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Welcome to part three of the series on how to implement the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People in a Getting Things Done-style system.

For those of you who may not have read Stephen Covey’s landmark book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, I encourage you to click that link and get a copy of your own.

Today’s post will focus on how to implement the first two habits into your GTD practice. The first two habits are most powerful at the “runway” level of thinking and activity. This is where the action really takes place, where things get done. Being Proactive and Beginning with the End in Mind are the habits that are the building blocks of your workflow.

The third habit is a tool for higher-level thinking and planning, so we will examine the third habit, Put First Things First, later this week.

Your Workflow process

As a reminder, the Getting Things Done workflow is designed to be an overlay upon your own working style and methods. Utilizing the first two habits of highly effective people is essential to beginning the GTD workflow process.

Collect
Process
Organize
Review
Do

Habit 1: Be Proactive

Being proactive means that you observe your environment for contextual cues that aid you in deciding what you should be doing right now. As you can see in the diagram, “Stuff” enters your In-box, or is captured in some fashion, and these inputs need to be addressed.

Identifying the input is the first step, followed by “Is it actionable?“. This is where being proactive comes in to play. As you develop this habit, you will learn to assign a proper context to each input, whether the item is something that should be done at home, at work, in front of the computer, on the phone, etc. Once you have decided on whether or not to act on this input immediately, you move to step three.

Habit 2: Begin with the end in mind

“What is the Next Action?” is the question you will be asking yourself. This is where the second habit, “Begin with the end in mind” is important. Deciding on the end-result of each input when it enters your workflow will save you time and effort later.

Each item that enters the workflow will need to be identified and labeled with a context. This procedure creates a mental pattern that you will use to process the item if it is deferred, stored, or delegated. If the input is to be acted upon immediately (that is, it can be completed in two minutes or less) a context label will allow you to efficiently file, store, or archive the information for possible retrieval at a later date.

The power of Contexts

If you do not mark your inputs in this way, as they come in, you will be forced to re-evaluate the item (identify and contextualize) the next time you see it as if it were a new input. The human brain is very good at identifying and recalling patterns, and you can leverage this power by labeling each input. When you get to the appropriate time to act on the input, the context label is recognized and you can quickly and easily recall what needs to be done, and what the end result is supposed to be.

When you delegate or defer an input, it is just as important to label it for yourself or the person to whom it was assigned. Writing “Call Jim at 5:00” on your calendar for a week from now is a useless note. Without context you will be forced to search for the reason before the call, or, if you go ahead and call without knowing, you risk being unprepared and wasting the time of two people.

“Call Jim at 5:00 re: Interviews/tickler-28 Feb/item 6” is a much better entry. The context labels remind you that the call is about interviews, and there is a note marked “#6″ in your Tickler File for 28 February.

Simply reading this entry leverages the power of recalling patterns in your mind, which helps you in three important ways:

1. It reduces the amount of time you spend on each input,
2. it eliminates the effort of re-thinking the input,
3. which in turn reduces the amount of stress that you experience.

Taking small, incremental steps in implementing the first two habits of highly effective people is the first phase of joining their ranks.

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/5v53cz. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen