Seven habits of highly effective people list

If you take personal development seriously and you want to be more effective in your private and professional lives, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey is a must-read. Together with The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma, it’s what I call “a manual for living well”. In this blog post I summarize the key learnings I got from the book.

Are you ready to find out which are the seven habits that highly effective people have in common?

At the foundation of Stephen Covey’s life philosophy is the profound belief that the world is run by universal laws or principles.

These principle are timeless, they have always been valid and always will be. They determine the rise and dawn of empires and societies, the success or failure of companies and individuals, the quality of everyone’s life.

Principles are natural laws that are external to us and that ultimately control the consequences of our actions.

Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

These principles are, for instance, fairness, integrity, honesty, human dignity, service, quality or excellence, potential, growth, patience, nurturance, encouragement, responsibility, abundance, renewal.

According to Covey, values are internal and subjective: everyone has values, even criminals. Values govern people’s behavior but principles govern the consequences of those behaviors. Principles are independent of us. They operate regardless of our awareness of them, acceptance of them, liking of them, belief in them, or obeying of them.

The goal is to align your values to principles and act accordingly.

To obtain success and be effective, you have to understand the principles, integrate them in the deeper part of your character and live according to them.

Hence, there is no quick fix, but a radical shift in the paradigms according to which you live your existence. This is an inside-out approach, which involves first working on your innermost part and then going for the external success: there is no public victory before private victory. This is in line with what I have already written in other articles (see The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari and The Miracle Morning for example): you cannot achieve success in any field of your choice, if you do not work on yourself first.

At the basis of Covey’s teaching is a new ethic, the so called character ethic, where the principles work as a lighthouse guiding you during stormy times (see The Clock and The Compass). They help you set your priorities and decide which are the most important things in your life. When you understand these principles, you understand why certain problematic situations arise and how they can be successfully solved. You understand why some decisions make you suffer, while others make you flourish.

Covey presents the seven habits in a systematic order, following the maturity continuum that you experience when you apply these habits daily. You move from a state of complete dependence to a state of independence, to ultimately reach interdependence.

Before going on, let’s define what Covey means by being dependent, independent and interdependent:

• Dependent people need others to get what they want;
• Independent people can get what they want through their own efforts;
• Interdependent people combine their own efforts with the efforts of others to achieve their greatest success.

Habits 1-3 bring an individual from a state of dependence to a state of interdependence. They deal with self-mastery, and that is why they are necessary to obtain your private victories.

Habits 4-6, instead, help you making the additional step from living an independent life to living an interdependent life. They are more oriented toward relationships, teamwork, cooperation and communication and that is why they are needed for public victories.

Finally, Habit 7 is the habit of renewal of the four basic life dimensions: body, mind, hearth, spirit. This habit is serving as a frame for all the other six and does not come before or after them, but in parallel.

If you want a short list to memorize and keep in mind, these are The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People:

1. Be proactive;
2. Begin with the end in mind;
3. Put first things first;
4. Think win/win;
5. Seek first to understand, then to be understood;
6. Synergize;
7. Sharpen the saw.

By working on these habits you can live a life according to principles, a life which flows easily (see The Stoic Happiness Triangle), a life of happiness.

In the remaining of this article I will address each habit in details.

Happiness, like unhappiness, is a proactive choice.

Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Whatever you want to accomplish in your life, you need to take initiative. The job of your dream or the love of your life rarely materialize in front of you if you do not take the first step. But just taking initiative is not enough, being proactive means more than just that.

Being proactive means knowing that you are responsible for your own life and acting accordingly. It means being aware that your behavior, and the outcomes of your behavior are a result of your decisions (see The self coaching model by Brooke Castillo).

Being proactive is the opposite of being reactive. It means to act to change what you can change (see Serenity, Courage, Wisdom), to influence others, to make things happen.

Contrary to reactive people, proactive people are not driven by feelings, circumstances and environmental conditions. Proactive people are driven by values and principles, on which they carefully thought about it. Sure, environment and external circumstances may play a role, but ultimately it is your response that determine how you feel. If something hurts you, it’s because you allow it to hurt you.

