Way back when I was with Andersen Consulting (now Accenture), our senior management became very interested in Stephen Covey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Every partner and manager attended an intensive five-day seminar on the seven habits and how to practically implement them into our daily lives.

Now, I have attended many seminars that I honestly got nothing out of. Not this one. This was when I experienced my first 360 evaluation. It was also during this seminar that one of the key concepts left a lasting impression: Habit 3, “Put first things first.” In this habit, Covey introduces the four quadrants of time management, as follows:

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Patty and I have two adult children. Briana, our eldest, is married and has a beautiful son & daughter. Trevor, our youngest, is single, and has a lovable dog.

At age 6, Trevor was diagnosed with Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS), a high-functioning form of autism. At the time, the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-4) divided autism into five categories (Source: Healthline.com):
* Autistic Disorder
* Rett Syndrome
* Asperger’s Syndrome
* Childhood Disintegrative Disorder
* PDD-NOS

The DSM has since done away with the categories and now just calls it Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), about 1 in 36 children have been identified with ASD and ASD is four times more common in boys than girls. More broadly speaking, the CDC also reports that one in four adults have some type of disability.

Before we had kids, we never envisioned having a child with a disability, and at the time very little was publicly known about autism. As a professional, I had grand plans for a career as a successful corporate executive.

Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men…

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