Basic Principle Of Being Effective

In life, we all know that things don't always go our way and we tend to be really frustrated about it. To name a few examples, we tend to get angry when our desktop breaks down when we are writing our report, or we get frustrated when our car stalled when we driving to work or when our children don't listen to us when we tell them to perform certain task and we have to nag at them. All these are the things which we will feel frustrated and angry about, but how do we actually prevent all these problems from happening?

Yes, a lot of people may argue that it's not their fault when their desktop breaks down or that their car stalled. While understanding this perspective, let's look at another perspective from another angle. What would have happened if there was a regular maintenance check on the car? Would that have prevented the car from stalling while driving? Or, does a regular check on the desktop would have prevented the problem? Many a times, we are looking at the problem itself without realizing what causes the problem.

In Stephen Covey's book "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People", it mentioned a principle called the "P/PC Balance". The P stands for production and PC stands for production capability. This principle is the basic principle of effectiveness. We cannot only focus on just the production and neglect the production capability and vice verse.

Let me illustrate this basic principle of effectiveness with a simple example. For example if you were to buy a desktop a couple of years ago for work purposes. And it has been serving you well for the past few years without any form of maintenance and servicing. And for a couple of years later, you start to realize that the computer is not functioning to its original capacity anymore and you went to service it. You realize that the hardware in your system is obsolete and has lost much of its capability that you will need to to purchase a new desktop. The time and money spent on replacing a new desktop was much more then you maintained the original desktop. This was simply not effective.

The Production in the example was the worked produced by the desktop and to enjoy Production Capability was to maintain the desktop and to take care of it well. If we just focus on the Production, we would have neglected the well-being of the desktop thus breaking down in time to come, and at the same time, if we focus too much on the Production Capability, we would have not gotten any results out from the desktop. Thus it is important that we actually balance both.

This is just one of the basic principle of being effective and it has already pointed out to me that i should strike a balance between the Production and the Production Capability of any situations to be very effective.

There are many more principles being written in Stephen Covey's book and i urge anyone who has the desire to make changes in their life to pick up the book and to read it. If you have never picked up a book and read before, let this be the first. Start changing your actions and you will see results changing.

"We must be the change we wish to see." - Gandhi