Tag Archives: hyrum w smith

Stephen Covey taught me Scepticism… (bear with me).

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I have always been ‘intelligent’ in the sense I could pass examinations, but I don’t think I became really intelligent until I started studying the works of Stephen Covey. He didn’t make me any cleverer in IQ terms, but he did open my eyes to a new mental approach to things. He showed me how people – you, me and an awful lot of politicians and celebrities – are psychologically flawed, and in recognising those flaws I realised just how much what we are told is ideologically biased. Not necessarily on a political ideology – just a set of ideas about which the speaker feels certain, even though they have no empirical, objective evidence for the firmness of that certainty. It is, to use a Markleism, a ‘lived truth’ and is therefore subjective.

I hear a ‘fact’ now, and I realise that it is rarely factual. It is routinely an opinion. It is an opinion honestly held in the sense that the person stating it (usually) genuinely believes it, but it is rarely an absolute, objective truth. I now question everything I hear, because I know about Values. They believe what they are saying because they want it to be true. And anything which challenges that ‘truth’ is not only wrong, it is an absolute lie!

Attaching emotion to an argument colours it, so when I hear emotion – anger, passion, hate, fear – then I also hear bias. And just because I disagree with you doesn’t mean I am right, either. Objectivity requires acceptance that you may also be biased.

Covey taught me many things, but one of them was to see things not through ‘my eyes’ but through ‘principles’. The main principle of debate and learning being – ‘have we heard ALL the facts?’ So I accept nothing, believe no-one and check everything.

For example, when I hear someone on one side of the political divide start insulting the other,  I remember Desmond Tutu’s advice that when in debate, instead of raising your voice, raise the quality of your argument. Try explanation and a quiet, considered voice – and I’ll hear you.

When I hear ‘There is no evidence to show …….. (whatever the speaker does not wish to believe)’, I ask, “Have you even looked?”

When I hear ‘something terrible IS going to happen’ (e.g. Brexit), I recall Hyrum W. Smith (author of What Matters Most) saying ‘ Results take time to measure’ and recognise none of us can tell the future. Try ‘might’ happen – and I’ll listen.

When I hear ‘you MUST do it this way’, I look at the background material and frequently find that ‘this way’ is not the ‘only way’. Indeed, it is occasionally the wrong way. Question what you are told – even if the answer remains the same, you will understand it to a far more informed degree.

When I hear talented actors, who I’ve watched grow up from their first childhood films to mature individuals, telling me their opinions about politics I ask, “When exactly did you do your—–ology degree?” They have a right to an opinion – but all too often they have no ‘authority’ behind it. (And as I get the impression that ‘creatives’ are almost consistently left-wing, I also ask how that stands up, statistically?).

And when I hear an academic’s opinion that is based on their expertise, I remember that they may have found the evidence they sought, but was it objectively tested? And you can get a degree with a 40% pass mark, by the way. Having letters after your name may just be confirmation of a bias!

In essence, what I am promoting, here, is to live a life of healthy cynicism, where you question what you hear – even your own experiences. The last thing this world needs is to move from objective reality to ‘lived truths’.

Listen, but assess. Could they be wrong – because if they are and you act on that, you’re wrong too.

Misery is Optional – I know that, now.

20 Wednesday Nov 2019

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In time management terms, there have been only a few writers whose works have properly impacted that science. Alec R McKenzie and Alan Lakein are two, but for me the three ‘greats’ are Charles R Hobbs, Stephen R Covey and Hyrum W. Smith, Covey passed away in 2012, Hobbs earlier this year and, two days ago, Smith passed for too quickly after a cancer diagnosis in his mid-70s. But in Smith’s case, the work of most relevance to me at the moment is one he called ‘Pain is Inevitable: Misery is Optional.’

What’s that got to do with time management?

Time management, looked at in its essence, means focus. It means doing the best thing at the optimum time with maximum attention, whether you want to or not.
We can schedule a lot of ‘best things’ and do them at the most appropriate moment, but focus – that’s down to us.

As I have implied in previous posts, I recently made a mistake. The consequences did not have to be what they were but remaining in the situation wasn’t an option because of the way it came about. I’m not blameless in my ‘downfall’ by any stretch, but the whole thing could have been better dealt with by some of the others involved.(Okay, me too.)

Since that time, I have walked my dog nearly every day, and nearly every day the events repeatedly arose in my mind. This happened so much that I created a psychological connection between the walk and the event, which meant reliving the ‘what if’s and the ‘who did’s. Constantly, on every walk.

Until today.

When I got the news of Hyrum’s death, I started reviewing some of his writing. There were a few Kindle samples viewed, but then I remembered ‘Pain’, and this morning I read the opening pages between a 60-minute spin cycle (I came out very clean) and the aforementioned dog-walk. And two things occurred to me.

As he wrote of his own mistake (worse than mine, heavier, longer-term consequences to his spiritual wellbeing) and the experiences of the 9/11 families, among other things, I realised my woes are teeny weeny in comparison. I also remembered that this kind of setback has happened to me before and I’ve bounced back – usually better.

I gave ‘The Event’ no thought on the walk. Sure, a particular tree or corner reminded me of it, but I gave it no further thought. It’s finished.

The mental space needed for creativity and focus on the important things mean that we must acknowledge that any negative event that hurt us in the past needs to be kept there so that our mental energy can be better used on the now, and on the future.

