10 things I learned from the 7 (and 8th) Habits of Highly Effective People By Steven Covey
Private Victory (Habits 1-3): Focus on personal mastery and independence.
1. Be Proactive
2. Begin with the End in Mind
3. Put First Things First
Public Victory (Habits 4-6): Build effective relationships and interdependence.
4. Think Win-Win
5. Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood
6. Synergize
Habit of Renewal (Habit 7): Maintain and enhance overall effectiveness.
7. Sharpen the Saw
8. Find Your Voice and Inspire Others to Find Theirs
1. you need the first 3 in order to be effective at 4 - 6
2. Developing these habits takes continuous effort
3. Facts have no meaning outside of their interpretation
Habit 5
4. Principles are timeless. Build a paradigm of principles. They're like a pair of glasses that you view the world through.
5. Experiences take on their quality based on your context and perceptions
For example, do you work late because you feel threatened? Because you're avoiding something? Or because you're extremely engaged? Because you're trying to save the world?
6. You are the programmer. Write the program. Create your mission statement.
The mission statement is not something that you can do overnight.
It may take weeks or months to create this. And you can modify it overtime.
7. Time management: urgent and important
First generation is checklist second generation calendars
Third generation is prioritization of the calendar based on values
Third generation introduces the concept of a daily planner
The fourth generation of time management is not to manage time, but to manage ourselves
Between urgent and important. When the phone rings, it’s urgent, but not important
Important has to do with results
This gives us the familiar quadrant of urgency versus importance
8. Quadrant two (important but not urgent) is the heart of effective personal management, where you are consistently addressing things that are important but not urgent so that they don’t ever become urgent and important
Quadrant two includes things like exercise, long-term planning, and relationship management. Stuff with a long-term payoff. Quadrant two is where the opportunity lies. But you need a high degree of proactivity to go after these quadrant two activities consistently. In the beginning, the only place to get time for quad two is to take them from quadrants three and four To say yes to something in quadrant two, you have to say no to something else Even when the urgent is good, it can prevent you from being your best.
Every one of the seven habits is in quadrant two
9. True effectiveness requires balance. At some point doing well in your career can override of other things but eventually a failed marriage or failed health will make it not worth it.
10. Don’t prioritize your schedules but schedule your priorities.
Do this in the context of a week. For example, if it is important for you to meditate put that on your schedule first and other things will flow around it. Otherwise you’re stuck in quadrant one chasing problems. Instead of using a roadmap of tight daily plans, use a Compass of looser weekly plans.
11. Make sure that you are using the correct map for the problem you are trying to solve
The author makes the analogy of a map, where if you're trying to find something in Chicago a detailed map of New York City is useless.
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