...Descartes's Method of Universal Doubt in the First Meditation Descartes is widely regarded as the father of modern philosophy. In the First Meditation, he begins with his method of doubt, calling into doubt everything which can be called into question. In the beginning of the First Meditation, Descartes tries to call all his empirical beliefs into doubt with a single stroke: “I have occasionally caught the senses deceiving me,” he writes, “and it’s prudent never completely to trust who have cheated us even once”. The reason why Descartes began by bringing into doubt all the beliefs that come to us from the senses is to show that science rested on firm foundations and that these foundations lay in the mind and not the senses. He is not aimed to prove that nothing exists or that it is impossible for us to know if anything exists, but to show that all our knowledge of these things through the senses is open to doubt. We could not even be sure that anything outside of us existed, if our scientific knowledge came to us through the senses. Since sense experience is sometimes deceiving, it is obvious to Descartes that a posteriori claim cannot be the basis for claims of knowledge. We do not know that what we experience through our senses is true; at least, we are not certain of it. And we cannot tell when our senses are correctly reporting the way things really are and when they are not. So the best thing to do is to doubt whether any knowledge can be based on our sense experiences...
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...More generally, it seems hard to deny that the planning time is difficult in use. A classic illustration often cited is that people cannot do all they have planned. On those days when you have a lot to do, prioritizing can help you get things done in a more efficient manner. When you find ways to prioritize, you might find that some things are more important than others, and that some can be crossed off your list of deals completely. What sort of picture do these considerations allow us to construct? Let us say you did the priorities of their affairs. Now you need to plan every thing in time. One observer has already drawn attention to the paradox in planning time. His name is Stephen Covey. In his book “First thing first” he said that daily planning is inefficient method in our case. When people plan for the day, they do not have time to do all the right things to them. Much more efficient is to plan for the week. For me it is the best and the easiest way to manage my time. I have time to do all the right affairs to me: at home, at university, at the courses of preparing for MSU....
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...the consequences that come from these actions. These actions can be as simple as determining what my attitude will be for the day all the way to choosing to have a great, motivating, and inspirational life. Covey (1989) explained, making the choice to choose our response we powerfully could affect the results. Personal responsibility links to everything in my life, my family success, my professional success, and my educational success. In this instance, personal responsibility’s associations with the actions I must take to be successful in college are show initiative, be proactive, manage my time effectively, and create effective habits. Initiative There are multiple methods and attributes to ensure my educational success, taking the initiative to choose to be a successful student seems to be the first key point. A study performed by Zimmerman and Martinez-Pons (1986), comparing advanced students and lower performing students found that the lower performing students often give reactive statements such as “I just do what my teacher tells me,” compared to the academically achievers that use statements such as, “If I’m having difficulty motivating myself to complete my homework, I just work harder.” The findings indicated a lack of personal initiative in the lower performing students whereas the over achievers show initiative in every aspect of their learning endeavors. By choosing to apply initiative to my college achievement and doing more than what is expected and is necessary...
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... These behaviors are not things we need to think about, they represent little success strategies or ways of coping with life that we have found to be helpful. If you take a look at what Seneca said about human character, you will see how acquiring new habits leads to a fundamental change of character. Sow a thought, reap an action Sow action, reap a habit Sow a habit, reap a character Sow a character, reap a destiny. - Seneca [pic] Stephen Covey Stephen Covey was born in 1932. He lives with his wife, Sandra, and their family in Utah; in the Rocky Mountains. Covey achieved international acclaim, and is perhaps best known, for his self-help book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People which was first published by Simon & Schuster in 1989 and has sold around 12 million copies word-wide. Covey has a Harvard MBA and has spent most of his career at Brigham Young University, where he was professor of organizational behavior and business management. In addition to his MBA, he also has a doctorate which he completed whilst at...
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...Response to Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People I am lucky to have chance to read and learn the book of Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which is about an approach to personal and interpersonal effectiveness that includes principle-centered, character based and “Inside out”. According to critical analysis and demonstrate, the author tries to help people to find and cultivate maximum human effectiveness especial for an effective leader who wants to lead and take shape a wining organizations. Firstly, Covey explains the definition of habit that is the intersection of knowledge, skill and desire and 7 habits need to be paid more attention. As the writer’s said “7 habits move us progressively on a continuum form dependence to independence to interdependence.” In the meanwhile, different habit cope with different aspect and habit 1, 2 and 3 are collectively referred to as private victory and habit 4, 5 and 6 concern on public victory that deal with teamwork cooperation and communication. The last one is the habit of continuous improvement. In the following content, I am going to introduce the influence on me for each habit and how to apply them to my real social life. Habit 1: Be Proactive According to the analysis of Covey, he points out that habit 1 actually is the ability of control and initiative, which human beings can manage specific environment rather than dominate by it. I have same feeling to his opinion as there are many kinds of circumstances...
