Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People (Important Notes)

There is a great book "Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People" by Steven R Covey, I have extracted some important notes from it, which can enhance individual's effectiveness, these are some points, one should study the book.

Habit is an overlapping of knowledge, skills and attitude. Knowledge is what to do, skill is how to do and attitude is why to do or want to do.

Effectiveness is the P/PC balance. P stands for production of desired results and PC stands for production capability. Most people define success almost entirely focused on P, getting the golden eggs. Effectiveness is the balance between production of desired results and production capability.

The Seven Habits Are As Follow:
1) Be Proactive
2) Begin With The End In Mind
3) Put First Things First
4) Think Win/Win
5) Seek First To Understand Then To Be Understood
6) Synergize
7) Sharpen The Saw
Habits 1, 2 and 3 are habits of character; they will enable us to move from dependency to independency, which leads to private victory. Habits 4, 5 and 6 are outward expression of character, we can also say that these are the habits of personality; they will enable us to move from independency to interdependency, which leads to public victory.

1) Be Proactive (We Are The Programmers):
Take responsibility for your life. Get out of blaming, circumstances or conditioning for your behavior. We are free to choose the response for every stimulus, and our response reflects our results, so don’t be the part of any herd, due to your mental conditioning by circumstances i.e. family, media, friends, government, social interaction etc. Be wise, and so be yourself.
Buddha put it very well, “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense”.
Effective people are proactive i.e. they take responsibility, their behavior is a product of their own decisions based on values, rather than being a product of their conditions, based on feelings. Opposite of proactive is reactive, proactive is being positive and reactive is being negative.
We are responsible for our results and so we are in charge of our own destiny. We shouldn’t be victimized by circumstances. Allen Roosevelt says, “No one can make you feel inferior, without your permission”, Gandhi says, “They cannot take away our self-respect, if we don’t give it to them”.
So if we control our destiny, we should be proactive. That is acting in anticipation of future problems, needs and changes.
Be Proactive is a habit of personal vision, that we are indeed in control or it shows that we are the programmers, not a program.

2) Begin With The End In Mind (Writing A Program):
This habit enables us to write a program of our life. This is a habit of leadership, it deals with direction. Write your mission statement and value system. Decide your value system and decide the right direction. Have you ever climb the ladder of success and got to the top run and realized it was leaning towards the wrong wall. To achieve self-control, write your mission statement, and then further write your goals and work to achieve it. Make a promise and work to keep it.

3) Put First Things First (Living A Program):
This is the habit of management; it deals with the speed, coordination, logistics and going in that direction.
Put first things first is the habit of time management. Habit 3 is taking habit 2 and making it happen, it’s organizing and executing around your priorities. Habit 2 is those priorities and habit 3 is doing it, habit 3 is discipline.
Habit 3 is the tempo, physical creation and habit 2 is the mental creation. Habit 2 writing a mission statement and setting of goals and priorities, while habit 3 is organizing and executing steps to achieve those goals and mission.

4) Think Win / Win (Public Victory – Win / Win Attitude):
Think win/win is a golden rule in action, which is, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. The habit of thinking win/win for both ends, embraces in 5 dimensions. First is character i.e. habit 1, 2 and 3, second is the quality of relationship i.e. the emotional bank account. Third, the agreements are made or the expectations that are being created. Fourth, how we organize structure and system to reinforce that win/win relationship and win/win agreements. Fifth is the process of how we do the other four.
Win/Win is not just being nice, nice guys finish lasts in results Lose/Win. Win/Win is much tougher than the Win/Lose behavior, far more rigorous than the authoritarian behavior. Why? Because, 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 only have to be considerate and sensitive, you have to be brave. It’s the balance between courageous and consideration; it’s the balance between self-respect and respect for others.

There are five basic elements to this win/win agreement:-
I) Desire Results: What is it? What we want to accomplish.
II) Guidelines: Define guidelines to work within, like values, things they should not do, identify the things which may push you to failure. Identify the key points for successful agreement. These are guidelines.
III) Resources: Identify the resources; they can grow up on them. Work on these guidelines to accomplish the desired results.
IV) Accountability: There should be a strict sense of being accountable to accomplish those desired results and win that accountability.
V) Consequences: What things will be resolved, if the results are accomplished. That is where we have our compensation system tied in there, where promotions, where psychic rewards, where possibly we have to give a new job. Plus identify all the natural consequences happens, if the job is well done and how well it lubricates the whole business.

Habit of think win/win is the attitude of seeking mutual benefit, to do so, we have to communicate, so here habit 5 comes, and it is called “Seek first to understand then to be understood”, it’s a habit of communication. Habit 6 is the ultimate fruit, it’s called “Synergize”, and it produces new creative solutions between the differences between us, better than the, I proposed or you proposed initially. That’s the opposite of compromise, its synergistic; the whole is greater than the some of its parts.

