'7 Habits of Highly Effective Leaders' shows the importance of prioritising and learning
Stephen Covey’s book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, shows how important this strategy is. It says a jar (life/effort/mind) can be filled up using rocks (priorities) and sand (distractions). If you fill the jar up with sand first, there won’t be space to put in the rocks. But if you put the rocks in first, the jar would be filled with more meaningful stones; even if sand is poured in, it would only fill the empty spaces. This shows that one should choose the things that are important in life and not waste time on other distractions.
The book provides a detailed framework on building such habits. The author speaks about being proactive by taking responsibility for actions and responses. From a career perspective, this could involve identifying the root causes of delays and streamlining processes and tasks instead of complaining.
Covey also highlights the importance of aligning the daily actions towards achieving the end goal. For example, if a mid-career professional has a dream of becoming a senior manager, they should identify the key requirements — such as leadership skills, specific kind of cross-functional experience — and strive to take steps to achieve each such intermediate goal.
This, again, involves prioritising the “big rocks”. The author makes a distinction between what is urgent in our lives versus what is important but not immediately urgent today. If our time gets consumed only by taking care of what’s urgent, we would not get time to think through the long-term aspects of what is
