5 Things I Have Learnt from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
Recently, I finally got myself a great book written by Stephen R. Covey, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. This book is known as one of the books that help you build your fundamentals to become successful in life, which is to form and redefine your habits.
Therefore, here are the 5 things I have learnt from this book. I may reconsider republishing another 5 things I learnt from this book and the previous ones I have read as well since there are definitely many things that you can learn from the same book.
1. If you want to change a habit, start from your paradigms.
Why paradigms? It represents the core beliefs and values you have developed, exposed or taught by your parents and growing up in the environment you are currently in. This shapes how you perceive everything and why you behave in a certain way.
If you strive to be a better person, you must start shifting your paradigms first. In the book, Stephen does mention that all of us have the ability to change and determine our own habits. Changing a habit is never easy, but with the right steps, a lot of perseverance and willpower, you can do it.
To begin, you got to determine which habits you should change and give yourself an explanation on why you should change them now. This is the most important step because you will hold onto that reason each time you are tempted to revert back to your old habits.
Once you have the clarity to change your habits, you are on the right track to improve yourself and become highly effective.
2. Break your to-do list down into smaller ones.
Have you ever experienced having a long to-do list but not sure which one to do first? If you are, chances are you are stressing yourself out too much or you treat everything as urgent and important. Doing so can make you feel disappointed and unsatisfied because you did not finish what you have planned.
Most people set high expectations and being harsh on themselves, which is not what highly effective people do. Set your priorities right, don’t squeeze everything into one day, break it down to manageable ones. Often we wasted too much time doing urgent but not important tasks, making ourselves distracted and eventually burnt out.
Remember to plan your priorities every week, follow the time matrix to categories your daily activities into each respective quadrants and implement them. Don’t forget to reward yourself each time you achieved your daily goals so you are always motivated to continue.
3. Being Independent alone is not enough, you need to be interdependent.
We often know that being independent is important for our own survival, no matter where we go. However, that is not where highly effective people stay. Highly effective people aimed for interdependence, which means being independent and dependent at the same time.
Sounds confusing, right? Why should we be dependent and independent? Here’s the thing. We have our own limits in life and we cannot achieve anything great just by ourselves, even if we do, we probably don't have time to enjoy what life has to offer us. Therefore, we always hear that if you want to achieve something far greater than you do, you need a team to work together with. This is where the dependency comes in after being independent, putting trust and delegate tasks to your team.
Aside from that, we also can see that in everything we do, we need other people to make it work as well. You need people to be your customers so your business can thrive, you need people to be your suppliers so you can buy what you need without working it out yourself. When it comes to learning, we also need someone else to teach us so we know how to do things. Therefore, it can be said that we need each other to survive in this interdependent world. Even wildlife also depend on each other to keep the ecosystem going.
Therefore, to be highly effective, we must be wary of what we do because every choice we make will affect others directly or indirectly. Strive to be interdependent, fellow reader.
4. Don’t settle to compromise things, aim to create better solutions for everyone.
In most cases, it seems that compromising ourselves to fit into situations is the easier way to go. The book mentions that this paradigm is not advisable because it shows that we don’t bother to try and seek the best solution that works for everyone, even ourselves.
At work, we have to understand that to achieve great team synergy, everybody must be happy and willing to work together. To do so, you must identify the team’s end objective in every situation, furthermore what everyone’s wins are in that particular situation. It is a lot of work but that is what separates highly effective people from the crowd.
The only time we compromise is when we did our best in seeking all the possible outcomes but still not able to reach an ideal solution for everyone. Ensure that everyone in the team is willing and agree to compromise too to make things work.
There are times where things still fail despite us trying everything we could, but remember that our own circle of influence has limitations as well. Just do your best all the time, it is better than not trying.
5. Only provide solutions to others when they asked for it and emotionally ready.
I got this “aha” moment when I watched a video of a couple arguing because the woman wants the man to listen but the man insists on providing a solution because he thinks that the solution he proposes can solve the woman’s problem.
This leads me to think that not everyone wants your advice or help when they are facing a problem and choose to look for you. Some just want you to listen when their emotion level is high. What we can do when we are in this situation is to practice emphatic listening based on the book. Be calm and give them time to cool down.
Conclusion
These are the 5 things I have learnt from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. I may create another similar blog that shares another 5 new things I have learnt from the same book, the same goes with the previous books I have read. Stay tuned for more great content!
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