The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Book Review

Book – The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Review)

Author – Stephen R. Covey

Genre – Self-help Book

First Published in 1989.

One of the best and highly recommended book written on personal development and positive change for better life. I wanted to read this book for a very long time.

Thanks to one book a week pledge I am able to read many books like this one, which are in my read list and happy to share the review here.

In the beginning of the book, problems and challenges Author has described in personal, professional, family and social life covers many problems that we see or might have some of them ourselves.

About the Author –

Stephen R. Covey was an American educator, author, businessman, and keynote speaker. He was well known for this book among others book he has written like First thing first, The 8th Habit.

About The Book – 

The book contains 7 habits that has Inside-out approach to personal and interpersonal effectiveness. It goes way deeper than working on personality ethics like attitude, behavior, and communication skill that usually doesn’t give long-lasting result.

Dependence, Independence and Interdependence are three stages of life, which one must travel to reach happy fulfilling life.

Habit 1, 2 and 3 teaches improving self by recognizing our paradigms, shifting those paradigms and putting the first thing first.

Whereas habit 4, 5, and 6 takes person from independence to interdependence. Habit 7 is about renewing self (sharpening the saw) through taking our at least an hour for self.

Here are 7 habits in a nutshell

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HABIT 1 – BE PROACTIVE

• It is about being proactive than reactive, using our self-awareness to determine what drives our behavior, action and then deliberately decides our response rather stimulated by other’s opinion and social mirror.

• It is about taking control over our own choices. Between stimulus and response is our greatest power — the freedom to choose.

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HABIT 2 – BEGIN WITH END IN MIND

• Once we become self-aware of why we believe what we believe and what drives our daily behavior, we can start writing our own mission statement of life like how we want to be pursue our life and what we want to accomplish be it personal, profession, family, social, spiritual.

• If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to wrong wall faster.

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HABIT 3 – FIRST THING FIRST

• Once we identify our goals, purpose and what matters we have aligned our actions in way that allows us to progress in desired direction. This concept is explained in great detail with awesome techniques to get rights things done.

• One of them is dividing all we do in four quadrants – I) Urgent and Important II) Important but not Urgent III) Urgent but not Important and IV) not urgent not Important.

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HABIT 4 – THINK WIN WIN – PRINCIPLES OF INTERPERSONAL LEADERSHIP.

• This habit talks about our dealing with other people be it in our personal life or professional life. How we can come up with win-win solutions, so that relation between people involved nourishes.

• All other outcome like Win- Lose, Lose-Win, Lose-Lose, Win at any cost may give us our way but certainly it’s short term solution and will deteriorate relation in long term.

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HABIT 5 – SEEK FIRST TO UNDERSTAND, THAN TO BE UNDERSTOOD

• This is the most profound habit that one needs to develop. In fast paced life people barely listen to understand and empathize, rather they are drafting their response in mind while listening.

• Active listening helps in understanding other’s point of view and unless this is done, one will never have success in effective communication. This habit is explained well and techniques shared are awesome.

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HABIT 6 -SYNERGIZE

• This habit can work only once we have habit 4 and 5 inculcated well. If we have win-win as our intent and seek to understand rather than seeking to be understood first, we can often come up with third solutions which may not be initial solutions both have in mind.

• As both have respect to one other’s point of view they will often reach win-win solution and even if they conclude for no deal which is rare, they will walk our with respect and their integrity intact.

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HABIT 7 – SHARPEN THE SAW

This is the habit for protecting the best asset you got. Yourself. We must take our time to exercise, play (Physical), enhance our knowledge through reading, listening (Mental, emotional), Pray, meditate (Spiritual).

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I have also created video of few quotes from the book – Hope you like it. Please do subscribe to my You tube channel – Myread4change

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Conclusion –

There are books needs to be read once, there are books which can be read periodically and there are books which needs to used as working Manuel. The 7 habits of highly effective people fall under the 3rd category and I highly recommend this book at least once in two months and keep working on all 7 habits, until it becomes second nature.

Hope this article helped you gain insights as what to expect from the book. Read this one book, You will be glad you did.

You may download Free E-Book here. If you like this book, you may also like Do It Today by Darius Foroux

Please share your feedback/suggestion about this post in the comment below or if you have any questions. I will be glad to respond.

Wish you a wonderful life.. Thank you for Reading.

Muzammil