The world's greatest get rich bible

Chapter 61: First things first: Achieving effective self-management 3
Volume Three Chapter 3 First Things First: Achieving Effective Self-Management 3
Independent will is the first condition for effective management
The most important thing is to establish a principle-focused attitude through the exertion of independent will, and then achieve effective self-management.

-- "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People"

Stephen Covey believes that everyone is a believer in his own inner values, and has the will and character to make feelings, impulses and emotions subordinate to the values.Life should be independent. If a person is always under the control of others, under the "slave" of people or things, it will be difficult to enjoy the sweet fruits of success.

Everyone should have an independent will, which is a prerequisite for effective personal management.Any discovery and creation of a person requires a calm, calm, and free state of mind. The independent will formed in this state is the catalyst for success and urges people to actively work hard to improve the value of life.But if a person does not have a clear goal for his own future, but is just a follower of others, lacking independent will and judgment, he may keep spinning in circles without any breakthrough.

French scientist John Farber once did a famous experiment, which is called "the caterpillar experiment".

Caterpillars are often found in groups, and they tend to march up the tree in long processions, with one leading and the rest following in order.Once the lead caterpillar finds food and stops, the rest of the caterpillars stop too and start enjoying the treat.

Farber was very interested in this, so he put several caterpillars on the edge of a flower pot, making them meet end to end in a circle, and the caterpillar that turned out to be the leader was also in the team.The caterpillars began to move, a long procession without head or tail.Not far from the pot, Farber sprinkled some pine leaves, which caterpillars like to eat.If they want food, they have to stop and climb down from the pot, relying heavily on the lead caterpillar.

Farber believes that caterpillars will quickly tire of this useless crawl and turn to food.Even if the lead caterpillar doesn't do it, one of them will break the circle.But to his surprise, these caterpillars crawled round and round the flower pot. An hour passed, and a day passed, and they were still crawling tenaciously for 7 days and 7 nights. , eventually died of starvation and exhaustion.

In this experiment, as long as any caterpillar changed its walking route a little, it would be easy to eat the pine leaves, but they got used to following the caterpillar in front, and finally they could only starve to death.There are also many such "followers" in real life. The lack of independent will leads them to either superstitious authority, or blindly follow the crowd. In short, they lack personal insights and decision-making power, and are used to relying on others. This is also one of the biggest obstacles to creativity .

For a manager, independent will and efficient decision-making are more needed, because they often need to judge the situation and choose a way out. If they follow others or get lost in the noisy suggestions, they may be like the leader in the Farber experiment. Like a caterpillar, it brings the whole team into a dangerous situation.

An effective decision-maker should view decision-making from a holistic perspective, viewing decision-making as a systematic process.Any department is a system composed of people, things, and information, and the decisions made by decision makers are also decisions about the system.

In addition, when decision makers face a large amount of information, the most important thing is to make an accurate judgment on the usefulness of the information.At this point, a highly effective person has the ability to consider these information in four categories: needed and urgent; important but not urgent; unimportant but urgent; not important and not urgent.Generally speaking, an effective decision maker does not need to spend too much time on this, especially for the first and fourth categories.And when faced with the second and third categories at the same time and need to make a choice, it is necessary to make some investigations to determine which decision-making measures should be given priority.There are many reasons why decision makers are in a hurry, but insufficient judgment for the above classification decisions is one of the important reasons that affect their decision-making efficiency.

Don't be a person who is always dependent on others and lacks independent will, but should be a depended person, cultivate your own independence, and strive to become a unique and indispensable figure in some respects, so that your value will increase will be immeasurable.

(End of this chapter)