7 - Habits of highly effective people - 2

This book focuses on character ethics rather than personality ethics. Personality ethics can be faked, whereas character ethics cannot be faked. Personality ethic depends on appearance. Character ethic is where you sow the seeds of greatness. 

My takeaways from this book: 

1. Be Proactive: Think about the circle of influence (Control) a lot.  Don’t waste your energy thinking about the circle of concern, which is reactive.  Life is to “Act” and not “Acted upon.” 

1. Begin with the end in the mind: Create passions, Goals, and Targets. Make a conscious effort to the end, or other people will decide your end. Have a personal mission statement, don’t get self-doubt get in the way. 

1. Put first thing first: Shift focus on the things that really matter. Use four Quadrant management principles. Q2 is what you need to habit to follow. 

Q1 – Focus on managing important & urgent things 

Q2 – Focus on planning important & not urgent things 

Q3 – Focus on avoiding not important and urgent  

Q4 – Focus on limiting not important & not urgent things 

These three habits make a man Independent from dependent oriented. 

1. Think Win-Win: If it’s not going to be mutually beneficial, then it defaults to a no-deal. 

2. Seek first to understand, then to understood: To understand someone, you must listen to them. Try to understand their perspective first, try to listen with Empathy, listen to understand not to reply back. The time to be understood is when the conversation leads to logic and advice is requested. 

3. Synergy: Celebrate and value the differences. Accept and encourage different opinions. 

  These three habits make a man Interdependent from independent oriented. 

1. Sharpen the Saw: Sharpen the four areas. This habit tells of striving for continuous learning and improvement by doing renews to each of the other 6 habits as well. 7th habit keeps you fresh so you can handle the other six habits. These four areas belong to the Q2 of quadrant management, which are not urgent but important. 

Physical à Workouts  

Spiritual à Yoga, Lonely Evenings 

Cognitive Health à continuous learning 

Social Health à Live interdependently 

The best way to learn habits is by teaching habits to others. Hence here I am posting this.