Basic Principles of Productivity

Think about the following statement:

Thirty-three years ago I started the Franklin Planner business with my partners. Since then I have had the opportunity to teach a great number of time management seminars all over the world. Through the years it has become common for people to approach me before or after a presentation. They come up to me, lower their voices, look around to make sure nobody’s listening, and then say, “You know, Hyrum, I wish I lived a hundred years ago, when they had more time.”

“Really?” I’d respond. “How much more time did they have a hundred years ago?”

“Oh, they had a lot more time.”

That is a common misperception. Do you know what the only difference is between today and a hundred years ago? It is that today we have more options. Why do we have more options? Because we do things faster. As a technologically advanced culture, we are into speed.

If my grandfather missed a train, it was no big deal. He’d wait twenty-four hours and catch another train. If my father missed an airplane, it was no big deal. He’d wait five hours and catch another airplane. If I miss one section of a revolving door, I go nuts. And so do you. Why do we do that? Because we want speed, that’s why. Would you tolerate today the speed of a computer from fifteen years ago?

Say it out loud. Write it down.

Every generation has to rediscover these principles. We give new names to them; we write books about them. A good friend of mine, Stephen Covey, wrote a book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I wrote a book, What Matters Most. Read either book. There’s not a new idea in either book. Why do I tell you this? Because what I’m going to be sharing with you in this book is really old stuff; it just happens to be very relevant for today. The magic of the 7 Habits is the fact that Stephen put seven of them together. The magic is how they are taught for the twenty-first century. The basic principles go back a long way.

Why do I make an issue of this? What hasn’t changed in the last hundred or a thousand years? You and I. As human beings, we haven’t changed. We still have to go to the bathroom several times a day. We put our pants on one leg at a time. The human being is the same. What has changed? Our environment has changed. And it continues to change at warp speed. The tools with which we implement these principles are changing fast. But the basic principles that help you and me become better, greater people haven’t changed for a long time.

The process of learning these principles must be rediscovered in every generation by individuals and organizations. We explored this at Franklin Quest, the time management company I founded back in the 1980s.