book-notes

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Part One: Paradigms and Principles

Inside Out

• The Character Ethic from early success defines the foundation of success as integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity, modesty, and the Golden Rule.
• The Personality Ethic, by contrast, defines success a function of personality, of public image, of attitudes and behaviors, skills and techniques that lubricate the process of human interaction.
• If your character is fundamentally flawed, then if you employ good human relations techniques, you will be seen as manipulative. You will not be successful.
• The Personality Ethic may allow you to get by in short-term situations, but these secondary traits have no permanent worth in long-term relationships.
• Character communicates most eloquently. As Emerson once put it, “What you are shouts so loudly in my ears I cannot hear what you say.”
• We experience everything through two mental maps: Realities, or the way things are, and values, or the way things should be.
• The influences of our lives, such as family, school, church, work environment, friends, associates, and current social paradigms, have all shaped our frame of reference, our paradigms, and our maps.
• We see the world not as it is, but as we are. When we describe the world, we describe ourselves, our perceptions, and our paradigms.
• The more aware we are of our basic paradigms, the more we can examine them, test them against reality, and listen to others and be open to their perceptions, thereby getting a more objective view.
• To make a minor change in our lives, we can perhaps focus on our attitudes and behaviors. To make a significant, quantum change, we must focus on our basic paradigms.
• The Character Ethic is based on the fundamental idea that principles govern human effectiveness. These are natural laws in the human dimension, like Newton’s law in the physical dimension.
• These natural laws are woven into the fabric of every civilized society throughout history and comprise the roots of every family and institution that has endured and prospered.
• These principles include fairness, integrity and honesty, dignity, service, quality or excellence.
• Principles are not values. We can hold values that are in violation of these fundamental principles. Principles are the territory, and values are the maps.
• The Personality Ethic promises quality of life without going through the natural process of work and growth that makes it possible. But this work is required for progress.
• Borrowing strength builds weakness in the borrower because it reinforces dependence on external factors to get things done. It also builds weakness in the person forced to acquiesce, and weakness in the relationship.
• When a relationship is strained and the air is charged with emotion, an attempt to teach is often perceived as a form of judgment or rejection.
• To solve the problems created and interact within the Personality Ethic, we need a paradigm based on the principles that accurately describe the territory of effective human being and interacting.
• “Inside-out” means to start first with self; more fundamentally, to start with the most inside part of self, which is your paradigms, your character, and your motives.
• An outside in paradigm leads to people who feel victimized and immobilized, who focus on the weakness of others and the circumstances they feel are responsible for their own stagnant situation.

The 7 Habits - An Overview

• Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny.
• Because habits are consistent, often unconscious patterns, they constantly express our character and produce our effectiveness or ineffectiveness.
• Knowledge is the theoretical paradigm, the what to do and the why; skill is the how to do; and desire is the motivation, the want to do. To make something a habit, we must have all three.
• Dependent people need others to get what they want. Independent people get what they want through their own efforts. Interdependent people combine their efforts with those of others to achieve the greatest success.
• Independent people who don’t have the maturity to think and act interdependently may be good individual producers, but they won’t be good leaders or team players.
• As an interdependent person, you have the opportunity to share yourself deeply, meaningfully with others, and you have access to the vast resources and potential of other human beings.
• Only independent people can choose to become interdependent. Dependent people cannot. They don’t have the character to do it; they don’t own enough of themselves.
• True effectiveness is a function of not just what is produced, but the producing asset of the capacity to produce. This is the P/PC balance, where P is the produced, and PC is for production capability.
• Like Aesop’s fable, P is what is produced (the golden egg), and PC is the producing asset or capacity to produce (the goose).
• There are physical, financial, and human assets. For each type, there is not just an asset or produced good, but value in the production capability.
• You can’t buy a person’s heart, where his enthusiasm and loyalty is. You can’t buy a person’s mind, where his ingenuity and resourcefulness is.
• Maintaining a balance between the golden egg (production) and the health and welfare of the goose (production capability) is difficult, but it is the very essence of effectiveness.
• Be patient with yourself. Self-growth is tender; it is holy ground. There’s no greater investment.