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

Viktor E. Frankl

The main concept of this chapter of the book, is the idea of the Circle of Influence and the Circle of Concern. I wrote an entire article about it and I invite you to go and read it to get more information (see Circle of Influence and Circle of Concern).

Beginning with the end in mind is the second habit of highly effective people. 

What does it mean exactly? It means that you stop and think where you want your life to be headed.

Imagine your funeral, how would you like to be remembered by friends, colleagues, family members and people from your community? What are your most important values and life goals?

It is very easy to get caught up by the daily business and never think about that. As Robin Sharma often says in his podcasts, nowadays people are busy being busy. We spend our life working hard trying to climb the ladder of success, only to find out once we are on top that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall (see Run your own race and The Well Formed Outcome Process).

Being busy does not mean to be effective. Being effective means getting everyday one step closer to your goal. And for doing that you need to know where you are headed. Otherwise, how can you know when you have arrived?

Beginning with the end in mind is at the basis of leadership. Indeed, leadership is deciding if the ladder is leaning against the right wall (the right one for you).

Management comes next (Habit 3), but first comes leadership: before you can do things right, you have first to define what are the right things. This is very important in all aspects of one’s life. Definitely in the work environment, but also in the private sphere, when dealing with parenting, relationships and personal and spiritual development.

A very effective way to begin with the end in mind is to define a mission statement. A mission statement defines who you want to be, what you want to do and on what your values are. It’s like an anchor you can always go back to, whenever you are not sure about what is the right decision to be taken.

I have to be honest and admit that I do not have a well written mission statement for my life yet, but at very high level I really like the “to live, to love, to learn, to leave a legacy” concept from Covey.

Once you know where you want to go, you need to be able to properly prioritize your daily activities to be sure that you can reach your destination.

Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

If Habit 2 was about personal leadership, Habit 3 is about personal management. I have already spent various blog posts on the topic of priorities and time management (for instance, see How to gain control of your free time, Urgent VS Important, The Clock and the Compass, Nothing to Regret).

I think I am kind of time management addicted. If you check my calendar you will see every appointment, commitment, celebration, hobby scheduled and classified according to its urgency and importance.

Covey actually wrote an additional book about the third habit, titled, guess how, First Things First. I have read this book and I totally recommend it to you if you feel overwhelmed by your day-to-day tasks and to-do-lists.

Essentially, Covey suggests to organize your weeks and days organically, without dividing your life into compartments. Indeed, the way you are at work influences how you show up with your family and vice versa.

There is a quote in this chapter, which I have been referring to so often recently…

The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.

Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

This is what most of the people do not understand. They see one hour running or thirty minutes meditation or their wife appointment at the doctor not important to be scheduled into their day, and then unplanned things come in at work and they skip one or the other personal commitment.

Give to your priorities at least the same importance that you give to any obligation toward others (see Watch Yourself).

If you have too many things to do and it is not realistic to take over and successfully complete all of them, please remember that it is ok to say no to things that are not your priorities.

A burning “yes!” inside that makes it possible to say “no” to other things.

Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

At the end, according to the Pareto Principle, (called as the ancient rule of 20 in The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari) 80% of the results come out of only 20% of your activities.

If you cannot say no but still you have no time, then try to delegate to others. Delegate smartly, using what Covey calls a stewardship delegation (which focuses on results instead of methods), not a gofer delegation (“Go for this, go for that, do this, do that, and tell me when it’s done” approach).

Once you have mastered Habits 1-3, the habits of self-mastery, you are ready to go on with Habits 4-6. These habits are much more difficult because they involve other people and personally I have problems with some of them (especially number 5).

As explained at the beginning of this blog post, Habits 4-6 move you from a state of independence to a state of interdependence. This is fundamental, because for everything you want to do in your life you need to rely directly or indirectly on someone else.