5) Seek First To Understand Then To Be Understood (Public Victory):
It’s the habit of communication, listen a person from a frame of reference of him, not our autobiography. We see the world as we are, not as it is.
Most people want first to be understood, and when both parties want first to be understood simultaneously, then that’s a dead dialogue. They are not really listening; they are either speaking or preparing their speech. This habit is to communicate, first by listening and then by expressing.
Seek first to understand then to be understood. Diagnose before prescribe. We should say, “Let me fully understand first, what you position is, until you feel like I understand it and then we will see whether my proposal has any relevance or not”, “You worry about these things, if we don’t go this direction, these problems will be resolved, do I understand”, and he will open more. There is always a reason, why someone does not understand, identify that reason by opening the conversation by listening.

6) Synergize:
Synergize is a habit of producing new creative solutions between the differences between us, better than I proposed or you proposed initially. That’s the opposite compromise, it’s synergistic. The whole is greater than the some of its parts.
Synergize means to value differences by bringing different perspectives together in a spirit of mutual benefit and mutual respect.

7) Sharpen The Saw (Maintenance):
Sharpen the saw is the habit of maintenance. This habit will help us to cultivate the other six habits. It’s this habit, if we do it right, we do it completely, and regularly, it will automatically develop the other six habits. It’s the habit of personal PC.

There are four dimensions to the human personality, and we will find all the six habits involved in the sharpening of the four dimensions.
I) The Physical
II) The Spiritual (that’s our value system)
III) The Mental
IV) The Social Emotional

To sharpen the saw means is to exercise these four dimensions; and organize your life, so that you have time to spend in quadrant 2 activities. Minimum of one hour a day will maintain the six habits.

I) Physical: Do a good exercise program, which must involve stretching, cardio exercise and bodybuilding.

II) Spiritual: Spiritual exercise involves habit 2 (leadership), where we renew our commitment and values to a well developed system, and do it in a way, that’s congruent to our own philosophy (That’s to follow the teachings of Islam and live on it. Pray to Allah five times daily).
III) Mental: Spiritual activity is producing leadership, which is habit 2; then mental planning and doing and staying with that leadership is habit 3. So in this mental exercise, we visualize our plans and goals for the week and then review it each day to make sure that our life is in harmony with our mission and long-term goals.

IV) Social Emotional: Social emotional sharpening the saw, embraces habits 4, 5 and 6 (these are the habits of public victory). So that we must say to ourselves, “I am going to approach this relationship with the win/win attitude, and I’m going to seek first to understand then I also want to be understood, but I will not seek to be understood until the other feels like I understand, and then I’m going to get in a creative problem solving with that person. Synergize is to see if we come up with a better solution than what we originally proposed to each other, come up with a better psychological agreement.


Paradigm Shifts:
A paradigm is the way we see the circumstances, the way we see the relationships, the way we see the roles, the way we see the world. It’s the lens of our glass through which he sees the whole world.
If we really want to significantly improve people’s behavior, then change people’s picture of their roles. For instance, if we know that we are going to teach a large group of people tomorrow, this same material we are learning would that affect our learning today. Dramatically, because we have a different role in our head, we have changed our role.
If we want to make small improvements in relationships, organizations, families, marriages and ourselves, then work on our behavior and attitude. If we want to make major, significant, quantum type improvements, then change our paradigm, change our way of thinking, change the way we see the world.
We should change our paradigm, our role; so that we could interpret into new light. It isn’t quiet happens to us that affects our behavior, it’s our interpretation of what happens to us. Einstein put it well, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at, when we created them”. It requires a new level of thinking, a new paradigm.


All Seven Habits Are Paradigm Shifts Explained As Follow:

1. Be Proactive:
The traditional popular paradigm is that we are not responsible, we are a product; we are a program. Paradigm shift is that we are responsible for our life, our destiny; we are not a program but a programmer.

2. Begin With The End In Mind:
The traditional paradigm is that we are acting out of the script given to us, that we are really not in charge, and that the goal setting is useful and helpful, but usually not result is great accomplishments because of all the other forces play upon our life and keep us from accomplishing those goals.
George Bernard Shaw says “People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are, I don’t believe in circumstances. People, who get on in this world, are the ones who get up looked for the circumstance they want, and if they can’t find them, they make them”.

3. Put First Things First:
We will find that most people are surrounding a paradigm of quadrant 1. They are always prioritizing into daily checklist, just managing the crisis, and the problems of their lives.
That is action paradigm shift, whether believe it or not throw away simple calendars, throw away appointment books; instead write our mission statement, our long-term and short-term goals from weekly to monthly, semi-annual, annual, 3 years and so on. Have a long-term calendar, where we can work on a weekly basis, rather than daily checklists. Write down the plan, that how you are going to accomplish those goals to a weekly and monthly basis. And then have a mental toughness and discipline to stay with it.

4. Think Win / Win:
Think win/win is so deeply countered the win/lose scripting programming of the most people’s lives. We should be focused for win/win agreement; all win/lose and lose/win agreements results in lose/lose. Think of customer, if you go for the win/lose agreement, wouldn’t you loose your customer in longer run.

