Living on the Real World

Praise be to you!

Pope Francis died this morning. The news media are saturated with material and that material is being augmented and updated so rapidly that there is no need to offer a single link or two here. Much of the remembrance recalls his support of the marginalized, balanced by clashes with traditionalists, on a range of issues. He called for a more inclusive church. To this layman these attributes reflected the life and spirit of Jesus himself. Laudato si’ indeed.

Pope Francis also cared deeply about humanity’s relationship with the rest of God’s creation – especially the planet we live on. These views were most profoundly (and beautifully) expressed in his encyclical from 2015, Laudato si.’

It’s Easter Monday. Worldwide, thoughts of resurrection are in the air. It’s also Earth Week. So perhaps it’s appropriate for me to do something I don’t recall doing before – republish a previous LOTRW post in its entirety – this from June 20, 2015. Here goes, beginning with a quote from the pope’s namesake:

Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and herbs   

– Saint Francis of Assisi

This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor; she “groans in travail” (Rom 8:22). We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth (cf. Gen 2:7); our very bodies are made up of her elements, we breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment from her waters.

– Pope Francis

Praise be to God indeed! Thursday’s Papal encyclical on climate change breathes fresh air and spirit on a world and on a climate-change debate sorely in need of both. The depth and breadth of the discussion defy casual summary. To attempt to identify and lift nuggets from the larger whole or to pick-and-choose cafeteria-style among the arguments presented is misdirected if not futile, though we’ve seen numerous attempts in all the news and social media in the days since. What makes the nuggets truly golden are their settings – the precise wording and the carefully-woven context. That weaving is so deft and intricate that attempts to unravel particular bits from the fuller exposition leave something far inferior to the whole.

In other words, to feel the impact you and I had best read the encyclical in its entirety. That encouragement doesn’t even go far enough. To go further – not merely to feel its impact but to derive its benefit, to experience its healing – we need to meditate on it. And we’re not talking about meditating on it over a single weekend. The encyclical deserves regular revisits. Over months. Years. It’s going to stand the test of time.

Ten comments.

The encyclical is more about human nature than Earth’s nature. In fact it sees the two as inextricably intertwined, inseparable. Furthermore, it sees climate change not as a separate issue, or even as an issue in its own right. Instead it’s a symptom of human failings and shortcomings: greed, selfishness, hypocrisy, mendacity, etc. You could add shortsightedness except that at several points the text notes that we’re not merely oblivious to our wrongs and how they exacerbate the problem. Our actions are premeditated. We possess the needed self-awareness, and we see the bow wave of problems we’re creating for the poor and disenfranchised, for those less fortunate – and yet we proceed anyway.

It’s a Rorschach test. Scientists may be tempted to ignore the spiritual dimension, and focus on the realities of environmental degradation, loss of habitat and biodiversity. NGO’s focused on the plight of the poor, whether the poor nations or the poor within each nation, will exult over the papal support for their cause. Free-market voices of a certain stripe will decry papal attempts to “make all of us poor.” Political leaders of a certain persuasion will grouse about religious meddling in economic and social matters. Check the news summaries and the blogs. You’ll find everyone finding in the encyclical support for long-held positions and personally and institutionally-cherished preferences. (LOTRW is surely no exception; another reason you should read the encyclical from start to finish and draw your own conclusions.)

It’s reality-based. In support, here’s a snippet from section 201 of the encyclical: realities are greater than ideas (the original text includes a citation to an earlier Vatican work). But (especially scientist-friends) be warned; reality here is assumed to have physical, social, and spiritual dimensions. (An aside. Some scientists make it clear that non-experts should be cautious in arguing with scientists about climate change. Understood. But we scientists ought to be equally attentive to those who’ve studied spirituality in a disciplined way when they share what their studies on such matters have revealed. And if we’re reluctant to be blindly submissive on these latter subjects, then perhaps we ought to be more respectful to those who dare question our science.)

It sees these realities and our human challenges as fully integrated and inseparable. For example, the encyclical makes clear that our environmental problems stems from seeing nature and all its life and creatures as being mere objects as opposed to essential manifestations of the love and power and nature of God. It sees our indifference to the plight of lifeforms and landforms as intimately related to our disinterest in the suffering of others. It describes us as having allowed ourselves to drift into a state of slavery to technology as opposed to retaining mastery over it.

It is fully comfortable with both science and faith. At one and the same time the encyclical holds true to the idea of a created universe and embraces findings of science with respect to the size of the universe, the age of the earth, evolution of life, and the nature of reality at the quantum level. It is positive about the contributions of science and technology not just to material human welfare but beauty and the elevation of the human spirit. And interestingly, it doesn’t dither over these concerns; it simply blows right through them. Surely an encouragement to the rest of us to follow suit.

The moral message ought to arouse us more than the economic message. The encyclical makes much of our interest in individual material well-being as measured by conventional means. This has already come under attack from some quarters as “the pope urging us to all be poor.” But the deeper message of the encyclical is that when we enrich ourselves while turning a blind eye to the basic human needs of others – whether for food, or water, or shelter, or respect – we do great and indelible harm to our souls, and that this is the greater danger.

The encyclical is more celebratory than condemnatory. Throughout – in every section and every reflection, the encyclical reminds us that the Creation is good. It sees every aspect of physical reality both animate and inanimate as carrying a message about God’s love, power, interest in our well-being, and forgiving nature. It speaks to our access to joy and peace in light of this understanding. It speaks to the possibility of building a richer, more equitable, more sustainable, future.

It is a group construct. Surely Pope Francis called for it. Surely he made editorial comments as the work proceeded, and had a good deal to say about both its substance and tenor. But the encyclical clearly has as much in common with an IPCC report as it does with the prayerful reflection of a saintly, devout individual. There are frequent, quoted references to thoughts and contributions from bishops from around the world. Much as an IPCC report, the chapters and conclusions are informed by the scholarship and study of many other individuals, past and present, who are extensively and thoroughly cited.

It is a valuable addition to the ongoing global dialog. While, as an encyclical, it’s intended to represent a “final” or definitive papal word in some sense, it’s not intended to supplant discussion so much as contribute to it. The latter sections of the encyclical encourage continuing dialog of all kinds: international, national and local, dialog leading to transparency in decision-making, politics and economy in dialog for human fulfillment, religions in dialog with science. In section 188, the Pope emphasizes all this:

There are certain environmental issues where it is not easy to achieve a broad consensus. Here I would state once more that the Church does not presume to settle scientific questions or to replace politics. But I am concerned to encourage an honest and open debate so that particular interests or ideologies will not prejudice the common good.

Did I say you ought to read the whole thing for yourself and draw your own conclusions? Yes. Is the encyclical the last word? No. Is it a perfect document? No. Is it something you and I would do well to discuss seriously with each other? Build on and improve? Absolutely, no matter who we are or what our role.

