Quote

Effective people stay out of Quadrants III and IV because, urgent or not, they aren't important. They also shrink Quadrant I down to size by spending more time in Quadrant II...Quadrant II is the heart of effective personal management.

Stephen Covey

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Stephen Covey
Age: 79 †
Born: 1932
Born: October 24
Died: 2012
Died: July 16
Author
Businessperson
Professor
Writer
Salt Lake City
Utah
Stephen Richards Covey
Important
Management
Heart
Spending
Time
Size
People
Aren
Quadrant
Stay
Shrink
Personal
Shrinks
Inspirational
Urgent
Also
Effective

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Only after we can learn to forgive ourselves can we accept others as they are because we don't feel threatened by anything about them which is better than us.
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I think the most significant work we'll do in our whole life, in our whole world is done within the four walls of our home.
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It's better to be humbled by the word than by the force of circumstances.
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An effective goal focuses primarily on results rather than activity. It identifies where you want to be, and, in the process, helps you determine where you are. It gives you important information on how to get there, and it tells you when you have arrived. It unifies your efforts and energy. It gives meaning and purpose to all you do.
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When I started teaching I realized that I had never had such a level of satisfaction and such a feeling of fulfillment and sense of contribution. Just like that. But, usually it's more cumulative, slow, evolutionary and less revolutionary.
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Strategy is important, but trust is the hidden variable. On paper you can have clarity around your objectives, but in a low-trust environment, your strategy won't be executed.
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The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person. Reactive people are driven by feelings, by circumstances, by conditions, by their environment. Proactive people are driven by values - carefully thought about, selected and internalized values.
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Would you not agree that relationships are built on trust? Would you not also agree that most individuals think more in terms of me-my wants, my needs, my rights? What would wisdom dictate - would it not direct us to focus on trust-building principles and sacrificing 'me' for 'we'?
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But until a person can say deeply and honestly, I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday, that person cannot say, I choose otherwise.
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As you begin to think more in terms of importance, you begin to see time differently.
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When we look through the lens of each others' weaknesses, we make others' strengths irrelevant and their weaknesses more evident.
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Effective interdependence can only be built on true independence.
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What does it matter how much we do if what we're doing isn't what matters most?
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I believe that the habit of constant reading of good books and scholarly periodicals and magazines in many disciplines is vital to give a larger perspective and to constantly sense the interdependent nature of life.
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Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions.
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The commitments we make to ourselves and to others, and our integrity to those commitments, is the essence and clearest manifestation of our proactivity.
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If we want to make relatively minor changes in our lives, we can perhaps appropriately focus on our attitudes and behaviors. But if we want to make significant, quantum change, we need to work on our basic paradigms.
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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 [the scripting], submerges it, until the whole personality is reorganized in the accomplishment of that vision.
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Belief is another word for paradigm. It's a synonymous. Your belief of the way things are. Values are the way things should be, it's a paradigm of the way things should be. Beliefs are the paradigms of the way things are.
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Over time, I have come to this simple definition of leadership: Leadership is getting results in a way that inspires trust.
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