Becoming an Effective Person: Begin With the End in Mind

Continuing notes from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.
Covey states that the second habit of a highly effective person is to organize life around a vision of what we value most, or in his words, to ‘begin with the end in mind’. Along these lines we should document what matters to us with a personal mission statement or statement of purpose. This is leadership; this is setting a vision of what we want to accomplish.
From an IT/computer perspective this habit is writing the program for our system.
The best programs we could write per Covey focus on solid principles (again, unchanging deep truths) and we must be careful not to center life on anything but those principles lest we make them little idols in our life. He cautions against a life that prioritizes marriage, family, money, work, possessions, pleasure, friends, enemies, church, or ourselves at the exclusion of everything else.
I went through this exercise many years ago – creating a statement of purpose- and have since refined it many times. My purpose statement is here:
http://songsofgratitude.blogspot.com/2010/09/purpose-statement.html
I think I’ve got a very good handle on this habit. I love to plan, to analyze, to prioritize, and I have a firm understanding of the biblical principles that I’ve built my mission statement on.

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