Book Summary: 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Author: Stephen R. Covey

Book Size: 579 pages

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Book Cover: 7 Habits

Moral and Introduction:

Stephen Covey noticed that high-achievers were often tormented by a sense of emptiness over his 25 years of dealing with successful persons in business, institutions, and relationship situations. He perused various self-improvement, self-help, and popular psychology books written over the past 200 years in an attempt to figure out why. He noted a strong historical contrast between two forms of success when he was there.

Before the First World War, success was ascribed to personal integrity. Humility, fidelity, integrity, courage, and justice were among the qualities listed. However, after the war, there was a shift toward what Covey refers to as the “Personality Ethic.” In this study, success was defined as a result of a person’s personality, public image, behaviors, and talents. However, these were merely surface-level triumphs, oblivious to life’s underlying principles.

Covey contends that it is your character, not your personality, that must be developed to attain long-term success. What we say and do is not the same thing. A set of concepts underpins the “Character Ethic.” These ideas, according to Covey, are self-evident and can be found in most religious, social, and ethical systems. They have a wide range of applications. When you value the right principles, you get a clear picture of reality. His best-selling book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, is built on this basis.

Interdependence is a more developed and sophisticated idea. It precludes the understanding that while you are an independent being, working with others will yield better results than working alone. You must cultivate each of the seven habits outlined in the book to reach this level of dependency. The following are the seven habits:

#1 Private Victory

1. Be proactive

2. Begin with the end in mind

3. Put first things first

#2 Public Victory

4. Think win/win

5. Seek to understand first, before making yourself understood

6. Learn to synergize

7. Sharpen the saw

#1 Private Victory

1. Being Proactive.

Every choice we make is influenced by our preferences.

The first and most crucial habit of an effective person is to be proactive. Being proactive includes more than simply taking the initiative; it also entails embracing personal responsibility for one’s life. As a result, you don’t blame your actions on circumstances, but rather own them as part of a purposeful decision based on your principles. Proactive people are motivated by values, whereas reactive ones are motivated by feelings.

While external causes can create suffering, your inner nature does not have to be harmed. What matters the most is how you handle these situations. Reactive people concentrate their energies on the aspects of their lives over which they have no control, whereas proactive people concentrate on the aspects of their lives over which they have no influence. They accumulate negative energy by blaming external circumstances for their victimization sentiments. This, in turn, permits other forces to maintain control over them indefinitely.

2. Being with End in Mind.

Make a wish, set goals, and choose a path.

The capacity to set a smart goal is a 21st-century skill.

S:- Specific

M:- Measurement

A:- Achievable

R:- Realistic

T:- Time

Imagine your funeral to better understand this inclination, according to Covey. He encourages you to consider how you want your loved ones to remember you, what you want them to say about your achievements, and how much of an impact you had on their life. This thought exercise can help you determine some of your most important values, which should drive your activities.

As a consequence, every day of your life should contribute to your overall life goal. Knowing what is most important to you enables you to conduct your life in its service. The second habit comprises identifying outdated scripts that are distracting you from your core values and changing them with new ones that are more consistent with your fundamental beliefs. This implies that when challenges arise, you will be able to face them head-on and with integrity since your values are well-defined.

According to Covey, the most effective way to begin with the end in mind is to create a personal mission statement. It should emphasize the following points:

• Who do you want to be? (character)
• What do you want to achieve? (contributions and achievements)
• What are the values that both of these things are based on?

3. Put the First Thing First.

1. Crucial and Urgent
2. Urgent but Insignificant
3. Essential but not Urgent
4. It’s neither Critical nor Urgent.

In this part, Covey expects you to answer the following questions:

1. What is one thing you could do daily to improve your personal life that you aren’t already?
2. Similarly, what one thing might you do to help your business or career?

Whereas habit one encourages you to acknowledge that you have power over your own life and habit two is based on your capacity to visualize and identify your most significant values, habit three is the application of these two habits. It promotes the development of effective self-management skills through the application of autonomous will. You become aware that simply asking yourself the following questions, may have a significant impact on your life in the present.

As a result, having an autonomous will entails the ability to make and act on judgments. The frequency with which you use your autonomous will is determined by your honesty. The amount of self-esteem you have and how well you keep your commitments are both measures of your integrity. The third habit is about prioritizing your responsibilities and putting the most important things first. This includes improving your capacity to say no to things that do not accord with your beliefs. To effectively manage your time after using habit three, you must do the following:

1. They must be guided by principles.
2. They must be conscience-directed, which means that they should allow you to organize your life around your underlying beliefs.
3. They establish your primary mission, which encompasses your values and long-term objectives.
4. They bring harmony to your life.
5. They are scheduled weekly, with revisions made daily as needed.

