Busydave said:
You will finish the book feeling servile and apostle-like, but soon your other ordinary likes and dislikes come back into view and the Covey message evaporates.
There is nothing new there apart from his preacher-like approach (which differentiates him from the more self focused angle of most other writers).
Well, as Sherlock Holmes would say, everything seems obvious once you know it. It clearly was not obvious stuff to you the first time you read it -- and that's the only time that counts for judging obviousness.
If it were all truly obvious stuff that no one needs to hear, I doubt the book would have had the impact that it did have and continues to have.
Busydave said:
I would LOVE to be able to devote chunks of high quality time to my important, non-urgent roles on a weekly basis, but I know this is never going to happen.
I get up at 6 a.m., and everything I do then is focussed on getting into work at 9 a.m. in a reasonably presentable condition. I generally get home around 9 in the evening, and I must be in bed by 10 p.m. to be ready to get up at 6 again.
My son is nearly 8, and after he hits 13 he won’t want to know me. The months are flying by and the window is closing rapidly. I can’t find time for him, let alone the other top role relationships.
Life in 2005 is a matter of trying to keep your head above water, a matter of survival.
The only hope in hell for the Covey approach is if we get non-urgent, important tasks onto our project lists, and try to get to the next action if an unexpected window of time comes up. But there are no big slots of time up for grabs: they don’t exist any more. There is no room for big rocks.
This is why Covey is irrelevant in the twenty first century. Ok, he can point out all the things that are wrong with life today. But life today is not going to get any better. Nothing short of dismantling the global stock market is going to change that.
Yikes. You missed the message of Habit #1 -- you have the power to choose. You choose to spend 15 hours a day on work and none with your son.
Logically, you have to actually
follow advice before you can judge whether it works or not. You choose to do the opposite of Covey's advice for habits 1, 2, and 3. Then you say that Covey is irrelevant. The logic here is sorely lacking. When you do the opposite of someone's advice, you cannot say the advice is irrelevant.
Likewise, if a person disregards every bit of advice in GTD, that person cannot claim that GTD doesn't work!
Covey is absolutely right about scheduling time for important but not urgent things. It works. How many times on THIS forum have people asked how they can get themselves to do the things on their Next Actions list that are important but not urgent? And how many times have people on THIS forum responded that they should schedule time for those things?
Putting things like "Exercise" or "Time with spouse" on a Next Actions list to be done whenever "possible" is the approach that DOES NOT work. Those merely important things sit on the Next Actions list forever while the urgent ones get done.
Every single person I know who exercises regularly or who spends time with family regularly schedules regular times in which to do those things.
So you read Covey, didn't like the message, and choose to live your life differently. That doesn't prove Covey irrelevant; in my opinion, your experience proves Covey IS relevant. In the long run,
if you are happy with the choices of your life,
if you are satisfied with the outcome of those choices, and
if the people to whom you owe responsibility, like your son, are happy with the outcome of your choices as well, then perhaps you can say you didn't need Covey. But you'll still never know what your life would have been like if you had followed the 7 habits. So you still cannot judge them.