Part Two: Private Victory

Habit 1: Be Proactive

• Self-awareness, or the ability to think of our very thought process, is why we can evaluate and learn from others’ experience as well as our own, and make or break our habits.
• Through self-awareness, we can examine our paradigms and determine whether they are reality- or principle-based or if they are a function of conditioning and conditions.
• The three social maps, or theories of determinism to explain our nature, are genetic, psychic (i.e. your upbringing), and environmental (someone or something in your environment).
• Between stimulus and response, man has freedom to choose. Within that freedom are endowments that make us uniquely human, such as self-awareness, imagination, conscious, and independent will.
• Reactive people are driven by feelings, by circumstances, by conditions, by their environment. Proactive people are driven by values, carefully thought about, selected and internalized.
• It’s not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts us.
• Our most difficult experiences become the crucibles that forge our character and develop the internal powers, the freedom to handle difficult circumstances in the future and inspire others to do so as well.
• There are three central values in life: the experiential, which happens to us; the creative, which we bring into existence; and the attitudinal, or our response to difficult circumstance.
• Our basic nature is to act. This not only enables us to choose our response to particular circumstances, but it empowers us to create circumstance.
• The best employees are the proactive ones who are solutions to problems, who seize the initiative to do whatever is necessary but consistent with correct principles.
• The language of reactive people absolves them of responsibility. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy, where people feel increasingly victimized and out of control.
• The Circle of Concern contains all of our concerns. Proactive people focus their efforts on the embedded Circle of Influence, which are the things they can do something about.
• Problems over which we have direct control are solved by working on our habits; problems with indirect control we solve by changing our methods of influence.
• It is much safer to say “I am not responsible.” If you say “I am responsible,” then you might also have to say “I am irresponsible.”
• The Circle of Concern is filled with statements with “have,” like “If I only had…” The Circle of Influence is filled with “be,” like “I can be more patient” or “I can be wise.”
• Mistakes are also out there in the Circle of Concern. We can’t recall them, we can’t undo them, and we can’t control the consequences that came as a result.
• It is important to immediately admit and correct our mistakes so that they have no power over the next moment and we are empowered again.
• The commitments we make to ourselves and to others, and our integrity to those commitments, is the essence and clearest manifestation of our proactivity.
• Making promises, setting goals, and being true to them is the essence of our growth. It builds the strength of character that makes possible every other positive thing in our lives.

Habit 2: Begin With The End In Mind

• The most fundamental application of this habit is to begin today with the image, picture, or paradigm of the end of your life as the frame of reference or criterion by which everything else is examined.
• This ensures that each day does not violate the criteria you define as most important, and that each day contributes meaningfully to the vision you have of your life as a whole.
• If a ladder is not leaning against the right wall, then every step we take up it just takes us to the wrong place faster.
• “Begin with the end in mind” is based on the principle that all things are created twice: There’s a mental creation first, and a physical creation second.
• We are either the second creation of our own proactive design, or we are the second creation of other people’s agendas, of circumstances, or of past habits.
• Management is the bottom-line focus: How can I best accomplish certain things? Leadership is a top-line focus: What do I want to accomplish?
• If industries do not monitor their environment, including their own work teams, and exercise the creative leadership to head in the right direction, then no amount of management expertise can save them.
• Leadership is even more lacking in our personal lives. We’re into managing with efficiency, setting and achieving goals before we have even clarified our values.
• Use your imagination and creativity to write new scripts for yourself that are more effective, more congruent with our values and the principles that give our values meaning.
• By writing a new script, you can live out of your imagination instead of your memory, and tie yourself to your limitless potential instead of your limiting past. You can become your own first creator.
• Once you have a sense of mission, you have the essence of your own proactivity; you have vision and values to direct your life.
• What is at the center of our life, or our Circle of Influence, will be the source of our security, guidance, wisdom, and power.
• Security is your sense of worth, guidance is your source of direction, wisdom is your perspective, and power is your capacity to act.
• If we are marriage centered, then we become highly dependent on the relationship with our spouse, and may be dependent on the person with whom we are in conflict.
• If we are family centered, then our need to be popular with the children may override the importance of a long-term investment in our children’s growth and development.
• If we are money centered, then we are vulnerable to all the external factors that will affect that net worth.
• If we are work centered, then our fundamental identity comes from our work, and our security is vulnerable to anything that happens to prevent us from continuing in it.
• If we are possession centered, then we feel inferior when in the presence of someone with greater net worth, and feel superior when in the presence of someone with lesser net worth. There is no constancy.
• If we are pleasure centered, we take too much undisciplined leisure time, in which we continually take a course of least resistance that gradually wastes our life.
• If we are friend centered, then the social mirror becomes the source of our four life-support factors, and we depend on the fluctuating moods, attitudes, and behaviors of others.
• If we are church centered, image or appearance can become a person’s dominant consideration, leading to hypocrisy that undermines personal security and intrinsic worth.
• If we are self centered, then we accept but never give. But paying attention to the development of the self gives context for dramatic increase in the four life-support factors.
• The ideal is to create one clear center from which you consistently derive a high degree of security, guidance, wisdom, and power, empowering your proactivity and giving congruency and harmony to every part of your life.
• Centering our lives on correct principles creates a solid foundation for the four life-support factors. Correct principles do not change; we can depend on them.
• Principle-centered living yields a self-aware, knowledgeable, proactive individual, unrestricted by the attitudes, behaviors, and actions of others or by circumstances or environmental influences.
• The only real limitation of principle-centered living is the natural consequences of the principles themselves.
• Looking at things through a paradigm of correct principles yields an outlook that is dramatically different than what you see through any other centered paradigm.
• Because you have a high degree of security, guidance, wisdom, and power that flows from a solid, unchanging core, you have the foundation of a highly proactive and highly effective life.
• To seek some abstract meaning to our lives in our Circle of Concern is to abdicate our proactive responsibility, to place our own first creation in the hands of circumstance and other people.
• Until you accept the idea that you are responsible, or that you are the programmer, you won’t invest in writing the program.
• The more we are able to draw upon our right brain capacity, the more fully we can project a holistic picture of what we want to do and be in life.
• If you’re proactive, you don’t need to wait for circumstances or other people to create perspective-expanding experiences. You can consciously create your own.
• Almost all world-class athletes and other peak performers are visualizers. They see it, they feel it, they experience it before they actually do it.
• Affirmation and visualization are forms of programming; we must not submit ourselves to any programming that is not in harmony with our basic center or anything other than correct principles.
• When people work to become effective in their life, they don’t think broadly enough. They lose the sense of proportion and balance necessary to effective living.
• Identify your various roles, and then think about long-term goals for each one. They should extend a mission statement that is based on correct principles, reflecting your deepest values, unique talent, and sense of mission.
• Just identifying the various areas in your life and two or three important results you feel you should accomplish in each area to move ahead gives you an overall perspective and sense of direction.
• Mission statements for families or for organizations are best when everyone comes together with mutual respect, expressing different views, and works together to create something greater than any one person could do.