Coming to Habit 4, whenever you interact with someone you can either end up with a win-lose, lose-win, lose-lose, win-win or no deal outcome. Covey analyzes all possible outcomes in details, and comes to the conclusion that only win-win is the meaningful outcome for both parties. Making the story short, lose-lose is a waste for both, lose-win does not make you content, win-lose gives you the illusion of a temporary success, but it prevents the possibility of a prosperous future interaction with that person (or company). So ultimately you should either go for a win-win solution or no deal.

What does it mean to think win/win?

Win/Win is a frame of mind that constantly seeks mutual benefits in all human interactions. When people think win/win there is cooperation and not competition and all parties are happy and feel satisfied about the final decision.

Win/Win is based on the paradigm that there is plenty for everybody, I can get my piece of cake and you can get yours, because there is plenty for both of us. If you have success, I rejoice for you because I know that you having success does not prevent me from having success. This is what is often called abundance mentality (the opposite of scarcity mentality).

Habit 5 is about listening and understanding before speaking and trying to be understood (I spoke about this inThree ways to spot good friends). I know, it’s hard (for me at least).

Think about this: are you really listening when others are speaking? Or are you just waiting for your turn to reply?

I often find myself (unconsciously) lost in the second behavior: either I am speaking or waiting for speaking.

There is nothing bad in wanting to speak, share your experience and opinions. I believe that this is an important part of being proactive (Habit 1). Sometimes, what you have to say is really valuable and need to be listened.

But very often, all you need to do is simply listening, empathetically, trying to understand the other’s problem without jumping to conclusions, judging or sharing advices and quick fixes (i.e. diagnose before you prescribe).

Listening to someone else with empathy, means to put yourself in the other person shoes, to start seeing the world with his pair of glasses, using his reference system. In this way, you may actually understand not only what they say, but how they feel about it too.

Seek first to understand, then to be understood applies to all areas of life, but it has of course its greatest power in the area of interpersonal relationships. If you have a job that put you in direct contact with customers (I do), try to understand their needs, before trying to sell what you have. Your job is not to sell products, but to sell solutions to your customers’ needs and problems. And to know them, you need to seek first to understand, and be ready for a win-win or no deal outcome (see Habit 4).

The last habit in the public victories domain is called Synergize.

To create synergy means that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts: 1+1 > 2. This is the way I feel when I am with my wife, together we are so much stronger and effective compared to when we are alone (see About Marriage). The best example of human synergy is when out of the love of two people a child is born. Then literally 1+1 = 3.

Synergizing means that together, we are and do better than when we are alone. It means teamwork, helping each other, gaining momentum, motivating each other and so on. When synergy starts everyone feels excited and there is this feeling that together things will significantly be better than before.

To find synergy it’s essential to value the differences. Very often a heterogeneous team is the most effective one, because everyone has different backgrounds, experiences and points of view and can contribute with his/her own specific skills.

In my life I have had good examples of synergy in the sport, academic and working domain. Personally, I think that I can be a good team player and have the ability to motivate others with my energy and positivity.

Last, but not least, there is Habit 7: sharpen the saw.

Sharpening the saw is a metaphor that actually means to always improve yourself and upgrade the tools you need to advance toward your goals.

“I don’t have time to sharpen the saw,” you may say, “I’m too busy sawing this big tree!”

If you are busy sawing with a saw that is not sharp, wouldn’t be more effective to stop sawing, sharpen your saw, and start sawing again afterward?

According to Covey there are four dimensions of renewal: physical, spiritual, mental, and social/emotional.

The time you spend on yourself is time well invested. Every day, spend at least one hour on your four dimensions to evolve into a better version of yourself (see The Miracle Morning). Meditate (see How I started meditating with Headspace), read (see Books), do physical exercise (see Swim, bike, run for those who can’t).

Remember that what you do in one area has great impact on the others as well. For instance, your physical health affects your mental health and your spiritual dimension influences your social / emotional sphere.

Each small incremental change, if in line with principles, brings you one step closer to greatness.

Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things… I am tempted to think… there are no little things.

Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

What should I add? Simply buy and read the book.

• Preview & Buy eBook here (affiliate link)
• Buy paper book here (affiliate link)

This is really a life manual, that you should read if you want to be effective in your life.

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