Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Seven Habits of Highly Effective People - Overview
	Our character is a collection of our habits. Habits consist of desire, knowledge, and skill.	- Desire motivates you to do something. - Knowledge allows you to know what to do. - Skills give you the ability to know how to do it.

We move us through the following stages as we mature:

Dependence: the paradigm under which we are born, relying upon others to take care of us.
Independence: the paradigm under which we can make our own decisions and take care of ourselves.
Interdependence: the paradigm under which we cooperate to achieve something that cannot be achieved independently.

We have a natural tendency to value independence, to become liberated and do our own thing. The reality is that we usually find ourselves in an interdependent environment that requires leaders and team players. Unless we grow through the independent stage, we will be limited, or ineffective, in the reality of today's world.

Before making the choice to become interdependent, we must first be independent, since dependent people have not yet developed the character for interdependence. Therefore, the first three habits focus on self-mastery, that is, achieving the private victories required to move from dependence to independence.

Habit 1: Be Proactive
Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind
Habit 3: Put First Things First

The next three address interdependence:

Habit 4: Think Win/Win
Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood
Habit 6: Synergize

Improvement of our personal capability is the result of Habit 7: Sharpening the Saw.
To be effective, one must find the proper balance between actually producing and improving our capability to produce.

Summary

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