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?

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