The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven Covey
The purpose of this page is for me to identify and collect the most significant points from Stephen Covey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I have put these notes on the Internet because I have found in this book a gold mine of sober and solid ideas for improving personal and professional management and forming quality relationships with other people. I recommend this book to anybody who wants to live a more productive and wholesome life. My comments are organized according to the chapters in the book so if you are reading the book, it will be easy to look up my notes on the section you are reading. I am still reading the book and will add more my notes here, so there is more to come.
This is the kind of book which you get more out of by discussing it, so please feel free to send me a message. This page will soon contain a forum in which various topics are discussed much like a usenet newsgroup. (If anyone knows how to technically do this, please tell me how!) Until then, enjoy these notes simply by clicking on the topic in the left hand window. Enjoy.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. — Aristotle
PART ONE: PARADIGMS AND PRINCIPLES Inside-OutThe Power of a Paradigm ShiftCovey has the best example of a paradigm shift: he was traveling in a subway, a man gets in with his two sons, the sons are running all over the place bothering the people, this continues, so he finally gets irritated enough to ask the father why he doesn’t do something to control his kids. The father replies, “We just got back from the hospital where their mother died. I don’t know how to handle it and I guess they don’t either.”
Suddenly you see the everything differently. That is the power of a paradigm shift. They are the same kids yelling and screaming in the subway, but you look at them and understand them in a different way.
I was at the swimming pool the other day and saw a family of three leaving out the door. The little boy suddenly stopped and stood looking through the glass at the swimmers in the pool who were still swimming. The father yelled back to him, “Come on, what are you doing, just staring at things again? Let’s go!” I thought about the paradigm that the father had of his son: “stupid, slow kid who’s always doing something he isn’t supposed to.” Now what if the school conselor were to call the father up the next day and tell him, “We have just received the test results back from your son and have discovered that he has impressively high IQ. He is a genius.” The next time his kid stood staring at something, I wonder if the father wouldn’t go back to him inquisitively and say, “Tell me what you are thinking about son. What do you see?”
Our behavior results from our paradigms of the world. The classic example of the old woman/young woman picture which Covey includes in the book is a good example. You can look at the picture and see an old woman or you can look at the picture and see a young woman. Depending on what you see is what you are going to say about “that picture.”
The Principle-Centered Paradigm In this book, Covey wants to express to us howwe can base our behavior on a paradigm of the world which is centered on our unchanging principles instead of being centered on what happens in the world, what others do, what we do, how we feel, how others feel, the stock market, and the vicissitudes of life.
The Way We See the Problem Is the Problem If you have a problem, the actual problem is that you are looking at it as a problem. It could be something else, such as an opportunity. When it rains lemons, make lemonade. You just need a paradigm shift.
The Seven Habits–An Overview
Production and Production Capability The Tale of the Golden Goose: There was once a farmer who bought a golden goose. A week later the golden goose laid a golden egg! The farmer was ecstatic! He cashed the golden egg and had a wild time. The following week he finds that the golden goose laid another golden egg! Again he cashes it in and spends the money. This happens week after week until one week the farmer just can’t wait till the end of the week to get the golden egg so he kills his golden goose and takes the golden egg out of it. He has another wild time with the money. But the next week he realizes that there is no golden egg, for he has killed his golden goose. The moral of the story is to never kill your golden goose.
Production is taking the golden egg every week. Production Capability is taking care of your golden goose. Covey suggests that we should strike a balance between production and production capability. Just like the farmer, someone who smokes and drinks constantly without exercising is getting too much production out of his body without storing any production capability. Yet someone who jogs 5 hours a day is not producing enough and is storing too much production capability (how long does he want to live anyway?).
Production is getting something to work now (demanding that your son clean his room). Production Capability is making sure something will work in the future (building up an adult-adult relationship with your son so that he is the kind of person who wants to keep his room clean). We should keep these in balance.
PART TWO: PRIVATE VICTORY
HABIT 1: Be Proactive
Proactivity
Being proactive means taking initiative, not waiting for others to act first, and being responsible for what you do. The opposite of proactive is reactive. Reactive people react to what goes on around them. Proactive people act based on principles.
