First things First is one of those books that was on my mind for a long time, and I’m so glad I finally read it. For someone who’s fascinated by productivity and maximising it through the choices i make on a daily basis, this has been the most impactful book I’ve read in my life.
I couldn’t help but regularly highlight passages. There were so many gems in this book, and perhaps the most important quote I highlighted, that has relevance to everyday life is:
“The key to quality of life is in the compass—it’s in the choices we make every day. As we learn to pause in the space between stimulus and response and consult our internal compass, we can face change squarely, confident that we’re being true to principle and purpose.”
This book was also surprisingly deeply spiritual and had relevance to relationships, daily fulfilment, just as much as work. For instance, the author talks about the idea that all have our own “Personal Integrity account”, which reflects the amount of trust we have in ourselves. We build a “high balance in this account, which is a great source of strength and security” by delaying gratification, avoiding temptations, and making the right choices when our honesty is on the line.
Before reading this book, I was strictly tied to a lot of the principles, systems, and rules I’d created in my life. Whether it be working in blocks of one hour, taking a walk before I start any work, and so on. But instead of approaching these parts of my life as overarching principles, I saw them as rules I needed to lead my life by.
Reading this book helped me realise that so long as my choices are made from the right compass, I can trust myself to worry a little less about the details. For instance, I used to track my daily habits every day by giving myself a checkmark on a Daily App. Now that I see my daily habits are principles to live by, rather than extraneous gridlocks. Now I only tick/cross something on a sheet when I don’t do a habit, freeing myself from having to ‘tick’ everything on a daily basis.
“In a sense, knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows: for details are swallowed up in principles. “
Another one of the highlights of this book was the idea that we live under different roles i.e. friend, creator, husband… etc. I was somewhat familiar with this before, but I appreciated the level of detail that the author went into here. He mentioned that everyone should have a “foundational role called “sharpen the saw.” “We treat this as a separate role for two reasons: 1) it’s a role that everyone has, and 2) it’s foundational for success in every other role.”
He also explored the idea that one of the most important questions we can ask ourselves at the end of e each week is: “what is the most important thing I could do in each role this coming week to have the greatest positive impact?”
The author also explored the idea that our life vision needs to be genuine. “If our self-vision is no more than a reflection of the social mirror, we have no connection with our inner selves, with our own uniqueness and capacity to contribute. We’re living out of scripts handed to us by others—family, associates, friends, enemies, the media.”
The author also shared the idea how we perform in each role of our lives, affects the whole. “Whatever we are we bring to every role in our life.” So if we change who we are on some small level in one role, we also change how we show up in all the other areas of our lives.
For example, I’ve witnessed the powerful effect of the amazing difference doing fulfilling work each day has to my overall level of happiness. Mastering this one part of my life makes me perform better in all the other areas of my life. I end up smiling more, contributing more, and being a better person for my family.
“When we see our roles as segmented parts of life, we develop a scarcity chronos mentality. There’s only so much time. Spending it in one role means we can’t spend it in another. It’s win-lose—one role wins, the other roles lose.”I can see now, that this certainly isn’t the case.
Below you’ll find some of my other favourite passages from this book.
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Have less money or prestige than somebody else? It’s irrelevant. Our security comes from our own integrity to true north.
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With the humility that comes from being principle-centered, we’re empowered to learn from the past, have hope for the future, and act with confidence in the present.
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We can’t just toss out a few seeds, go ahead and do whatever we want to do and then expect to come back to find a beautiful, well-groomed garden ready to drop a bountiful harvest of beans, corn, potatoes, carrots, and peas in our basket. We have to water, cultivate, and weed on a regular basis if we’re going to enjoy the harvest.
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the difference between our own active involvement as gardeners and neglect is the difference between a beautiful garden and a weed patch.
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Since studies show that it’s less effective to attempt to mentally manage more than seven categories, we recommend that you try to combine functions, such as administration/finance or personnel/team building to keep your total number of roles to seven.
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If our vision is based on illusion, we make choices that aren’t based on “true north” principles. In time, these choices fail to create the quality-of-life results we expect. Our vision becomes no more than platitudes. We become disillusioned, perhaps cynical. Our creative imagination withers, and we don’t trust our dreams anymore.
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“when man discovered the mirror, he began to lose his soul.”
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The power of transcendent vision is greater than the power of the scripting deep inside the human personality and it subordinates it, submerges it, until the whole personality is reorganized in the accomplishment of that vision.
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No one else can be the husband or wife you can be to your spouse. No one else can be the doctor you can be to your patients, the teacher you can be to your students, the sister, the friend, the community volunteer you can be to the people whose lives you can touch. What you alone can contribute, no one else can contribute. Viktor Frankl said we don’t invent our mission; we detect it.
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Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfilment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated.
