The 7 Habits of highly effective people

I am the follower of Stephen Covey's 7 habits of highly effective people. Recently our office staff had a 2 days seminar on this by one of the 7 habits certified professsional. Though am a voracious reader, when I started reading this book, I felt that the subject is very dry and I just skimmed thru the content. But when I have seen the presentations and all by covey, am pretty impressed. Our character is a composite of our habits. Changing habits is hard, but can be done by tremendous commitment.

HABIT 1: Be Proactive

Being proactive means taking initiative, not waiting for others to act first, and being responsible for what you do. Its all about a gap between stimulus and response. In that gap humans have a freedom to CHOOSE.

Gandhi said "They cannot take away our self-respect if we do not give it to them". Our response to what happened to us affects us more than what actually happened.10% of life is made up of what happens to us. 90% of life is decided by how we react.

Change starts from within and effective people make the decision to improve their lives through the things that they can influence rather than by simply reacting to external forces

HABIT 2: Begin with the End in Mind

Being a techie, I follow this for sure. Design Phase first and then coding phase. Ofcourse manythings comes in between. This habit is based on the principle that all things are created twice:
a mental or first creation
a physical or second creation.

In simpler words its a carpenter rule "measure twice, cut once". Everyone of us should have a principle-centered personal mission statement. We can extend the mission statement into long-term goals based on personal principles.

HABIT 3: Put First Things First

The Time Management Matrix
..................Urgent Not Urgent
Important.........Q1 .........Q2
Not important.... Q3 ........Q4

Every activity we do during the day can be put in one of four quadrants. Effective, proactive people spend most of their time in Quadrant II. We need to stay out of Quadrants III and IV. This can be done if we are able to organize our goals, prioritize and work towards it.

HABIT 4: Think Win/Win

Building a business is nothing but building relationships. We should seek agreements and relationships that are mutually beneficial. This habit is best suited in co-operative environment rather than competetive environment. Win/Win is not a personality technique. It's a total paradigm of human interaction.

HABIT 5: Seek First to Understand, then to be understood

This is the toughest habit of all. Stephen covey presents this habit as the most important principle of interpersonal relations. Effective listening is not simply echoing what the other person has said through the lens of one's own experience. Rather, it is putting oneself in the perspective of the other person, listening empathically for both feeling and meaning.

HABIT 6: Synergize

Its about the whole is greater than sum of its parts. Through mutual trust and understanding we can solve conflicts and can find a better solution. synergize doesn't mean compromise. Compromising is nothing but a win/lose situation, where as synergistic communication is the win/win situation and the highest level of communication.

HABIT 7: Sharpen the saw

Habit 7 is taking the time to sharpen the saw. By renewing the four dimensions of our nature - physical, spiritual, mental and social/emotional, we can work more quickly and effortlessly. To do this, we must be proactive. This is a Quadrant II (important, not urgent) activity that must be acted on. It's at the center of our Circle of Influence, so we must do it for ourselves.

I started inculcating this habits one by one slowly. Lemme see how well I can change myself.