The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

by Stephen Covey

What is the book about as a whole?

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People offers a journey of personal and private victory found in 7 Habits that Stephen Covey offers as useful in building personal character and living a principle centered life.

What is being said in detail?

In a nutshell:

Habit 1: Proactivity. You are responsible for your own existence. Whether you’re doing something about it you are an acting agent that has the power to bring about change. No one is responsible for your life but you but this will be clear to you to the extent that you’re willing to take actual responsibility for your actions and circumstances.

Habit 2: Begin With The End in Mind. What is your purpose in general? What is your purpose for a specific activity? Knowing WHY you’re doing something serves as a guide to whether your specific actions are being relevant in the process and guides you in selecting the most effective actions in order to meet your purpose.

Habit 3: Put First Things First. PRIORITIZE! Covey offers a chart or sort of punnet square where you classify what is most urgent and important through 4 Quadrants. On the first one you have what is Important & Urgent, on the second one what is Important but Not Urgent (you want to be spending most of your time here), on the third what is Urgent but not Important and on the 4th one what is not urgent and not important ( you want to be spending the least time in this one).

“Don’t prioritize your schedule. Schedule your priorities.”

Habit 4: Think WIN-WIN. Again Covey offers a variety of options in any exchange you may have with another person. You can think Win-Lose, Lose-Win, Win-Win or no Deal, Win, or Lose-Lose. What you probably want is to come up with Win-Win solution where both you as well as the person you’re dealing with end up happy that they won something. Not only is this mentality essential in building relationships and ethical negotiations but in the end if you seek to really be an effective person and bring change about in the world you must genuinely care for others and what they get form their interactions with you.

Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, then to be Understood. Shhh! LISTEN. Listening is one of the hardest things to do, too often we’re just waiting for the person to finish talking so that we can say our point. Too often we want everyone to understand us and know how terrible our lives are and how terrible we feel but we’re not willing to listen to how terrible THEIR lives are, how terrible THEY feel. By understanding first we may come to have an actual and meaningful conversation with others where we’re untangled from our urgent desire to be heard and we actually have a meaningful interaction.

Habit 6: Synergize. Though I had a bit of trouble understanding this one at first it is a Habit that can truly only be achieved as a result of efficiently applying the previous 5. In synergy you are working interdependently with others towards a common goal, you look to work within the group dynamics as a team member rather than as a boss or a competitor.

Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw. Basically, take care of yourself. Covey speaks about 4 essential dimensions of your life that need constant renewal in order for you to be well and lead a balanced life which are Physical, Mental, Spiritual and Social / Emotional. Though you may think of yourself as many separate things (it’s impossible for one to perceive himself as a whole) I will state the obvious and say that you are ONE. What you eat, what you avoid, how you interact with others, what higher beliefs and purposes you hold, what you read and write, it’s all connected to your wellbeing. In the preface Covey talks about the story of a king who owned a goose that could lay a golden egg everyday. The king becomes greedy and wanting more golden eggs he cuts open the goose and finds nothing, now knowing that he had lost the opportunity to have more golden eggs even if that meant being patient. The same will happen to you, you’re a Goose and what you create are golden eggs but if you’re not integrally well then you won’t be able to produce golden eggs.

What was most meaningful to me?

I began listening to the audiobook of Covey in January (before we even entered the MPC) and found it so interesting and to hold so much of the things that I believe to be true that I changed my original organization book (The Now Habit) for Covey. To be honest the last year has involved many big changes in my personal life that really shook me up through the term and made me question the very essence of my existence. It began with the preparation form y sister’s wedding and what it implied to have my sister getting married, to having feelings for someone with whom I had no idea of how to deal with in terms of a relationship, to questioning my religion and putting up my faith into deep inquiry once again, to fighting with my brother, to dealing with many many things that in the end made me wonder: why am I here? Why am I alive? Do I want to be alive? What is this whole thing? It seemed as if in one moment the road was so clear, in the next moment I was suddenly fighting against waves in the middle of the ocean to stay afloat. Now that I look back this semester involved much personal growth and character endurance. It made me rethink who I am, who I want to be, and who I can be if I allow myself and go for it.

Part of reading the 7 habits involved taking an optional leadership workshop with the first year students and whoever chose to sign up. Though I had my doubts (due to schedule changes) I do not regret this decision at all. Part of this was reading a complimentary book. I chose to read Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. I think I couldn’t have come up with a better one. Everything that was going on really made me think about existence and my purpose in this world. Though an interesting ride existentialism can turn out to be emotionally and mentally very demanding. I was expecting to think of a purpose for my life as if it were an answer that would miraculously come down from heaven. Perhaps one of the most important lessons I learned from this complementary reading was that there isn’t just any ONE purpose but rather many purposes in specific moments and contexts of one’s life that one wishes to fulfill. Also, the fact of having or making a purpose for yourself and life gives you really enough determination and power to live through about any experience.

Quotes

“We began to realize that if we wanted to change the situation, we first had to change ourselves. And to change ourselves effectively, we first had to change our perceptions.” (change in my perception of what a relationship and what the future is!) Covey

“The Character Ethic taught that there are basic principles of effective living, and that people can only experience true success and enduring happiness as they learn and integrate these principles into their basic character.” Covey

“It becomes obvious that if we want to make relatively minor changes in our lives, we can perhaps appropriately focus on our attitudes and behaviors. But if we want to make significant, quantum change, we need to work on our basic paradigms.” Covey

“The inside-out approach says that private victories precede public victories, that making and keeping promises to ourselves precedes making and keeping promises to others. It says it is futile to put personality ahead of character, to try to improve relationships with others before improving ourselves.” Covey

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” Aristotle