“The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” book review

The title of this book can make you think, why seven habits, not five or ten? The author doesn’t take credit for inventing them. He purely identified universal principles and organised them into a framework. This book is pleasant to read or listen to, and it’s full of sometimes such evident life principles and practices that are needed to be reminded of. The book was first published over thirty years ago, yet the content is universal and may help change your perception and life today.

The author will introduce you to the concept of the paradigm shift. Your perspective may sometimes differ from perceiving the same information from someone else’s view. We often forget about it, and our professional or private relations may suffer when ignoring this universal principle. There is no right or wrong view of things, a somewhat different perspective on which both sides may disagree and yet both be right. In the opening chapters, you will also learn about the Maturity Continuum. These are three stages of increasing maturity:

DEPENDENCE, INDEPENDENCE, AND INTERDEPENDENCE

The author based the book’s structure on these stages, taking the first dependence stage as the lowest stage when we are born—the second Independence explains how to achieve the stage by incorporating three habits. The author describes the importance of and teaches how to be proactive, take responsibility for your reaction to events, and make effective decisions in your life to get closer to your goals. And my favourite part of this book – is the “First things first” habit. It helps identify urgent but unimportant things that are consuming time while ignoring not critical but essential stuff (these are the things that impact our health and life but we tend to forget about).

Further, the third stage, Interdependence, is cut into the following three chapters. First, the author explains how effective it is to base on a win-win situation and highlights that it is sometimes better to go for a lose-lose rather than a win-lose. The fifth habit, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood”, remind us that this way of caring builds solid relationships and creates a problem-solving environment. Then, the author discusses what is hugely upsetting and ineffective in everyday conversations and explains how to listen to improve communication and relationships.

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.

(Convey, 1989)

The next habit, “Synergize, ” features how powerful people’s work in a cooperating team couldn’t achieve the same big things when working individually.

In the last chapter, the author helps to maintain the above achievements in your habits change. Learning how to balance a healthy, lifelong and practical lifestyle is extremely important. This habit – “Sharpen the saw”, gives you examples of maintaining and balancing your energy resources through physical and mental self-care.

It is one of the most influential business management books, but these principles should be a part of the educational program. I hope my review will inspire you to read this book with priceless and universal knowledge, positively impacting your life.

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