Let’s get at it.

(back to April 21, 2025) Thank you, Pope Francis! Requiescat in pace.

The previous post revisited resilience to hazards and hazards recovery, LOTRW topics covered multiple times over past years. That reflection prompted a thoughtful comment from John Plodinec, who offered a range of reasons why FEMA needs a rethink, and a few suggestions for improvement.

Comments tend to get buried in blogs; to ensure that John’s thoughts see the light of day, I’m reprinting them here, verbatim (thank you, John!):

I don’t think anyone can argue with your conclusion – “An attack on one state is an attack on all.” But it doesn’t necessarily follow that FEMA, as she is now, best suits today’s needs.

The GAO has been justly critical of many aspects of FEMA’s operations. The national flood insurance program is … a mess. Sadly, parts of recent FEMA actions have been sullied by partisan games. And too often, there have been conflicts between the states’ and FEMA’s approach to recovery.

Three other aspects of the current situation are more subtle, but also indicate a need for rethinking FEMA:
• Even more problematic, the funding and responsibility for response and recovery funding is spread across several agencies. FEMA, SBA, HUD, HHS …
• Similarly, there are programs in several agencies (FEMA, Dept of Energy, HUD, EPA…) aimed at (or at least impacting) various aspects of mitigation.
• Emergency response and recovery funding is off-budget. In effect, a bad year (in terms of storms and other adverse events) adds to our already overwhelming federal debt.

I look at all of this and conclude that there may not be a better time than this to re-examine FEMA. For example, suppose we set up a disaster “bank” at the national level to manage flood insurance, and emergency response and recovery funding. Every year, it would receive say 60% of the maximum funding spent on response and recovery and flood insurance payouts. If one or more states declared a disaster, they could draw on those funds. In good years the “bank” would build up a cushion; in bad years, it would draw it down. There would be some requirements (as there are now), but the each state would be responsible for managing the funds. We might begin to see some significant innovation in the “laboratories of the states.” Further suppose that, instead of FEMA Regional Offices, we have regional compacts so that the state EMA’s provide support to each other (similar to what utilities do now).

I don’t claim that these ideas are either original or all that great – only that this is an ideal time to figure out how to fix current problems and actually get better bangs for our bucks. If we don’t make changes, we are saying we can’t do any better; to me, that’s an abdication of responsibility.

Well said! And a reminder to me that in these blogposts I’m never so articulate as I imagine or wish. I made mention of FEMA in the post, but that was in passing, while trying to address a bigger point: namely, that since we all find ourselves living on a planet that does much of its business through extreme events, the task of constructing a safety net – building resilience to hazards and recovering from hazards – is everybody’s business, every day. The fifty separate United States are in it together. As are 320 million Americans.

Call me defensive, but I wasn’t suggesting we absolve FEMA from a rethink. Rather I was suggesting that the current finger-pointing and focus on FEMA in isolation is misplaced. I was implying, apparently too timidly or vaguely, that to deal with hazards effectively will require substantive change by all institutions in all sectors, and at all levels. Emphasis needs to be less on fixing blame, and more (and more urgently) on fixing the problem. State and local governments need to place more emphasis on building codes and land use, and on the public education (both K-12 and adult-) needed to sustain political awareness of and support for hazard resilience. The private sector needs to focus more proactively on business continuity in the face of hazards (looking not just at facilities and supply chains but also the larger challenges of critical infrastructure and protecting workers and their families, homes and communities).

In light of the localized nature of most natural disasters and the technical and political complexities and expense of actually reducing disaster losses, insuring/spreading risk across larger regions and populations has appeal. The dollar risks alone are large and growing^[1]. Hence the emergence over recent decades of property and casualty insurance, reinsurance, the much-maligned flood insurance, catastrophe bonds, and other financial instruments. Furthermore, disasters disrupt every aspect of daily life and work in different ways and through every societal interconnection. Risk management is rarely any government agency’s or company’s top concern; but it’s almost always in any sector’s Top Ten. It’s therefore unsurprising that efforts to build resiliency, recover, etc., can’t be confined to any single agency, such as a FEMA. They are spread throughout government and the private sector. The work can’t be compartmentalized.

That brings us to the individual level. We were all born on this planet of earthquakes, cycles of flood and drought, violent storms, disease outbreaks (and more). We can’t avoid risk; at best, we can only choose our risk preference through where and how we live and work. In particular, we can’t eliminate risk through some level of spending. No dollar level of effort will be enough. We must balance our respective family allocations of resources between risk management and life’s other aspirations.

As a practical matter, none of us enjoys universal options; we find our range of choice is constrained by where we were born, our birth circumstances, and the vagaries of life (geography, ethnicity, culture, poverty, wealth, etc.) But in the end, we must each shoulder personal responsibility and live with the consequences of our choices.

One special pain point in all this is the deep longing of most disaster survivors to return to the prior state-of-things. This applies especially to sense of place, but more broadly inclines us to rebuild-as-before. Perhaps we can aim no higher, but we should realize that natural hazards recur. Rebuilding-no-better therefore condemns some future generation to a repetition of the current grief and suffering.

A closing thought. That same longing follows other loss – the death of a loved-one, say. In that instance, however, there is no possibility of going back. As social scientists have explained, moving on, with its implication of somehow forgetting the past and the person, and the relationship, is an unsatisfying path. The path that beckons is moving forward – continuing to remember and honor the relationship and the person, acknowledging the loss and its reality for our present circumstances – but then going boldly into the future.

During this Passover/Easter season, with resurrection in the air, that future might reasonably look a little brighter.

[1] Two (of many) references. The estimated cost to the municipality of Los Angeles of the Altadena fire was $2B. The actual property loss was somewhere between $20-40B. A NYTimes Climate Forward article warns that climate costs could $40 trillion dollars annually by 2050. (The US has 3000 counties; that averages to more than $10B/year per county; assuming our population remains 320M or so, it comes to $100K/year per man, woman, and child). on the city of Los Angeles.

Hmm. Why does the question seem familiar? Oh yes! The same idea is enshrined in NATO treaty article 5:

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all…

NATO article 5 has been invoked only once – and that in America’s favor. European and Canadian members came alongside the United States following the 9-11 attacks of 2001. The last few years have again focused minds on these few words – occasioned by the war in Ukraine (not a NATO member). Current NATO commitments look wobbly. The United States has expressed skepticism, citing failure of the other parties to commit to their fair share of the defense budgets needed to give the agreement teeth.

This kind of complaint, whatever the issue, from whichever source – that other parties to this or that agreement should pull their weight, do more – is regrettably embedded in human DNA. It shows itself in marriages, in siblings, and in the office. Unsurprisingly, it also manifests itself in the DNA of the United States.