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look into this container which is our soul; look and listen to it. Until you have listened in to that thing which is dreaming through you, in other words—answered the knock on the door in the dark, you will not be able to lift this moment in time in which we are imprisoned,
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• Commit your mission statement to memory.
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Set a daily “sharpen the saw” goal to visualize yourself living your mission statement.
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Read mission statements written by other people throughout history. Consider the impact of these statements on their lives and on society.
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What is quality of life if it isn’t spending time with the people you love most?
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Whatever we are we bring to every role in our life.
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Much of our pain in life comes from the sense that we’re succeeding in one role at the expense of other,
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a compelling, future-oriented vision is the primary force that kept many of them alive.
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Petty things become unimportant when people are impassioned about a purpose higher than self.
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In a sense, we each live three lives. We have our public life, where we interact with other people at work, in the community, at social events. We have our private life, where we’re away from the public. We may be alone or we may choose to be with friends or family. But our most significant life is our deep inner life.
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The basic paradigm is that without some form of tight control, we’ll mess up. We don’t have trust in ourselves that, left to our own internal motivation, we would moment by moment make effective choices. But the passion of vision releases the power that connects “discipline” with its root word, “disciple.”
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It includes fulfillment in physical, social, mental, and spiritual dimensions.
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8. is written to inspire you—not to impress anyone else. It communicates to you and inspires you on the most essential level.
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The way we see the problem is the problem. This compartmentalization is based on illusion, and to try to live the illusion is incredibly strenuous.
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Balance isn’t “either/or” it’s “and.”
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It is as if society somehow deems it less valuable to raise competent children than to raise the profit on a company’s product line. A woman who chooses to focus on motherhood, and does so out of a clear sense of her own personal vision, becomes truly energized in her role. She recognizes the value of her efforts in shaping the characters of future leaders in society.
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We can think win-win with all the roles in our lives, to see them as parts of a highly interrelated whole.
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Success or failure in any role contributes to the quality of every other role and life as a whole.
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Writing our roles each week keeps them in our awareness and helps us pay attention to all the important dimensions of our life.
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balance is living, loving, learning, and leaving a legacy over a lifetime—gives context and meaning to her seasonal imbalance.
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forgetting to shift back out of high gear after such a bout with adrenaline has served its purpose.
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Whatever we do with whatever we have—money, possessions, talents, even time—we leave behind us as a legacy for those who follow.
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A significant part of effectiveness in any role is in the balance between developing and doing, between production (P) and increasing our production capability (PC).
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Building character strength is like building physical strength. When the test comes, if you don’t have it, no cosmetics can disguise the fact that it just isn’t there.
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It takes strength to set a heroic goal, to work on chronic problems instead of going for the “quick fix,”
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Accomplishing one goal impacts other areas of life in a negative way. When we come face-to-face with the results, we become disillusioned.
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We’re working against ourselves, not sure why (or even if) we want to accomplish a particular goal. The commitments we make in a moment of enthusiasm don’t have the sustaining power to carry us all the way to successful achievement of our goals.
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we need to push our thinking and feeling until we break through and create an open flow between the passion of vision and the goal. The stronger the connection, the stronger and more sustained the motivation.
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The way we see others in terms of control or release generally reflects the way we see ourselves. If we have a control perspective, we assume we have to exercise strict control over ourselves if we want to accomplish anything.
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There are times of short-term imbalance when wisdom suggests that we make the conscious choice not to set goals in some roles.
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It’s like reading a run-on sentence that goes on for pages without a comma
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At work, we may connect with some of the purposes of the organization, and find fulfillment by contributing to them. We may find fulfillment in the service we provide for our customers or in the growth and development of the people we train or work with. As we invest and connect in ways that bring growth and contribution, we discover that the person who comes home from work at night is stronger and better than the one who left for work in the morning.
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When urgency pushes us, moods pull us, or unexpected opportunities beckon, we have something solid against which we can weigh the value of change. We can put content in context and choose the “best” over the “good.”
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the point was not to schedule every little thing, but to work on first things first.
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wisdom is a marriage—a synergy—of heart and mind.
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• End-of-the-week evaluation helps us see time as a cycle of learning and growth rather than as linear chronos measurement.
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the most fundamental ingredients to success were such things as honesty, integrity, humility, fidelity, justice, patience, and courage.
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in his book The Pursuit of Happiness, study after study shows that those who have this bigger picture orientation in their lives are happier, more satisfied, contributing people.
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“People seem not to see,” said Emerson, “that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.”7
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our relationships with others are fundamentally a reflection of our relationship with ourselves.
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If we don’t have a sense of mission and principles to measure ourselves against, we benchmark against other people instead of our own potential.
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We’re into comparative thinking and win-lose mentality.