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...Issues of Time management at a workplace in Kazakhstan Akhtanova Madina Suleyman Demirel University Kazakhstan, Kaskelen Faculty of Economic and Administrative Sciences Specialty: Finance Email: madina-akhtanova@mail.ru Abstract Nowadays conditions of rapid rise of competition around the world induce companies to pay attention to absolutely new fields of management. This research concentrates on the field , called Time management. The paper here looks at whether Kazakhstan companies use and have good time management techniques and if they apply Stephen R.Covey’s popular theory of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective people. The purpose of this study is to examine the omissions of Kazakhstan companies in this issue and find the ways of correction. The sample of 85 companies, locating in Almaty, Astana, Shymkent and Aktobe has chosen to participate in this research. Data was collected through the results of well-constructed questionnaires and by the agency of general managers of companies. Questionnaire was distributed to all potential respondents. A total of 76 companies returned the completed questionnaire. The finding shows that most companies have placed low emphasis on company time management. In addition, the results identifies that only small portion of companies are familiar with the book «The Seven Habits of Highly Effective people» by Stephen Covey. With greater competition in the globalized market, this research implicates that Kazakhstan companies also should...
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...create cultures in their companies that recognize these basic principles. In Covey's model, leadership is broken down into three basic functions. First, there is path finding. In this role, a leader develops and articulates a vision for the future and gets people excited about it. The second activity is aligning. This means that the leader ensures that a company's organization, systems, and processes are consistent with, and contribute to, the leader's vision and the company's mission. The third activity is empowering. This means that the leader gives the people in the organization the power and resources to accomplish their portion of the organization's mission. This will unleash hidden talents, energy, and creativity. Covey trains leaders for companies in a variety of ways. These include books, on-site workshops, seminars, and training events at his institute for leadership in Utah. Covey also encourages follow-up training and assessment. Many companies have credited Covey and his training for helping them to develop leaders for the future. Goals and The 7 Habits As in any aspect in life, it is beneficial to have a goal in mind before undertaking it. From the simplest task of setting your feet on the ground in the morning to the monumental task of mapping out a strategy for corporate excellence, goals and effective methods are needed. "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen R. Covey set the foundation for successful approaches to achieving personal change...
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...expressed in the United States up until about World War I, when poplar literature began to focus more on short-cuts and easy ways to manipulate situations or to get what you want. Character ethic depends on deep changes within each of us, while the personality ethic falls back on methods or techniques. The personality ethic does not challenge us and does not bring about deep changes in us. “The problem with relying on the Personality Ethic is that unless the basic underlying paradigms are right, simply changing outward behavior is not effective (Covey 2010).” Paradigms are the mental maps that we use to describe the world around us. The key of a paradigm isn’t much in the nature of a thing as much as our perception of the thing. Covey uses the example of a person in Chicago with a map of Detroit trying to find their way around the city. No matter how hard they try, they will not be successful. In order to maintain correct paradigms it is essential to keep an open mind and to realize that no matter how much we see, there is always more to the picture. “If our paradigm is not close to reality, our attitudes, behaviors and responses will not be effective or appropriate (Gray 1997).” Proactive is the first of the seven habits written by Covey. Proactive involves acting in advance of a future situation, rather than just reacting. It means taking control and making things happen rather than adjusting to a situation or waiting for something to happen. Measurable Learning Outcomes...
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...Time Management Essays-Various Top Five Time Management Mistakes Time management is not necessarily working "harder", but rather, "smarter." And to accomplish significantly more in our days, we need not increase our efforts. As an example, in a horse race, the first horse may earn a $50,000 purse and the second horse may earn a $25,000 purse. The first horse gets twice as much money as the second horse, not because it ran twice as far or twice as fast. It was only a "nose ahead" of the competition. So it is with our daily results. We need not run twice as fast or put in twice the effort to significantly increase our daily success. We only need to be a "nose ahead" of where we already are. We are all productive in our days. We would not survive the demands of this world if we were not. The real challenge is how much more productive can we become? And, a lot of our time management has to do with more of what we are not doing rather than what we are doing. Sometimes our mistakes and omissions will keep us from running at a full pace. Here are the Top Five Time Management Mistakes we should all avoid to help us to increase our daily success both on and off the job, in less time and with less stress. 1. Start your day without a plan of action. You will begin your day by responding to the loudest voice (the squeaky wheel gets the grease) and spend it in a defensive mode, responding to other people's and events' demands. The tail will wag the dog. If there is a void of...
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...The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People. AUTHOR: Stephen R Covey PUBLISHING HOUSE: Simon & Schuster FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1989 AWARDS: In August 2011, Time listed Seven Habits as one of " The 25 Most Influential Business Management Books. NO OF COPIES SOLD: it has sold more than 15 million copies in 38 languages since first publication. OTHER BOOKS: Covey has written a number of follow-up books: * First Things First * Principle Centered Leadership * The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness, a sequel to The Seven Habits published in 2004 * The Leader in Me, a book on using the seven habits for young children, especially in schools, published in 2008. TYPE OF BOOK: self help book PURPOSE OF THE BOOK: In many ways it's a general purpose psychology book, dealing with such things as motivation, organizational skills, and how to deal with stress. THEME: The 7 Habits provide an incremental, sequential, integrated approach to the development of personal effectiveness moving us progressively from dependence (on others) to independence (taking care of ourselves) to interdependence (looking after others and combining strengths to multiply our individual effectiveness). This book's focal point is on an approach to obtain personal and interpersonal effectiveness. Covey emphasizes that if we want to make a change in our lives, we should probably first focus on our personal attitudes and behaviors THE STORY: Be Proactive: Covey states that we are responsible...