Consider our history. In 1776, colonial signatories closed the Declaration of Independence in this way:

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

A noble vow![1] But for much of the war that followed, perhaps most poignantly even as Washington and his forces were shivering and starving in the cold in Valley Forge, the colonies in the Continental Congress squabbled over who should cover which costs and make which contributions (munitions, say, vs. food and blankets). Several of the colonies wanted to protect their own narrow interests by supporting state-level militias instead of funding the national army. In the end, the colonies’ victory owed as much to England’s remoteness and internal English politics as it did to colonial pledges. The United States Constitution and our current form of federal government emerged in response to these shortcomings.

U.S. unity would continue to be threatened over the ensuing decades by the slavery issue and the divergent economic interests of the plantation south and the more mercantile and industrial north. By 1858 the moral and political divide had become so vast that it prompted Abraham Lincoln to mourn:

 A house divided against itself cannot stand.^[2]

Unity was eventually restored, but only at the cost of four years of war and hundreds of thousands of lives.

Americans today could be forgiven for a sense of déjà vu. The United States is riven by political fault lines – racial, ethnic, income-level, rural versus urban, border-states vs. the rest, gender differences, vaccinations, right-to-life, religion, etc. Policy measures to cope trigger disputes about fairness – allocation of both benefits and burdens. In the current political climate, some of these have prompted complaints about federal interference and calls for devolution – a transfer of power (and responsibility) from the federal government to the states.  

Some seek devolution in another arena – living on a real world that does much of its business through extreme events such as cycles of flood and drought, hurricanes and tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, pandemics, and more. The plaintiffs aim to reduce the role of FEMA in disaster recovery and in pre-event measures to reduce vulnerability.

At a superficial level, it’s easy to see why devolution is tempting. Natural disasters are localized and intermittent. They hit communities and states in no particular order. But the patterns of loss and the underlying causes are uneven. Individual states face different risks, and different levels of risk. No state is fully immune to any type of hazard. However, a few are more vulnerable than the rest to earthquakes. Others face hurricane landfalls, or lie in the tornado belt. Others are challenged by drought and wildfires. Some states by virtue of economic strength and other factors are more resilient than others. States vary in how responsibly they take measures to mitigate the risks they face.

But it’s also clear that devolution must be resisted. Natural disasters exact a grievous toll – in lives and injuries, property loss, and economic and social disruption. Almost by definition, natural disasters exceed the ability of communities and even states to recover on their own. Public attention to any one disaster is fleeting, because others are continually coming along to grab the headlines. For example, today’s preoccupation is with last weekend’s Midwest floods and tornadoes.

But disaster losses and the hardship of recovery are enduring. Asheville and Altadena are rapidly fading from national public concern. Meanwhile, Asheville’s recovery is barely getting underway. In Altadena, EPA removal of hazardous waste is complete but the larger task of fire debris removal may extend into next year. (For comparison, 15-20 years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans has yet to recover fully; see also here).

Experts see a FEMA dismantling as problematic. FEMA and other public- and private-sector institutions for accomplishing disaster recovery could all do with improvement, at national, state, and local levels. But we should do the hard work to make those needed improvements, not just walk away. In every disaster’s aftermath, survivors need to know that all Americans have their back.

This is an important responsibility, but it’s also a significant opportunity. As politicized as the arena of disaster recovery has become, it is less divisive than many of the other social fractures we face. After all, the urge to help the victims of catastrophe is also in our human and national DNA. Rigorously exercising this desire to help, putting it into practice, could be a start to restoring needed national unity in the face of the more contentious issues. And not just the domestic ones. Perhaps success here would help us as a nation to stiffen our commitment to our international allies as well.

An attack on one state is an attack on all.

[1] Inspired by practical interests. At the time, Benjamin Franklin put the issue more earthily: We must all hang together, or most assuredly, we will all hang separately.

[2] Of course, Lincoln was quoting a remark made famous by Jesus, one well known to Americans. From Matthew 12:25: Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand…”

In 1999, D. Allan Bromley, a former science advisor to President George Herbert Walker Bush, wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post by this title. He opened in this vein:

America is on a roll. We’re balancing the federal budget, reforming welfare and making retirement secure. Sound like a breakthrough in fiscal management? Not exactly. Our awesome economic success can be traced directly to our past investments in science. The problem is, this year’s federal budget for science is a disaster, and it compromises our nation’s economic and social progress.

Dr. Bromley went on to discuss particulars of that federal budget that he saw as cause for concern. The op-ed deserves a thoughtful read[1] in its entirety.

Why revisit this today? Start with this. America is a nation with a population of some 320 million. That’s about 4% give-or-take of the total world population of eight billion. We aspire to maintain relevance, or indispensability (or, sigh – even dominance?) in this world, which happens to be also populated by 1.4 billion Chinese and 1.4 billion Indians – to say nothing of another four-or-so billion from other countries.

There’s only one way this demographic reality can be squared with the global aspiration.  It’s really quite simple.

To be at all relevant let alone indispensable going forward, we must be (1) the world’s most innovative nation, and (2) the world’s most inviting (especially to the sci-tech savvy of the world’s eight billion); we must be a destination.

A few years after Dr. Bromley’s piece, the Sunday Outlook section of the Washington Post featured another op-ed,[2] this one arguing that China would not likely become the dominant nation for the 21^st century. That author listed four reasons: (1) rapid aging of the Chinese population, brought on by years of a one-child-per-family policy; (2) lack of the transparent, reliable financial statistics needed for effective economic policy, whether domestic or global; (3) failure to deal with rapidly growing environmental problems; (4) the lack of any compelling vision that would make the world’s peoples (especially the young) wish they lived there. By implication, America’s arguably better track record in these four respects at the time was offered as cause for comfort here in the United States.

There’s less reason for complacency today. That’s not because the Chinese experiment has been an unvarnished success. The government hasn’t been able to coax the population into a burst of marriage and procreation. Financial statistics remain murky; China has created a powerful engine for export but has not motivated the needed growth in domestic consumption. Despite vigorous efforts to move into renewable energy, rising domestic energy demands still leave China largely dependent on coal. Rivers are polluted. Urban air quality is poor. And China is hardly an immigration magnet. Other peoples aren’t eagerly trying to break down the doors to enter, nor does China show any signs of wanting them.

