THE 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE by Stephen R. Covey

• First build upon a strong core of principles that are not open for continuous change; at the same time, be relentless in the quest for improvement and continuous self-renewal.
• If you want to achieve your highest aspirations and overcome your greatest challenges, identify and apply the principle or natural law that governs the results you seek.
• In fact, you will increasingly find that principled solutions stand in stark contrast to the common practices and thinking of our popular culture.
• Many of the great things in the history of our civilization have been achieved by the independent will of a determined soul.
• Share with your loved ones what you are learning. And most important, start applying what you are learning.
• Remember, to learn and not to do is really not to learn. To know and not to do is really not to know.
• what we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do.
• Each of us has many, many maps in our head, which can be divided into two main categories: maps of the way things are, or realities, and maps of the way things should be, or values. We interpret everything we experience through these mental maps. We seldom question their accuracy; we’re usually even unaware that we have them. We simply assume that the way we see things is the way they really are or the way they should be.
• Each of us tends to think we see things as they are, that we are objective. But this is not the case. We see the world, not as it is, but as we are—or, as we are conditioned to see it.
• Our paradigms, correct or incorrect, are the sources of our attitudes and behaviors, and ultimately our relationships with others.
• if we want to make significant, quantum change, we need to work on our basic paradigms.
• Paradigms are powerful because they create the lens through which we see the world.
• Principles are not practices. A practice is a specific activity or action.
• Principles are guidelines for human conduct that are proven to have enduring, permanent value. They’re fundamental.
• “A thousand-mile journey begins with the first step” and can only be taken one step at a time.
• Admission of ignorance is often the first step in our education.
• The way we see the problem is the problem.
• We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
• Our character, basically, is a composite of our habits.
• Habits are powerful factors in our lives. Because they are consistent, often unconscious patterns, they constantly, daily, express our character and produce our effectiveness… or ineffectiveness.
• Habits can be learned and unlearned.
• 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.
• Knowledge is the theoretical paradigm, the what to do and the why. Skill is the how to do. And desire is the motivation, the want to do. In order to make something a habit in our lives, we have to have all three.
• By working on knowledge, skill, and desire, we can break through to new levels of personal and interpersonal effectiveness as we break with old paradigms that may have been a source of pseudo-security for years.
• dependence is the paradigm of you—you take care of me; you come through for me; you didn’t come through; I blame you for the results.
• Independence is the paradigm of I—I can do it; I am responsible; I am self-reliant; I can choose.
• Interdependence is the paradigm of we—we can do it; we can cooperate; we can combine our talents and abilities and create something greater together.
• Dependent people need others to get what they want. Independent people can get what they want through their own effort. Interdependent people combine their own efforts with the efforts of others to achieve their greatest success.
• It’s easy to see that independence is much more mature than dependence. Independence is a major achievement in and of itself. But independence is not supreme.
• True independence of character empowers us to act rather than be acted upon.
• Interdependence is a choice only independent people can make. Dependent people cannot choose to become interdependent. They don’t have the character to do it; they don’t own enough of themselves.
• Private victories precede public victories.
• true effectiveness is a function of two things: what is produced (the golden eggs) and the producing asset or capacity to produce (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.
• Basically, there are three kinds of assets: physical, financial, and human.
• Our most important financial asset is our own capacity to earn.
• One of the immensely valuable aspects of any correct principle is that it is valid and applicable in a wide variety of circumstances.
• always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers.
• You can buy a person’s hand, but you can’t buy his heart. His heart is where his enthusiasm, his loyalty is. You can buy his back, but you can’t buy his brain. That’s where his creativity is, his ingenuity, his resourcefulness.
• A short-term bottom line is important, but it isn’t all-important.
• HABIT 1: BE PROACTIVE
• Self-awareness enables us to stand apart and examine even the way we “see” ourselves—our self-paradigm, the most fundamental paradigm of effectiveness.
• Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose.
