Now that you have a mission, how can you proactively take charge and make it into a reality? Simple: by living it, day in and day out.

Of course, in the midst of your everyday hassles, roles and relationships, this can be challenging, and it demands good time-management skills.

Unfortunately, most time-management techniques focus on increasing efficiency, not on improving effectiveness. But the good news is that you don’t really need complicated techniques. Most of the time it’s good enough to remember the simple maxim: “first things first.”

This means rigorously prioritizing everything you do so that the important things are always taken care of first, while everything else is put aside and then dealt with or delegated later.

Okay, but how can you tell which things are important?

A good place to start is by categorizing all your tasks according to two dimensions: urgency and importance. This gives you a 2×2 matrix with four quadrants:

• In quadrant one are tasks that are important and urgent, like crises that need to be dealt with right away.
• In quadrant two are tasks that are important but not urgent, like, say, writing your mission statement, building important relationships and planning for the future.
• In quadrant three are tasks that are urgent but not important, like, say, a phone ringing while you’re working on something else.
• And in quadrant four are tasks that are neither important nor urgent – a pure waste of time, in other words.

Of these, the most important quadrant to focus on is number two. These actions are the ones that will have an enormously positive impact on your life. And when you work enough in quadrant two, you’ll find far fewer crises emerging in quadrant one.

Unfortunately, many people don’t understand the importance of quadrant two. For instance, when working with a group of shopping-center managers, the author found that although they knew that building relationships with store owners was the most positively impactful thing they could do, they still spent less than five percent of their time doing it. Instead, they were constantly busy dealing with quadrant one issues like reports, calls and interruptions. Encouraged by the author, they decided to start spending a third of their time with the store owners, and the effect was enormous: both satisfaction and lease revenue shot up.

(Thật không may, nhiều người không hiểu được tầm quan trọng của góc phần tư hai. Ví dụ, khi làm việc với một nhóm các nhà quản lý trung tâm mua sắm, tác giả nhận thấy rằng mặc dù họ biết rằng việc xây dựng mối quan hệ với chủ cửa hàng là điều có tác động tích cực nhất họ có thể làm, họ vẫn dành ít hơn năm phần trăm thời gian để làm việc đó. Thay vào đó, họ liên tục bận rộn xử lý các vấn đề ở ô thứ tư như báo cáo, cuộc gọi và gián đoạn. Được khuyến khích bởi tác giả, họ quyết định bắt đầu dành một phần ba thời gian của họ với các chủ cửa hàng, và hiệu quả là rất lớn: cả sự hài lòng và doanh thu cho thuê đều tăng vọt.)

A good first step in implementing this habit in your life is to identify a quadrant-two activity that you’ve been neglecting – one that would have a significant impact on your life if you did it well – and then commit in writing to doing more of it.

(Bước tốt đầu tiên  để thực hiện thói quen này trong cuộc sống của bạn là xác định một hoạt động ở ô thứ hai mà bạn đã bỏ qua – một hoạt động sẽ có tác động đáng kể đến cuộc sống của bạn nếu bạn làm tốt – và sau đó cam kết bằng văn bản để làm nhiều hơn của nó)

When you interact with others, what kind of outcome do you usually look for?

Most people’s worldviews are shaped by a strong “win-lose” paradigm. This means they see any interaction with others, whether at work or in their personal life, as basically a competition, where they need to fight the other person for the bigger slice of pie.

But most situations in life don’t need to be competitions. There is usually enough pie for everyone, and it is far better when all parties work toward a “win-win” solution that is beneficial for everyone, rather than fighting for a “win-lose” outcome.

The major disadvantage of the “win-lose” mentality is that when two people of this mentality come up against each other, the situation usually becomes a “lose-lose” one. After a bitter fight, both parties end up losing. Meanwhile, the dog gets the entire pie, which was knocked to the floor during the argument.

Furthermore, it is impossible for a long-term positive relationship to form between two people who are constantly in competition with each other.

For example, if your company sells services to a customer, and you argue for a higher price with a strong “win-lose” mindset, you may succeed in increasing the value of the deal a little bit. But the customer will probably prefer to take their business elsewhere the next time, so that, in the long term, you lose also.