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See yourself living by the fundamental Laws of Life that are basic to all civilizations. Don’t cheat. Don’t lie. Don’t steal. Treat people with respect. ”
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People know it. In their deep inner lives, they know what they ought to be doing. And they know it would improve quality of life. The challenge is to develop the character and competence to listen to it and live by it—to act with integrity in the moment of choice.
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What can I learn from this week that will keep next week from essentially being a repeat of the same?
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The value of any week is not limited to what we do in it; it’s also in what we learn from it and become as a result of it.
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• Did my choices make deposits or withdrawals from my Personal Integrity Account?
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• What keeps getting in the way of accomplishing my goals?
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• Connect to mission empowers you to access the deep burning “yes!” created by the awareness of first things in your life, the “yes!” that generates passion and energy and makes it possible for you to say “no”—with
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The shift is from doing more things in less time to doing first things in an effective, balanced, and synergistic way. It’s a holistic, integrated, and aligned approach to living, loving, learning, and leaving a legacy.
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everything people identify as really important has to do with others.
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We get our paycheck because what we do in some way affects the lives of others.
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To love is, by definition, interdependent. “Love isn’t love till you give it away.”
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To leave a legacy is also, by definition, interdependent. It’s contributing to society, contributing in meaningful ways to the lives of others.
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We’re living with the illusion of independence, but the paradigm is not creating the quality-of-life results we desire.
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The problems we see in families, organizations, and societies are the result of individuals making choices in their space between stimulus and response. When those choices come out of reactivity, scripting, or urgency response, it impacts time and quality of life for families, organizations, and society as a whole.
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We can stop seeing people as a reflection of ourselves, looking at everything they do in terms of how it affects our time and our world.
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in almost all situations, cooperation is far more productive than competition.
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when both people understand both perspectives, instead of being on opposite sides of the table looking across at each other, we find ourselves on the same side looking at solutions together.
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There’s no sense of shared vision. There’s no passion, no deep burning “Yes!” in the organization.
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Just think of the cost in terms of time and effort wasted in organizations because people don’t have a clear sense of shared importance!
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The degree to which urgency drives the organization is the degree to which importance does not.
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The passion created by shared vision creates synergistic empowerment. It unleashes and combines the energy, talent, and capacities of all involved.
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A powerful shared vision has a profound effect on quality of life—in the family, in the organization, in any situation where we work with others. We become contributing parts of a greater whole. We can live, love, learn, and leave powerful legacies together.
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An empowering organizational mission statement: • focuses on contribution, on worthwhile purposes that create a collective deep burning “Yes!” • comes from the bowels of the organization, not from Mount Olympus • is based on timeless principles • contains both vision and principle-based values • addresses the needs of all stakeholders • addresses all four needs and capacities
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A manager, leader, or parent becomes a source of help—a facilitator, helper, cheerleader, advisor, counselor, and coach—someone to remove the oil spills and then get out of the way.
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In a high-trust culture, people are internally motivated. They’re fueled by the fire within. They’re driven by a sense of passion about fulfilling a shared vision that’s also a co-mission, a synergy between their own mission and the mission of the family or organization.
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The quarterly bottom line tends to drive the mentality in the culture. In a high-trust culture, structures and systems are aligned to create empowerment, to liberate people’s energy and creativity toward agreed-upon purposes within the guidelines of shared values.
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“What are the things I’m now doing you’d like to see me continue to do? What would you like to see me stop doing? What would you like to see me start doing that I’m not doing now?”
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never told me what to do. He always said, “You might consider this option” or “Had you thought about this possibility?”
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“Accomplishing tasks through people” is a different paradigm than “building people through the accomplishment of tasks.” With one, you get things done. With the other, you get them done with far greater creativity, synergy, and effectiveness
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If you find yourself afraid to act authentically, to speak courageously, to challenge the assumptions, you’re doing a disservice to yourself and your organization.
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Your deeply held beliefs about someone will create the tone for any interactions you have.
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Principle-centered living is not an end in itself. It’s the means and the end. It’s the quality of our travel along life’s road.
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In a principle-centered life, the journey and the destination are one.
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Rather than activities and appointments, you see your day in terms of people and relationships. You see processes in progress as new possibilities for contribution
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where you could focus your effort with the greatest positive long-term result.
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You would see tasks, not as things to do, but as indicators of a larger process that you want to improve.
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Foundational to “first things” are the four needs and capacities—to live, to love, to learn, to leave a legacy.
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We see how vital it is to pause in that space between stimulus and response so that we can listen to our conscience and exercise the attributes of the heart to make the “best” choices.
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Vision gives purpose and meaning. Roles become synergistic avenues of contribution. Goals become conscience-driven, purposeful, integrated accomplishment. The week bridges the mission and the moment in a cycle of growth.
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