Stephen R. Cover Critical Review: Covey, Stephen.

¶ … Stephen R. Cover

Critical review:

Covey, Stephen. First Things First. Simon & Schuster, 1995.

At first, Stephen Covey's 1995 book First Things First strikes the reader as a curious mix of self-help and time management advice. Gradually, however, it becomes clear upon reading this text that in Covey's eyes, effective time management and self-actualization are linked. Only if people have a strong sense of their goals and moral 'true north' can they prioritize tasks in an effective manner. The nature of modern life demands that people multi-task and deal with a great deal of overstimulation on a daily basis. Through Covey's simple yet revolutionary technique, he hopes that the reader will never say: "I would love to do x, y, and z, but I simply don't have the time."

According to Covey, one of the reasons that people become overwhelmed and do not use their time efficiently is because they do not understand that all tasks are not equally urgent. As an antidote to this sense of being overwhelmed, Covey suggests creating a 'grid' rather than using a traditional calendar or planner. One 'cell' of Covey's suggested grid (which Covey calls a quadrant) is for important and urgent activities, like a work-related deadline that must be met immediately, or a crisis that must be dealt with in the family. This first side of the grid can refer to both professional and personal matters. The second quadrant of the grid refers to equally important matters that do not have to be dealt with right now. This might include planning for retirement or studying for the LSATs. The third quadrant of the grid refers to urgent yet non-important matters, like a phone ringing from a friend to ask you to go out to dinner later that night. The fourth quadrant refers to non-urgent and unimportant matters -- such as checking Facebook, for example, while you work.

It might be assumed that effective people always take care of 'quadrant one' or highly urgent matters first, and ignore the trivial quadrant four matters. Covey agrees that most functional people are capable of understanding that mindless entertainment online is less important than a deadline at work. The problem is that people fail to give priority to quadrant two matters. People need to have a sense of important, long-term goals before quadrant two issues do not spiral into quadrant one crises. For example, not having enough money to send a child to college is clearly a quadrant one problem. However, by making saving for a child's education a continuing, high-priority, quadrant two-matter, such a quadrant one crisis can be avoided and the problem can be tackled in a less stressful fashion.

Another problem in our society is that too much weight is given to urgency -- unimportant quadrant three matters can often seem more important than really they are, simply because they are urgent. A person who is trying to improve his or her physical fitness might be tempted to constantly check his or her cellphone during yoga class and get distracted and have an ineffective workout, simply because the presence of an unread message 'feels' urgent, even though the actual message is unlikely to be of great consequence.