Review of First Things First,9780684858401

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First Things First

Paperback
Edition: New Ed
Author: Stephen R. Covey, A.Roger Merrill
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd
Release Date: January 1999
ISBN-10: 0684858401
ISBN-13: 9780684858401
List Price: ~~£14.99~~
Average Customer Rating:

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Customer Reviews

Average Customer Rating:

Disappointing

Customer Rating:

Covey's '7 Habits' had some good ideas but was too long. This book is also over-written but, for me, contains very little of value. It reads like a course manual and is certainly directed to an American audience. Practically every example involves the office or the family - perhaps the authors think that only executives with a spouse and children have busy lives.
Many of the example stories serve only to highlight the wisdom of the authors in solving the problems of others. The stories they relate about their own families are frightening - do they really believe that American families are so dysfunctional that they need to be run like a business, with meetings, schedules, mission statements and feedback?
My favourite line appears in chapter 11 - 'Where would we be without doctors, hospitals, penicillin and health insurance?' For me, that summed up the tone of the whole book.

too much of a (not so) good thing

Customer Rating:

This is a very thick, dense book, full of words and more words.It is supposed to teach the reader how to get more time for doing those things we all want to do - how to be better organised; if only someone applied the same rules to their book!

Getting the main points out of this abundance is not easy -everything is laboured to death and so the progress is slow, with time spent discussing other non-productive ways and reasons for their limitations - Do I care?
A person or average intelligence would get it from a few bullet-point statements but the book goes on and on - and on...

But that isn't even the worst of it. Reading this book has been one of those 'I could kick myself for buying - let alone reading' experiences.

The complicated nature of its presentation would logically suggest that if this 'method' needs this amount of detail and instruction it is definitely not going to be suitable for anyone who is really busy and really short of time.
There are lists to make , matrixes to fill in, percentages, evaluations...
There are phrases such as win-win agreements, self-directing, accountability, goals, mission, abundance mentality...
Not forgetting the 20 point evaluation of your week!(and no, it isn't 1-10 score system either)

My conclusion: following principles outlined will not make any more time. To get it all 'right' would be very hard, maybe even impossible. Definitely stressful!

Life's complicated enough but after reading this book you'll realise just how much more complicated you could make it!

Excellent book

Customer Rating:

I have now read 7 habits and now this book. i find them very interesting and mylife is changing in the right direction if I apply the rules and things Stephen are writting about.

My next goal is to attend a workshop on this. it is properly expensive, but I belive it will be worth every cent!

Keld

Ps: I don't find their web site to very good. But check it out, you can build you own personal missions statement, whitch is pretty cool. they should get into Pocket pc instead of Palm...!

A fundamental piece of literature - but is it right?

Customer Rating:

Dr Covey appears to have worked out life to a mint here - how to organise every second of your life to what you want to do, and how to make decisions based on what you set yourself. He starts from the roots - and tells you how to lead yourself to form your character, with a singular mission in life based on your values, which form the secondary base of the leadership principles he describes. It's a complicated process which needs all 368 pages to explain, and a lot of effort to start the ball rolling if you are serious about your life. It seems you might as well call this book 'how to live'. But - one problem - doesn't what you value in life (the base upon which his life leading strategy lies upon), change over time - so what you achieve from using this book will depend upon when you start using it. Or do your values only change over time if you have not set yourself values to stick to? It's very complicated.

But enough philosophy - this book is definitely worth a serious look. It teaches how to live with honesty and integrity, out of which personal worth is produced. Just don't think about it too hard.

Sets the direction & energy to persue our Real Goals easiy.

Customer Rating:

I have organized an audio program for one hour of Stephens to my students who are going to be our software engineers. To my surprise they have spent four hours listening and deliberating on the contents of the cassettee and I was amazed because it is not very easy to listen to one subject continuously for four hours, that to with replays. The concept of compass,paradigm and the time matrix are some of the real conceptual tool that can help us in analysing and assessing our goals.

Stephen, you book is really great. It would be an honour to meet you, talk to you or at leasy receive a mail from you.

Thanks stephen for making careers of so many of my employees purposeful .