But today the United States alternative looks less promising in several important ways. Our population has been aging only slowly in large part because of immigration, which until recent years had remained strong because of the U.S. opportunity-pull: a strong economy plus a liberal democracy. Present policies are shutting the door for immigration in general and are threatening freedom of speech and the rule of law. The U.S, will start to age more rapidly as the result. Our economy has been the world’s strongest, but tariffs and a range of policy uncertainties across the board threaten the world’s current reliance on dollar-based financial transactions that have kept foreign investment pouring in. Those policy uncertainties extend to environmental issues; with the current tilt back toward fossil fuels our future no longer looks as clean or as safe, or globally competitive as it once did. As a result, some of the shine is coming off the US-as-destination for the wealthy, highly-educated, and tech-savvy. Foreign-born, including many from India and China, still plan to emigrate, but increasing numbers are contemplating moves to Europe, Canada, and Australia instead of the United States. Some of the foreign-born here are returning to their home countries (where China and India in particular have put out the welcome mat).

All this would matter less if American kids were interested in and being well prepared in STEM. But this doesn’t seem to be the case. Consider the U.S. ranking in the OECD  Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Our 2022 PISA scores were only middling. The U.S. ranked 26th in math, 6th in reading, and 10th in science among 81 participating education systems. Those U.S. math scores were the worst in the history of the surveys, with math scores being the lowest ever recorded for the U.S. in the eight cycles of data collection. And our higher education, which has until now been the envy of the world, is being convulsed by recent targeting of individual universities and bullying – as well as draconian federal budget cuts for research and threats of more across the board. None of this portends well for continuing innovative world leadership.

What can scientists and innovators do, given this loss of national vision? It’s certainly right to put a spotlight on the problem, to ask more of the nation’s leaders, and to seek and hope for judicial relief. But that should only be the start. Scientists should use the present political turbulence as an incentive to focus even more on the direct links between their research and on-the-ground societal benefit.

A recent communication from the Council of Engineering and Science Society Executives (CESSE) highlights an interesting illustration of the kind of action that will bear fruit – this from Canada and its environmental community. It’s an Evict Radon National Study that allows Canadians to actively support research by purchasing at-cost radon testing kits and participating in radon testing alongside professional scientists. Canadians help themselves and at the same time help cancer researchers survey radon exposure across the country.  

The program is making an impact by targeting a major public concern (cancer deaths), by involving governments as well as the private sector, by going beyond building public awareness to provide matching opportunities for action (in-home measurements), and by motivating kids (in those same homes), showing them science-at-work. It’s a wonderful blend of the tangible and experiential, versus the abstract and vague. Note the second-order impact of building public identification with and support for science and innovation. And it’s just one small example of the possibilities.

It’s easy to imagine similar, equally effective programs here in the United States. Time to get moving.

[1] You can also find a 2018 LOTRW post on his op-ed here.

[2] I blogged on this in 2013; even then, my search skills were not up to the challenge of finding the original source; I’ve had no better luck this time around.

Tell me something I don’t know, Bill. Most of us consider this is something we’ve always known – innately, or learned at home or elementary school. But I remember a refresher in this, as an adult, more than a half-century ago.

The year was 1973, and I was an early career federal scientist-manager working in Colorado. I was taking a five-day short course put on by the University of Colorado entitled Management of Scientists and Engineers. With me were about 20-25 scientists and engineers from government and industry. Gene Koprowski, a CU faculty member, was one of the speakers as well as the coordinator for the full week.

Gene began our opening session this way, asking the innocent question: What is the great motivator?

Of course we all knew the answer, or thought we did. And we supplied a volley of candidates: money, reputation, competition, learning, love, desire to make a better world, intrinsic pleasure of the work, etc., etc. We each took our turn, providing a bit of rationale.

And each time, Gene would simply shake his head. No.

Finally, after what must have been 5-10 minutes, but seemed like longer, we collectively gave up.

And Gene grinned (this whole exercise was making him happy) and said: Fear! Fear is the greatest motivator – by far. Nothing else comes even close.

Ugh! Whether actually convinced or merely beaten down by the debate to that point, we had to agree.

Gene viewed the nodding heads with satisfaction and asked his second question: Okay! Since we all agree that fear is the great motivator, why don’t we use it?

Sigh. The group was in the tank for another 5-10 minutes while we fumbled around with this question.

Gene responded as we went along: No. No. No. No-no-no-no-no-no-no!

Finally, he showed some mercy. We don’t use fear, he said, because if we do, then the moment our back is turned, our people beat our brains in.

A little colorful, perhaps not so politically correct, but remember, this was 1973, not today.

Gene then told us this story, which he claimed came from his own consulting practice. Hard to do it justice after the passage of fifty years, but it went something like this. One of his clients ran a big aluminum smelter. Some time shortly before Gene had been brought on, they had to replace a veteran manager of the operation. They settled on an off-the-charts-bright early-career guy. The newcomer came into the operations center – a cavernous room covered wall-to-wall with instrument panels and switches, and with a main control desk at the room’s center. Being bright it didn’t take the young boss long to realize from the reading of one of the dials that things were seriously out of whack. He called to the guy at the control desk – an older fellow. Hey, you see that dial? We need to make some adjustments, and urgently! The control operator started to reply but the boss cut him off, saying faster action was needed to avert catastrophe. The boss was approaching the desk, preparing to take over himself, continuing to berate the controller – who suddenly hit the big red button on the desk.

Which shut down the entire smelter.

Aluminum smelter operations are highly energy intensive – the process requires having a lot of molten aluminum/ore around and keeping that mix molten. Shutting the plant down meant a slow process of several days to reheat and the mix and bring the operation back on line. That shutdown cost a heap of money.

 According to what the smelter folks told Gene, the operator – a control-room veteran with the company for many years, knew that the one dial in question was malfunctioning and was awaiting replacement, but the new boss hadn’t taken the time to hear him out. The new boss had been subsequently let go; the senior operator was still at his post.

That was Gene’s lead-in to first topic of the five days – an introduction to Theory X vs. Theory Y management, a hot topic back then, but certainly old news today.

Theory X and Theory Y[1], developed by Douglas McGregor, and articulated in his 1960 classic book The Human Side of Enterprise, are contrasting management philosophies: Theory X assumes employees dislike work and need constant supervision, while Theory Y assumes employees are self-motivated and capable of taking responsibility. 

Digging deeper: Theory X assumes that employees inherently dislike work and avoid responsibility, that they lack ambition and need constant supervision and direction, and that they are primarily motivated by external rewards and punishments. That prompts a management style that is authoritarian and controlling, focuses on micromanagement and tight control, and emphasizes task completion and efficiency. The potential outcomes might be problematic: low employee morale and job satisfaction, reduced creativity and innovation, and high turnover rates. 

By contrast, Theory Y assumes that employees find work to be natural and enjoyable, that they are self-motivated and capable of taking initiative and responsibility, and that they are motivated by internal factors like job satisfaction and personal growth. That favors a management style that is participative and empowering, focuses on delegation and autonomy, and encourages employee involvement in decision-making. This combination leads to likely positive outcomes: increased employee engagement and motivation, higher productivity and quality of work, and greater creativity and innovation. 

