...employee/ customer satisfaction, and often profitability. This can only be achieved through concise planning, high efficiency, and a bit of luck. We must begin with a focus; all organizations operate with a goal in mind. It is human nature in that we must have some sort of shiny gold star or an orchestra of applause and accolades to motivate us in order to thrive in our endeavors. How we come to achieve our goals is based on motivations and effectiveness. Stephen Covey’s book, First Things First looks at time management strategies and how one can best achieve effectiveness and therefore succeed in obtaining their goals Covey’s approach to effectiveness works with two very important dynamics in mind illustrated by the clock and the compass. There has to be reasonable amount of resources available as we contend with our aspirations or else one will face stress and frustrations hindering one in their pursuits therefore some self analysis and planning is required. “Our struggle to put first things first can be characterized by the contrast between two powerful tools that direct us: the clock and the compass. The clock represents our commitments, appointments, schedules, goals, activities what we do with, and how we manage our time. The compass represents our vision, values, principals, mission, conscious, direction—what we feel is important and how we lead our lives.” (Covey 20) As Covey illustrates with the clock, time is a very important part of our lives. We live by schedules...
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...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 for our own lives; therefore, we possess the initiative to make things happen. He also points...
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...and change in our life. This habit can let us to practice the other six habits more clearly and correctly. We should maintain among the areas that I have mentioned. From this habit, I learned to balance and renew my resources, energy, and health to create sustainable, long-term, effective lifestyle. Habit 4 : Think Win/Win Win/win situation is better than win/lose or lose/win situation. Win-win is a frame of mind and heart that constantly seeks mutual benefit in all human interactions. We should seek agreement and relationships that are mutually beneficial. From this habit, I should have the three vital character which are integrity, maturity and abundance mentality will approach conflicts with a win-win attitude. Habit 5: Seek first to Understand, then be understood This is the habit of communication. Effective listening is very important. We should not only focus about the words being said, we should know the true meaning entirely. We should put ourselves in the perspective of the other person. From this habit, I learned to use empathetic listening to be genuinely influenced by a person, which makes them to respond the listening and take an open mind to be influenced by me. Habit 6: Synergize Synergize is a habit of creative cooperation. Two is better than one. It is teamwork, open-mindedness, and the adventure of finding new solutions to old problems. Synergize let us to gain our ideas, strengths to make us become stronger and let us get a new insight....
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...work hard at acquiring these principles, if you learn them well, think about them deeply and teach them to others, they will eventually become internalized. They will lead to fundamental change because they will affect who you are - your character - for the better. Your personality was formed as the result of specific behaviors you internalized as you grew up. 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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...not a changeless core inside them. Until a person can say deeply and honestly, 'I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday,' that 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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...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. Mistakes will be made but you have to acknowledge and learn from them. Next, Covey explains how to begin with the end in mind. This is probably my favorite chapter in the book. As I was envisioning my funeral it really brought to light the question, How do I want to be remembered?...
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...situation, provides a new choice. And in doing so, it gives you a perfect opportunity to do things differently to produce more positive results. Habit 1: Be Proactive is about taking responsibility for your life. You can't keep blaming everything on your parents or grandparents. Proactive people recognize that they are "response-able." They don't blame genetics, circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. They know they choose their behavior. Reactive people, on the other hand, are often affected by their physical environment. They find external sources to blame for their behavior. If the weather is good, they feel good. If it isn't, it affects their attitude and performance, and they blame the weather. All of these external forces act as stimuli that we respond to. Between the stimulus and the response is your greatest power--you have the freedom to choose your response. One of the most important things you choose is what you say. Your language is a good indicator of how you see yourself. A proactive person uses proactive language--I can, I will, I prefer, etc. A reactive person uses reactive language--I can't, I have to, if only. Reactive people believe they are not responsible for what they say and do--they have no choice. Instead of reacting to or worrying about conditions over which they have little or no control, proactive people focus their time and energy on things they can control. The...
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...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 leadership in your time management life, someone will fill that void, not that others are bad people, but others will take all of your time if you let them. You will have worked hard but may not have done enough of right things. Time Management is...
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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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...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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... 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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...Dr, Stephen R. Covey, the author of this book tries to illustrate that our character is fundamentally a combination of our habits; either good ones or bad ones. Habits become consistent and because of such consistency, they often become an unconscious pattern, which causes our character to be manifested and creates our effectiveness or ineffectiveness. Since no one is born effective, it is great to know these habits can be learned. They obviously are not quick fixes, because anything that comes easy goes away just as easy. These habits take time and are a journey of constant self-analysis and tweaking those things that we know shouldn’t be a part of the process. The good thing is we don’t have to figure it out all alone. This book gives us awesome guidelines and steps to create an effective life that has been proven successful in a personal and professional sense. One thing we should keep in mind though is that integrity and fundamental goodness are key qualities behind anything we do. If these aren’t genuine in our lives, our true motives will creep out when life challenges come our way, and our short-term success will be substituted by human relationship failure. Change can be painful, and therefore the desire to change our habits must have and be motivated by a higher purpose and we must have the willingness to lower what we think we want now for what we know we want later. Patience is another key quality, since attaining the seven habits described in this book aren’t something...
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...plan my time. There are various explanations for why planning is so important to our time. Time management is necessary to perform maximum efficiencies. For example, when you study at university you do not have time to do all necessary things and the best students is not necessarily the smartest. So if you will be able to plan your time, the mood will be good and scores will be high. 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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...Management XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Homework: Week 3 1/29/13 Position Paper on Stephen Covey’s, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People Introduction In 1989, Stephen Covey's book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People started a landmark revolution in how we think about time and life management. In this book, Covey presents seven principles for developing effectiveness in our private and public lives. By developing these habits, one moves from being dependent on other people to being and acting independently. Then we learn how to move to the more advanced state of interdependence and successful Cooperation. As a part of the seven habits, Covey introduced important and powerful techniques of time management under the habit of "Put First Things First." It is necessary to understand (and Practice) all seven habits so that the tools of time management can be learned and practiced in their natural setting. What follows is a basic overview of these ideas presented so you can take better advantage of this tool you hold in your hands. Covey does not claim to invent the seven habits of highly effective people but rather claims to have discovered them and have a simple language for articulating them. Counter Argument Though the term self-help can refer to any case whereby an individual or a group (support group) betters themselves economically, intellectually or emotionally, the connotations of the phrase have come to apply particularly to psychological or psychotherapeutic...
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...Be proactive Habit 2- Begin with the end in mind Habit 3- Put first things first Time quadrants The Public Victory Habit 5- Seek first to understand then to be understood Habit 6- Synergy Habit 7 - Sharpen the saw Habit 8 – Finding your voice Quotes that support the habits The ABC of using the habits Reading Recommendations Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People® ( Remember Covey’s habits are protected intellectual property) 1 Seven Habits of Highly Effective People Habit 1: Be Proactive Take responsibility for your life. Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind Define your mission and goals in life. Habit 3: Put First Things First Prioritise, and do the most important things first. Habit 4: Think Win-Win Have an everyone-can-win attitude. Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood Listen to people sincerely. Habit 6: Synergize Work together to achieve more. Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw Renew yourself regularly. Habit 8: Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs. To deal with people in a way that will communicate to them their worth and potential so clearly they will come to see it in themselves. Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People® ( Remember Covey’s habits are protected intellectual property) 2 Defining a habit and explaining how the habits can help us. WHAT EXACTLY ARE HABITS? Habits are things we do repeatedly. But most of the time we are hardly aware that...
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