But if you think ”win-win,” you’ll find yourself building lots of positive relationships because each interaction strengthens the relationship, rather than eroding it. In the previous example, if you’d instead sought a mutually satisfactory deal, the customer would probably remember that you’d been fair – and he or she would come back again the next time, thereby increasing your profits in the long run.

So it’s necessary to keep negotiating and communicating until a solution is found that suits all parties. This is not an easy task. It requires both sensitivity and patience, but the reward is a lasting positive relationship and the creation of mutual trust, from which all parties can profit.

A good exercise to start with is to think of an important relationship you have where you’d like to develop a “win-win” mentality. Now put yourself in the shoes of the other party and write down what you believe would constitute wins for him. Then think about what results would be wins for you. Finally, approach the other party and ask if he’d be willing to try to find a mutually satisfactory agreement.

A relationship with another person is kind of like an emotional bank account: by putting time, effort and good will into it, the balance of the account grows, reflecting the increasing trust between the two parties. A healthy balance on your account means that both parties are flexible and any miscommunications are quickly sorted out.

If, on the other hand, the balance is zero, there’s no flexibility and the relationship is like a minefield: every word has to be carefully chosen to avoid explosive conflict.

So how can you grow your balance?

A payment could be, for example, finding a win-win solution, sticking to promises you’ve made or really listening empathically to the other person.

A withdrawal, on the other hand, would be fighting for a win-lose solution, breaking a promise or only halfheartedly listening to the other person.

To build strong, long-lasting relationships, there are several major deposits you can make: always keep promises, be explicit about what you expect of the other person and be courteous and sensitive even in small matters.

Another major deposit is maintaining the utmost personal integrity. This means being loyal to those who are not present, and never bad-mouthing them or revealing what they’ve told you in confidence. This will prove to those who are present that you can be trusted.

But perhaps one of the most important deposits you can make is really trying to understand other people, because this deposit allows you to discover what’s important to them – and thus which things they consider deposits.

A friend of the author understood the importance of this kind of deposit. Though he wasn’t a fan of baseball at all, he took his son on a road trip one summer to see every major-league team play. It took six weeks and was very expensive, but it also strengthened their relationship a great deal. When asked if he liked baseball that much, the friend said, “No, but I like my son that much.”

If you do happen to make a withdrawal from the account, pluck up the courage to apologize sincerely. It takes strength of character to do so, and people are usually more than happy to forgive a repentant sinner.

Imagine walking into a doctor’s office and having the doctor listen absentmindedly to the first few seconds of your description of your ailment before announcing, “I’ve heard enough,” and handing you a prescription.

Or what if an optician gave you his own glasses, without bothering to check your eyesight, claiming that since he can see fine with them, they should work for you, too?

You probably wouldn’t put much trust in their advice.

Though these examples sound surreal, we actually often behave very similarly in everyday life, particularly when talking with others. We don’t really listen to what they have to say and instead project our own situation onto them, coming up with quick solutions that we can “prescribe” to them.

In general, such advice is seldom welcome, since people usually only trust someone’s judgment if they feel their situations have been fully understood.

So if you want to be respected as a listener and an imparter of advice, you need to develop the skill of empathic listening. This necessitates a change of paradigm from “I’m listening so that I can provide an answer” to “I’m listening so that I can really understand the person in front of me.”

Empathic listening means trying to get inside the other person’s frame of reference so you can understand them both intellectually and emotionally.

According to experts in communication, the words we say account for just 10 percent of our communication, while the sounds account for 30 percent and our body language for 60 percent. So to practice empathic listening, you shouldn’t just listen to the words; you should attend to the feeling, behavior and meaning behind them. One way to work on your empathic listening skills is to observe a conversation without hearing the words. What emotions do you see being communicated?

It takes time and effort to master this skill, but the later rewards are well worth it. If you learn to listen in a truly empathic way, you’ll notice that many people are fully prepared to open up to you and to reciprocate by considering your opinions and advice. They just need a good, appreciative listener before they can do so.

We now come to a habit that all the previous habits you’ve learned have prepared you for: synergizing. Synergy means a situation where the contributions of many add up to a total that exceeds the combined contributions of the individuals. One plus one can equal three or more.

So how can you implement this principle in your own social interactions?

Each of us sees the world differently and we each have our own particular strengths. You can leverage the power of synergy by being open with others and valuing these differences.

