The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

by Stephen Covey

The book

Private Victory

Habit 1 - Be Proactive

• Covey contrasts being proactive or having a proactive mentality with being reactive. Reactive people, he says, are those who are resigned to the truth that whatever they do in the present can have no effect on their circumstances. And interestingly, for reactive people, it really is a truth, for whatever we believe in our heart affects our thoughts, words and actions. If we really believe that we can do nothing about our unreasonable boss or the daily events in our lives, then we simply do not make the effort.
  Proactive people, on the other hand, simply will not accept that there is nothing that can be done about the unreasonable boss or the events of daily life - they will point out that there are always choices. It is by the decisions we make, our responses to people, events and circumstances that proactive people can and do affect the future. We may have no control over what life throws at us but we always have a choice about how we are to respond.
• Now this notion that having a particular attitude of mind (which is really where this habit begins) can make such a huge and positive difference to almost everything we experience in life is foreign to those who have already internalized the opposite habit as a part of their personalities. For some people, the glass is always half-empty and the feeling of melancholy is a pleasant reminder that something is indeed missing. For such people, this habit represents a bitter pill to swallow - but, says Covey, it is also completely liberating.
• When we are finally prepared to accept full responsibility for the effects that are manifest in our lives; when we have the strength of character to admit it when we make mistakes (even big ones); when we are completely free to exercise the options available to us in every situation; then it can be said that we have finally internalized this habit. The other six of the habits require that we first work on our basic character by becoming proactive and thereby transforming ourselves into men and women of integrity.

Habit 2 - Begin with the End in Mind

• The second of the habits is - Begin with the End in Mind. Many people in the west identify with the frustration of success. Being successful at their chosen career and committed to its progress they come to realise that it does not, in the final analysis, bring any sense of real satisfaction. The reason for this ultimate dissatisfaction is that they did not begin with the end in mind. For many people, it is not just that they did not begin with the end in mind; it goes a bit deeper - they did not ever get around to defining the end itself and so they simply could not begin with the end in mind. So what does all this mean? The end represents the purpose of your life. Until you can say what that purpose is, with assurance, then you just cannot direct your life in the manner that would bring you the greatest satisfaction.
• There are no short-cuts here. To engage in this habit, you need to have a dream, define your own vision and get into the practice of setting goals which will allow you to make measurable progress toward the dream. If you practice a faith, then you will want to consider how this affects your purpose in life; if you do not, you will still need to get involved in deep self-examination to find out exactly what it is that will bring you fulfilment.

• Until you have defined your vision - the big dream to which you will be working - you will be unable to move on to habit 3 which provides a basic framework for you to re-align your efforts so that you will ultimately achieve your heart's desire.

Habit 3 - First Things First

• The third habit is - First Thing First. Consider the simple 2 x 2 matrix shown below. It plots the concepts of urgency and importance against each other; and
  represents where you are spending your time. To really understand and apply this habit, you need to have first done habit 2 - that is, you should already have defined what is important to you. Without first doing this, habit 3 has no power because you simply cannot separate what is important from what is not important.
• This representation shows four categories of demand which may be made on your time. Quadrant 1 consists of activities which are both urgent and important - in other words, things to which you absolutely must attend. Why must you do these things? Because they are important - meaning that they contribute to your mission; and they are urgent - meaning that they have some sort of deadline associated with them.
• Choices about where to invest your time really are made in the other categories; and most people - driven by the concept of urgency - get drawn into Quadrant 3; doing things that consume their time but do not contribute to their goals. Highly Effective People (yes they all fit together you see) understand that the high leverage activities are all Quadrant 2 - important but not urgent. Planning, preparation, prevention, relationship-building, reading, improving your professional knowledge and exercise are all examples of Quadrant 2 activity - not an exhaustive list, by any means.
• We all intuitively know that Quadrant 2 activities are the key to getting results; but you need to have internalized the first two habits before you can benefit from the high leverage this habit brings. In other words, you first need to have developed the strength of character (proactivity) which allows you to be able to say no to demands on your time that fall into Quadrants 2 and 3; and you also need to have defined what importance means for you - otherwise the Quadrants do not exist.

