Created

Apr 1, 2023 6:37 AM

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⭐️Key Takeaways

Character ethic: There are two ways to strive for improvements in life: the personality ethic, which involves working on skills necessary for desired behaviour, and the character ethic, which involves working on fundamental habits and belief systems that form one's view of the world. Working on one's character is the optimal solution for lasting personal growth.

Principle based values: To make lasting changes to our characters and behaviours, it is important to recognise and shift our paradigms, or subjective ways of perceiving and understanding the world. Paradigms aligned with larger, universal principles like fairness, honesty, and integrity are the most effective, the seven habits outlined in the book are designed to help readers attain this kind of principle-based paradigm.

Habit 1: Be Proactive and Take Control of Your Own Fate

Humans have the ability to reflect on stimuli and choose how to respond
Proactive people make conscious choices about their behavior and assume responsibility for their own lives
Proactivity can be a profoundly powerful habit and it even works in the most extreme circumstances

Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind

It's crucial to have the desired end firmly in mind before you start any task
Visualising the desired outcome before beginning will lead to better execution and better results
Write a personal mission statement to define your own creed, what kind of person you want to be, what you hope to achieve in your life, as well as the basic values and principles underlying these goals.

Habit 3: Put First Things First

Put first things first by rigorously prioritising everything you do so that the important things are always taken care of first
Categorise all your tasks according to two dimensions: urgency and importance ()
Identify a quadrant two activity that you've been neglecting and commit to doing more of it

Habit 4: Think Win-Win

Most people's world views are shaped by a strong win-lose paradigm
The major disadvantage of the win-lose mentality is that when two people of this mentality come up against each other, the situation usually becomes a lose-lose one
It's necessary to keep negotiating and communicating until a solution is found that suits all parties

Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood

It's important to practice empathic listening
Listen with the intent to understand, not just to reply
Use reflective listening, summarising, and clarifying to better understand the speaker’s perspective

Habit 6: Synergise

Synergise by working in a team and making use of the strengths of each person
By working together and combining efforts, the team can accomplish more than the sum of individual efforts
Synergy requires communication, trust, and respect

Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw

Sharpen the saw by taking care of your physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual needs
It's important to take breaks and engage in activities that help you relax and rejuvenate
Continuous learning and improvement is also necessary to keep growing and developing

Introduction:

Adopting the habits that set apart highly effective individuals can significantly improve your personal and professional life. Whether you're seeking higher productivity at work, or aspiring to be a more loving and devoted partner, the key lies in changing yourself first.

We are, in essence, creatures of habit. Our habits extensively shape our actions and our identity. They influence our character traits and guide our behavior.

So, what are the habits that can contribute to your effectiveness? Steven Covey offers an incremental and integrated program aimed at enhancing your personal and professional effectiveness.

Character! not just Behaviour

To achieve enduring change, it's crucial to focus on your character, not merely your behavior.

When Stephen Covey initiated his journey to comprehend the essence of success, he delved into approximately 200 years of literature on the subject, beginning from 1776.

From this thorough exploration, he deduced that there are typically two paths to pursue for self-improvement:

If you want to enhance your behavior, for example, improve your relationships, you might focus on acquiring skills such as communication or body language techniques. This approach is known as the personality ethic. It gained popularity in the 1920s and might seem like a practical path for growth. However, it's just a shortcut. The personality ethic allows you to bypass the deeper work on fundamental character traits that might be holding you back, suggesting that mastering a simple technique will solve all your problems. Regrettably, this promise often falls short, and rarely leads to enduring personal growth.
Working on one's character involves focusing on the fundamental habits and belief systems that shape our worldview. Only behaviours that are deeply rooted in our character can stand the test of time, as our true character eventually reveals itself. This is the essence of the 'character ethic', which places emphasis on values such as courage, integrity, and adherence to the Golden Rule. This approach to success was predominant prior to the 1920s, as evident in the writings of influential figures like Benjamin Franklin.

If you truly desire change, it must start from within. For instance, if your aim is to cultivate a joyful marriage, the first step is to become a more positive person. It's not about merely learning a handful of techniques that could make you more likable. The real transformation comes from personal growth and character development.

Principle based Values

Align your way of seeing the world with basic universal principles

If you've ever tried to navigate the streets of a foreign city, you know that a map is useful.

But when you navigate the world around you, instead of a map with streets and addresses, you use your paradigms to guide you. A paradigm is the subjective way each of us perceives and understands the world.

After all no one is really an objective observer. Everything we understand about the world is tinted by our own paradigms. For instance, a person with a negative paradigm will perceive getting lost in an unknown city is a frustrating waste of time, while someone with a more positive paradigm might see it as an unexpected adventure.

