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The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Metadata

• Author: Stephen R. Covey;Sean Covey
• Full Title: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
• Category: #books

Highlights

• principles, not on mere techniques or momentary fads; (Location 151)
• To focus on technique is like cramming your way through school. You sometimes get by, perhaps even get good grades, but if you don’t pay the price day in and day out, you never achieve true mastery of the subjects you study or develop an educated mind. Did you ever consider how ridiculous it would be to try to cram on a farm—to forget to plant in the spring, play all summer, and then cram in the fall to bring in the harvest? The farm is a natural system. The price must be paid and the process followed. You always reap what you sow; there is no shortcut. (Location 477)
• I frequently use this perception demonstration in working with people and organizations because it yields so many deep insights into both personal and interpersonal effectiveness. It shows, first of all, how powerfully conditioning affects our perceptions, our paradigms. If ten seconds can have that kind of impact on the way we see things, what about the conditioning of a lifetime? The influences in our lives—family, school, church, work environment, friends, associates, and current social paradigms such as the Personality Ethic—all have made their silent unconscious impact on us and help shape our frame of reference, our paradigms, our maps. (Location 569)
• The more aware we are of our basic paradigms, maps, or assumptions, and the extent to which we have been influenced by our experience, the more we can take responsibility for those paradigms, examine them, test them against reality, listen to others, and be open to their perceptions, thereby getting a larger picture and a far more objective view. (Location 590)
• But whether they shift us in positive or negative directions, whether they are instantaneous or developmental, paradigm shifts move us from one way of seeing the world to another. And those shifts create powerful change. Our paradigms, correct or incorrect, are the sources of our attitudes and behaviors, and ultimately our relationships with others. (Location 613)
• Principles are not values. A gang of thieves can share values, but they are in violation of the fundamental principles we’re talking about. Principles are the territory. Values are maps. When we value correct principles, we have truth—a knowledge of things as they are. (Location 710)
• In all of life, there are sequential stages of growth and development. A child learns to turn over, to sit up, to crawl, and then to walk and run. Each step is important and each one takes time. No step can be skipped. (Location 732)
• If you don’t let a teacher know at what level you are—by asking a question, or revealing your ignorance—you will not learn or grow. You cannot pretend for long, for you will eventually be found out. (Location 747)
• Thoreau taught, “How can we remember our ignorance, which our growth requires, when we are using our knowledge all the time?” (Location 749)
• To relate effectively with a wife, a husband, children, friends, or working associates, we must learn to listen. And this requires emotional strength. Listening involves patience, openness, and the desire to understand—highly developed qualities of character. (Location 755)
• My experience has been that there are times to teach and times not to teach. When relationships are strained and the air charged with emotion, an attempt to teach is often perceived as a form of judgment and rejection. But to take the child alone, quietly, when the relationship is good and to discuss the teaching or the value seems to have much greater impact. (Location 799)
• But is it possible that my spouse isn’t the real problem? Could I be empowering my spouse’s weaknesses and making my life a function of the way I’m treated? (Location 840)
• Habits, too, have tremendous gravity pull—more than most people realize or would admit. Breaking deeply imbedded habitual tendencies such as procrastination, impatience, criticalness, or selfishness that violate basic principles of human effectiveness involves more than a little willpower and a few minor changes in our lives. “Liftoff” takes a tremendous effort, but once we break out of the gravity pull, our freedom takes on a whole new dimension. (Location 910)
• Happiness can be defined, in part at least, as the fruit of the desire and ability to sacrifice what we want now for what we want eventually. (Location 933)
• If you adopt a pattern of life that focuses on golden eggs and neglects the goose, you will soon be without the asset that produces golden eggs. On the other hand, if you only take care of the goose with no aim toward the golden eggs, you soon won’t have the wherewithal to feed yourself or the goose. Effectiveness lies in the balance—what I call the P/PC Balance. P stands for production of desired results, the golden eggs. PC stands for production capability, the ability or asset that produces the golden eggs. (Location 1029)
• “That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly. It is dearness only which gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price on its goods.” (Location 1177)
• In the midst of the most degrading circumstances imaginable, Frankl used the human endowment of self-awareness to discover a fundamental principle about the nature of man: Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose. (Location 1371)
• It means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. (Location 1392)
• Of course, things can hurt us physically or economically and can cause sorrow. But our character, our basic identity, does not have to be hurt at all. In fact, our most difficult experiences become the crucibles that forge our character and develop the internal powers, the freedom to handle difficult circumstances in the future and to inspire others to do so as well. (Location 1430)
• Viktor Frankl suggests that there are three central values in life—the experiential, or that which happens to us; the creative, or that which we bring into existence; and the attitudinal, or our response in difficult circumstances such as terminal illness. (Location 1453)
• Many people wait for something to happen or someone to take care of them. But people who end up with the good jobs are the proactive ones who are solutions to problems, not problems themselves, who seize the initiative to do whatever is necessary, consistent with correct principles, to get the job done. (Location 1471)
• The language of reactive people absolves them of responsibility. “That’s me. That’s just the way I am.” I am determined. There’s nothing I can do about it. “He makes me so mad!” I’m not responsible. My emotional life is governed by something outside my control. “I can’t do that. I just don’t have the time.” Something outside me—limited time—is controlling me. “If only my wife were more patient.” Someone else’s behavior is limiting my effectiveness. “I have to do it.” Circumstances or other people are forcing me to do what I do. I’m not free to choose my own actions. REACTIVE LANGUAGE PROACTIVE LANGUAGE There’s nothing I can do. Let’s look at our alternatives. That’s just the way I am. I can choose a different approach. He makes me so mad. I control my own feelings. They won’t allow that. I can create an effective presentation. I have to do that. I will choose an appropriate response. I can’t. I choose. I must. I prefer. If only. I will. (Location 1516)
• That language comes from a basic paradigm of determinism. And the whole spirit of it is the transfer of responsibility. I am not responsible, not able to choose my response. (Location 1535)
• Whether we are aware of it or not, whether we are in control of it or not, there is a first creation to every part of our lives. We are either the second creation of our own proactive design, or we are the second creation of other people’s agendas, of circumstances, or of past habits. (Location 1979)
• by our own experience. Admittedly, we’re not omniscient. (Location 2407)
• There are a number of techniques using your imagination that can put you in touch with your values. But the net effect of every one I have ever used is the same. When people seriously undertake to identify what really matters most to them in their lives, what they really want to be and to do, they become very reverent. They start to think in larger terms than today and tomorrow. Visualization (Location 2581)
• We discovered that the nature of the visualization is very important. If you visualize the wrong thing, you’ll produce the wrong thing. (Location 2612)
• One of the main things his research showed was that almost all of the world-class athletes and other peak performers are visualizers. They see it; they feel it; they experience it before they actually do it. They begin with the end in mind. (Location 2617)
• After you identify your various roles, then you can think about the long-term goals you want to accomplish in each of those roles. (Location 2671)
• As I told the manager of the first hotel I visited, I know a lot of companies with impressive mission statements. But there is a real difference, all the difference in the world, in the effectiveness of a mission statement created by everyone involved in the organization and one written by a few top executives behind a mahogany wall. (Location 2778)
• What one thing could you do (something you aren’t doing now) that, if you did it on a regular basis, would make a tremendous positive difference in your personal life? (Location 2972)
  • Note: Be more proactive in the sense of organizing more high quality evenings. High quality weekend activities such as sporty weekeeneds for example climbing Hiking and others . Alsso be mkore proactive in conversations. Be mkore myself and keep my opinion
• What one thing in your business or professional life would bring similar results? (Location 2973)
  • Note: Be more organized. Have a good plan and stick to it with appropriate and necessary adaptions. Learn to defendd the plan against floris. Hire experts that do what I do slowly in much shorter time. get over my psychological barrier to OneSec. Learner spirit. Take the proper time to fully engulf a topic that needs to bee learned. Put it on an organized learning list and repeat once a while. But don't forget it anymore. Often I cannot defend against flokris because the facts are missing
• In addition to self-awareness, imagination, and conscience, it is the fourth human endowment—independent will—that really makes effective self-management possible. It is the ability to make decisions and choices and to act in accordance with them. It is the ability to act rather than to be acted upon, to proactively carry out the program we have developed through the other three endowments. (Location 2999)
• Rather than focusing on things and time, fourth-generation expectations focus on preserving and enhancing relationships and on accomplishing results—in short, on maintaining the P/PC Balance. (Location 3048)
• (Location 3062)
• if you were to fault yourself in one of three areas, which would it be: 1) the inability to prioritize; 2) the inability or desire to organize around those priorities; or 3) the lack of discipline to execute around them, to stay with your priorities and organization? Most people say their main fault is a lack of discipline. On deeper thought, I believe that is not the case. The basic problem is that their priorities have not become deeply planted in their hearts and minds. They haven’t really internalized Habit 2. (Location 3150)
• In the words of the architectural maxim, form follows function. Likewise, management follows leadership. The way you spend your time is a result of the way you see your time and the way you really see your priorities. If your priorities grow out of a principle center and a personal mission, if they are deeply planted in your heart and in your mind, you will see Quadrant II as a natural, exciting place to invest your time. (Location 3163)
• It’s almost impossible to say “no” to the popularity of Quadrant III or to the pleasure of escape to Quadrant IV if you don’t have a bigger “yes” burning inside. Only when you have the self-awareness to examine your program—and the imagination and conscience to create a new, unique, principle-centered program to which you can say “yes”—only then will you have sufficient independent willpower to say “no,” with a genuine smile, to the unimportant. (Location 3166)
• Many people seem to think that success in one area can compensate for failure in other areas of life. But can it really? Perhaps it can for a limited time in some areas. But can success in your profession compensate for a broken marriage, ruined health, or weakness in personal character? True effectiveness requires balance, and your tool needs to help you create and maintain it. (Location 3214)
  • Note: Absolutely This resonantes to 100p with me
• DESIRED RESULTS. Create a clear, mutual understanding of what needs to be accomplished, focusing on what, not how; results, not methods. Spend time. Be patient. Visualize the desired result. Have the person see it, describe it, make out a quality statement of what the results will look like, and by when they will be accomplished. (Location 3407)
  • Note: Effective delegation
• If you know the failure paths of the job, identify them. Be honest and open—tell a person where the quicksand is and where the wild animals are. You don’t want to have to reinvent the wheel every day. Let people learn from your mistakes or the mistakes of others. Point out the potential failure paths, what not to do, but don’t tell them what to do. Keep the responsibility for results with them—to do whatever is necessary within the guidelines. (Location 3415)
• It doesn’t help that busyness has become a status symbol, according to research by professors Silvia Bellezza, Neeru Paharia, and Anat Keinan. Throughout history, status has been measured by how much leisure time you have.I Not anymore. As author Brigid Schulte writes, “Unlike a century ago, when Americans showed their status in leisure time, busyness has become the new badge of honor. So even as we bemoan workplaces where everyone is busy and no one is productive, busyness has actually become the way to signal dedication to the job and leadership potential. One reason for this is that, while productivity is relatively easy to measure on a factory floor, or on the farm, we have yet to develop good metrics for measuring the productivity of knowledge workers. So we largely rely on hours worked and face time in the office as markers for effort, and with the advent of technology and the ability to work remotely, being connected and responsive at all hours is the new face time.”II (Location 3583)
• The key to saying No is to have a deeper Yes burning inside of you. Clarify the few things you do well, and then start saying No to everything else. Remember, the enemy of the best is the good. In the words of Emerson, “The crime which bankrupts men and nations is turning aside from one’s main purpose to serve a job here or there.” (Location 3620)
• We can often live for years with the chronic pain of our lack of vision, leadership, or management in our personal lives. We feel vaguely uneasy and uncomfortable and occasionally take steps to ease the pain, at least for a time. Because the pain is chronic, we get used to it, we learn to live with it. But when we have problems in our interactions with other people, we’re very aware of acute pain—it’s often intense, and we want it to go away. (Location 3731)
  • Note: Do I have that with OneSec?