When people truly synergize, they listen to each other, put themselves in each other’s shoes and use the contributions of others as a springboard to create something great. They’re on the same side, trying to tackle a shared challenge, not fighting each other.

When David Lilienthal was tasked with heading the Atomic Energy Commission after World War II, he put together a group of highly influential and capable people. Knowing that each had his own strong agenda, Lilienthal started by scheduling several weeks for the group to get to know each other better – to learn about each other’s hopes, fears and dreams. Many considered this inefficient, and he was criticized, but the basic human interaction helped the team get into an open, trusting and synergistic mind-set. When disagreements arose, instead of opposition, there was a genuine effort to understand the other person, resulting in a very respectful, creative and productive culture.

The path to synergizing starts with seeing your interactions with others as an adventure. The outcome of that adventure may not be completely under your control, but you should still embrace it with complete openness.

This requires a significant degree of self-confidence, as well as the conviction that the combined contribution of each party can lead to something great, even if the journey to get there is a bit chaotic.

So make a list of the people you find it difficult to discuss things with and think about their views. If you were more confident and open-minded, do you think you could find synergies between your perspective and theirs?

If lumberjacks spent all their time sawing down trees but never once paused to sharpen their saws, they’d soon have such dull tools that they couldn’t fell a single tree.

Similarly, if you never pause to take care of yourself, any gains in effectiveness you achieve will be short-lived, for you’ll soon exhaust yourself and won’t be able to maintain any of the good habits you’ve developed.

That’s why “sharpening your saw” is essential for lasting effectiveness in each of the four key dimensions of your life:

To stay physically fit, you need to exercise regularly, eat healthily and avoid undue stress.

Your spiritual health also contributes to lasting effectiveness. This could mean praying or meditating, or simply regularly reflecting on your own norms and values.

To stay mentally healthy, read plenty of good books, avoid spending too much time in front of your television screen and make time for your own writing in some form – be it letters or poetry or a diary. Organizing and planning things are also good exercises to keep your mind sharp and fresh.

Last but not least, it’s important to take care of your social and emotional health by deliberately seeking to understand others, building positive relationships with them and working on projects that help improve their lives.

Consciously make time to recuperate and recharge. Many people claim they can’t find time for this, but in the long-term, it’s essential for sustained effectiveness and the rewards in productivity and well-being that come with it.

To make sure you truly sharpen your saw, write down activities that could contribute to your well-being in each of the four dimensions. Then pick one activity in each as a goal for the week and, afterwards, evaluate your performance. This will help you strive for balanced renewal in all areas.

The key message of this book:

For lasting effectiveness, adopt these seven habits:

• Be proactive: You have a natural need to wield influence on the world around you, so don’t spend your time just reacting to external events and circumstances. Take charge and assume responsibility for your life.

• Begin with an end in mind: Don’t spend your life working aimlessly, tackling whatever job comes to hand. Have a vision for the future and align your actions accordingly to make it into a reality.

• Put first things first: To prioritize your work, focus on what’s important, meaning the things that bring you closer to your vision of the future. Don’t get distracted by urgent but ultimately unimportant tasks.

• Think win-win: When negotiating with others, don’t try to get the biggest slice of the pie, but rather find a division that is acceptable and beneficial to all parties. You’ll still get your fair share and build strong positive relationships in the process.

• Seek first to understand, then to be understood: When someone presents us with a problem, we often jump right to prescribing a solution. This is a mistake. We should first take time to really listen to the other person and only then make recommendations.

• Synergize: Adopt the guiding principle that the contributions of many will far exceed the sum total of individual contributions. This will help you to achieve goals you could never have reached on your own.

• Sharpen the saw: Don’t work yourself to death. Strive for a sustainable lifestyle that affords you time to recuperate and recharge, so that you can stay effective in the long-term.

What to read next: The 8th Habit, by Stephen R. Covey

Now that you’ve learned which seven habits to adopt to become more effective in life and work, it’s time to look at another habit – a habit that will help you become, not just more effective, but truly great at what you do.

In The 8th Habit, Covey explains that, to get there and to live a truly fulfilling life, you need to find your inner voice. So how do you do that?

Well, it starts by realizing that you have more power than you think to choose the kind of life you want. But that’s just the beginning. To learn more – including how trusting others will not only make life easier, but help you grow as well – get the blinks to The 8th Habit.