Since our paradigms are at the core of our characters shifting our paradigms is the key to making lasting changes. Only in this way can we change our subjective realities – and, with them, our characters and behaviors. This is why you need to recognize and monitor your own paradigms; if you don't, you won't know which ones are holding you back.

The author experienced a profound paradigm shift once in the subway in New York. It was a Sunday morning and the subway car was very peaceful; people were mostly reading or resting with their eyes closed.

Then a man entered the car with his children immediately the scene changed: the children began shouting and throwing things, disturbing everyone in the car. Meanwhile the father just sat down and closed his eyes.

The author was so irritated by the disturbance and the mans seeming indifference that he asked him to control his children. Softly, the man answered that he probably should, but that the children's mother had died a mere hour earlier, and they were all in shock.

Of course, the author's paradigm shifted instantaneously to one of profound compassion and a desire to help. Through not all paradigm shifts are this fast, each one can be just as powerful.

So which paradigm should you strive for?

The most effective for the ones that aligned with larger, universal principles, like fairness honesty and integrity. Since the majority of people agree that these principles are good, we can see them as permanent, natural laws. Therefore, the more accurately your map of paradigms reflects the landscape of natural principles, the more realistic your view and the better your chances of success in attaining lasting change.

Attaining this kind of principle-based paradigm is exactly what the seven habits are all about

Habit 1: be proactive and take control of your own fate.

What distinguishes humans from animals? one crucial difference is that animals are slaves to external stimuli, and can only react to those stimuli in the pre-programmed way that is their nature.

We humans, in contrast, can reflect on a stimulus before responding to it and we can even reprogram ourselves to responding to it a specific, desirable way.

This means that instead of just reacting to the world around us we have the ability to proactively influence it. But even though we all have this capacity for proactivity, many people still choose to be reactive and allow external circumstances to dictate their behavior and emotions.

For example, they may be in a crummy mood if it's rainy outside or if other people have treated them poorly. You can also hear it in the way such people speak phrases like “it wasn't my fault” or “it's out of my hands” are extremely common.

People who are proactive on the other hand make their own weather. They assume responsibility for their own lives and make conscious choices about their behavior. They say things like ‘I've decided to’ or ‘let's try to find a solution to this problem’.

Another way to understand the difference between the two attitudes is to imagine two concentric circles. The outer circle is your circle of concern, representing all the things you're concerned about, ranging from the electricity bill to the threat of nuclear war. Inside this circle is the smaller circle of influence, which represents all the things you can actually do something about.

Proactive people focus on their circles of influence, choosing to work on the things within their control. This results in the expansion of their circles of influence.

Meanwhile, reactive people focus on their circles of concern fretting over things they can't alter. This results in their circles of influence shrinking.

Proactivity can be a profoundly powerful habit. It even works in the most extreme circumstances consider Viktor Frankel who during World War Two was imprisoned in multiple German concentration camps. In the midst of this misery, he decided that although his guards controlled everything about his environment, he was still free to choose how he responded to his circumstances. Though suffering terribly, he could imagine himself in future happier days teaching his students what he had learned in the camp. His freedom existed in the small gap between the outside stimuli he faced and his response to it. No one could take away this last freedom and he nurtured it until like a tiny spark that blazes into a roaring fire, it inspired those around him, including some of the guards.

Similarly, you too have the power to decide what happens in the gap between a stimulus and your response. Thus, you can change your behavior and your emotions. To put this into practice commit to a 30 day proactivity challenge: whether at home or at work whenever you catch yourself blaming someone or something external for a problem you face, remind yourself that the root cause is your reaction to the problem. Focus on finding solutions instead of accusing others. Exercise the tiny freedom you have before you respond, and you'll find your capacity for proactivity flourishing.

Habit 2: Begin with the end in mind

Whenever you perform an action you're actually performing it twice, first in your mind when you imagine it and then physically when you do it. For example, if you build a house you'll first visualize what kind of house you want, making plans for the layout in the rooms, in the garden, all before a single brick is laid. If you didn't take the time to do this, the construction itself would likely prove very chaotic and expensive.

Without a plan to follow there will no doubt be costly missteps like forgetting to leave room for stairs leading from the ground floor to the second. That's why it's crucial to have the desired end firmly in mind before you start any task. The more exact and realistic the mental picture of the action is the better its execution will be and hence the better the results.

