My takeaways from Covey's 7 Habits

Finished reading: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey 📚

Time Management

Covey recommends that we organize and plan our time on a week to week basis, using the roles that we want to focus on during the week.

Roles can be from our personal (such as being a spouse or a son) and our professional (PhD researcher, team event organizer, etc).

He emphasizes that the only way to spend most of the time in quadrant 2 (Not urgent-Important; from Eisenhower’s matrix for time management) is by thinking about the tasks per role that you want to accomplish and scheduling them.

Being Proactive

Such a basic and obvious principle (once you hear it) to only take actions or use language that is within my circle of influence. 

I have been guilty of being reactive rather than proactive in dealing with situations before. Instead, I should have taken control of the situation by thinking about what I could have done to influence a change. To be proactive is to compliment other’s weaknesses by making up for them while maximizing their strengths. This also aligns with being independent and co-dependent with others. To use each other’s strengths to accomplish something that cannot be done alone.

Financial Independence

Instead of working about how to gather money, cultivate skills that can generate income. Change yourself, be proactive, listen first to understand others, become independent and recognize how I can complement other’s skills and expertise.

Make the process of generating wealth intrinsic, instead of relying on the extrinsic process.