First Things First is Stephen R. Covey's 1994 follow-up to The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, co-written with longtime collaborators A. Roger Merrill and Rebecca R. Merrill. Rather than offering another system for scheduling more tasks into less time, the book argues that conventional time management gets the whole problem backward, chasing urgency instead of importance. Its central tools, a four-quadrant matrix distinguishing urgent from important activities and a planning method built around a person's actual life roles, are meant to pull attention toward the quietly important work that constant urgency tends to crowd out. The authors frame this as a shift from managing a clock to following a compass.
A Direct Follow-Up to The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
First Things First arrived in 1994 as Covey's direct follow-up to The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, narrowing in on the habit the earlier book calls "put first things first" and expanding it into a full argument about how people actually spend their time versus how they say they want to spend it.
The Clock and the Compass: Reframing What Time Management Actually Means
The book's central metaphor contrasts the clock, representing appointments, schedules, and commitments, with the compass, representing vision, values, and a sense of direction, arguing that most time management advice obsesses over the clock while ignoring whether the compass is even pointed anywhere worth going.
The Time Management Matrix and the Case for Quadrant II
Covey and his co-authors organize activities into four quadrants defined by urgency and importance, and build their central argument around Quadrant II, the important-but-not-urgent activities like planning, relationship building, and prevention that get crowded out by constant urgency despite mattering the most over time.
Naming an "Urgency Addiction" Most Readers Will Recognize
The book names something it calls an "urgency addiction," describing how the adrenaline of constantly responding to crises can become psychologically compelling in its own right, even when the crises themselves are minor or self-inflicted, a dynamic many readers recognize immediately in their own work habits.
Organizing Around Roles Instead of a Daily To-Do List
In place of a single daily to-do list, the authors propose organizing weekly planning around a person's actual roles, parent, professional, community member, individual, and setting one or two meaningful goals within each role, an approach meant to keep long-term priorities from being crowded out by whatever feels most urgent that day.
Co-Written With A. Roger Merrill and Rebecca R. Merrill
Covey wrote the book with A. Roger Merrill and Rebecca R. Merrill, longtime collaborators at the Covey Leadership Center, and their contributions show up in the book's more detailed planning tools and worksheets, which go further into implementation than the more conceptual 7 Habits did.
Principle-Centered Living Over Pure Efficiency
Running through the whole book is Covey's broader argument, familiar from his other work, that genuine effectiveness has to be principle-centered rather than purely efficiency-centered, meaning the goal isn't doing more things faster but making sure the things being done actually reflect what a person values.
A 1990s Business Book That Still Shapes How People Talk About Priorities
Decades after publication, language from the book, particularly "Quadrant II" and the broader urgent-versus-important framing, still turns up constantly in productivity writing and workplace training, evidence of how thoroughly its central distinction reshaped popular conversation about time management.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Offers a genuinely different premise than most time management books, importance over urgency
- The urgent/important matrix gives readers an immediately usable decision tool
- Role-based weekly planning offers a concrete alternative to a flat daily to-do list
- Includes detailed worksheets and planning tools beyond what The 7 Habits covered
- Co-written with two experienced collaborators who add practical implementation detail
Cons:
- Some material overlaps with concepts already introduced in The 7 Habits
- The planning system requires more setup than simply keeping a to-do list
- Its principle-centered framing leans on Covey's broader philosophy, which not every reader shares
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this a sequel to The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People?
It's a direct follow-up that expands on one specific habit from that book, "put first things first," into a full framework of its own.
What is the Time Management Matrix the book describes?
A four-quadrant model sorting activities by urgency and importance, with the book's central argument built around protecting time for the important-but-not-urgent quadrant.
Does the book replace daily to-do lists with something else?
Yes, it proposes organizing weekly planning around a person's actual life roles rather than a single flat daily task list.
Who co-wrote the book with Stephen Covey?
A. Roger Merrill and Rebecca R. Merrill, longtime collaborators who contribute much of the book's detailed planning tools and worksheets.
Final Verdict
First Things First holds up as one of the more substantive entries in the crowded time management genre, mostly because it argues for a genuinely different premise instead of just a faster version of the same to-do list. The urgent-versus-important matrix and the role-based planning method both give readers tools they can put to use immediately, and the clock-versus-compass framing is memorable enough to stick. Readers who found The 7 Habits too abstract may appreciate this book's more detailed, worksheet-driven approach to actually applying its ideas.
Rating: 4.6/10