McGregor saw himself as merely articulating two extremes of a range of managerial approaches. He hoped that managers would use this perspective to analyze their work situations and then adopt one or the other, or blends of the two to optimize outcomes. In later years, most managers and students of management would come to lean toward a strong preference for Theory Y. My memory is that Koprowski’s 1973 presentation tended toward that latter view. That was supported by a subsequent module in that same 1973 short course, taught by an HR person at Texas Instruments (and equally memorable). He spoke of people and their value systems, breaking these down into seven categories and talking about optimal management strategies for each.[2] These strategies varied substantially – but again for most job categories and most people favored Theory Y. The week’s lectures were couched in terms of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (Maslow was McGregor’s graduate school mentor), and stressed the importance of getting people operating at the higher levels of Maslow’s pyramid.

The bottom line? As measured by Stephen Covey’s seven-dimensional yardstick of the most recent LOTRW posts? Bullying/intimidation/fear have no place, not even the merest toehold, in the pantheon of effective habits.

A closing note, for those who might want to read more: My grandfather (as a teenager!) and my father (for much of his career) both had some relevant management experience – recounted in previous LOTRW posts.

(Grandfather) Want to reduce disaster losses? Keep score, September 7, 2010.

(Father) Theory X, Theory Y and the genesis of red tape in science, March 14, 2016.

[1]The material here is adapted from a Google AI summary and other Google entries.

[2] Perhaps a topic for another day.

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” – generally attributed to Abraham Lincoln

In his 1989 management classic, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey emphasizes three personal habits: be proactive; begin with the end in mind; and put first things first. He then articulates three habits essential to effective collaboration with others: think win-win; seek first to understand, then to be understood; and synergize.

To wrap up, he highlights habit 7 : continual self-renewal.

He suggests attention to four aspects, fleshing out each with examples:

He adds this exhortation:

As you renew yourself in each of the four areas, you create growth and change in your life. Sharpen the Saw keeps you fresh so you can continue to practice the other six habits. You increase your capacity to produce and handle the challenges around you. Without this renewal, the body becomes weak, the mind mechanical, the emotions raw, the spirit insensitive, and the person selfish…

…Feeling good doesn’t just happen. Living a life in balance means taking the necessary time to renew yourself. It’s all up to you. You can renew yourself through relaxation. Or you can totally burn yourself out by overdoing everything. You can pamper yourself mentally and spiritually. Or you can go through life oblivious to your well-being. You can experience vibrant energy. Or you can procrastinate and miss out on the benefits of good health and exercise. You can revitalize yourself and face a new day in peace and harmony. Or you can wake up in the morning full of apathy because your get-up-and-go has got-up-and-gone. Just remember that every day provides a new opportunity for renewal–a new opportunity to recharge yourself instead of hitting the wall.

Covey’s encouragement might seem totally inadequate in the face of today’s turbulent times – in a word, Pollyannish[1]. Even in the calmer times of the late 90’s and the early “aughts” I remember articles from the Washington Post chronicling the brutal schedules of White House staffers, their physicians’ concerns, and pointed questions: Doc, (in the White House, in my federal agency…fill in the blank) I don’t have time for both sleep and exercise. Which is more important? (back then, most of the doctors reluctantly came down on the side of sleep).

Unrealistic? Inadequate? Maybe. Put that question aside for the moment (we’ll get back to it). Look closely and you’ll find some particularly endearing features of these four aspects. To start, they are all well within your circle of influence. You decide what you prioritize, how you allocate your sharpen-the-saw time. You get to select your preferences from today’s rich and varied physical-fitness menu. You get to decide what you read and learn about. For a variety of reasons, in the course of your entire day, you have to make meaningful social connections with people across the full spectrum, but you do get to choose your closest handful of friends, and sort out how you’ll invest in those special relationships.

Then there’s the issue of cost. In 2025, you can spend as much money as you want on these activities. You can buy not a single exercise bike, but a fleet: a road bike, a mountain bike, a stationary bike… You can decide that you want to learn, but through world travel. Luxurious spas stand by to help you with meditation and rest. But you can also progress in each of these four respects for little money or even for free. Dissatisfaction with today’s consumer-driven society combines with today’s economic uncertainties might make the cheaper options especially attractive.

And don’t forget the umbrella-label for this set of habits – sharpening the saw. As the Lincoln quote suggests, attention to these aspects of the seventh habit will make your day job easier, and at the same time improve your performance, expand your usefulness and impact. And all that will show! Others will be attracted by what they see, imitate your example, ask for your advice. Your circle of influence might expand a bit, maybe even a lot.

________________

This brings to a close our look at Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits from a 2025 vantage point. Perhaps you’ve read this far, or have been reflecting on these seven habits, but are still wondering whether they can prove effective – or adequate – to the challenges posed by today’s turbulent world. Then do a thought experiment. Ask yourself: if everyone – all eight billion of us – subscribed to and practiced these habits, would the world be a better place, or would we quickly discover a point of diminishing returns? Would we have a better chance of coping with climate change, reducing world poverty, ending war, rationalizing immigration, and creating a more promising future for our children? Or is a different stance required?

There are other leadership models out there to choose from. You may remember Jack Welch, GE’s CEO from 1981-2001. At the height of his career and reputation, he began offering management wisdom, showing others how he did it – writing books, setting up an eponymous management institute, and more over the next to decades.

A sampling of his approach: Welch spoke of 4E’s and a P: energy, energize, edge, execute, and passion.

Energy: the ability to go, go, go – to thrive on action and relish change.

Energize:the ability to get others revved up.

Edge: having the courage to make tough “yes or no” decisions. Smart people can assess a situation from every angle–but smart people with edge know when to stop assessing and make a tough call, even without all the information.

Execute:having the ability to get the job done… put decisions into action and push them forward to completion, through resistance, chaos, or unexpected obstacles. People who can execute know that winning is about results.

Passion[2]: People with passion have a heartfelt, deep, authentic excitement about work. They care–really care in their bones–about colleagues, employees, and friends. They love to learn and grow, and they get a huge kick out of people around them doing the same.

But along the way, he also spoke and wrote a book about Winning. And it was indeed about winning more than about win-win. There’s a difference in tone between his famous quote Control your own destiny or someone else will and Covey’s quieter encouragement to be proactive (and differences as well between his other attributes and those propounded by Stephen Covey. Again, ask yourself the same question: if all eight billion of us followed Jack Welch’s advice, would the world be better off? Or would the noise be deafening? And the level of competitiveness be stifling?

Unsurprisingly, with so much time in the goldfish bowl that comes with leadership of a major corporation, Welch built up his share of detractors, especially as the wheels came off GE’s business model. By comparison, Stephen Covey was offering perspective from the gentler terrain of the sidelines and its more-forgiving level of scrutiny. But he made a major point that merits your attention. In introducing his book, he argued that a century or more ago, management books emphasized the virtues (hard work, integrity, perseverance, trustworthiness, respect, etc.) as the way to be effective. He contrasted that with what he saw as the present-day tendency for such self-help to focus instead on manipulative techniques. He called leaders to return to the virtues.

You be the judge: who is walking the walk? Which approach, if widely adopted, would bring better societal outcomes? Why? Or put your own favorite body of leadership advice to the test. Or synergize: meld the models into a framework that helps you.

But don’t stop at mere judgment or analysis. Take the next steps! Be proactive! Whatever the task at hand, continue setting your priorities and working with others to make this real world a better place.

Bon courage![3]

[1] But dig deeper, and you’ll discover Pollyanna was right and the detractors in her dispirited town were wrong – and she brought them around rather than vice versa.

[2] Couldn’t find an exact reference to this, but my memory from the time is that Passion was an add-on to what began as simply the 4E’s, and may reflect the thinking and influence of his partner and wife Suzy Welch.

[3] Using this instead of the more familiar bon chance. That’s because hard work lies ahead. You may or may not reach your goals, and chance will play its role, but your success will largely reflect your effort as well as the effectiveness of your effort.

E pluribus unum (out of many, one) For years, the unofficial motto of the United States[1].

…Our differences are our glory, and we need to examine what it would look like to really celebrate them—to face them boldly, and respond with the trusting inquiry that leads to love. – April Lawson

Our differences are our glory? Celebrate them? Use them as a starting point for synergizing, building unity? Getting to love? Surely all that’s a little over the top?

But here’s some of what Stephen Covey had to say back thirteen years ago. Worth a slow, thoughtful read:

“To put it simply, synergy means “two heads are better than one.” Synergize is the habit of creative cooperation. It is teamwork, open-mindedness, and the adventure of finding new solutions to old problems. But it doesn’t just happen on its own. It’s a process, and through that process, people bring all their personal experience and expertise to the table. Together, they can produce far better results that they could individually. Synergy lets us discover jointly things we are much less likely to discover by ourselves. It is the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. One plus one equals three, or six, or sixty–you name it.

When people begin to interact together genuinely, and they’re open to each other’s influence, they begin to gain new insight. The capability of inventing new approaches is increased exponentially because of differences.

Valuing differences is what really drives synergy. Do you truly value the mental, emotional, and psychological differences among people? Or do you wish everyone would just agree with you so you could all get along? Many people mistake uniformity for unity; sameness for oneness. One word–boring! Differences should be seen as strengths, not weaknesses. They add zest to life”.

A small, entirely personal example: When my wife and I moved from Colorado to DC in 1987, we had been married for eleven years. We could only afford one car, so we drove to work from home and back together (45 minutes or so, each way). For the first time in our married lives, we started listening to Morning Edition and All Things Considered on the radio. As a result, we found ourselves talking about a wide variety of subjects we had never discussed before. We came to see vast areas of unexplored disagreement. At the same time, the stress of living and working in DC had the side effect of teaching us the hard way that our differences, which we had previously seen as weaknesses to overcome, were really strengths to build on. We came to realize that most of the bad decisions and mistakes we’d been making as a couple came when we started out in agreement – with the same blind spot. By contrast, when we would disagree initially on some matter, we had a better chance of coming to a single good approach.

As a result, during this period our good marriage transitioned to a great one. As a couple, we had synergy.

Back to Stephen Covey. Read from his 1989 book and you’ll find that he, like Lawson, wasn’t referring to slight differences. Both focused their attention on seemingly irreconcilable differences, of massive scale, pervading large swaths of society. He, as she, saw the search for synergy in the face of such great divides as high-risk but also high reward.

Perhaps through a 2025 lens this task looks far more daunting, and chances for success seem far less likely. We face a choice: give up? Or double down?

Which brings us to E pluribus unum. In today’s perspective, the Latin E pluribus discidium (separation, division, divorce, discord, disagreement, tearing) or E pluribus dividia (dissension, discord, care, vexation, trouble) might seem more realistic. The differences we face here in the United States do seem on their face to be irreconcilable.

But remember: the thirteen original colonies were themselves by no means homogeneous. Their interests and cultures varied radically. Nor were they virtuous or of one mind. Their morals and values were seriously flawed. Some practiced slavery. Others saw that as an abomination. Democracy was thought to be the province of men, not women, and to be confined to landholding men at that. Even within each colony there was polarization; revolutionaries and Tory loyalists lived (and argued) side by side. Disagreement and discord were the order of the day. But they ultimately found unity – synergy – in their desire to break away from British rule. Years later, the stain of slavery, still festering, would reach a flashpoint. The resulting Civil War threatened to rip the country asunder. Again (though only at the cost of many lives), the United States would make a critical choice in favor of synergy. Later, more quietly, women would achieve the vote. Time and again, throughout our history, Americans have done the arduous synergizing needed to deal with social fault lines, to achieve or maintain unity.

In building and articulating his first three habits – be proactive, begin with the end in mind, and put first things first – Stephen Covey is encouraging and equipping each of us individually to be effective and responsible by nature. Only then, he says, will we be able to work with others effectively to build a better world. Provided, as we enter such collaborations, that we bring to the table additional social skills, practiced to the point of habit: that we think win-win; that we seek first to understand, then be understood; and that we synergize. Without the first three habits, attempts at collaboration will lack a proper foundation and be compromised; without the last three habits, the first three will be sterile[2].

Whew! No pressure!

But isn’t there a seventh habit? What about the seventh habit? More on that next time.

[1] Since 1956, the official motto of the United States is “One Nation, under God” (but that is a subject for another day).

[2]There’s an analogy with team sports here. It’s the individual athlete’s responsibility to show up for practice physically and mentally fit. The coaches and the practice sessions will concentrate on teamwork.

If I were to summarize in one sentence the single most important principle I have learned in the field of interpersonal relations, it would be this: Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” –  Stephen R. Covey

Years ago, when I was living and working in Boulder, two of my favorite scientist-friend-colleagues coauthored a series of great papers. Their happy place was a shared office with a blackboard where they could discuss their calculations and the implications for hours. They would sometimes go on like this for days. One, you see, was Greek, the other Italian, and they were communicating in English. Before they could be sure that they truly understood each other and were in full agreement about an equation or a piece of text, they had to state and restate their arguments again and again.

They sought to understand, then be understood. The product was always magnificent.

As today’s quote suggests, of the Habits 4-6, it is #5 that Stephen Covey himself thought was the big one. Thirteen years ago, his website amplified on the subject in this way:

Communication is the most important skill in life. You spend years learning how to read and write, and years learning how to speak. But what about listening? What training have you had that enables you to listen so you really, deeply understand another human being? Probably none, right?