Circle of Influence Imagine a circle within a circle. The inner circle is your circle of influence and the outer circle is your circle of concern. This means that many things which you are concerned about you cannot influence. Yet there are many things which you are concerned about which you can influence. Reactive people focus on their circle of concern. Proactive people focus on their circle of influence. Being proactive also increases your circle of influence.
HABIT 2: Begin with the End in Mind
All Things Are Created Twice Plan well. Think things through. The carpenter’s rule is “measure twice, cut once.”
Identifying Your Center What is your center? What determines your mood? If it is determined by your work, then you are centered on work. If it is determined by your spouse, then you are centered on your spouse. If it is determined by your church, then you are centered on your church. Covey suggests that you instead center yourself on your principles.
A Principle Center While other things which we could center our lives on fluctuate, principles do not:
Correct principles do not change. We can depend on them. Principles don’t react to anything. They don’t get mad and treat us differently. They won’t divorce us or run away with our best friend. They aren’t out to get us. They can’t pave our way with shortcuts and quick fixes. They don’t depend on the bahavior of others, the environment, or the current fad for their validity. Principles don’t die. They aren’t here one day and gone the next. They can’t be destroyed by fire, earthquake or theft. Principles are deep, fundamental truths, classic truths, generic common denominators. They are tightly interwoven threads running with exactness, consistency, beauty, and strength through the fabric of life.
A Personal Mission Statement To find out what your principles are, envision your own funeral. Imagine that as your casket is being lowered down into the ground, your family and friends are standing around watching. What are they thinking about? When they think of you and your life, which statements, images and memories come up in their minds? What do you want them to think, imagine, and remember? It is precisely these statements, images, and memories which should be your principles. You should live toward these principles everyday. All of these principles combined make up your mission statement.
Visualization and Affirmation I saw a documentary film once about an olympic high jumper who used visualization in his training. He said that he trained the same amount of time visually as he did physically. This meant that half of his training was sitting in a chair envisioning every movement of the run up to the bar, then the jump, then the arched back, then the feet, and the successful fall down to the mat. He ran it in slow motion, backwards, and forwards until it was smooth. Anytime there was a doubt, he stopped his visualization and checked where his feet were, where his hands were, and how high his knee was. Then when he practiced physically, his body and mind had already “experienced” a successful jump and knew exactly what to do.
This is the kind of visualization and affirmation that one can do with principles in a mission statement. If one of your mission statements is to be an understanding mother, visualize your daughter coming home from school and telling you that she failed a test. Visualize yourself being understanding in that situation.
Identifying Roles and Goals The funeral exercise emphasizes roles before goals. “Being an good father” is a role. “Buying your son a skateboard” and “taking him to the ballgame” are goals which fulfill this role.
Organizational Mission Statements When my wife and I were traveling in France, we stayed in an old hotel in Toulouse. We packed everything in the morning and made off to the train station. Ten minutes before our train was to leave, the owner of the hotel came running up to us with a bag of clothing we had forgotten. We thanked her profusely and we all said au revoir.
She had a principle that she would give her customers the best service that she can, which means chasing after them to the train station when they have forgotten a bag of clothes. Now, being the owner of the hotel, it is not difficult to imagine that she needs customers and will go to all ends to satisfy every customer she has.
Now what about a larger hotel. Would a bellhop or a cashier come running after a customer for a half hour to give them a bag of clothes? Probably not. Not only because they make their hourly wage anyway, but also because if they left the hotel, they would have a boss yelling at them when they got back. Most hotels are not set up to provide the kind of service that this French hotel owner provides her customers.
Writing an organizational mission statement gives a common purpose to every employee of the organization and encourages employees to go out of their way to please the customers and fulfill the organizational principles. The janitor knows what the purpose of the company is and looks for ways to achieve that end. The president of the company encourages new ideas which will fulfill the company’s roles and goals.
