First Things First

What Hacker News says

1. tailspin2019May 2024
   I share your taste in books. 7 Habits in particular absolutely changed my life. I’ve always thought that its title doesn’t really do it justice. There is a lot more depth to that book than you’d think based on the title alone. It has helped set my moral compass.

   Lean startup is a recent discovery for me - and boy do I wish I’d read it sooner!

   Edit: also I highly recommend Stephen Covey’s audiobooks of 7 Habits and First Things First (read by him)

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2. tailspin2019Aug 2021
   Wow, never seen such a brutal put down of 7 Habits.

   I kind of get where you’re coming from, but it was still one of the most impactful books I’ve ever read, by a mile. Not just for “working effectively” either, it’s really a book about living a good, balanced, purposeful life.

   Also I would encourage people to listen to at least one of Stephen Covey’s narrated audiobooks (7 Habits or First Things First). The guy was full of wisdom, authenticity and compassion, and you can hear it in his voice. Not to mention the subject matter (in my opinion) is solid gold.

   Yes his books were a bit wordy but they’re still very much worth a read (or listen) IMHO.

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3. pandatigoxJun 2020
   @duopixel mentioned that life is more akin to a poem, and I agree with that. OKRs for personal management seem amazing on the surface, but they can be too focused on optimising for goals. I would suggest adopting a mindset like "First Things First" (from Stephen Covey, author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) and incorporating OKRs into that instead. I think it would give more flexibility in identifying what your values are in life, and attempting to achieve goals within those values.
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4. halfcatFeb 2015
   Stephen Covey wrote a book along these same lines, First Things First [1], which advises to first define your roles in life, such as developer, parents, home owner, and so on, then identify the priorities in each of those areas, and schedule those things into your week first. He gives the "importance/urgency" matrix which is helpful for identifying which things you should be focusing on. After you have scheduled the important things into your week, you can schedule the unimportant items.

   Having said that, you still have to make choices and stick to them. For this, you need to look at the science of habit change, which a good book is The Power of Habit [2]

   [1] http://www.amazon.com/First-Things-Understand-Often-Arent/dp...

   [2] http://www.amazon.com/The-Power-Habit-What-Business/dp/08129...

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5. jasonswettDec 2012
   I often do the same thing as you, where I get up early (6ish for me) and do a couple hours of work before the start of the actual workday.

   The most important part to me is to make sure that I'm only doing things that actually matter. So when I'm thinking about adding a feature to my product, I first try to see if that feature should actually be the highest-priority thing, or if my customers can live without it. And it helps to zoom way out, too. Often, programming is not the wisest way for me to spend my time. Sometimes it makes a lot more sense to spend time on, say, marketing, or on education, whether that be programming-related education or something else. Abraham Lincoln said, "If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six hours sharpening my ax." A lot of the time, sharpening your ax is the most effective use of your limited time.

   I've found the following books helpful when it comes to time management and overall effectiveness. In order of how strongly I recommend them:

   - The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey

   - First Things First by Stephen R. Covey

   - Getting Things Done by David Allen

   - The first 20 pages or so of The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes

   I use a combination of tactics recommended by GTD, FTF and T7HOHEP. After reading GTD, I wrote down everything I could think of that I would have to or want to do, ever. Examples: do the dishes, email Steve, visit Europe. Later, I captured most of these items in Evernote, and then later, I graduated to Things. I suspect that the developers of Things have read GTD.

   Now that I have all of my to-dos captured in Things, I try to take one day each week (usually Monday) to plan the rest of the week. Reality never matches up with the plan, but I don't think that means I need to throw out the entire process. It's still helpful to have at least a high-level idea of what I want to do with the week.

   I still find Evernote valuable for capturing ideas, but Things seems best so far for capturing to-dos. I also still use pen and paper to plan on a day-to-day basis. If I go by Things only, I forget, so I usually transfer my daily Things to-dos to paper at the beginning of the day. As unexpected things naturally pop up throughout the day, I add them to my daily to-do list and/or Things, depending on how likely I think it is I'll get to that item the same day.

   Hope that stuff helps.

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6. felipeMar 2009
   > My biggest gripe with traditional time management method is that you lose sight of the big picture and only concentrate on the small urgencies.

   The Stephen Covey's method ("7 habits" fame) specifically deals with this issue. I highly recommend you to read the book "First Things First", but basically it's about scheduling the big stuff first (literally blocking chunks of time in the calendar), and only deal with the today/soon/whenever tasks on the remaining time. It's not as simple as that, you need to read the book to actually apply it effectively, but I can tell you that I've been following it at least for the past 5 years and it has been extremely effective for me.

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