This kind of visual anticipation works in all possible situations most competitive sprinters, for example, are well practiced in visualizing how they will Bolt from the starting block, complete a perfect race and finish in first place. So whether it work or at home take the time required for visualization. As the saying goes better to ask twice than to lose your way once. Is much more productive to spend time anticipating in action and visualizing the desired outcome than just plowing hastily on, possibly in the wrong direction. To get started you could think about one of your upcoming projects and write down exactly what results you desire and what steps you will take to attain those results (could use a path -goal analysis).

But beginning with the end in mind isn't just important for individual projects. You should also have a clear view of your larger life goals, a continuation of the second habit, writing a personal mission statement and integrating it into your daily life.

Funeral Visualization Exercise

Here's a small mental exercise, imagine that it's three years in the future and sadly enough you've passed away. Take a moment to visualize your own funeral. Imagine your loved ones, your partner, your best friend, maybe your dearest colleagues will be giving eulogies. Now ask yourself what you'd like them to say, what sort of person do you want to be remembered as? for what do you want to be remembered?

Unfortunately, many people spend their time working toward goals that don't really matter to them, because they never stopped to define them properly. In short, they fail to understand the difference between being efficient and being effective. Being efficient means getting the maximum amount done in the shortest amount of time but this is pointless if you don't know what you're striving for and why you're doing it.

It's a bit like climbing a ladder that’s laid against the wrong wall. You're progressing but in the wrong direction. Being effective, on the other hand, means having your ladder on the right wall, that is knowing what your destination in life. Effective people don't just thoughtlessly pursue things like money and fame, they focus on what's important to them, everything else is a waste.

Create a Personal Mission Statement

So how can you clarify your destination in life? One useful method is to ask yourself those aforementioned funeral questions and then use your answers as a basis for writing a personal mission statement - a document where you define your own Creed - what kind of person you want to be, what you hope to achieve in your life, as well as the basic values and principles underlying these goals.

The mission statement is your personal constitution, an established standard by which everything else can be measured and valued. Having such a compass gives you a sense of direction and security and it enables you to at least try to align all your actions with it.

Some thoughts that could be included in a person's mission statement might be;

I value my work and family equally and will seek to balance my time spent on them
I value a just and fair society and will strive to make my voice heard in political decisions
I will be proactive in pursuing my life goals and will not simply be swept along by circumstances
….

This is a foundational document in your life, you can't just bang it out in one night. It will require deep introspection in several rewrites before you get it right and even then it should be reviewed occasionally.

Habit 3: Put First things First

Now that you have a mission, how can you proactively take charge and make it into a reality? Simple, by living it day in and day out of course! In the midst of your everyday hassles, roles and relationships, this can be challenging, and it demands good time management skills. Unfortunately, most time management techniques focus on increasing efficiency not on improving effectiveness, but the good news is that you don't really need complicated techniques.

Most of the time it's good enough to remember the simple Maxim: Put First things first. This means rigorously prioritizing everything you do so that the important things are always taken care of first. While everything else is put aside then dealt with or delegated later.

Identify what is important

But how can you tell which things are important? A good place to start is by categorizing all your tasks according to two dimensions: urgency and importance. This gives you a two by two matrix with four quadrants.

DO: tasks that are important and urgent, like crises that need to be dealt with right away.

PLAN: tasks that are important but not urgent, for example writing your mission statement, building important relationships and planning for the future.

DELEGATE: tasks that are urgent but not important like the phone ringing while you're working on something else

ELIMINATE: tasks that are neither important nor urgent, pure waste of time.

In other words of these, the most important quadrant to focus on is number 2 (PLAN). These actions are the ones that will have an enormously positive impact on your life and when you work enough in quadrant two, you'll find far fewer crises emerging in quadrant one.

Unfortunately, many people don't understand the importance of quadrant 2. Working with a group of shopping center managers , Covey, found that although they knew that building relationships with store owners was the most positively impactful thing they could do, they still spent less than 5% of their time doing it. Instead they were constantly busy dealing with quadrant one (DO) issues like reports, calls and interruptions. Covey encouraged they start spending a third of their time with the store owners and the effect was enormous, both satisfaction and lease revenue shot up. (use the wheel of life/work tool here)

A good first step in implementing this habit in your life is to identify a quadrant two activity that you've been neglecting. One that would have a significant impact on your life if you did it well and then commit in writing to doing more of it.

Habit 4: Think Win-Win

When you interact with others, what kind of outcome do you usually look for? Most people’s world views are shaped by a strong win-lose paradigm. This means they see any interaction with others, whether at work or in their personal lives as a competition, where they need to fight the other person for the bigger slice of the pie. However, most situations in life don't need to be competitions.