If you’re like most people, you probably seek first to be understood; you want to get your point across. And in doing so, you may ignore the other person completely, pretend that you’re listening, selectively hear only certain parts of the conversation or attentively focus on only the words being said, but miss the meaning entirely. So why does this happen? Because most people listen with the intent to reply, not to understand. You listen to yourself as you prepare in your mind what you are going to say, the questions you are going to ask, etc. You filter everything you hear through your life experiences, your frame of reference. You check what you hear against your autobiography and see how it measures up. And consequently, you decide prematurely what the other person means before he/she finishes communicating. Do any of the following sound familiar?

“Oh, I know just how you feel. I felt the same way.” “I had that same thing happen to me.” “Let me tell you what I did in a similar situation.”

Because you so often listen autobiographically, you tend to respond in one of four ways:

You might be saying, “Hey, now wait a minute. I’m just trying to relate to the person by drawing on my own experiences. Is that so bad?” In some situations, autobiographical responses may be appropriate, such as when another person specifically asks for help from your point of view or when there is already a very high level of trust in the relationship.

But even with that last bit of sugar-coating, Mr. Covey is indeed saying that is “so bad.” He encourages us to listen with more empathy – to understand and share the feelings of the other person, to see things from their point of view. That requires listening wholeheartedly versus half-listening while formulating what we will say next. When it finally is time to say something (much later in most conversations than any of us tend to think – as Mr. Covey notes, we’re generally guilty of prematurely jumping in), we might make that something a question or two, looking for points of clarification. Often, when we speak a common language it’s too easy to jump to the conclusion that we know exactly what the speaker is saying, and the thought process that lies behind it.[1]

Let’s jump ahead to the year 2025. We see habit #5 observed mostly in the breach. And we see it on the big-screen – the largest of national political issues, multiple issues. the great polarization and disunity tearing at our basic social fabric.

In the previous LOTRW post, I referred you to a sobering essay by April Lawson. Perhaps you’ve read her article already. If you haven’t, I again encourage you to do so. By way of motivation, here is another set of excerpts:

…A variety of organizations have sprung up in more recent years to forge a kind of depolarization field, most of them sincere and well intentioned. But there is a bias in the soil: a Blue bias. (Blue = leans liberal; Red = leans conservative.) The vast majority of leaders, funders, and participants in the bridging field are Blue, and this imbalance dictates the approach taken to depolarization…

… The virtue of Blues is that they are very open (at least at the beginning), and they’re always the first to reach out a hand and say they want to learn about the other side. The vice, however, hidden to themselves most of all, is in the fact that many Blues assume that if Reds could just be taught what is true, they would be enlightened into Blueness…

…If you are a Blue, you may be thinking, “but wait—we want to celebrate differences! We love diversity, that’s what we’re all about.” And I commend your intention. But what I’ve found, over and over again, is that Blue organizations say they love diversity, but not when it comes to viewpoint diversity. Oh sure, they can handle your standard libertarian who works in IT, but when it comes to real difference—like being a Trump supporter because you genuinely love Trump and think he’s one of the great Americans of our generation—somehow the celebratory fanfare dims.

The reasoning Blues will offer is typically that they want to celebrate difference as long as everyone is tolerant. The problem is that many powerful forms of religious, political, and philosophical belief make claims that are in direct conflict with the idea that all ways of being are equally valid. Blue insistence on “tolerance” functions as a fence to keep those beliefs and their adherents out. In simpler terms, when Blues say they want to “celebrate difference,” Reds often hear the caveat: that some are “approved differences” and others, like their political persuasion, are not…

… To my mind, this is one of the most profound causes of our present polarization: the ethic of tolerance, which goes in the guise of a neutral standard, denudes public argument of its profound spiritual dimensions and thereby guts the richness of pluralism…

…Our differences are our glory, and we need to examine what it would look like to really celebrate them—to face them boldly, and respond with the trusting inquiry that leads to love.

Whew! A lot to wrap our heads around! The stakes are high, and the difficulties commensurately great. A closing thought. Perhaps one arena where we come closest to getting this right is the marriage, or a lifelong partnership, or family relationship where the starting point is we are unified, united – we’re one. Nothing can tear us apart; we will work it out. Now what was that disagreement we were having again? Where do we start?

Maybe habit #6 – synergize – provides some hints. More soon.

[1] Logicians in the crowd might smell a problem here: what if both parties enter a conversation with this point of view? Do they sit there, silent, waiting for the other to speak first? And for how long? My answer is: you’re bright. You’ll work it out. The Old Testament speaks to this. In the book of Job, when Job is suffering, his three friends gather at his side. When they see his condition, they rend their own garments and sit on the ground with him for seven days in silence. Finally Job speaks. So far so good! But after that beginning, things go downhill. It’s not long before Job’s friends start probing, evaluating (negatively), and offering chapter-after-chapter dollops of useless advice.

“No man is an island…, entire of itself; …any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.” – John Donne (1624)

Effectiveness cannot be accomplished as solitaire.

Stephen Covey’s habits 1-3 speak to us as individuals. He asks us to view life proactively, not reactively, or (worse) through a lens of victimhood. He encourages us (a) to discover or (b) to invent (there’s a little of both here) our long-term goals and bring these to a conscious awareness – to the forefront of our minds. He exhorts us to translate those desired ends into concrete steps that will get us there, and give those steps priority amidst the other necessary tasks we face each day (lest desired progress towards our long-term aspirations be stymied by the urgent).

But habits 4-6 take us outside ourselves. They recognize that effectiveness is something achieved in community.

Each of these next three habits has much to teach us. Let’s begin with think win-win. A reminder: LOTRW visited each of these habits in 2012. (You can find the earlier post here.) At that time, Mr. Covey’s website (not his book) had this to say:

“Think Win-Win isn’t about being nice, nor is it a quick-fix technique. It is a character-based code for human interaction and collaboration.

Most of us learn to base our self-worth on comparisons and competition. We think about succeeding in terms of someone else failing–that is, if I win, you lose; or if you win, I lose. Life becomes a zero-sum game. There is only so much pie to go around, and if you get a big piece, there is less for me; it’s not fair, and I’m going to make sure you don’t get anymore. We all play the game, but how much fun is it really?

Win-win sees life as a cooperative arena, not a competitive one. Win-win is a frame of mind and heart that constantly seeks mutual benefit in all human interactions. Win-win means agreements or solutions are mutually beneficial and satisfying. We both get to eat the pie, and it tastes pretty darn good!