Habit 3: Put First Things First

• Habit 1 says that you are the creator. Habit 2 is the first or mental creation; it is the deep contact with our basic paradigms and values and the vision of what we can become.
• Habit 3 is the second or physical creation. It is the fulfillment, the actualization, and the natural emergence of the first two habits.
• Practicing Habit 3 requires effective self-management. This is the breaking down, analysis, sequencing, specific application, time-bound left-brain aspect of self government.
• Empowerment comes from learning how to use this great endowment of independent will in the decisions that we make every day.
• The degree to which we have developed our independent will is measured by our personal integrity, which is fundamentally the value that we place on ourselves.
• Successful people do things that failures don’t like to do. This requires independent will to be a function of your values rather than a function of the impulse or desire of any given moment.
• The efficiency focus of modern time management creates expectations that clash with the opportunities to develop rich personal relationships, meet human needs, and enjoy spontaneous moments.
• Urgent matters require immediate attention and are usually visible. Important matters have to do with results, and contribute to your mission or your high priority goals.
• If we do not practice Habit 2, then we don’t have a clear idea of what is important, of the results that we desire in our lives, and we are diverted to responding to the urgent.
• People who focus on only urgent matters, important or not, lead irresponsible lives. Focusing on things that are important but not urgent, or Quadrant II, is the heart of effective personal management.
• Crises are important and urgent matters. Cultivating proactivity to focus on Quadrant II matters, such as building relationships, planning, and maintenance will lessen them.
• To make time for Quadrant II, you cannot steal time from crises; instead you must say no to urgent and unimportant, or not urgent and unimportant matters.
• The essence of important time and life management is to organize and execute around balanced priorities.
• How you spend your time is a function of your priorities. To spend time on Quadrant II tasks requires a principle center and a personal mission that are planted in your heart and mind.
• Identify your roles and select your goals, and then translate each goal to a specific day of the week, either as a priority item or, even better, as a specific appointment.
• Your roles and goals provide a natural prioritization that grows out of your innate sense of balance.
• Reviewing your schedule each morning puts you in touch with the value-based decisions you made as you organized the week as well as unanticipated factors that may have come up.
• Living the program is a function of our independent will, integrity, and commitment to our correct principles and deepest values, which give meaning and context to our goals, schedules, and life.
• You can’t simply think efficiency with people. You think effectiveness with people and efficiency with things.
• Frustration is a function of our expectations, and our expectations are often a reflection of the social mirror rather than our own values and priorities.
• Delegating to others is perhaps the single most powerful high-leverage activity there is. It enables both individuals and organizations to grow.
• Gopher delegation uses one-on-one supervision of methods. The user still thinks like a producer and is responsible for the results. This does not scale.
• Stewardship delegation focuses on results instead of methods, giving people a choice of methods and makes them responsible for the results. It does scale.
• With stewardship delegation, you must communicate the desired results without focusing on methods, guidelines while identifying paths to failure, resources available, standards for evaluating results, and consequences from the evaluation.
• Trust is the highest form of human motivation and brings out the very best in people, but you may have to train people so that their competency can rise to the level of trust.
• Stewardship delegation applies to any kind of person or situation: you simply ramp up or down the desired results, resources, accountability interviews, and consequences.