The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Social Media — First Things First

Habit 3: First Things First

This habit is a crit­i­cal one, and one that gets a lot of atten­tion.  Before we delve into First Things First, let’s take a step back to place this habit in the proper context.

Covey’s first three habits are described as habits of inde­pen­dence.  They are intro­spec­tive in nature.  When adopted suc­cess­fully they pro­vide a sta­ble foun­da­tion for engag­ing the out­side world with pur­pose, con­vic­tion, and con­fi­dence.  Habit 3, First Things First, is the final of the 3 habits of inde­pen­dence.   I view habit 1 as the real­iza­tion that you con­trol your life through your thoughts and actions.  Habit 2 then extends this real­iza­tion into a vision and pur­pose for future actions — per­sonal lead­er­ship rooted in change­less prin­ci­ples.  Which brings us to Habit 3, First Things First.

Habit 3 is about exe­cu­tion.  It is the car­ry­ing out of the first 2 habits.  First things first is about tak­ing the nec­es­sary steps to bring the men­tal cre­ation of “Begin With the End In Mind” into the phys­i­cal world.  This is accom­plished by focus­ing time, tal­ent, and energy on the impor­tant things in your life as opposed to those that are sim­ply urgent.  Impor­tant is deter­mined by your prin­ci­ples, not by the opin­ions of the out­side world, the demands of oth­ers, or the shift­ing fads of pop­u­lar culture.

Steven Covey asks read­ers of the book to answer the fol­low­ing ques­tion with regard to habit 3 — “What is the one activ­ity that you absolutely know that if you did it superbly well and con­sis­tently well would pro­duce mar­velous results in your per­sonal or pro­fes­sional life?”   Why are you not doing it?  This is where you should focus your time and tal­ent — on that which is important.

How does this apply to social media?

In the dig­i­tally con­nected, always-on world in which we live, there is no short­age of urgent demands imposed us.  Some by oth­ers, most by our­selves.  Blog posts, microblog posts, links, news arti­cles, projects, videos, pod­casts, phone calls, new tools and tech­nolo­gies, events, email, online friend requests, com­ments, and on and on… This list is just the “dig­i­tal stuff.”  Now add to these, the bulk of your life, which includes fam­ily time, social and pro­fes­sional events, meet­ings, edu­ca­tion, exer­cise, enter­tain­ment, and more.  You quickly get a sense of how much we all have to man­age day to day.  With all of this urgency, how on earth would you ever find time for social media?  The answer — you make it by get­ting rid of activ­i­ties that are not important.

Do you watch tele­vi­sion every night?  Is this impor­tant to you?  Does it have a pos­i­tive impact on your life?  Is it impor­tant?  Is it urgent?  Sure it might be impor­tant for relax­ation, enter­tain­ment, social­iza­tion, or even edu­ca­tion.  And yes, sport­ing events and live tele­vi­sion could be legit­i­mately viewed as urgent within log­i­cal bounds.  Even still, there is a good chance that you can “make time” for social media by sim­ply turn­ing off the tele­vi­sion one or two hours a week.   How many other activ­i­ties like this do you have in your life?  No, you can’t truly make time, but you can choose how you use it.

To be effec­tive in the world of social media, you need to develop a plan and then com­mit to it.  It does not just hap­pen.  You need to deter­mine what you want to accom­plish, cre­ate a plan for mov­ing for­ward, and then exe­cute on your plan.  Note that this plan prob­a­bly does not man­date that you be on every social net­work,  forum, site, and plat­form that you dis­cover.  That is nei­ther pro­duc­tive nor pos­si­ble.  Instead of try­ing to be every­where, all the time, con­nected to every­one,  make social media about learn­ing, con­nect­ing, and build­ing inter­ac­tive rela­tion­ships with peo­ple.  Edu­cate and be educated.

With regard to tech­nol­ogy, yes it is fine to explore your options from time to time.  There is noth­ing wrong with explor­ing new plat­forms, just real­ize that you don’t have to use them all.  Man­age the time you spend wisely.  Fig­ure out what works for you and lever­age it.

Let’s look at First Things First in the con­text of blog­ging.  Sup­pose you choose to start writ­ing a blog — com­mit to it.  Cre­ate a sched­ule for post­ing con­tent.   Set aside time for think­ing, research­ing, and writ­ing.  Reg­u­larly post con­tent on a sched­ule that works for you.  For some that might be sev­eral times per day.  For oth­ers once a week.  Develop a plan, stick to it, and refine it based on your prin­ci­ples.  The same can be said for social net­works, RSS feeds, com­mu­ni­ties, and other social media tech­nolo­gies.  Focus on the important.

It is far too easy to lost sight of what is impor­tant– to just wait until next week to write that blog post.  If you want social media to be truly effec­tive, you must view it as impor­tant.  Make the com­mit­ment, fol­low your prin­ci­ples, and put first things first.  Man­age your social media activ­i­ties based on your prin­ci­ples, and you will make impor­tant changes in your life and your world.