5. Seek First To Understand Then To Be Understood:
The traditional and very popular paradigm is that, most people seek first to be understood. And when both parties want first to be understood simultaneously that’s called the dead dialogue. They are not really listening; they are either speaking or preparing their speech.
Listen a person from a frame of reference of him, not our autobiography. We see the world as we are, not as it is. So, diagnose before prescribe.

6. Synergize:
Habit of synergy is traditionally defined as compromise, very few people experience what synergy is really like. It’s a whole new world of adventure, excitement, creativity, new options, new opportunities, and whole new way of thinking. Einstein put it well, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved, at the same level of thinking we were at, when we created them”.

7. Sharpen The Saw:
Sharpen the saw is itself a paradigm shift. The normal operational paradigm that exists is not valence; it doesn’t focus on all four dimensions of human personality. It may focus only on physical one, so people are into exercise, or perhaps a mental one, so that they become readers of books, or it may focus only on the spiritual ones, so people are into deep meditation.
The key is balance between all four dimensions and also requires constant attention, a daily attention on all four dimensions.


Applications Of Seven Habits To Business Organizations:

Be Proactive: Organizations which are highly proactive are making their own future. A business which is proactive is in charge of their destiny in a relatively hostile environment.

Begin With The End In Mind: It develops a mission statement of a company, a purpose statement, a value system that everybody is involved in its formation.

Put First Things First: Corporation lives accordingly, by putting first things first. It uses that as the criteria about which everything else is evaluated.

Think Win / Win: In all relationships between suppliers, employees, owners, managers, customers, and public, think win/win for mutual benefits.

Seek First To Understand Then To Be Understood: Understand a customer, understand first, before we design products, before we sell services. Understand our people, our employees, before we know how to organize the culture, try to influence the culture, and then seek to be understood, and then seek to have influence. Diagnose before prescribe.

Synergize: Get deeply involved with our customers, and understand their needs. Come up with creative new solutions, and if we help produce it with them, they will be highly influenced about by you, in fact it will test your professional integrity, because they will do about anything you tell them to. Just like someone had confidence in a doctor, will do anything doctor told them to do.

Sharpen The Saw: This is a self-renew habit for organizations. What organizations do, to renew itself? An organization has to rethink all of its operations against the higher criteria of change out there in the environment and the mission statement. So that the spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation is kept alive. It has to fundamentally ask this question, “If we did not have this practice, if we did not have this policy, if we did not have this product, would we adopt it today”. That takes courage and expression of move away completely.


Difference Between Principle & Practice:
All these seven habits are the principles and natural laws that will hold over time for individuals and organizations.
A principle is a natural law; a practice is its expression in a particular circumstance. For instance, let’s say that we have a principle of serving the customer well; a practice may be to listen carefully to the customer wants and give him that particular thing. By another situation we don’t have access to the knowing, what customer wants, so we may have to do some research to understand generic needs out there of customers and then adapt to that.
The point is everything we work with principles, we work with natural laws, but they express themselves in a numbers of different ways in different circumstances. The key is to get our life around principles, and then let everybody sense their conscience, what the appropriate practices are in different situations.
If we teach people practices, we make them depended. If we say to a new employee, “do this and do this”, now hat happens when a change comes, they are looking to us again, they are depending upon us. There is no PC (production capability) in it. We give a man a fish, we feed him for a day, we teach him how to fish, and we feed him for a lifetime.
Teach principles and let people govern themselves in selecting the practices. Arnold the great historian says “The whole history of mankind institutions and societies themselves, can be summarized in simple formulae, Challenge & Response”, the challenge is external, the response is internal. If we respond equal to the challenge, it is success. If the response is obsolete because of a new change, even though it was once applied and once worked, it will lead to failure. That’s why we operate on principles not practices, the principles will always stay no matter what the circumstances is, but the practice is vary all over the place.
In organization, the key is to get the entire culture around the mission statement and set the values, and then you don’t have to supervise them.


Circles Of Concern And Influence:
Envision in mind two circles, the inner circle is called the circle of influence and the outer circle is called the circle of concern, it’s a much larger circle, it may be ten times as large. The inner circle, are those concerns of which you have direct influence, direct control. If we think through all seven habits, we will come to realize that there is only one place to go to work and that is the inner circle of influence, things which you have direct control, because the nature of that energy is proactive, it’s value driven, it’s positive energy, which enlarges less things and magnifies them and the inner circle of influence gets larger and larger.

Focus on the circle of influence, see what we can do about it, be positive and act upon it in anticipation, and be proactive with the positive energy. Our power of influence is the function of us, not other people denying us access, just work within the present circle of influence with positive energy, work on these seven habits and then watch what begins to happen, we will realize a significant change for good.
On the other hand, if we give our energies to the outer circle of concern, we will find the inner circle will get smaller. Why? Because we are neglecting it and the nature of energies are focusing on things outside of our circle of influence. So this magnifies the things which are out of our control and shrinks our control.
Remember this, if we ever think, the problem is out there, that very thought is the problem; if we ever think that the problem is with somebody else, what will be the circumstance. Einstein put it well, “The Significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of think we were at, when we created them”.