Covey’s 4 quadrants of LIFE…

This morning I’m thinking about the 4 quadrants of life defined by Stephen Covey. It’s one of my favorite paradigms, keeping me focused on the essential, over the meaningless and ephemeral.

This is one of the clearest graphics I’ve seen for these principles. Consider a business crisis for one of your clients, that to you is not a ‘drop everything’ emergency. For that person, it feels like quadrant 1, for you it’s #3. You have to empathize, but to always dive in to what is desperately important to another person, is to loose your way. It’s an interruption, that you can take in stride.

The greatest danger of living in the URGENT quadrants, is you have little time for QUAD 2, and that is where Covey believes all the meaningful / great stuff of life is nurtured. The realm of PLANNING + PREVENTION is an easy thing to understand, but it can be a hard place to get to, especially if your life is defined by helping other people. Self-sacrafice can be deadly. It makes me think of the flight attendants instruction on take-off to put on your own oxygen mask first, and then that of your child; else you black out, and are unable to care for them.

I’m thinking of Life design fail, in which a person allocates zero time for their own making, growing, and reflecting. An artist I really respect, a single parent, said she let her daughter know at the earliest age that mommy has to have serious amounts of art time, or mom isn’t mom. Here is a bio of Kim Victoria Abeles.