L'art de (se) diriger ( le blog de Laurent Pellegrin)

Stephen Covey designed a two-by-to matrix for deciding which things to put first, dividing activities into the important and the urgent. So activities can be urgent and important, not urgent but important, urgent but not important and neither urgent or important. Effective people, said Covey, concentrate on the second of these - the non urgent important activities. By so doing, they minimize the chances of there being activities of the first kind - urgent and important.

His full set of seven habits consists of :

1. be proactive
2. begin with the end in mind
3. put first things first
4. think win/win
5. seek first to understand, then to be understood
6. synergies - learn to work with others to the benefits of all parties
7. sharpen the saw - taken from the metaphor of the woodcutter who doesn't stop to sharpen his saw because he's too busy chopping down a tree.

To read more : http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_sept_habitudes_des_gens_efficaces

Source : Guide to Management Ideas and Gurus, Tim Hindle, The Economist

The seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Simon & Shuster, 1989.