your work and career.

The way that you perceive comfort may be different from the way that your spouse or co-workers do (have you ever worked in a sweltering office and the person next to you keeps complaining how cold they are?)

Take some time to flesh out this list, considering the inter-connected nature of these principles. Write down how each category impacts the others, and how others may view them differently. Note that family and spouse are separate categories, as your relationships with them are likely to be very different. Likewise work and career are separate, as how you make a living may not necessarily be what you want to do in the future.

Sample Applications

Stephen Covey has a list of recommended activities for implementing this habit. Two of them are:

1. Look carefully at your list of values and principles. Does a pattern emerge? Is this really the person that you are? Or want to be?
2. Identify a project that you have coming up. Apply the principle of visualizing the final outcome. Write down the results that you desire and the steps that you need to take to achieve those results.

I would also recommend:

1. Look at every task you have this week with a new perspective. Visualize the best end result, and decide if this action will get you there.
2. Use the worksheet to create your own personal mission statement. Keep it handy and be prepared to revise it if necessary. Watch for opportunities to incorporate this mission statement into your daily interactions and decisions.

Thank you for participating, we will check back with you on Saturday for a review of how you did. Be sure to download the PDF for your own tracking here (link).

Here are all of the posts in the series:

• Habit One - Be Proactive
• Habit Two - Begin with the End in Mind
• Habit Three - Put First Things First, part I
• Habit Three - Put First Things First, part II
• Habit Four - Think Win/Win

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/5vuktn. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen