A brief summary of the best seller “7 Habits of Highly Effective People

By | April 4, 2019

Renowned author Steven Covey’s bestseller 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is a must read for everybody. This book addresses some of the eternal questions we humans are struggling to find the answer for since time unknown. Here I have put a brief The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Summary for you if you haven’t read the book yet.

What is success? Everybody has some different answer to that question. For some, success is enough money, for some success is “all” the money, for some success is satisfaction in what one do, and for some success is to become the reason of the success of anybody else. Every answer has its merit, and no answer is wrong here. Success really is everybody’s own point of view, there’s no argument. My success may not be considered as the “success” from your point of view, but that doesn’t make my success any less than yours.

Whatever your “success” is, do you think you achieved that already? If not, do you think you’re on the way to achieve that soon, and you’re progressing consistently? Do you feel stuck in some point? Do you feel you’re not going anywhere by doing what you do? Then you should read the book, it has some points that will make you question to your inner self – “am I doing what it takes to get succeeded”?

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Summary

The gist in a few simple words

In this book, Covey explained today’s generation and their quest to succeed in great details. Today people want “antibiotic” for everything, even to get success in life. We, today’s generation, believe success is a mere technique, and it can be replicated. Nothing is far from the truth. Success can’t be replicated since it’s unique for each and everybody. Today if we see somebody is successful (I.e., rich, highly positioned, influential), we ask them what’s the secret. We ask them “how did you do it?” We ask them for their way, method, techniques. Like it can be taught, learned and replicated. We basically want an “antibiotic” which we take for a few days and bam! We got succeeded!

In this book, Steven Covey tried to address that mindset. He believes, to be successful, we need to dig deeper instead of just scratching the surface. This is precisely what we are doing so far, merely scratching the surface! He explained, to get that desired success, we need to change ourselves from within. He is not talking about changing your personality, attitude or behaviors, he is talking about your perception. Your perception towards life need to be changed, if you want to change your life – this is the gist of his book in one simple sentence.

The 7 habits

He mentioned about 7 habits which you need to form – to change your own self fundamentally. This would be a total paradigm shift for oneself, and we must be ready and able to go through that.

Now, as always, very few of us have time to read a 400+ page book, right? I get that. I took the plunge so that you don’t have to, and tried to summarize that 7 habits here –

  1. Don’t be reactive, you need to be proactive.
  2. Have a crystal clear idea in your mind about your final

destination – where you want to be at the end – you must decide

that end goal even before you start

  1. You should make a habit of prioritizing your jobs, and you must follow that religiously. In simple words, what you need to do first, do that at first.
  2. Always try to make the situation win-win, where no party loses.
  3. You should first try to understand, and once you successfully understand the others, you then can effectively make others understand yourself.
  4. Try to build togetherness, instead of acting alone. Synergizing is the key where one plus one would create a result of three.
  5. Revitalize yourself, renew yourself every day by consistently working on your physical, mental and social self.