There is usually enough pie for everyone, and it is far better when all parties work toward a win-win situation that is beneficial for everyone, rather than fighting for a win-lose outcome. The major disadvantage of the win-lose mentality is that when two people of this mentality come up against each other, the situation usually becomes a lose-lose one, after a bitter fight both parties end up losing.

Meanwhile the dog gets the entire pie which was knocked to the floor during the argument. Furthermore, it is impossible for a long-term positive relationship to form between two people who are constantly in competition with each other. For example, if your company sells services to a customer and you argue for a higher price with a strong win-lose mindset, you may succeed in increasing the value of the deal a little bit, but the customer will probably prefer to take his business elsewhere the next time, so that in the long run you lose.

If you think win-win you'll find yourself building lots of positive relationships because each interaction strengthens the relationship rather than eroding it in the previous example. If you'd instead sought a mutually satisfactory deal the customer would probably remember that you'd been fair and he or she would come back again the next time, thereby increasing your profits in the long run. So it's necessary to keep negotiating and communicating until a solution is found that suits all parties. This is not an easy task it requires both sensitivity and patience, but the reward is a lasting positive relationship and the creation of mutual trust from which all parties can profit.

Win-Win Exercise

A good exercise to start with is to think of an important relationship you have where you'd like to develop a win-win mentality. Now put yourself in the shoes of the other party and write down what you believe would constitute wins for him. Then think about what results would be wins for you. Finally, approach the other party and ask if he'd be willing to try to find a mutually satisfactory agreement.

Emotional bank accounts

Forming stable relationships with others means investing in emotional bank accounts. A relationship with another person is kind of like an emotional bank account. By putting time, effort and goodwill into it the balance of the account grows, reflecting the increasing trust between the two parties.

A healthy balance in your account means that both parties are flexible and any miscommunications are quickly sorted out. If on the other hand the balance is 0 there's no flexibility in their relationship. It’s like a minefield, every word has to be carefully chosen to avoid explosive conflict.

So how can you grow your balance? A payment could be, for example, finding a win-win solution, sticking to promises you've made or really listening empathetically to another person. A withdrawal, on the other hand, would be fighting for a win-lose solution, breaking a promise or only halfheartedly listening to the other person.

To build strong long-lasting relationships there are several major deposits you could make:

always keep promises
be explicit about what you expect of the other person
be courteous and sensitive even in small matters
maintaining the utmost personal integrity - being loyal to those who are not present, never badmouthing them or revealing what they've told you in confidence (proves you can be trusted).
Most important: really trying to understand other people, because this deposit allows you to discover what's important to them, what their deposits are.

A friend of the author understood the importance of this kind of deposit. Although he wasn't a fan of baseball at all he, took his son on a road trip one summer to see every Major League team play. It took six weeks and was very expensive, but it also strengthened their relationship a great deal. When asked if he liked baseball that much, the friend said: “no but I like my son that much”.

If you do happen to make a withdrawal from the account, pluck up the courage to apologize sincerely. It takes strength of character to do so and people are usually more than happy to forgive a repentant Sinner.

Habit 5: Seek first to understand, then to be understood

Imagine walking into a doctor's office and having the doctor listen absentmindedly to the first few seconds of your description of your ailment, before announcing “I've heard enough, im handing you a prescription”. Or what if an optician gave you his own glasses, without bothering to check your eyesight claiming that since he can see fine with them they should work for you too. You probably wouldn't put much trust in their advice.

Although these examples sound surreal, we actually often behave very similarly in everyday life, particularly when talking to others. We don't really listen to what they have to say and instead project our own situations onto them, coming up with quick solutions that we can prescribe to them. In general, such advice is seldom welcome since people usually only trust someone's judgement if they feel their situations have been fully understood.

So, if you want to be respected as a listener and a provider of advice you need to develop the skill of empathic listening. This necessitates a change of paradigm from:

“I'm listening so that I can provide an answer”

to:

“I'm listening so that I can really understand the person in front of me”.

Empathic listening means trying to get inside the other person's frame of reference so you can understand him both intellectually and emotionally. According to experts in communication the words we say account for just 10% of our communication, while the sounds account for 30%, and our body language for 60%. So to practice empathic listening you shouldn't just listen to the words, you should attend to the feeling, behavior and meaning behind them.

Practice Empathic Listening

One way to work on your empathic listening skills is to: observe a conversation without hearing the words, what emotions do you see being communicated?

It takes time and effort to master this skill, but the later rewards are well worth it. If you learn to listen in a truly empathic way, you'll notice that many people are fully prepared to open up to you and to reciprocate by considering your opinions and advice. They just need a good appreciative listener before they can do so.

