I bought this book because I needed some guidance to start putting things back in order in my life. Eventhough it focus on business and work, it provides some helpful hints to apply on you personal life.

Covey's "First Things First", was required prerequisite text for a class. At first I balked at the idea of someone telling me how to organize and structure my time and life. Pushing my preconceived notions aside I tackled the reading with an open mind, since I was about to start academic studies again. I found much of the book to be blatant common sense, which seems to be a precious commodity today. As it turns out the book was very helpful. It put words to my present thoughts and allowed me to align myself with what the book calls "a true North principle". In all if you are a person who needs some structure or guidance or is lost in the day to day shuffle; I would definitely recommend this book. One word of advice is that you whole heartily read it. It can become very deep with intangible philosophies and at times trying with repetitive words (you will become quite familiar with the word synergy), but press on past it and you will be able to gain a better understanding of why you wake in the morning.

A side note to that; Covey, in my opinion, is a devout follower of LDS. The religion I have had some conflicts with. Not withstanding the book does not feed their doctrine down your throat, directly. Alhough some of the LDS religious undertones, albeit the good ones, are made slightly evident throughout the book. Despite my dislike of their doctrine, I will be the first to admit that of the world's religions the LDS seem to have a better grasp of family and community structure than most. In that regard, we could all stand to be a little more influenced by the shirt-and-tie guys. Oh, and the book makes some efforts to sell some other Covey self help tools, which again if you are lost in the woods may be of some help although a poor marketing tool for the needy.

This book is a good follow through from the 7 habits of highly effective people. This is a must read first before you read all other management books. Most of other books has the same principles.

The Stephen R. Covey engine has kicked out numerous books on self-help, and they consult 200 out of the top 500 Fortune companies. After all of those books and years, they have heard enough stories and waded through enough crisis situations to get a good handle on what works and does not work in all of those environments.

Now, if you've read every book they're written, then undoubtedly you're going to begin this book and say "I've read this all before". Naturally, when they begin a book, they have to assume that some readers haven't read the other books yet. They have to catch them up on the background and basics. If you don't need that primer, then skim for a while. It's not a bad thing, it's a normal thing. It's how book writing works :) If you pick up book 5 of Harry Potter, you still have to go through a little bit of scene setting for the .00002% of the population who skipped the other books and lept into Book 5.

So now, onto the key points of this specific book. Time management is good. Organizing your goals is good. But all of these things are only good if your goals are actually valid ones. If you spend all your time creating to-do lists, and carefully plotting out weekly goals ... but your goal is to get a "bigger fur coat" while your children are starving and you're miserable at work, something is out of sync. This book is all about making sure that what you do is what you REALLY want to do. It's about a higher level of time management.

So they're not saying the other time management systems are bad. They explicitly say that each has its place in life! However, if you work very hard every day to climb a ladder, and find after many years that the ladder you've climbed was against the wrong wall, then you'll be very disappointed. You should always make sure you are working for a goal that you really feel is important at a basic moral level.

This isn't a book to just plow through in an hour and see what you remember. It's asking you to really think about why you do things in life. Is it because your parents harassed you when you were young, and you want to get a flashy car to prove you're something? Do you try to out-do your co-workers even if it hurts your home life? Sometimes these answers don't come easily. If they did, I imagine we wouldn't need a book to help us sort them out.

This is a good book to read a chapter, then put down for a while. Go back and read another one, then think about it for a while. The basic concept is easy enough to understand. Divide your tasks up based on what category they fall into -

Quadrant I - urgent, important
Quadrant II - not urgent, important
Quadrant III - urgent, not important
Quadrant IV - not urgent, not important

Sounds easy, yes? But how many of us get sucked into a ton of "urgent" but really not important tasks for all sorts of reasons? It's the planning - the Quadrant II time - that can help fix those issues. But we have to make time to plan. If your life is full of incessant urgent demands, it may seem impossible to do this. But it can be done.

A hard idea to wrap your mind around is that we all only have 24 hrs a day. Leonardo Da Vinci, Ghandi, every one of us has 24 hrs. You might say "Well but I have 3 kids at home". True! So in your life, you made children your priority. You wanted those kids! So embrace that, and accept that as your mission. Put aside other less important things. We all make choices in life about what is important to us. When we make those choices, we should accept that, be happy with that, and find ways to emphasize our time in those areas. You have to choose to spend the time on things you love - not to divide your time up amongst various things that are "OK". That's what the main lesson is here. Focus on what is most important - don't try to do 80 quadrillion things that are all "OK". It can't work.

The author of "First Things First," Stephen Covey, Roger Merrill, and Rebecca Merrill, are all involved with the Franklin Covey Company--a company most known for training individuals and institutions in "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People." The purpose of "First Things First" is to provide an expanded, fuller treatment of some aspects of the Seven Habits. These aspects include the concepts of "Sharpening the Saw" (making time to renew and develop your mental, social, physical, and spiritual health), Quadrant II (things that are important yet not urgent), Personal Mission Statements, What Matters Most (making sure you spend your time in the most important activities and relationships), Roles and Goals, Synergy and Inter-dependence, and Leadership Styles.

Overall, this is a helpful book, but id does have some negative aspects. For those of us who have read and digested "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People," much (but not all) of this book will be repetitive and feel like a waste of time. There is a great deal of overlap between "First Things First" and "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People." Second, this reviewer finds Covey, Merrill, and Merrill's writing style annoyingly syrupy. They often employ vague-yet-emotional words and phrases like "I felt blessed to have him share his deepest feelings with me," "wonderful," "deeply satisfying," "we made a real connection," and "listening to that peaceful, quiet voice deep within you." I felt talked down to when the authors wrote in this style. Instead of trying to appeal to my emotions, I would rather the authors "talk up" to me and appeal to my logical side. They are most successful when they take that approach.

There are also positive aspects to "First Things First." Chief among which is the content of the book itself. Covey, Merrill, and Merrill's main thesis--that one should strive for effective time management techniques (the clock) and also strive to make sure you're spending your time on the most worthwhile, meaningful tasks (the compass)--is profound. This thesis is developed well throughout the book and applied to a myriad of situations. This leads to another strength of the book, the variety of situations used by the authors. One would expect examples coming from the business world, but Covey also provides anecdotes related to academia while Rebecca Merrill offers numerous anecdotes applying the thesis to family life. This reviewer also appreciates the authors' focus on holistic health and balance. The definition of "balance" is one that most people think they know, but Covey, Merrill, and Merrill give a full explanation of balance and show how it is achieved in life. This was highly appreciated and influential. Further, the authors' treatment of holistic health through reading wisdom literature, relationship building, exercise and diet, character development, and the empowerment of others show that they have thought long and hard about their topic and have approached it from a number of angles.

In all, this book is recommended to just about everyone. This book is intended to be applicable to a wide audience and the authors have certainly hit that mark. Work your way through the cotton-candy language and enjoy the satisfying meat it conceals.