A person or organization that approaches conflicts with a win-win attitude possesses three vital character traits:

1. Integrity: sticking with your true feelings, values, and commitments
2. Maturity: expressing your ideas and feelings with courage and consideration for the ideas and feelings of others
3. Abundance Mentality: believing there is plenty for everyone

Many people think in terms of either/or: either you’re nice or you’re tough. Win-win requires that you be both. It is a balancing act between courage and consideration. To go for win-win, you not only have to be empathic, but you also have to be confident. You not only have to be considerate and sensitive, you also have to be brave. To do that–to achieve that balance between courage and consideration–is the essence of real maturity and is fundamental to win-win.”

Today, Franklin Covey (Stephen Covey’s son) has it boiled down to another four-quadrant matrix:

Win-lose    steamroller_________________________ Win-win      partner

Lose-lose   saboteur ___________________________Lose-win    doormat

7 Habits emphasized the following point. Win-win is not a matter of I-win-this-time and you-win-next-time (then repeat). Stephen Covey emphasized that the goal is both-parties-win-transaction-by-transaction-all-the-time. And it wasn’t a mere goal. He stressed that to be effective, neither party can settle for anything less.

Let that sink in. He didn’t say this, but he could have: For most of us, in most of our dealings with others, we settle for win-some, lose-some. In fact, the place we’re most likely to catch glimpses of this level of win-win is in our marriages – and that’s only in the good marriages. But that simply isn’t good enough. The standard has to extend to our families, our neighbors, our co-workers, the clerk behind the counter, the telemarketer…everyone.

To make a connection to our circumstance in 2025, you might give this 2021 essay by April Lawson a read; it’s entitled Building Trust Across the Political Divide. She starts out this way:

We are arguably living in the most polarized time since the Civil War. And what’s more, the particular variety of polarization that presently plagues our society is an especially nasty one. Two kinds of polarization are spiking: negative polarization—“It’s not that I like my team, I just hate the other team”—and affective polarization—“Not only do I disagree with you, I think you’re a bad person.”

To be Stephen-Covey-level effective in 2025, we have to bring win-win to bear on the most extreme polarization; not just to our relatively comfortable transactions with family and friends, or within our occupational or political tribe.

Bring that level of courage, and that degree of acceptance, and that willingness to find ways to collaborate, across such divides? That may sound impossible. Maybe. But it’s necessary. It’s what’s needed to move beyond merely clinging-on, existing – to satisfying living – on the real world.

We might help the process along with Habit #5. Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

More on that next time.

Let’s review.

Are you living on the real world? Do you want to make that life – your life – effective? Do you want your life to matter? If so, Stephen Covey advises, you’ll be proactive. You’ll see the world for its true vastness, its powerful trends, its turbulence and complexity – and within that, you’ll see your circle of influence – the bits you can (and should!) change for the better. And you won’t lose sight of your long-term goals – the ends you have in mind, both personally and professionally.

But then, Stephen Covey says, you must take a third step. There’s no shortage of the actions you’ll need to take day-by-day, month-by-month, and year-by-year, to achieve your ends.  Chances are good you may not have fully thought these through. You must therefore clarify these actions in your own mind. You need to articulate them, sequence them. Which steps come first? Which can only come later?  You need to plan. Note that because these are your ends, there’s no external urgency associated with them. You set the schedule[1].

At the same time, you operate within a context of necessary actions that are more-or-less imposed on you by that larger world. Showing up for work/doing your job. Paying your bills and your taxes. Keeping the fridge stocked. Raising children if you have them. These categories, and the individual actions within them, whether large or small, vary in importance. But the larger world, not you, sets the schedule. Sooner or later, if left unattended, they all become urgent. Finally, there’s so-called me-time.

Hmm. We’ve backed into the four-quadrant picture, sometimes called the Eisenhower matrix (he claimed he got it from a former college president). Eisenhower used to say he had two kinds of problems, important and urgent. And he would add that the important were never urgent, and the urgent never important.

In the context of this matrix, Stephen Covey argues that we want to spend as much energy/effort in the important/non-urgent quadrant as we can; devote the time/energy to the important/urgent quadrant that we must; do no more in the urgent/unimportant quadrant than we need to get by; and do all we can to eliminate the time we waste in the unimportant, non-urgent quadrant.

A couple of points. First, Covey argues that toward this end, it helps to schedule our priorities versus prioritize our schedules. (you can find commentary on this distinction here.) Second, it might seem that those life-ends have no urgency, but the fact is that they do. Tim Urban’s masterful 13-minute TED Talk Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator drives this point home, hilariously and effectively (just what the doctor ordered in these turbulent times). Finally, you really do want to reduce greatly the amount of time you’re wasting. And this is both subtle yet fundamental. Turns out that one contributor to wasting time in this quadrant is the daily accumulated stress of operating in the other quadrants. And much of this stress is self-imposed, not external. That means we can do more to minimize it. Here’s a maxim that might help, especially if you’re able to meditate on it, live it out: Instead of resting from your work, work from your rest. This draws strength from Mr. Covey’s first two habits. When you and I are thinking and working proactively, based on our internal end goals for our lives, we are in a more peaceful, relaxed, and effective posture than when we are reacting willy-nilly to someone else’s priorities. And to the extent we’re taking care of those important but externally-driven priorities before they become urgent, we are also more effective. Reminds me of the wall sign in the workshop of the Boulder lab where I had my first government job: lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.

To be crystal clear. Careful attention to and execution of Habit #3 is both more challenging and more vital in the year 2025 than it was in 1989 when Mr. Covey wrote his book.

In closing, a confession. I might be the last person who should be holding forth in this vein. In this instance, you should be doing as I say, not as I do. One of the first management courses I ever took was a 1976 two-day course entitled time management. As I’ve told people for the past half-century, my wife-to-be was handling the on-site arrangements for that course. We were married seven weeks later – and she’s been managing my time ever since. (Meanwhile) one of her instructor’s sobering lines? Most of you will sit through this course, and you won’t put it into practice. You are time slobs – and you might as well admit it.

Too true. Later, for most of my AMS years, I had a boss who was a master at getting things done. At one point, early on, he shared with me he owed a lot to David Allen’s book by that title. He even gave me a copy. (A gentle-but-not-too-subtle hint?) At the time, the approach was paper-based (it now accommodates paperless/electronic means) and it wasn’t my cup of tea. I gave the book to co-workers, and noticed that their reaction was positive and that uptake was rapid and noticeable. Over time, I gave the book a (more-open-minded) re-read, to find that its message had grown on me. That said, implementation has been a continual struggle. I have not one but two copies of the book, but only fragments of Allen’s methodology are in evidence in my workspace. Sigh.

[1] This presentation leaves the impression that the first three habits follow a linear sequence. That’s an oversimplification. The reality is you want to be cycling through these first three steps, iteratively refining or redefining them, on some kind of regular rhythm.