There’s a lot in this chapter of Covey’s book. Pulling out what I think is the central idea…

Habit 3: Put First Things First

If you know you have choices that make a difference (Habit 1), and you know where you want to end up (Habit 2), then you must be organized enough to spend actual time working toward those goals. That’s Habit 3, allocating real time in your schedule to the activities that will move you closer to the end you want.

As you know, this is harder than it sounds. Life and business crowd a lot of urgent and self-generating tasks into our days. It’s really easy to have big goals in mind, yet spend all day on these popup tasks, moving no closer to the big goals.

I try to prevent this with a entry that lives at the top of my task manager called “Big Picture Strategy”. Inside it I have sub-tasks listing the current big goals for my companies and for myself. These usually focus a few months to a year ahead. I try to look this over once per work day and take a moment to meaningful process those strategies and the actions we should be taking now to move them forward. Some days I don’t get to it and that’s life, but I think it helps keep me focused. That’s the spirit of Habit 3.