Review: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Distilling this legendary read down to the core.

Mar 24, 2023

Distilling this legendary read down to the core.

Habits. This is a topic that is written so many books about that you can fill a library of libraries with it. Not for a bad reason though.

Having the right habits in place makes your life better. It’s like a plane having the autopilot going toward the right direction. It makes the job for the pilot quite a lot easier, it leaves less room for error.

This book describes the 7 habits that (nearly) all highly effective people posses. What do these people do on a daily basis? How do they think, how do they operate? That’s all laid out in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.

It would be quite easy for me to simply list all the habits out in this book and call it a day. Today I’m explaining my biggest lessons that are bit buried in the book itself. So without further ado, here’s what I learned:

The Principle of the Golden Egg

A poor farmer one day hit a jackpot when he found his goose laid a golden egg, not once, not twice, but every day! He got filthy rich because of it, but that was also his downfall. As a result of this grew very impatient and greedy to get more cash.

He was so impatient that he slaughtered the goose in an attempt to collect all the eggs inside, but he discovered none and missed the chance to collect more.

What a silly goose.

The poor farmer and his poor goose’s fable teaches us the concept of delayed gratification.

The farmer was so intent on collecting all the eggs at once that he overlooked the long-term benefits of owning a goose capable of laying a golden egg every day.

Similarly, rather of focusing on short-term rewards, we should focus on developing habits and processes that will lead to long-term success.

Winning isn’t everything, it is important though.

What’s the point of winning of someone on the other side loses.

That’s why we need to think win-win.

Focusing solely on winning can lead to disregarding others, but aiming for achievement can be a powerful motivator.

It's important to keep in mind that success doesn't have to come at the expense of others.

By adopting a win-win approach, we can achieve our goals while still considering the needs of those around us. In other words, we can strive for mutually beneficial outcomes in our relationships By doing so, we can pursue achievement while building healthy connections and a collaborative mindset with others.

All things are created twice

Creations are not only physical. Every good idea ever created was first mentally created.

Take a business for example. You have to first have the idea of the business to actually make into something tangible. Hours of brainstorming, product designs, business plans You have to visualize to see the end result before physically creating it.

What this teaches us is to stay focused and motivated, we must have a clear vision of what we want to accomplish. We can ensure that our activities are in line with our aims by having the final goal in mind.

The management Matrix

In today's fast-paced world, it's easy to get caught up in the daily grind of reactive tasks. Sometimes we have these days when we simply only focus on perform vanity tasks. Responding to e-mails, pointless meetings, water cooler talks. Is this really what we spend our time on all day. Probably not.

This is where The Management Matrix comes into Play. It is divided in 2 types of tasks, urgent and important:

Ideally, you want all of your tasks to be in quadrant 2.

We can't constantly devote our entire day to quadrant 2 duties. We may, however, change our focus to a more proactive and meaningful lifestyle by attempting to do as many of these things every day.

The next time you find yourself mired in reactive duties, take a step back, assess your priorities, and begin adding more quadrant 2 activities into your daily routine. Your future self will be forever grateful!

Rest and recuperate

This is something I struggle with still to this day. I’m always in: ‘go-mode’. No rest. I used to think being a workaholic was THE way to achieve things. I couldn’t be much further from the truth.

This book taught me that there are 4 forms of rest we need to take to become an effective person, a.k.a the 4 dimensions of renewal. You can see them below.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People®: Habit 7 - FranklinCovey

Make sure that you attend to these different needs, otherwise there’s no balance. This also ties into The Principle of the Golden Egg, but this is the guide to rest and recuperate correctly. We need to protect the asset at all costs.

Verdict

I’m always a bit sceptical when something gets praised to heaven. I’ve heard loads about The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and all of it had a positive tone of voice. And all this praise was with good reason, because this isn’t just a read you skim through.

If you truly want to improve yourself and make your life and the lives of others better too. Applying the habits in the book will more than help you achieve this. Trust me. I highly recommend you becoming a highly effective person by reading this one!

Rating: 8.6/10