Do you want to live with purpose? My word for this year is “purposeful.” To live more intentionally, I’m reading more non-fiction that inspires me and gives me practical advice on how to make progress on my goals.
Today I wanted to share three books that will help you focus on what’s most important. What are your key principles? If you don’t have a purpose founded on your principles, you’re likely to get distracted and discouraged.
Principles can guide your goals, habits, interactions with others and thinking when you plan and act with purpose. As a Christian, my key principles are organized around what Jesus said were the greatest commandments: to love the Lord with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind and to love other people (Matthew 22: 36-40).
My primary aim for studying these books is to reduce the overwhelm and NOT TRY TO DO ALL THE THINGS. I want to choose just a few concepts from each one to help me spend my time in such a way that it helps me live with purpose.
My first book on the list is almost 30 years old, but the concepts stand the test of time.
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The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
In The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Covey encourages you to live with purpose by focusing on managing yourself in the first three habits, and then working with others in the next three habits. The seventh habit makes the other habits possible.
Here are the seven habits and what they mean:
- Be proactive. Take positive steps in line with your principles. Choose action and decide to leave behind the thinking patterns that don’t fall in line with your principles.
- Begin with the end in mind. What do you want people to say about you when you’re gone? What legacy will you leave? Don’t neglect your important roles. Envision your unique potential.
- Put first things first. Exercise self-discipline. Covey introduces the concept of the four quadrants: I: Important and Urgent; II: Important and Not Urgent; III Not important and Urgent; IV: Not Important and Not Urgent. Effective people dedicate regular time in quadrant II, doing things that are important but not urgent. Examples include planning, building relationships and skills, recreation and recognizing new opportunities. Identify your key roles, selecting goals for the next week (ideally including some QII activities) and place them in your schedule.
- Think Win/Win. Not my way or your way; it’s a better way. Character is the foundation of Win/Win. It demonstrates integrity, maturity and an abundance mentality. We strive to keep our commitments, show courage and concern for others and want them to benefit because there’s plenty to go around. We encourage others and treat them well so our emotional bank account is high. When we make a mistake (withdrawal from the emotional bank account), we admit our error and seek to make things right.
- Seek First to Understand, Then Be Understood. Listen to others with the intent to understand. Practice empathic listening, which involves seeing issues from the other person’s frame of reference, how they see the world and how they feel. Then you can present your ideas in the context of the other person’s frame of reference.
- Synergize. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Value differences, build on strengths and compensate for weaknesses. Synergy feeds creativity. If you’re aiming for synergistic communication, it will be Win/Win. When trust is low, you have defensive communication, resulting in a Win/Lose or Lose/Win mentality. The next level is a respectful communication, which can result in a compromise. The highest level is synergistic communication, which only happens with high trust.
- Sharpen the Saw. Make time for renewal. This is the habit that makes it possible for you to succeed in the other habits. We need to be intentional in addressing our physical, spiritual, social and mental needs. Spending time exercising, reading the Bible, visiting with friends and learning new concepts and skills fall under this habit. Balanced renewal means we don’t neglect any of the four key areas (body, spirit, mind and relationships).
My main take aways from this book is to be proactive, plan my time focusing on roles and goals and become a better listener. Those steps will help me live with purpose each day.
Way back in the early 1990s, not long after Covey published the Seven Habits book, I invested in a planner from Franklin Covey. For many years, I used it to plan my days, weeks and months, focusing on priorities.
My bullet journal was a semi-fail for 2017.
Last year I tried a bullet journal. My creative side LOVED it, so many possibilities! My procrastinating side LOATHED it, too many possibilities!
This year I ordered the planner from Living Well Spending Less. It’s colorful, inspiring and encourages me to focus on goals for my various roles. I planned long-term goals for the year, and every month I have goals.
The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko
Who wants to be a millionaire? Whether that is your goal or not, you’d probably like to be better at managing money. If you want to live with purpose when it comes to finances, this book has got some GREAT tips.
The Millionaire Next Door shows the fascinating truth of how most millionaires build their wealth. The two authors surveyed more than 11,000 high-net worth and/or high-income respondents and interviewed more than 500 millionaires from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s.
They discovered that those who built the most wealth were more likely to drive Fords instead of Ferraris and shop at Sears instead of Saks. What was the primary key to their success? Wait for it… living well below their means. I know, common sense has no pizzazz but is often chock full of wisdom. Here are the common traits:
- Most of them were frugal (husbands and wives both). What they drove, what they wore, where and how they lived didn’t look like American society’s concepts of millionaire behavior.
- They allocated their time, energy and money efficiently. They had budgets to guide their spending and planned their investing strategies, often realizing the benefits of gains and interest over long periods of time.
- Those who raised independent children did not give their young adult offspring large, routine monetary gifts (what the authors called economic outpatient care). Such gifts encouraged spending, not saving and removed an incentive to build their own wealth.
- Many of the millionaires worked in dull-sounding occupations but owned their own businesses or had side hustles to boost their income.
Ask my kids and they’ll tell you I’m frugal. I like to save money and find it hard to justify luxury purchases. But I’m not a great money manager.
My Fix It Farmer does a superb job of keeping track of our finances with the free open source software, Gnu Cash. I know how much we’re spending, but I haven’t been intentional about budgeting.
Since I got laid off, I’m more motivated. I’d like to do some basic budgeting to reduce the amount I spend on food and household items. Here’s a great, easy method I plan to try from Jordan Page at Fun Cheap or Free. Jordan is an awesome YouTuber, funny, relatable and energetic.
The One Thing by Gary Keller
The One Thing is based on the singular question: “What’s the ONE Thing you can do such that by doing it everything else would be easier or unnecessary?”
Once we’ve determined a big goal, Keller encourages us to narrow our focus and topple one domino at a time to increase our effectiveness. It’s better to accomplish your One Thing than to check eight less important tasks off your list.
Recent research indicates that you have a limited supply of willpower. Figure out how to structure your days to do what matters most.
The ONE Thing question can be applied to all the roles we got from Covey (spiritual life, physical health, personal development, key relationships, career and finances). Keller also urges goal setting and breaking those down into our daily plan.
One of his key concepts that I’m trying to implement is time blocking. It means setting time on your calendar for your ONE Thing and also for time off and for planning.
Focusing on one thing at a time helps me not get overwhelmed. I can focus on how to live with purpose. A lot of the newer time management theories say you shouldn’t have more than three “must do” tasks in a day, but that’s not always possible when your list is long.
I do feel better about my day if I accomplish my top priority. The Living Well planner has three spaces for each day’s “must do” tasks, but you also can order a “Daily Focus Sheet” or a “Weekly Wizard Sheet” that help you track goals and tasks in different roles.
Do you have a favorite personal development book? I’d love to hear your suggestions. In a future post, I plan to give a list of my top Christian books to help you live with purpose.
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