‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ by Steven Covey - my summary of the book (No ChatGPT used)

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Steven Covey

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I will cover the first few habits in some detail and will have to just skim over the others due to space constraints.

1.??? Habit 1 – Responsibility & the freedom to choose our response

This chapter begins with the remarkable story of Victor Frankl. He was a psychiatrist who lived in Germany in the 1930’s and because Frankl was Jewish he was imprisoned in the death camps. He witnessed his parents, brother and wife die. He was tortured and beaten, never knowing from day to day if he too would be killed.

One day naked and alone in a small room, he became aware of what he would later call ‘the last of the human freedoms’, the freedom the Nazi captors could not take away. They could beat him and control his physical environment but there was one thing that they could not manage and that was his freedom to decide how he would react to their treatment.

With his new found belief he became an inspiration to the prisoners and he helped others find meaning in their suffering.

?Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose.

?It’s not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts us.

?So if you’re feeling miserable and you’re blaming it on the government, your boss, your customers, the weather or whatever, remember that nobody else can make us feel that way except ourselves.

?Habit 2 – Begin with the end in mind

?Try this small visualisation exercise.

See yourself going into a funeral of a loved one. As you walk into the building notice the flowers and the music. You see faces of friends and family as you walk by.

As you walk to the front of the room and look into the casket you suddenly come face to face with …..yourself.

Ok, some people may find this exercise a little freaky but please stay with it. The purpose of this is to get people to look at their life and their various roles in life to see what’s important.

Back to the funeral service and you see that four people are going to speak about you.

Somebody from your family, partner, child, sister, brother etc.

One of your friends.

Somebody from work or profession.

Somebody from a community organisation or club.

What would you like each of these people to say about you?

What kind of father, brother, co-worker were you?

What contributions/achievements would you want to be remembered for?

This exercise is designed to get us thinking about our values. Values are a big theme running through this book.

Values are like a foundation in a house. Even in a storm the foundations stay strong. Good values can help shape our lives, our behaviour and our decisions.

All things are created twice – first in our mind and secondly in reality.

Personal mission statement – just like companies can have mission statements that describe what they stand for, so individuals can create personal mission statements.

I did this myself a number of years ago and found it very powerful.

Habit 3 – put first things first

As Goethe once famously said

‘Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least’.

?As Brian Tracy talk about in his great little book’ Eat that frog’, we must identify our single most important task and do that first thing every day.

?Stephen comes up with a great 4 quadrant time management tool which has important and not important on the left axis at the side and urgent and not urgent on the top. He asks people to take their typical daily tasks and place them in one of the 4 quadrants. As you can imagine most tasks end up in the urgent and important box or in the urgent and unimportant.

Covey’s point is that we all need to spend more time in the important, not urgent box. So if you have to learn more about optimising your website or get up to speed on social media, there is probably no deadline on those tasks so we keep putting them off.

?Learn to say NO. Too many people don’t or can’t which means they have less time for the important tasks.

?Habit 4 – think win-win

?Win/win means that we approach our business and personal relationships looking for an outcome where all parties are happy. In reality how often does this happen?

Are there times when we make sure that we win regardless of how the other person fares out?

In the current climate, many people are haggling for deals and trying to beat people down on price. That may seem fine short term but win-lose is not good long term.

Abundance or scarcity mentality – which one do you have?

For win-win to thrive, you must have an abundance mentality.

A person with a scarcity mentality thinks there is only so much pie to go around and if you get some they might lose out.

Whereas somebody with an abundance mentality thinks there is plenty to go around for everyone.

Stephen tells a great story about a real estate company he was working with. He went along to their annual awards where with much razzmatazz, they announced 40 winners from 800 staff. Stephen felt this was a win:lose situation with 760 people losing. He devised a new system where the focus was on everybody hitting their own target and the company matching their target. At the annual conference the following year, most of the 800 staff received awards. The most remarkable thing about this story was the sales figures of the 800 staff the second year. Most of these people hit sales figures equal to the top 40 from the previous year and the company saw a huge jump in their total sales figures.

Habit 5 – seek first to understand, then to be understood

?This involves us listening carefully and unfortunately many of us don’t really listen to understand the other person. Instead we are listening to reply, waiting for our chance to jump in with our thoughts.

Listening is a skill that can be learnt. We must listen without interruption and pause before replying.

We must endeavour to step into the shoes of the other person.

Many ancient communities had a peace pipe or some other instrument. Whoever had this instrument ‘had the floor’ so to speak and everybody else had to listen. Even if you wanted to speak you had to wait until the person speaking had finished.

Emotion is so important to understanding how another person is feeling. ‘How do you feel about that?’ is a great question to ask and can totally change our view on any situation.

Do you know the feeling you get when you’re talking to somebody and before you even finish, they jump in with their comments?

Or maybe somebody is talking to you and they say something and you’re dying to reply and you’re just waiting for them to finish so you can rush in with your opinion?

?In both cases, listening skills are not being used.

To understand another person, we must listen closely to what they say.

Listening to understand is very different from listening to reply – like the 2 examples above.

Stephen talks about ‘empathic listening’ which means tuning into somebody on all levels – physical and emotional.

Men are particularly guilty of rushing in with solutions. People often just want to talk and share what’s on their mind. They are looking for somebody to listen to them and don’t want somebody rushing in with solutions.

Habit 6 – Synergy

Synergy is everywhere around us in nature. If you plants 2 shrubs near each other, the roots join together and improve the quality of the soil so that both plants grow stronger that if they were planted separate.

1 + 1 = 3 – Synergy.

?Habit 7 – sharpen the saw

A short story sums up what this habit means.

A man in the forest was sawing down a tree with a blunt saw. He saws and saws (and saws and saws). Working feverishly but not getting very far. A passer-by suggests he take a break and sharpen his saw and gets the reply ‘I don’t have time for that’

Overall summary

Well I hope you enjoyed this summary as much as I enjoyed reading this book.

Steven’s messages about taking responsibility and choosing our response are powerful and can have a huge influence on our business and in our personal lives.

One powerful message

Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose.

Neil O’Brien

Are you working away feverishly and not taking time to sharpen your saw?