024: Habit 3 – Put First Things First

Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here.

This is the third in the series of videos where I talk about how Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People applies to language learning. The third of Stephen Covey's habits is what he calls ‘Put First Things First'. Now, this is advice to a manager and it means if you want your people to perform well you, yourself, have to be proactive and have to be a model they can follow.

He says rule number two, ‘Begin With the End in Mind', is what he calls the mental creation, you've got this idea of where you want to get to, and rule three is the physical; that is, where you can actually make it happen. So with language learning you have this vision of what you want to be, what level you want to achieve, now rule three is put first things first. In other words, make it happen.

Because language learning takes a lot of time, do it every day or as close to every day as you can and be prepared to do it for quite a while. Whenever you have an opportunity, do it. I often talk about how I always have my mp3 player and now, of course, my iPhone 6 Plus, which is a phenomenal device. I have mp3 files on there and I have my texts in ILingQ that I can read whenever I am stuck anywhere. If I'm driving I'll listen, but if I'm sitting in a waiting room somewhere I can read. I can save words and phrases.

I'm always with my language because I know in order to achieve results it's that time with the language. I don't have to be talking to someone on Skype. I don't have to be in the country. I can determine that at every opportunity I'm going to connect with the language by putting first things first because that's my goal. It's only by doing that that I'm going to achieve that vision I have of myself speaking the language fluently.

So, Stephen Covey's advice is for a manager or a businessman, but I think it has equal application for language learning. Once you've determined where you want to get to, you have that vision, what he calls the mental creation, now it's the physical creation. You've got to make it happen, so do it.

That's the third of his Habits of Highly Effective people. Thanks for listening.