First Things First: To Live, to Love, to Learn, to Leave a Legacy Book

First Things First: To Live, to Love, to Learn, to Leave a Legacy and other best sellers. Great prices on First Things First: To Live, to Love, to Learn, to Leave a Legacy and other best selling books. To find additional books browse the Book categories, or use the search box at the top of this page.

by: Stephen R. Covey, A. Roger Merrill, Rebecca R. Merrill

See Larger Image


Customer Reviews
Average Rating: Rating: - Highly Recommended! Most time-management schemes fail because they don't address basic principles. But this is a rich, moving and powerful book for anyone who is open to its message. While the language is a little overblown, the basic message is truly profound. The authors have identified a clear path to a way of life that enriches the person, the people around, and the world at large. For principle-centered living, it is critical to focus on activities that are important, and not just urgent. We must learn to live by the compass of principles instead of focusing on the clock. We must also have the humility to understand that importance is defined by principles that are larger than our values. Don't focus on urgent activities. Focus instead on important things - first things. Set principle-based goals. Try to do the right thing, for the right reason, in the right way. Focus on working with others to create win-win situations. Not everyone will be willing to live the humble, giving, and spiritual life, but for those who are, this book is all but unassailable. We [...] recommend this book to everyone in business. Rating: - First Things First - A Philosophy for Living Life This is a must read for professionals in any walk of life. Covey and the Merrill's (the coauthors) promote a principle centered leadership style focusing on personal leadership. Their philosophy is that you can't lead others unless you can lead your own life first. The authors promote that when a person aligns his or her life with internal principles, then that person is able to focus on what's important, not what's urgent. Why? Because many times things become urgent due to a lack of prioritization in our lives. The authors title the initial chapter "How Many People on Their Deathbed Wish They'd Spent More Time at the Office?" Aptly describing the urgency addiction that many people face in today's hectic lifestyle, Covey and the Merrills walk through a methodology that shows how to reconnect with our core beliefs and then to live accordingly. Not that there aren't days when you should be working long hours, but those hours should be spent on important issues that yield quality of life results. People should not be mired in frivolous paperwork and detail that doesn't impact their life and those around them in a positive way. Covey and the Merrills write an inspirational book that should be used as a resource to refer to time and time again. The insight embodied in their work transcends much of the consumerism and materialistic values of modern life and reconnects us with the wisdom literature of the ages. Anybody preparing for, or currently in, a leadership position should read this book. Rating: - Useful and Important But Not Enough Here for 350 Pages Stephen Covey and crew have written a worthwhile book about making your day to day life reflect your most important priorities and purposes. The key concept of the book is Quadrant II. Quadrant II are those activities that are important but not necesarily urgent. They argue that most people spend most of their time in Quadrant I (urgent and important) and Quadrant III (urgent, not important) but that it is more effective to spend more time in Quadrant II. Quadrant II is where we plan, think about the best way to do something, prioritize, reflect, etc... and thus provide the best structure for carrying out our plan. A previous reviewer put it well when he said that this is "quality" time. The second part of the book, which is its heart, explains exactly how to use Quadrant II organizing. Its about translating your mission, roles and goals into your plans for the upcoming week and then reviewing that week in order to learn from it. I found section two very helpful from a technical standpoint but the most interesting part of the book is chapter 3, "To Live, to Love, to Learn, to Leave a Legacy". It is here that Covey and company give us their conception of human nature and the good life. To live refers to our physical needs which are for health and wealth; to love refers to our social needs which are to be in healthy relationships; to learn refers to our mental needs to learn, develop our capacities and grow; and to leave a legacy refers to our need to be a part of something bigger than ourselves and to make a contribution. In my opinion, this is a pretty good outline of the basic categories of human need. They then list the four human endowments (self awareness, conscience, independent will, creative imagination) which we need to use in order to satisfy our needs. But I do have some reservations about this book. First, there is just not enough material here for the approximately 350 pages they spend. I only read about 225 pages, skipping around, because I didn't feel like anything new or interesting was being said. Second, I agree with the review of Peter Hupalo about all the copyrighted drawings.... I am glad I read this book because it is a useful meditation on what it means to put first things first, what those first things are and how to implement this. But I couldn't read the whole thing and all the copyrights and "generation four" talk is annoying. I do recommend this book. ---- Greg Feirman gfire77@yahoo.com

First Things First: To Live, to Love, to Learn, to Leave a Legacy Book

Related Book Searches