HABIT 3: Put First Things First
The Time Management Matrix
| Urgent | Not Urgent | |
| Important | QUADRANT I crises, pressing problems, deadline-driven projects | QUADRANT II prevention, PC activities, relationship building, recognizing new opportunities, planning, recreation |
| Not important | QUADRANT III interruptions, some calls, some mail, some reports, some meetings, popular activies | QUADRANT IV trivia, busy work, some mail, som phone calls time wasters, pleasant activites |
Every activity we do during the day can be put in one of four quadrants:
- urgent and important
- not urgent and important
- urgent and not important
- not urgent adn not important
Quadrant II Answer this question: What one thing could you do in your personal and professional life that, if you did on a regular basis, would make a tremendous positive difference in your life? Chances are whatever you name, it is a Quandrant II activity. Effective, proactive people spend most of their time in Quadrant II.
What It Takes to Say “No” To be effective, you need to stay out of Quadrants III and IV. To do this, you need to tell yourself and other people “no” to actvities which lie in these areas. Suggest Quadrant II activities instead.
Weekly Organizing Plan your week instead of your day. Each Sunday, look at your roles and goals from your mission statement, and assign activities throughout your week which fulfill these roles and goals. Double and triple them up, so that if your mission is that you want to be a good father, a good husband, and stay in shape, then on Thursday afternoon when you all have free, go jogging with your wife and son.
Delegation: Increasing P and PC I love Covey’s example of him delegating the lawn care to his son. He simple tells him “think green and clean” and use any tools and resources you need, including me. When delegating this job, he doesn’t tell his son what to do (which would be killing the goose), he simple gives him a vision and lets his son fulfill it himself.
Paradigms of Interdepence
The Emotional Bank AccountImagine that each person with which you have a relationship of some kind has an emotional bank account. A deposit would be when you pick up a couple skateboard magazines for your son on your way home. A withdrawal would be when you make a promise to come watch his baseball game, but you do not show up. The goal is to get as much money in your emotional bank accounts as possible.
Six Major Deposits Ways that you can make deposits in emotional bank accounts are:
- Understanding the Individual
From Covey: “I have a friend whose son developed an avid interest in baseball. My friend wasn’t interested in baseball at all. But one summer, he took his son to see every major league team play one game. The trip took over six weeks and coast a great deal of money, but it became a powerful bonding experience in their relationship.
My friend was asked on his return, “Do you like baseball that much?”
“No,” he replied, “but I like my son that much.”
- Attending to Little Things
- Keeping Commitments
- Clarifying Expectations
- Showing Personal Integrity
- Apologizing Sincerely When you Make a Withdrawal
P Problems are PC Opportunities Seeing problems as opportunities requires a paradigm shift. The flat tire on your way to an important meeting is still a flat tire, but the situation becomes an opportunity to show your resolve to act in a crisis situation. Or take the example of William Least Heat Moon, author of the book Blue Highways: in a period of three months back in the 70s, his wife divorced him and his college fired him. So he put all the money he had in a shoebox, packed up his van and drove around America on all the blue (smallest) highways writing a book about his travels through small town American culture. Today the book is a classic.
From Covey: “When parents see their children’s problems as opportunities to build the relationship instead of as negative, burdensome irritations, it totally changes the nature of parent-child interaction. Parents become more willing, even ecited, about deeply understanding and helping their children. When a child comes to them with a problem, instead of thinking, “Oh, no! Not another problem!” their paradigm is, “Here is a great opportunity for me to really help my child and to invest in our relationship.” Many interactions change from transactional to transformational, and strong bonds of love and trust are created as children sense the value parents give to their problems and to them as individuals.”
PART THREE: PUBLIC VICTORY
HABIT 4: Think Win/Win
Six Paradigms of Human Interaction
Five Dimensions of Win/Win
HABIT 5: Seek First to Understand
Empathic Listening
Diagnose Before You Prescribe
Four Autobiographical Responses
Then Seek to Be Understood
One on One
HABIT 6: Synergize
Synergistic Communication
Synergy in the Classroom
Synergy in Business
Synergy in Communication
Fishing for the Third Alternative
Negative Synergy
Valuing the Differences
Force Field Analysis
All Nature is Synergistic
PART FOUR: RENEWAL
HABIT 7: Sharpen the Saw
Four Dimensions of Renewal
The Physical Dimension
The Spiritual Dimension
The Mental Dimension
The Social/Emotional Dimension
Scripting Others
Balance in Renewal
Synergy in Renewal
The Upward Spiral
Inside-Out Again
Intergenerational Living
Becoming a Transition Person
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