Becoming an Effective Person: Sharpen the Saw

Continuing notes from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
The final habit for effective living offered by Covey is one of renewal, or what he refers to as ‘sharpening the saw’. In essence this means taking care of ourselves from a holistic perspective:

physical health: stewardship of our body including physical fitness, nutrition, proper rest, etc.
mental health: stewardship of our mind and talents including continuing education and training, reading, writing.
spiritual health: stewardship of our spiritual life including prayer, meditation, worship, and study.
social health: stewardship of our social relationships including civic duties, service to others, practicing habits four through six.

According to Covey we should ensure that we carve out time in our weekly schedules for each of these stewardship areas alongside our Quadrant II activities.
Since my mission statement (again, here for reference) already incorporates these four areas of stewardship as subset points under the main/summary mission (to glorify God) I won’t need to add them in separately- they’re automatically built in to my Quadrant II planning.
So we’ve come to the end of our discussion on Covey’s philosophy for becoming an effective and successful human being. I hope you enjoyed the review and found my notes useful. Where are you in your development of the seven habits? Are you motivated to write a mission statement or have you written one already? Have you made plans to begin using the Quadrant approach to planning? Overall comments, questions or concerns on this material?

Comments

Board Game Review: Anno 1800

Whenever Martin Wallace designs a new game, I am all over it. This is because I absolutely love Brass Birmingham (another MW designed game); in fact Brass Birmingham is my #1 board game of all time. Over the years, his other games I've tried have been pretty good, but not necessarily amazing must-buys. Still, I keep trying each new release of his, searching for that next star performer. That's why I'm excited to report that Anno 1800 is, in fact, a star performer, and an amazing must-buy board game. Anno 1800 was adapted by the publisher (Kosmos) from a Ubisoft video game of the same name. In the board game, players take on the role of industrialists, charged with developing their island economies and exploring other islands. Each player begins the game with a personal industry board with trade & exploration ships, a shipyard, and industrial goods tiles printed on the board. A starting collection of workers (wooden cubes) of various types to produce the goods is a

Board Game Review: Hues and Cues

Last week we received Hues and Cues from The Op Games. We recently finished playing through Scooby-Doo Escape from the Haunted Mansion (a fantastic game in The Op Games catalogue designed by Jay Cormier, Sen-Foong Lim, and Kami Mandell that you should absolutely pick up to play with your family) and wanted to give another game from the same publisher a go. I picked Hues and Cues because I’ve been pleasantly surprised by other “test whether our minds think the same way” games such as The Mind and Wavelength. In Hues and Cues , players gather around a large central board comprised of 480 graduating colors of the rainbow surrounded by an x-y axis and scoring table. White and black (which are technically not colors) are conspicuously absent as are shades (mixtures of color + black; e.g., grey) and tints (mixtures of color + white; e.g., cream). On each player’s turn, they draw a card with four colors and the x-y axis codes of those colors depicted and they select one. They are in the

Board Game Review: Brass Birmingham

Here’s a story of a lovely lady (spoiler: it’s me) and her pride and how it has led to the discovery of the single greatest board game I have ever played. It’s probably also a good primer for other reviewers on increasing your reach. At GenCon this year, I was perusing the wares of the various booths and my eyes caught a glimpse of two beautiful game boxes. Each had crisp metallic lettering with an old world feel and artwork that radiated European class. I made my way to the booth and waited patiently to speak to to the team manning it as there were many buyers lined up to purchase the games. I didn’t know anything about the games (Brass Birmingham and Brass Lancashire), or the publisher – Roxley Game Laboratory – but I knew I wanted to review one or both of the games. Almost every board game love story I star in in can be summed up this way: I am seduced by the artwork or theme and then I stay for the right mechanics. When the lead rep spoke with me, he gently rejected my request. He