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...7 Habits of Highly Effective People Book Summary Before going into the actual 7 habits, the author Steve Covey goes into few important concepts. Character Ethic (good) There are basic principles of effective living and people can only experience true success and enduring happines as they learn and integrate these principles into their basic character. Personality Ethic (not so good) It is manipulative, deceptive, encouraging people to use techniques to get other people to like them. Personality ethic is illusory and deceptive and trying to get high quality results with its techniques and quick fixes – not effective at all. Paradigm The book talks a lot about paradigm shifts and I remember having to look it up in the dictionary to find the true meaning of it; paradigm meaning: model, theory, perception, assumption, the way we see world. Conditioning affects our perceptions/paradigms (old/young lady drawing example in the book worth checking out). We see the world not as it is but as ‘we are’ through our paradigms. Different people can have different views and still both be correct. The more aware we are of our basic paradigms the more we can examine/test them against reality, listen to others and be open to their perceptions getting a larger picture and far more objective view. Paradigm shifts move us from one way of seeing the world to another. They influence our relationship with others. Not all are good. If we want to make relatively minor changes in our lives we...
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...7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey is a very insightful book providing an approach to obtain personal and interpersonal effectiveness. I really gained a lot from Covey’s different examples he provided in each chapter via family, business and society in general. Covey explains how a person must make a paradigm shift prior to incorporating these habits into their life. We have to be committed to ourselves before we can commit to others. I really find this “inside-out” approach inspiring as change starts with oneself. By incorporating these habits in our lives it will make success easier to obtain both personally and professionally and failure a lot easier to swallow as well. But before we make any changes in our lives we first have to focus on our own personal attitudes and behaviors. Habit number one discusses the importance of being proactive. In order to be proactive we have to possess the initiative to make things happen. Being proactive is the ability to respond positively to our circumstances. I have heard so many times the expression, “that’s just the way I am, “to me this is one of the most frustrating things one can say. I just want to tell them “No, that is the way you are choosing to be and there is something you can do about it.” We all have to bypass the negativity and find a way to focus our time and energy on being effective. Covey explains how to focus your energy on our Circle of Influence by working on the things that you can do something about...
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... 2/2/2014 | I was inspired by Stephen R. Covey’s, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The 7 Habits have encouraged me to rethink how I was looking at the world and it has changed how I plan to move forward in my life. Covey defines a habit as the intersection of knowledge, skill, and desire. Knowledge is the what to do and why, skill is the how to do, and desire is the motivation or want to do, “In order to make something a habit in our lives, we have to have all three”, (Covey 55). Covey describes the Maturity Continuum which moves us progressively from dependence to independence to interdependence. The 7 Habits are tools which provide an approach to the development of personal and interpersonal effectiveness. Part 1 The first three habits focus on transitioning from dependence to independence, the mastery of self. Each of us begins life as an infant. We are completely dependent upon others to care for us. “They gradually, over the ensuing months and years, we become more independent- physically, mentally, emotionally, and financially-until eventually we can essentially take care of ourselves, becoming inner-directed and self-reliant”, (Covey 57), it is in our nature to transition to independence. Wikipedia.org summarizes The 7 Habits in correlation to each phase, beginning with self-mastery. Habit 1: Be Proactive describes how to take initiative in life by understanding how our decisions are determining factors for effectiveness in your life. Covey encourages...
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...person cannot say, 'I choose otherwise.' To learn and not to do is really not to learn. To know and not to do is really not to know. It is one thing to make a mistake, and quite another thing not to admit it. People will forgive mistakes, because mistakes are usually of the mind, mistakes of judgment. But people will not easily forgive the mistakes of the heart, the ill intention, the bad motives, the prideful justifying cover-up of the first mistake. Admission of ignorance is often the first step in our education. 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. How you treat the one reveals how you regard the many, because everyone is ultimately a one. There's no better way to inform and expand you mind on a regular basis than to get into the habit of reading good literature. And, of course, the meat of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Habit 1: Be Proactive Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind Habit 3: Put First Things First Habit 4: Think Win/Win Habit 5: Seek...
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...sold. Here are his seven habits, and some ideas for helping your teen understand and apply them: Be Proactive Being proactive is the key to unlocking the other habits. Help your teen take control and responsibility for her life. Proactive people understand that they are responsible for their own happiness or unhappiness. They don't blame others for their own actions or feelings. Begin With the End in Mind If teens aren't clear about where they want to end up in life, about their values, goals, and what they stand for, they will wander, waste time, and be tossed to and fro by the opinions of others. Help your teen create a personal mission statement which will act as a road map and direct and guide his decision-making process. Put First Things First This habit helps teens...
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