Friday Feature: How to be Successful

What is success? Financial freedom? A job you love? Travel? A happy life?

All of the above?

Since we all define success a little differently, we all discover it a little differently as well. In his article in Inc., Benjamin P. Hardy focuses on how we can unwittingly create our own obstacles, making the path to reaching our goals longer and more circuitous than it has to be.

Since my freshmen have just finished discussing Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, this piece was especially interesting to me, as so much of Covey is about setting priorities and building our personal and professional lives around them. I love teaching this each fall because it gives me an annual refresher and a check-up -- am I putting first things first? Beginning with the end in mind? I think this article might serve the same purpose: a check-in, of sorts, to remind me to consider the impact of small habits.

What is one step that you can take today toward your own success?

Friday Feature: Is Covey Still Relevant?

Every fall, I teach a first year seminar and every fall, we study Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. This fall, I realized with a jolt just how many years before my students were born this book was published. Does it hold up?

I think it does. In fact, I'd go one step further, asserting that, in a class where we focus on defining and achieving a personal definition of success, Covey is required reading. Or, as I approach it, required studying.

I'm not alone in my opinion. In her article, "Revisiting the Habits of Highly Effective People," Melody Wilding brings Covey's 1989 text into the 21st century, pointing out that in our highly distracting, fast-paced world, some of Covey's considerations are more important than ever. Personally, I think that in my Year of No, "Put First Things First" might just take on even more significance than before.

The funny thing is, I was a hard sell. My Covey training was mandatory and on my own time, which placed two strikes against it from the outset. But the trainings were better than I expected and the thing I came to like about Covey is that he's not trying to sell productivity at all costs. He was proponent of work-life blend before we were debating the terminology.

Next week, my students present Covey's habits. I can't wait to see how they bring them into the 21st century -- the only century they've ever known.