• Within the freedom to choose are those endowments that make us uniquely human. In addition to self-awareness, we have imagination—the ability to create in our minds beyond our present reality. We have conscience—a deep inner awareness of right and wrong, of the principles that govern our behavior, and a sense of the degree to which our thoughts and actions are in harmony with them. And we have independent will—the ability to act based on our self-awareness, free of all other influences.
• But because of our unique human endowments, we can write new programs for ourselves totally apart from our instincts and training. This is why an animal’s capacity is relatively limited and man’s is unlimited.
• Our unique human endowments lift us above the animal world. The extent to which we exercise and develop these endowments empowers us to fulfill our uniquely human potential. Between stimulus and response is our greatest power—the freedom to choose.
• Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions.
• The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person.
• Reactive people are driven by feelings, by circumstances, by conditions, by their environment. Proactive people are driven by values—carefully thought about, selected and internalized values.
• It’s not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts us.
• what matters most is how we respond to what we experience in life.
• Our basic nature is to act, and not be acted upon. As well as enabling us to choose our response to particular circumstances, this empowers us to create circumstances.
• Taking initiative does not mean being pushy, obnoxious, or aggressive. It does mean recognizing our responsibility to make things happen.
• 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.
• A serious problem with reactive language is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
• Proactive people focus their efforts in the Circle of Influence. They work on the things they can do something about.
• Reactive people, on the other hand, focus their efforts in the Circle of Concern.
• Direct control problems are solved by working on our habits.
• Indirect control problems are solved by changing our methods of influence.
• No control problems involve taking the responsibility to change the line on the bottom on our face—to smile, to genuinely and peacefully accept these problems and learn to live with them, even though we don’t like them.
• Anytime we think the problem is “out there,” that thought is the problem. We empower what’s out there to control us.
• If I really want to improve my situation, I can work on the one thing over which I have control—myself.
• Sometimes the most proactive thing we can do is to be happy, just to genuinely smile.
• Happiness, like unhappiness, is a proactive choice.
• While we are free to choose our actions, we are not free to choose the consequences of those actions.
• We are free to choose our response in any situation, but in doing so, we choose the attendant consequence.
• The proactive approach to a mistake is to acknowledge it instantly, correct and learn from it.
• The power to make and keep commitments to ourselves is the essence of developing the basic habits of effectiveness. Knowledge, skill, and desire are all within our control.
• When you make a mistake, admit it, correct it, and learn from it—immediately.
• Work on things you have control over. Work on you.
• We are responsible for our own effectiveness, for our own happiness, and ultimately, I would say, for most of our circumstances.
• HABIT 2: BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND
• To begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination. It means to know where you’re going so that you better understand where you are now and so that the steps you take are always in the right direction.
• The extent to which you begin with the end in mind often determines whether or not you are able to create a successful enterprise.
• Leadership is not management.
• “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”
• Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.
• No management success can compensate for failure in leadership.
• The most effective way I know to begin with the end in mind is to develop a personal mission statement or philosophy or creed.
• The key to the ability to change is a changeless sense of who you are, what you are about and what you value.
• Security represents your sense of worth, your identity, your emotional anchorage, your self-esteem, your basic personal strength or lack of it.
• Guidance means your source of direction in life.
• Wisdom is your perspective on life, your sense of balance, your understanding of how the various parts and principles apply and relate to each other.
• Power is the faculty or capacity to act, the strength and potency to accomplish something.
• If our sense of emotional worth comes primarily from our marriage, then we become highly dependent upon that relationship.
• Inevitably, anytime we are too vulnerable we feel the need to protect ourselves from further wounds.
• Perhaps the best way to identify your own center is to look closely at your life-support factors.
• Most people are very much a function of a variety of influences that play upon their lives.
• By centering our lives on correct principles, we create a solid foundation for development of the four life-support factors.
• The principles don’t change; our understanding of them does.
• The personal power that comes from principle-centered living is the power of a self-aware, knowledgeable, proactive individual, unrestricted by the attitudes, behaviors, and actions of others or by many of the circumstances and environmental influences that limit other people.