• Our tendency is to project out of our own autobiographies what we think other people want or need. We project our intentions on the behavior of others. We interpret what constitutes a deposit based on our own needs and desires, either now or when we were at a similar age or stage in life. If they don’t interpret our effort as a deposit, our tendency is to take it as a rejection of our well-intentioned effort and to give up. (Location 3811)
• Suppose you and I were talking alone, and we were criticizing our supervisor in a way that we would not dare to do if he were present. Now, what will happen when you and I have a falling-out? You know I’m going to be discussing your weaknesses with someone else. That’s what you and I did behind our supervisor’s back. You know my nature. I’ll sweet-talk you to your face and bad-mouth you behind your back. You’ve seen me do it. That’s the essence of duplicity. Does that build a reserve of trust in my account with you? (Location 3888)
• Integrity in an interdependent reality is simply this: you treat everyone by the same set of principles. As you do, people will come to trust you. They may not at first appreciate the honest confrontational experiences such integrity might generate. Confrontation takes considerable courage, and many people would prefer to take the course of least resistance, belittling and criticizing, betraying confidences, or participating in gossip about others behind their backs. But in the long run, people will trust and respect you if you are honest and open and kind with them. (Location 3900)
• Dag Hammarskjöld, past secretary-general of the United Nations, once made a profound, far-reaching statement: “It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses.” (Location 3979)
• P PROBLEMS ARE PC OPPORTUNITIES This experience also taught me another powerful paradigm of interdependence. It deals with the way in which we see problems. I had lived for months trying to avoid the problem, seeing it as a source of irritation, a stumbling block, and wishing it would somehow go away. But, as it turned out, the very problem created the opportunity to build a deep relationship that empowered us to work together as a strong, complementary team. I suggest that in an interdependent situation, every P problem is a PC opportunity—a chance to build the Emotional Bank Accounts that significantly affect interdependent production. (Location 4008)
• 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. (Location 4017)
• The academic world reinforces Win/Lose scripting. The “normal distribution curve” basically says that you got an “A” because someone else got a “C.” It interprets an individual’s value by comparing him or her to everyone else. No recognition is given to intrinsic value; everyone is extrinsically defined. (Location 4100)
  • Note: What is intrinsic value? How is it defined?
• “Who’s winning in your marriage?” is a ridiculous question. If both people aren’t winning, both are losing. (Location 4118)
• My short-term Win will really be a long-term Lose if I don’t get your repeat business. So an interdependent Win/Lose is really Lose/Lose in the long run. (Location 4169)
• Experience shows that it is often better in setting up a family business or a business between friends to acknowledge the possibility of No Deal downstream and to establish some kind of buy/sell agreement so that the business can prosper without permanently damaging the relationship. (Location 4241)
• He taught the finest, simplest, most practical, yet profound, definition of emotional maturity I’ve ever come across—“the ability to express one’s own feelings and convictions balanced with consideration for the thoughts and feelings of others.” (Location 4270)
• Many people think in dichotomies, in either/or terms. They think if you’re nice, you’re not tough. But Win/Win is nice… and tough. It’s twice as tough as Win/Lose. To go for Win/Win, you not only have to be nice, you have to be courageous. You not only have to be empathic, you have to be confident. You not only have to be considerate and sensitive, you have to be brave. To do that, to achieve that balance between courage and consideration, is the essence of real maturity and is fundamental to Win/Win. (Location 4284)
• When you’re dealing with a person who is coming from a paradigm of Win/Lose, the relationship is still the key. The place to focus is on your Circle of Influence. You make deposits into the Emotional Bank Account through genuine courtesy, respect, and appreciation for that person and for the other point of view. You stay longer in the communication process. You listen more, you listen in greater depth. You express yourself with greater courage. You aren’t reactive. You go deeper inside yourself for strength of character to be proactive. You keep hammering it out until the other person begins to realize that you genuinely want the resolution to be a real win for both of you. That very process is a tremendous deposit in the Emotional Bank Account. (Location 4343)
