A couple of months ago, I shared the process of writing my personal mission statement on the blog. I started by defining my personal core values, translated that into my personal mission statement and followed through by making guidelines and goals.

At the time I used a Dutch website that guides that process and gives examples of the values and mission statements of other people. Although it’s important to really connect to your own values and define your own mission statement, examples are a great way to get inspired. They also can open your eyes to areas of your life that you may have unwillingly left out.

My blogging friend Stephen of Productivity in Context came up with the idea of building a list of personal mission statements, and asked several fellow bloggers to participate. So this post is an attempt to build a list of examples of mission statements of the readers of How to be an Original. But I’m also very interested to know how you use them, or why you’re not making one.

Have it or hate it? … personal core values, mission statements?

Do you have … (or hate)

• Personal core values?
• A personal mission statement?
• A guiding principle?

How do you use them …

• All the time in everyday life?
• Only when the going gets really tough?
• Only on new years eve?

I’ll kick off with mine in the comments…

If you don’t crack the shell, you can’t eat the nut. - Persian Proverb

Cracking the shell is a necessary activity to find the nut and eat it. The same goes for theories and concepts. Applying it to a real life situation is like cracking the shell of that theory. And the lessons you learn are the golden nut of insight you find inside that shell.

Cracking the shell is exactly what this post is about, and the nut we’re cracking is the theory of the Time Leadership matrix (or Eisenhower matrix). In this article, I’m going to present a case study on how to use this technique. I took my own blogging activities as the subject.

Time Leadership - a short recap

Time Leadership is a term coined by Stephen Covey and it’s about taking control of your activities by determining their relative importance and urgency. I’ve written about this concept before when I discussed Covey’s habits and I even made a sketchcast about it.

For a quick recap: The Eisenhower Matrix has two axes:

• Importance
  Do you regard the activities as important? This is defined by you: What’s important with respect to your values, ambitions and goals?
• Urgency
  Is there time pressure to do the activities? Time pressure is often applied by others, or by circumstances.

Combined, these two axes create a matrix with four quadrants:

• I: Quadrant of Stress
  Activities are both important and urgent.
• II: Quadrant of Value
  Activities are important but not urgent.
• III: Quadrant of Deception
  Activities are not important, yet they are urgent.
• IV: Quadrant of Regret
  Activities are neither important nor urgent.

The Time Leadership Matrix for my Blogging Activities 

I’m going to discuss all the topics in the matrix briefly, but for your overview I present the entire matrix beforehand (click for a larger version).

Click to continue »

Saying yes is easy, saying no is a skill. And an important skill too, because saying yes too often can get you into trouble and saying nothing is troublesome altogether. So saying no is an important skill to use on a regular basis. Saying no to yourself and saying no to others.

The skill of saying no

Saying no is often associated with negative feelings, like disappointment, anger and loss. That’s why it’s a lot easier to say yes all the time, because people like to avoid situations that evoke those emotions. But at the same time, we don’t feel proud or satisfied with saying yes. It’s a Catch-22, we don’t want to say no and we don’t want to say yes.

So often we reside to other options, but they prove to be even more troublesome than just saying no:

• Saying yes, doing yes
  This is authentic. If you say yes, do yes. People will know that you keep your word.
• Saying yes, doing no
  This is deception. You try to keep the relationship good at first, but don’t keep your word and end up damaging it in the end.
• Saying nothing, doing yes
  This is vague, but mostly if you do not answer people assume that you will say yes.
• Saying nothing, doing no
  This is vague and deceptive. People assume that you say yes, but you do the opposite. Plenty of room for an argument.
• Saying no, doing yes
  This is confusing to say the least. People will not know what your word is worth, saying no clearly does not mean no.
• Saying no, doing no
  This is authentic. If you say no, do no. You might disappoint someone, but you are clear and people will know that you keep your word.

Saying yes and saying no are the only two viable options in the long run. Saying yes is something that most people are very capable of, saying no on the other hand…

Click to continue »

Saturday is sketchcast day. Short 5 minute videos in which I explain a concept related to the topics on my blog.

This sketchcast is about the Eisenhower matrix, also known as the time management or time leadership matrix. It’s a short 5 minute 30 second video explaining the concept and ways to use it to your advantage.

Eisenhower is not often credited for this concept, yet he is the originator of the quadrants as the people from Google Answers once checked for a curious person (it wasn’t me).

In the sketchcast I mention the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (aff) by Stephen Covey. I also wrote a series about Covey’s habits.

This post is part of habits tuesdays.

The past 7 weeks I have discussed Covey’s habits one at a time. I really enjoyed writing these articles, both because I like the subject very much and because writing and explaining deepens your knowledge. So even if no-one read it…I learned a lot

But thankfully there were readers, and looking through the incoming Google-traffic people are finding the articles when they are specifically looking for one of the habits. I hope you enjoyed the series, and I hope it will remain a reference for people in the time to come.

Revisiting the habits in the future
I will be visiting the habits in the future. I did not cover all the elements of the habits in the posts, and there still are a lot of interesting concepts to be addressed. I already have some ideas for posts in the future.

For now I conclude with an overview of the links to the articles:

Habit 1 Be proactive
Habit 2 Begin with the end in mind
Habit 3 First things first
Habit 4 Think Win Win
Habit 5 Seek first to understand then to be understood
Habit 6 Synergize
Habit 7 Sharpen the saw

If you enjoyed the articles, and consider buying The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (or one of the audiobooks), I would really appreciate it if you use my Amazon links. Thanks!