Stephen Covey

Having cited Stephen Covey in a sermon on Sunday, I was sad to hear (via Twitter, sign of the times), that he has just died, aged 79. If I had to list the books which have influenced me the most, his '7 Habits of Highly Effective People' would be pretty near the top.

Here are the habits (note, reading this doesn't mean you've read the book! A bit more exposition here)

1. Be Proactive (take responsibility for yourself, your life, your direction)
2. Begin with the end in mind (work out what's most important to you)
3. Put First things First (see 2, then make it a priority)
4. Think Win-Win (prioritise relationships, success by co-operation, not competition)
5. Seek First to Understand, then to be Understood (empathy, listening, the more you appreciate people, the more they appreciate you)
6. Synergise (build on strengths, work in a team)
7. Sharpen the Saw (take time out for personal renewal, mind body and spirit)

There are several bits of the book that have really helped me:

Quadrant 2: everything that needs to be done is either urgent or non-urgent, important or not important. So everything falls into 1 of 4 categorites:

Urgent and important:  e.g. meeting my boss in 5 minutes
Non-Urgent and Important: e.g. my marriage
Urgent and not important: e.g. most email
Non-Urgent and Not important. watching TV

Covey puts these into a matrix of 4 boxes, and argues that Quadrant 2, the important but non-urgent, is what is most easily neglected. This includes things like relationships, skill development, prayer, rest, and most of the things that actually make us function well and grow. Without setting aside time for these things (and being accountable for that), they're easy to neglect. I've found this really helpful and try to book into the diary the people and things which, left from one day to the next, won't get the attention they deserve.

Circle of Concern: we have a 'circle of influence'  - you're in it now, because you're reading this. And a 'circle of concern', which is the things we're aware of,  and concerned about. The problem is that my circle of concern is bigger than my circle of influence. I'm concerned about the state of the UK, but I can only influence a very small part of it. Identifying and focusing on my circle of concern means I end up doing what I can do, rather than fretting about what I can't.

Sharpening the Saw: a woodcutter who stops to sharpen his saw every so often is more effective than one who just keeps hacking away. Plodding on wearily is less effective than being fit, fully rested, mentally alert and well informed etc. This is all 'work smarter, not harder' stuff, but also affects the quality of my family life, relationships, personal mood etc. And in terms of discipleship I'm going to follow Jesus better if I'm sharp than if I'm blunt. So I try to read, stay fit, take time out on retreat, be accountable to others etc. Emphasis on the word 'try' !!

update: how could I forget Putting the Big Rocks in First.......?

The best way to honour his memory? Throw away your 50 Shades of Grey and read 7 Habits instead.

New Year, Big Rocks, Big Waistline

How reassuring it was to hear Giles Fraser on 'Thought for the Day' this morning, critiquing the diet industry and talking about fatness and self-esteem. Even more reassuring to discover that, at 16 stone, he weighs in 3 1/2 stone heavier than I do. In the local Tesco corner shop, the Christmas displays have been replaced by a 'healthy eating' stand - positioned exactly where the legions of chocolate bars were sited just days ago. Don't you just love marketing? The hypocrisy is so overt that we don't even notice anymore.

Meanwhile Alex Ferguson has complained that the New Year crowd at the Man Utd. game was quiet. New Years Day? Hello? After a pretty restrained party with some friends I woke up (actually, 'woke up' is putting it too strongly) with a cold and a headache, and the last thing I'd want to have done is spent 2 hours surrounded by 75,000 people shouting at a referee. If they've been daft enough to spend £50 on a ticket, I guess they've earned the right to enjoy the game in silence. Judging by the press reports on record ambulance and police call outs over new year, sitting with a quiet hangover at a football match is the least of the sins committed in the last 72 hours.

On a more positive note, a spot-on new year sermon at St. Johns Yeovil (click here to hear the talk), based on an illustration popularised by Steven Covey, which goes something like this........

You have a bowl, and 4 other containers, one each containing rocks, pebbles, sand, and beer. Put the rocks in the bowl. Is it full?

...No, because if you pour in the pebbles, you can fit them in around the rocks, until the bowl is full...

...Except that it isn't full, you can fit in a surprising amount of sand into the spaces between the rocks and pebbles. And now it's full...

...Except that it isn't full, because you can pour in the beer, and that will fit too...

There are 2 morals to this excercise:
a) No matter how full your life is, there's always room for a beer.

b) Put the big rocks in first. If you fill the bowl with pebbles or sand first, there won't be room for the rocks. And the rocks are the things which are most important: God, relationships, health, character, calling, parenting, developing your gifts and so on. The sermon illustrated this with the story of Mary and Martha - Mary sitting at Jesus feet, because this was 'most important', compared to washing up and tidying the kitchen. Obvious really.

The other key feature of these big rocks is that they only demand our attention in a crisis. The rest of the time, our time, energy and attention will be demanded by sand and pebbles - emails, phone calls, little jobs that need doing, a TV programme, blogging something (!) etc. Unless we commit time and energy to the big rocks, they won't get any. I discover this anew every holiday. My morning workday routine includes time to pray and read the Bible. On holiday, with no routine to speak of, the prayer rarely happens.

Which is why New Years resolutions aren't enough on their own. A list of wishes is, unless you're possessed of iron will or a nagging wife/husband, pretty useless. Until the resolution becomes a plan with concrete steps - (book the gym appointment, work out which times in the week you'll go and put them in the diary) - it's not going to get us anywhere. Which is why we all end up depressed in February, because we've set ourselves up to fail at the start of the year.

It's good therefore to hear of some wisdom from American family therapists on realistic expectations of relationships. The myth of the perfect couple sets us up to fail, and this is much more damaging than being realistic, and accepting that I'm not perfect, you're not perfect, and that bad stuff will happen. The Bible already knows this (the technical term is sin), but it's a sign of where we are as a culture that when therapists notice it, it's suddenly news.