• There are basically four kinds of consequences (rewards and penalties) that management or parents can control—financial, psychic, opportunity, and responsibility. Financial consequences include such things as income, stock options, allowances, or penalties. Psychic or psychological consequences include recognition, approval, respect, credibility, or the loss of them. Unless people are in a survival mode, psychic compensation is often more motivating than financial compensation. Opportunity includes training, development, perks, and other benefits. Responsibility has to do with scope and authority, either of which can be enlarged or diminished. Win/Win agreements specify consequences in one or more of those areas and the people involved know it up front. So you don’t play games. Everything is clear from the beginning. (Location 4458)
• First, see the problem from the other point of view. Really seek to understand and to give expression to the needs and concerns of the other party as well as or better than they can themselves. Second, identify the key issues and concerns (not positions) involved. Third, determine what results would constitute a fully acceptable solution. And fourth, identify possible new options to achieve those results. (Location 4560)
• “Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.… It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest.” (Location 4649)
• Frustration is the feeling; school is the content. You’re using both sides of your brain to understand both sides of his communication. (Location 4953)
• The essence of synergy is to value differences—to respect them, to build on strengths, to compensate for weaknesses. (Location 5319)
• And unless people have a high tolerance for ambiguity and get their security from integrity to principles and inner values, they find it unnerving and unpleasant to be involved in highly creative enterprises. Their need for structure, certainty, and predictability is too high. SYNERGY (Location 5344)
• Insecure people think that all reality should be amenable to their paradigms. They have a high need to clone others, to mold them over into their own thinking. They don’t realize that the very strength of the relationship is in having another point of view. Sameness is not oneness; uniformity is not unity. Unity, or oneness, is complementariness, not sameness. Sameness is uncreative… and boring. The essence of synergy is to value the differences. (Location 5516)
• You may really want to change that level. You may want to create a climate that is more positive, more respectful, more open and trusting. Your logical reasons for doing that are the driving forces that act to raise the level. But increasing those driving forces is not enough. Your efforts are opposed by restraining forces—by the competitive spirit between children in the family, by the different scripting of home life you and your spouse have brought to the relationship, by habits that have developed in the family, by work or other demands on your time and energies. Increasing the driving forces may bring results—for a while. But as long as the restraining forces are there, it becomes increasingly harder. It’s like pushing against a spring: the harder you push, the harder it is to push until the force of the spring suddenly thrusts the level back down. (Location 5611)
• You can sidestep negative energy; you can look for the good in others and utilize that good, as different as it may be, to improve your point of view and to enlarge your perspective. (Location 5685)
• You can value the difference in other people. When someone disagrees with you, you can say, “Good! You see it differently.” You don’t have to agree with them; you can simply affirm them. And you can seek to understand. (Location 5687)
• There’s no other way you could spend an hour that would begin to compare with the Daily Private Victory in terms of value and results. It will affect every decision, every relationship. It will greatly improve the quality, the effectiveness, of every other hour of the day, including the depth and restfulness of your sleep. It will build the long-term physical, spiritual, and mental strength to enable you to handle difficult challenges in life. In the words of Phillips Brooks: Some day, in the years to come, you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here, now… Now it is being decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a steady, long continued process. (Location 6011)
• The Daily Private Victory—a minimum of one hour a day in renewal of the physical, spiritual, and mental dimensions—is the key to the development of the 7 Habits and it’s completely within your Circle of Influence. It is the Quadrant II focus time necessary to integrate these habits into your life, to become principle-centered. (Location 6153)
• So much of our happiness depends on the quality of our relationships. You may think you don’t have time to exercise, go to lunch with a friend, read a book, write in your journal, attend that conference, take a break, or go on a family vacation. In reality, you don’t have time not to. (Location 6286)
• My contemplation of life and human nature in that secluded place had taught me that he who cannot change the very fabric of his thought will never be able to change reality, and will never, therefore, make any progress. (Location 6452)