The common thread that runs through all five of these themes is that the emphasis is on increasing relationships and results rather than maximizing time.

#2 Public Victory

4. Think Win/Win

Win/win is a philosophy of human interaction, not technology. It’s a mindset that looks for a win-win situation for everyone involved. This means that all agreements or solutions are advantageous to all sides, and everyone is happy with the result. Life must be viewed as a collaborative effort rather than a competition to reflect this philosophy. As a result, anything less than a win-win situation is incompatible with the quest of interdependence, which is the most efficient position to be in.

As a result, cultivating the practice of interpersonal leadership is necessary to adopt a win-win perspective. When dealing with others, this entails demonstrating each of the following characteristics:

• Self-awareness
• Imagination
• Conscience
• Will be self-sufficient (Independent will)

Covey claims that to be a successful win-win leader, you must embrace five distinct dimensions:

1. Character: This is the foundation of a win-win mentality, and it entails acting with honesty, maturity, and an “abundance mentality” (i.e., there is enough of everything for everyone, and one person’s success does not jeopardize your own).
2. Relationships: To achieve win-win agreements, trust is crucial. To retain a high degree of trust, you must cultivate your connections.
3. Agreements: This requires all stakeholders to agree on the desired outcomes, guidelines, resources, accountability, and repercussions.
4. Performance agreements that benefit both parties and supported systems: Developing a defined, agreed-upon set of intended outcomes to gauge performance inside a system that can encourage a win-win mentality.
5. Processes: All procedures must make it possible for win-win scenarios to develop.

5. Seek First to Understand then to Understand.

Before attempting to make yourself known, you must first seek to grasp the circumstance. The capacity to communicate properly is the most crucial talent you can learn, and it is critical to your total effectiveness. While you spend years learning to read, write, and talk, Covey, claims that you don’t spend nearly as much time honing your listening skills.

If your values are strong, you’ll want to engage and listen to others without making them feel manipulated. As a result, your character is how you transmit and communicate what kind of person you are. People will begin to trust and open up to you as a result of it. Most individuals listen intending to respond, while the skilled listener listens with the intention of understanding. This is referred to as empathic listening.

An empathetic listener may enter the speaker’s point of view. As a result, individuals perceive the world through their own eyes and experience things in their way. As a result, empathic listening permits you to have a better understanding of reality. You’ll be surprised at how quickly people open up once you start listening to them to understand them.

If you feel you’ve grasped the problem, the next step is to make yourself understood. This calls for bravery. You can express your ideas following your listener’s paradigms and worries by applying what you’ve learned from empathic listening. Because you’ll be speaking the same language as your audience, your ideas will have more credibility.

6. Synergies.

1. Cooperation.
2. Unite.
3. Positive.

To obtain the best results, synergy combines the drive to negotiate win-win agreements with empathetic communication. It is the essence of principle-centered leadership. It pulls people together and unleashes incredible power since it is based on the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The ultimate litmus test is to apply synergetic creative collaboration concepts into your social interactions. According to Covey, such instances of synergetic interpersonal group cooperation are often ignored but should be a part of your everyday life.

At its core, synergy is a creative process that demands vulnerability, openness, and communication. It requires balancing a group of people’s mental, emotional, and psychological differences and, as a consequence, developing new thinking paradigms among the group’s members. This is where the most inventiveness may be found. Synergy is the interconnected reality of effectiveness. This requires collaboration, teamwork, and the establishment of ties with others.

7. Sharpen the Saw.

1. Updation.
2. Un-Obsolete.
3. Practice.

This seventh habit focuses on self-improvement through the four rejuvenation dimensions:

1. Physical: Exercise, diet, and stress management are all critical considerations. This includes taking care of your physical body by eating appropriately, sleeping enough, and exercising regularly.
2. Social/Emotional: We cherish qualities such as service, empathy, harmony, and innate security. This provides you with a sense of security and significance.
3. Spiritual: Clarification of values and commitment, study, and meditation Focusing on this aspect of your life brings you closer to your center and inner value system.
4. Mental: Reading, imagining, planning, and writing are all activities that need concentration. Constantly educating oneself entails broadening one’s horizons. This is critical for efficiency.

“Sharpening the Saw” means regularly and consistently expressing and practicing all four motives. This is the most crucial investment you can make in your life since you are the instrument of your performance. Overindulging in one area suggests ignoring another, thus it’s vital to strike a balance in all areas.