A breif summary of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Habit 1: Be Proactive

This means taking responsibility for your attitudes and actions. Proactive people develop the ability to choose their response, making them more a product of their values and decisions rather than their moods and conditions.

Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind
This means living your life with a clear understanding of your desired direction and destination.

Habit 3: Put First Things First
This means organizing and managing your time and tasks around the goals you have identified in habit 2.

Habit 4: Think Win-Win
This means collaborating with people to produce outcomes in which everyone benefits – not just yourself.

Habit 5: Seek First to Understand Then to be Understood
This means really listening to and understanding another person’s point of view before communicating your own.

Habit 6: Synergize
Synergy is where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It results from valuing differences by bringing different perspectives together in the spirit of mutual respect. People then feel free to seek the best possible alternative, often the “third alternative,” one that is substantially different and better than either of the original proposals.

Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw
This is the habit of self-renewal.

This book has had a tremendous influence on me and I like to summarize the habits as follows:

Take responsibility for your life.
Figure out what you want to do with your life.
Do it! No excuses!
Don’t walk over other people or let them walk over you!!
Communicate openly.
Don’t go it alone. Collaborate.
Continually develop your abilites. Learn!

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