• Our meaning comes from within.
• Writing or reviewing a mission statement changes you because it forces you to think through your priorities deeply, carefully, and to align your behavior with your beliefs.
• Our self-awareness empowers us to examine our own thoughts.
• A good affirmation has five basic ingredients: it’s personal, it’s positive, it’s present tense, it’s visual, and it’s emotional.
• Affirmation and visualization are forms of programming, and we must be certain that we do not submit ourselves to any programming that is not in harmony with our basic center or that comes from sources centered on money-making, self interest, or anything other than correct principles.
• Writing distills, crystallizes, and clarifies thought and helps break the whole into parts.
• An effective goal focuses primarily on results rather than activity.
• HABIT 3: PUT FIRST THINGS FIRST
• “The successful person has the habit of doing the things failures don’t like to do,”
• Organize and execute around priorities.
• As you can see, the two factors that define an activity are urgent and important. Urgent means it requires immediate attention.
• Importance, on the other hand, has to do with results. If something is important, it contributes to your mission, your values, your high priority goals.
• We must act to seize opportunity, to make things happen.
• Quadrant II is the heart of effective personal management. It deals with things that are not urgent, but are important.
• But you have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage—pleasantly, smilingly, nonapologetically—to say “no” to other things.
• The way you spend your time is a result of the way you see your time and the way you really see your priorities.
• Organizing on a weekly basis provides much greater balance and context than daily planning.
• The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.
• Again, you simply can’t think efficiency with people. You think effectiveness with people and efficiency with things.
• people are more important than things.
• the first person you need to consider in terms of effectiveness rather than efficiency is yourself.
• We accomplish all that we do through delegation—either to time or to other people. If we delegate to time, we think efficiency. If we delegate to other people, we think effectiveness.
• effectively delegating to others is perhaps the single most powerful high-leverage activity there is.
• the ability to delegate to others is the main difference between the roles of manager and independent producer,
• the key to effective management is delegation.
• There are basically two kinds of delegation: “gofer delegation” and “stewardship delegation.” Gofer delegation means “Go for this, go for that, do this, do that, and tell me when it’s done.” Most people who are producers have a gofer delegation paradigm.
• Stewardship delegation is focused on results instead of methods. It gives people a choice of method and makes them responsible for results.
• Trust is the highest form of human motivation.
• Effective delegation is perhaps the best indicator of effective management simply because it is so basic to both personal and organizational growth.
• Self-mastery and self-discipline are the foundation of good relationships with others.
• The most important ingredient we put into any relationship is not what we say or what we do, but what we are.
• Remember that quick fix is a mirage. Building and repairing relationships takes time.
• In relationships, the little things are the big things.
• One of the most important ways to manifest integrity is to be loyal to those who are not present.
• It takes a great deal of character strength to apologize quickly out of one’s heart rather than out of pity.
• HABIT 4: THINK WIN/WIN
• The basic task of leadership is to increase the standard of living and the quality of life for all stakeholders.
• So often the problem is in the system, not in the people.
• HABIT 5: SEEK FIRST TO UNDERSTAND, THEN TO BE UNDERSTOOD
• We have such a tendency to rush in, to fix things up with good advice. But we often fail to take the time to diagnose, to really, deeply understand the problem first.
• Seek first to understand, then to be understood. This principle is the key to effective interpersonal communication.
• Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.
• People want to be understood.
• The time you invest to deeply understand the people you love brings tremendous dividends in open communication.
• HABIT 6: SYNERGIZE
• What is synergy? Simply defined, it means that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
• HABIT 7: SHARPEN THE SAW
• This is the single most powerful investment we can ever make in life—investment in ourselves, in the only instrument we have with which to deal with life and to contribute.
• It is extremely valuable to train the mind to stand apart and examine its own program.
• There’s no better way to inform and expand your mind on a regular basis than to get into the habit of reading good literature.
• Writing is another powerful way to sharpen the mental saw.
• 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 Seven Habits and it’s completely within your Circle of Influence.