In working as a blogger for more than 10 years, I have incorporated my perspective to doing what I love to do from the principles and teachings I have learned from the books I read. It can also come from practicing what I’ve learned into actions and take note of the outcome.

On this very specific discussion, I will relate what I have learned from a personal leadership book I first got around January-March of 2006, almost the same time I decided to venture into writing online. The book is called “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by renowned Leadership and Management author, Stephen Covey.

A Game-Changing Idea For Bloggers From A Stephen Covey Book

Stephen Covey, as one of my learning mentors, wrote a holistic, integrated, principle-centered approach for solving personal and professional problems; that is “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. He died in 2012, which somehow gave an impact to me as an avid reader of his work.

Nevertheless, from my leadership experiences at school as student council official, and implementing those things that I’ve learned from school, at work (considering that I always tell people that I’ve coached that, “What you’ve learned from school is not always applicable in the workplace”), I always believe that leadership is a general practice. The only difference is the style of leadership you use to a specific situation. I will discuss further the different types of leadership because it will take me to write another set of a blog post (but I’m planning to share it with you in the future).

In the book, Covey discussed the 7 habits of powerful lessons in personal change. To dig deeper with the main emphasis of my discussion, let us have a review of what are those 7 habits.

The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People

The 1989 edition of the Stephen Covey book is 360 pages. The book opens with an explanation of how many individuals who have achieved a high degree of outward success still find themselves struggling with an inner need for developing personal effectiveness and growing healthy relationships with other people.

Here are the 7 habits of highly effective people, according to Covey:

1) Be proactive
2) Begin with the end in mind
3) Put first things first
4) Think win/win
5) Seek to Understand, Then to be Understood
6) Synergize
7) Sharpen the saw

The 7-Habit principle centers about “Success”. The idea of achieving success, according to Covey, and according to how I’ve understood the book is through “Personal Change”. Since the habits being introduced are principle-based, the learning of reading and understanding the book can empower the reader through more continuous learning and growth. For this reason, due to its being principle-based, the learning is long term and the approach can be applied to any situation in general.

As a person, we all want to succeed. One path to success is identifying the habits that can help us on our journey. As bloggers, we all want to succeed with our blog because we have spent a lot of time and effort to improve your skills to deliver relatable content, and also growing your readership through audience engagements.

However, the one thing you need to remember about The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People that can help you with your blogging is this: The Quadrant of Time Management.

Blogging And Time Management

The two-by-two matrix was tackled on Habit 3: “Put First Things First”. As a summary, in order to manage ourselves effectively, we must put first things first. We must have the discipline to prioritize our day-to-day actions based on four (4) quadrants of time management: Important, Not Important, Urgent, Not Urgent.

In blogging, we need to do lots of things. We need to consider things that we have (hopefully everyone does) created a timetable, or simply called as “schedule”. Sometimes, though, we tend to leave out things we have put on our schedule because of some reasons like “we ran out of time”, “we have lots of things to finish”, and others.

If we have to boil down all of these things, we can come up with two simple habits:

1) Do something. Every time you spend sitting around and checking random things on Facebook, you’re not taking action getting you closer to your goals. Stop just sitting around. Do something.

2) Plan what you’re taking action about. Don’t just take action. Actually, have a plan. Think things over and through. Do one thing in the right order before you need to do the next thing in order to get where you want to go.

If we do not learn the skill of prioritizing things, we tend to consider everything as important. And that is a big lie. Not everything is important. I always believe on what Covey emphasized in the book, that said:

The key is not to prioritize your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.

There are many ways on how to schedule your priorities. However, to make life easier, practice the principle of the quadrant. Every time I do a deep conversation with anyone, I always ask this question:

Which one will you do first: the urgent, or the important?

The answer lies in the quadrant. Let’s have a look again.

Prioritize your priorities first. As a blogger, you need to do something and plan out the things you need to do to reach your goals and achieve success. You also need to categorize the things that are important and urgent for you to reach your dream as a blogger.

ALSO READ: 5 Understandable Reasons Why Aspiring Bloggers Are Still Not Blogging

Again, prioritizing is something we need to learn, not just for blogger. It is for everyone who needs to manage and focus their tasks and time; in short, that’s everyone.

To end this blog post, what is your answer? Which one will you do first: the urgent or the important?

The Stephen Covey book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” can be sold online or at a local bookstore near you.

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