You all must have heard about this book “Seven habits of highly effective people” by Stephen Covey. Some of you will have read it, too. And many of you will have considered it too long a book to give your time to. These habits are very important if you want to be a high-scoring student, an efficient employee, or overall, a successful person in your life.
They are not just a few things to practice but they change the way you look at life and make you a better thinker and an effective person if you follow them. That’s why this book went so famous. Well, here are the seven habits of highly effective people that Covey has mentioned in this book. It is an excellent read if you have not read the book yet and an effective reminder to those who have read it but gave not much importance.
Proactive
The first habit that the writer says effective people have is that they are proactive. This means they do not spend their time that is going to bring them no benefit. Let’s suppose your teacher gave you an extensive syllabus for the exams. Now, a group of students will start complaining about it. They will keep on complaining until there is very little time left for their preparation. On the other hand, the proactive people will start making a schedule to prepare it before the deadline. So, successful people are those who deal with situations proactively and keep control of their life.
Begin with the end in mind
Ask yourself a question, what do you want to achieve in your life? It will be happy family life, success in career, or money. Then, compare it with the way you are spending your life. You will very rarely find your actions in alignment with what you want to become. Whereas, effective people spend their lives by having the end in their mind. They keep their goal first and align their actions according to that.
Put first things first
Just like we very rarely do the things keeping the end in our mind, our activities are not according to our preferences. Let me ask you a question. Out of the two, what do you want to become; a successful student or a person who has completed all the Netflix series? Definitely, you will say a successful student. In other cases, maybe a successful professional, player, or anything. But where do you spend most of your time? Studying or watching Netflix? Effective people do things in order of their preference. They will work because they have to be successful in their business instead of watching a series that has nothing to do with their aims.
Think win-win
Do not pull others down. You have your own journey and your comparison is with yourself. In your class, when you see you are unable to complete a person, you will think of hiding some important information from them that might help them in their exams. Whereas, successful people do not do that. They would look at their own efforts, performance, mistakes, and the reasons for less marks. Then, they will improve according to it. In short, instead of bringing others down, they will evaluate themselves.
Seek first to understand than to be understood
Most of the people we meet have certain expectations from their spouses, family members, friends, and other people. However, we very rarely find people who believe that they cannot be understood by others until they understand them and take care of their expectations. This philosophy applies everywhere. If you want people to buy your products, understand their needs and demands first.
Synergize
We mostly look for other people to get away from our journey so that we can work independently and effectively. When we see the world from an eye of competition, it looks good. But looking at it from a cooperative perspective, it does not. Successful people look for the opportunities to synergize with others because they believe that mutual work is more effective than individual effort,
Sharpen the saw
Saw is a metaphor used for preparation. If you have a tree to cut and your saw is not sharpened enough, you will spend the whole day with minimum progress. However, you will not sharpen your saw because it will take you extra time. Sounds funny? Yes, it is. But we all are doing the same stupid thing in our lives. Instead of studying for one hour every day, we wait for the last day where we do not have enough time to be fully prepared. Well, the effective people make sure they have made all the preparations beforehand.
Read more: Six habits to defeat procrastination
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