Book Review: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

@ Tuesday, October 17, 2006

I must be one of the last people in America to read Stephen Covey's classic The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People because I saw echoes of the book in every business book I've read and corporate training session I've taken during my short, 11-year professional career. That's quite a testament to how influential the 7 Habits have become since the book was first published in 1989.

Habit 1 is about being proactive, or deciding what your core principles are as a human being and then basing your reactions to situations on those principles. For example, are you going to let that jerk who cut you off on the road this morning put you in a sour mood the whole day, or are you going to forget about it? It's your choice.

Habit 2 is about visualizing the end result of every action you take before you take it. Does that action conform to your principles? Will it make you more effective in your career or in your family relationships?

Habit 3 is about focusing on the tasks that support your priorities in life, rather than focusing on the minor crises of the moment. For example, you may not "have the time" for a half hour of exercise per day, but you'll lose even more time when you start having health problems because you didn't exercise.

Habit 4 searches for "Win/Win" solutions to problems, where both sides feel good about the outcome.

Habit 5 is about empathically understanding the people in your life, really getting into their shoes. Once you understand them, then you can "seek to be understood."

Habit 6 is about using Habits 4 and 5 to create "synergy," where a group feeds off of each other's ideas and understandings to come up with successful solutions that no one of them could have envisioned on his own.

Habit 7 is about consciously practicing the other six habits, and trying to "learn something new every day."

I've heard about "synergy," "paradigm shifts," "Win/Win," and "proactivity" throughout my career, but it was interesting to finally see where all those buzzwords came from.

Though Covey's book has had a profound effect on the business world over the last sixteen years, he really didn't come up with anything new, something he admits in the first few pages. The 7 Habits are so universal to human nature that they feel like common sense. All Covey did was simply organize and describe them in one book.

And that's what makes it brilliant.