The pain of a negative experience is temporary. I think 7 weeks isn’t that long to ‘feel’ it. But the misery I felt became, after a time, a reactive choice. Today, thanks to Hyrum, I made a better, proactive one.

Namaste, everyone. And RIP, Hyrum.

HWS

 

 

 

Computer or Paper Planning?

31 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by in General, Rants, Time Management

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I’ve just been reading “Effective Time Management Using Microsoft Outlook to Organize Your Work and Personal Life” By Lothar Seiwert and Holgar Woeltje. Luckily I bought it ‘Used and New’ from Amazon for under £3 because to be frank, it’s hard work.

I am a great believer in and user of a paper planning system, but as someone who uses a computer all the time I was interested in seeing how I could use Outlook as a time management tool, not only to see if it would be of benefit but also because I am a quasi-time-management consultant in my own mind and it pays to be familiar with alternatives.

It may have been poorly translated but although I pride myself on having a slightly above average IQ (about 101?) I spend half my time re-reading paragraphs to understand what the book is trying to tell me to do. Occasionally the book introduces a concept as if you know what the writers mean, then says ‘we’ll explain later in the chapter’, leaving you wondering whether you should jump ahead and learn something so you can follow what you just learned.

Anyway, I have concluded that while life management through Outlook or other computer planning systems has its place for those who sit at a computer all day and have no life away from it, and it IS a good system IF you can understand and fully utilise it – to be fair it’s a good system if you can only use half its facilities – you cannot beat a paper planning system for simplicity, adaptability and portability. I could understand Charles Hobbs Timepower and Hyrum Smith’s “The 10 Natural Laws of Successful Time and Life Management: Proven Strategies for Increased Productivity and Inner Peace” in one or two readings. The same applied to Dave Allan’s Getting Things Done, another simple system.

The only caveat is repeated appointments and tasks can be done once on a computer, while they need to be repeated on a paper planner. And you may have to wait until October to start planning next year properly. But how lazy do you have to be to be unwilling to write something more than once? And if it’s repeated often enough and is routine – why do you need to rewrite it anyway?

Paper for me. Probably always will be.

Don’t get me started on driverless cars.

Hyrum Smith on Paper Planners

24 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by in General, Time Management

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Hyrum Smith, co-founder of FranklinCovey and seller of thousands of Palm Pilots, was asked in 2009 about technology and planning. This is what was said.

Q; Technology today offers many electronic options for managing time, but I still love my paper Franklin Planner. Are we seeing a return to paper and pencil, or is the trend going toward electronic tools?

“My impression is that there is a surge returning to paper. I will never forget when 3Com brought in and put on my desk the first Palm Pilot. I played with it and thought it was a great toy, but no one will ever buy one. I turned out to be wrong about that. We strongly embraced technology at FranklinCovey and sold 10,000 Palm Pilots a week for several years, and then all of a sudden, we didn’t. People stopped buying PDAs. I thought, “I’ve got to try the Palm Pilot.”

I put away my paper planner for 13 months. I went to a PDA and I discovered that I could do everything in my Palm Pilot that I could do in my paper planner, but I wouldn’t. The reason I wouldn’t is because it took too much time. It was too hard to do. I came back to my paper planner because of the ease of the operation. What I discovered was that for managing tasks, appointments, and taking notes, a paper planner is four times faster than any electronic device. There is a whole host of reasons for that, but I will just leave it at that level. A paper planner for tasks, appointments— managing me—is four times faster.

Now, there is a place for technology. I carry a BlackBerry. I love my BlackBerry. What do I use it for? I can communicate my calendar to my people. I can download The Wall Street Journal. I can check my email. It is a wonderful phone. But for managing me in the heat of the day, my paper planner is more effective and it is faster. I have had letters from CEOs, senior vice-presidents from all over the country, telling me, “Hyrum, I’m back to my paper planner. I’ve got control back in my life.” In fact, just a year ago, a senior VP from Merrill Lynch went through our seminar. She said, “Hyrum, you trained me 18 years ago, I went to an electronic device 3 years ago, I lost control of my life. I went back to my paper planner and my control is back.” There is something about writing on paper that a human being likes.

The thing about those three things: tasks, appointments, and taking notes, and if I know how to retrieve those notes—the magic of the Franklin Planner is the retrieval system. The minute I write a note in my planner, I’ve given that note a root in time. I will always be able to find it. There are three different ways for retrieving information from a Franklin Planner. I can do it with lightning speed. If you don’t understand the mechanics of the Franklin Planner, you don’t understand why people would use that instead of technology. If you’ve gone through the class and you’ve been taught well how to use it, it is a dangerous tool. I’m a paper guy myself.”

I’ve spent a few hours pondering about using my smartphone for planning, but I can’t get around the size of the keyboard, the fiddliness of the note-taking facilities, the constant spell checking by me or machine, the fact that the phone will be gone at the end of a contract along with all that I record on it (no, you never really take the time to transfer it all), and the poor way the diary/task management software works in reality. Not to mention the fact that for all that tech provides, all smartphone users are still carrying around heaps of paper anyway.

If the leadership of companies like Merrill Lynch think papers I best, who am I to argue?

HAPPY STEPHEN COVEY’S BIRTHDAY DAY TO ALL!