Public Victory

Habit 4 - Think Win Win

Habit 5 - Seek First to Understand
then be Understood

• The fifth habit is - Seek First to Understand. What most people do, naturally, when involved in some type of discussion, meeting or dialogue is exactly the reverse - they seek first to be understood. And, as Stephen Covey says, when both parties are trying to be understood, neither party is really listening; he calls such an interaction, 'the dialogue of the deaf'. This habit is an important key to inter-personal relationships and it seems to be almost magical in its ability to transform the course of discussions. Why? Because by making the investment of time and effort required to understand the other party, the dynamics of the interchange are subtly affected.
• This habit is not just about letting the other person speak first; it concerns actually making the effort to understand what is being said. It is about understanding that our natural habit of mind is to misunderstand. When we are engaged in conversation, error is always present. NLP tells us that we simply make our own meaning based on our own experiences and understanding of life; and frequently we make the wrong meaning.
• If however, we are prepared to invest the time and effort to really understand the other person's position; and to get into the habit of spending the first part of the discussion doing so; then, when it is felt by the other person that you do indeed understand, the dynamic changes. People become more open, more teachable, more interested in what you may have to say and with the mutual understanding that flows from this habit, you are ready to practice habit 6; which concerns finding creative solutions.

Habit 6 – Synergize

• The sixth of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is - Synergize. This habit involves you putting your head together with the other party or parties in order to creatively brainstorm a synergistic solution to a problem i.e. to find a solution which contains win-win benefits. It can only be done successfully if you have first practiced habits 4 and 5. The well-known definition of synergy is as follows:
• Synergy - When the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
  Finding a synergistic solution means finding a solution which is better than either party might first propose. Such a solution can only be found if both parties truly understand the other parties position - the fruit of habits 4 and 5.

Renewal

1. Spiritual Exercise
   To exercise spiritually, I recommend that you consider engaging in some form of meditation. Meditation involves regularly sitting in a relaxed position and thinking about nothing for a period of about 10 or 15 minutes. Why this practice should bring about any material benefits is an interesting question. You might consider that you relax your mind quite enough when you sleep, but it turns out that we don't really relax our minds when we sleep. The brain is active during sleep - during REM sleep, the brain appears to be processing information. Though it is not yet known exactly what it is doing, the brain is certainly not passive and so the mind is not relaxed during sleep. Meditation is the practice of disciplining the mind, It is difficult to do at first, but if you stick with it, positive health benefits will follow.
   What Stephen Covey means when he talks about spiritual exercise - the regular, review and preview of the things that are most important to you in life. These are the first things that you must define in habit 2 - Begin with the End in Mind.
2. Physical Exercise
   Regular aerobic, physical exercise is essential for health, energy and a feeling of well-being. Naturally, you should always consult your doctor or physician before you embark upon any course of physical exercise; and it should be obvious that such professional advice as may be given, should always be taken into account.
   To practice this part of Habit 7 requires that you commit to at least three sessions of at least twenty minutes per week. If you are not already engaged in this sort of exercise, you will find that after a period of about six weeks, you will feel much better, much healthier and indeed your body will become more efficient at processing oxygen - which is the key to energy.
3. Mental Exercise
   Ask yourself these questions. What am I doing to sharpen my mind? Am I engaged in a programme of education or learning of some kind? What am I doing to improve my professional knowledge?
   How you should go about this part of the habit is, of course, for you to decide, but you should ensure that you are reading regularly. What should you read? Naturally you want to put in the good stuff - so it's not a case of reading for its own sake; it is reading carefully selected material which allows you to broaden and deepen your understanding. You will naturally be paying particular attention to the important areas you defined in habit 2, but you should also consider reading all the great works of literature and also ancient wisdom literature which includes books like The Psalms and Proverbs.
4. Interpersonal
   This part is not really a discipline, as are the other three parts, it is really a commitment; and for me, I make the commitment during the spiritual part of the habit, that is, during a meditation. It is simply to commit to approaching inter-personal relationships by making use of habits 4, 5 and 6.
   Even if people approach me making use of language, actions, or behavior which I personally believe to be inappropriate, my commitment is to not react, but to use my proactive capacity to engage in the exercise of habits 4, 5 and 6 which I believe will lead to the best possible outcome in such circumstances.

Quotations by Stephen Covey

Actually I did not invent the seven habits, they are universal principles and most of what I wrote about is just common sense. I am embarrassed when people talk about the Covey Habits, and dislike the idea of being some sort of guru.

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