First Thing First Book Autobiographies and Self Development Books

Another terrifically helpful book from the pen of Stephen Covey. I personally found especially useful the two-by-two matrix he discusses as a way to organize yourself. The four resulting quadrants include:

1. Important and Urgent
2. Important, Not Urgent
3. Urgent, Not Important
4. Not Urgent, Not Important

Simply put, most people spend far too much time in quadrants 3 & 4. We also spend too much time in quadrant 1, not that those issues are unimportant, but because we don’t manage our priorities well. The goal is to gradually focus more and more of our time and energy in quadrant 2, thus reducing the amount of energy necessarily directed to quadrant 1.

Having been disappointed by too many time-management books in the past, which primarily purport to show one how to cram more into the limited amount of time we have, another epiphany for me from Covey’s book was that the issue isn’t time management, but rather priority management. That hit home, and caused me to make some changes that have led to a more satisfying life for me. I suspect this would be worthwhile reading for most people, but probably most especially, young adults