Habit 6: Synergise

By treating other people with openness and respect. We now come to a habit that all the previous habits you've learned have prepared you for: synergising. Synergy means a situation where the contributions of many add up to a total that exceeds the combined contributions of the individuals, 1 + 1 can equal 3 or more.

So how can you implement this principle in your own social interactions each of us sees the world differently and we each have our own particular strengths. You can leverage the power of synergy by being open with others and valuing these differences. When people truly synergize, they listen to each other put themselves in each other’s shoes and use the contributions of others as a springboard to create something great. They are on the same side, trying to tackle a shared challenge, not fighting each other.

When David Lilienthal was tasked with the heading of the Atomic Energy Commission after World War Two, he put together a group of highly influential and capable people knowing that each had his own strong agenda. Lilienthal started by scheduling several weeks for the group to get to know each other better to learn about each other’s hopes, fears and dreams.

Many considered this inefficient and he was criticized, but the basic human interaction helped the team to get into an open trusting and synergistic mindset. When disagreements arose, instead of opposition, there was a genuine effort to understand the other person. Resulting in a very respectful, creative and productive culture.

Synergizing starts with seeing your interactions with others as an adventure; the outcome of that adventure may not be completely under your control, but you should still embrace it with complete openness. This requires a significant degree of self-confidence, as well as the conviction that the combined contribution of each party could lead to something great, even if the journey to get there is a bit chaotic.

So, make a list of the people you find it difficult to discuss things with and think about their views. If you were more confident and open minded do you think you could find synergies between your perspective and theirs?

Habit 7: Sharpen the saw

If lumberjack spent all of their time sawing down trees but never once paused to sharpen their saws, they'd soon have such dull tools that they couldn't fell a single tree. Similarly, if you never paused to take care of yourself, any gains in effectiveness you achieve will be short-lived, you'll soon exhaust yourself and won't be able to maintain any of the good habits you've developed. That's why sharpening your saw is essential for lasting effectiveness.

In each of the four key dimensions of your life:

to stay physically fit you need to exercise regularly, eat healthily and avoid undue stress;
your spiritual health also contributes to lasting effectiveness, this could mean praying or meditating or simply regularly reflecting on your own norms and values;
to stay mentally healthy read plenty of good books, avoid spending too much time in front of your television screen and make time for your own writing, in some form, be it letters or poetry or a diary. Organizing and planning things are also good exercises to keep your mind sharp and fresh.
take care of your social and emotional health by deliberately seeking to understand others building positive relationships with them and working on projects that help improve their lives, consciously make time to recuperate and recharge.

Many people claim they can't find time for this, but in the long-term it's essential for sustained effectiveness, and the rewards in productivity and well-being that come with them.

How to Sharpen your Saw

To make sure you truly sharpen your saw:

write down activities that could contribute to your well-being in each of the four dimensions.
Then pick one activity in each as a goal for the week
Evaluate your performance

This will help you strive for balanced renewal in all areas.

🛫 10 Actionable Take-aways:

Embrace Character Ethic Over Personality Ethic: Focus on developing deep-seated habits and beliefs, rather than surface-level skills, to foster enduring personal growth and a genuine transformation of character.
Adopt Principle-Based Values: Align your perspectives and actions with universal principles such as fairness, honesty, and integrity to guide your behaviours toward more sustainable and ethical outcomes.
Habit 1: Be Proactive: Cultivate the habit of proactivity by taking responsibility for your reactions to situations and assuming control over your fate, rather than being passive or reactive.
Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind: Always start tasks or projects with a clear vision of your desired outcomes. Craft a personal mission statement to guide your actions and decisions.
Habit 3: Put First Things First: Prioritise your activities by focusing on what is truly important and not just urgent, ensuring that your efforts are aligned with your overall goals and values.
Habit 4: Think Win-Win: Approach interactions and negotiations with the mindset that all parties can succeed. This fosters healthier relationships and more productive outcomes.
Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood: Practice empathic listening to truly understand others before trying to be understood yourself, enhancing communication and relationships.
Habit 6: Synergise: Leverage the strengths and perspectives of others to achieve outcomes that are not possible individually. Embrace teamwork and collaboration.
Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw: Regularly renew yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually to maintain and improve your effectiveness over the long term.
Apply Paradigm Shifts: Recognise and adjust your paradigms, or subjective perceptions of the world, to better reflect reality and improve your interactions and decision-making processes.

These takeaways provide a roadmap for anyone looking to improve their effectiveness and overall quality of life by focusing on fundamental character development and adopting a principles-based approach to living.