Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
A decent summary available here
Paradigm Shifts
A paradigm-shifting experience as told by Frank Kock in Proceedings, the magazine of the Naval Institute:
Two battleships assigned to the training squadron had been at sea on maneuvers in heavy weather for several days. I was serving on the lead battleship and was on watch on the bridge as night fell. The visibility was poor with patchy fog, so the captain remained on the bridge keeping an eye on all activities.
Shortly after dark, the lookout on the wing of the bridge reported, “Light, bearing on the starboard bow.” “Is it steady or moving astern?” the captain called out. Lookout replied, “Steady, captain,” which meant we were on a dangerous collision course with that ship.
The captain then called to the signal man, “Signal that ship: We are on a collision course, advise you change course 20 degrees.” Back came a signal, “Advisable for you to change course 20 degrees.” The captain said, “Send, I’m a captain, change course 20 degrees.” “I’m a seaman second class,” came the reply. “You had better change course 20 degrees.” By that time, the captain was furious. He spat out, “Send, I’m a battleship. Change course 20 degrees.” Back came the flashing light, “I’m a lighthouse.” We changed course.
New Level of Thinking
“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”
– Albert Einstein
Have to work toward a new thought paradigm and perspective to answer significant problems; thinking on the same plane is often fruitless
Asset Management
- Three types of asset: physical, financial, human
- Managing these assets well involves P/PC balance, P being production, PC being production capability
- P is often tied to short term results, where we’re concerned only with the fruits of production and the actual output
- PC is often tied to long term results, where we’re concerned with the ability to produce (and produce in the future)
- One must balance product use (P) and maintenance (PC) when it comes to effectively managing physical assets (e.g. a vehicle)
- Financially, one must balance capital (P) with interest (PC). You can improve quality of life now by making purchases with available capital, but you (potentially) rob yourself of the ability to earn interest on that capital.
- In relationships, one must balance personal immediate benefits (P) with long term relationship building (PC). Too much of the former can result in controlling the other individual to satisfy personal needs. Same goes for raising a child: permissive, pleasure mentality giving them their way vs authoritarian controlling mentality where the adult is always correct.
Excessive focus on P results in ruined health, worn-out machines, depleted bank accounts, and broken relationships. Too much focus on PC is like a person who runs for three or four hours a day, bragging about the extra 10 years of life it creates, unaware he’s spending them running. Or a person endlessly going to school, never producing, living on other people’s golden eggs – the eternal student syndrome.
- The balancing of the short term with the long term is the very essence of efficiency and effectiveness; this underlies all of the seven habits.
- Reminds me of discussion in Innovating in Bets on being “results-oriented” vs “process-oriented”
- A fundamental aspect of decision making as discussed in On Efficiency
Habits
Habit 1: Be Proactive
- Be proactive and responsible for your own life. If you are merely a function of the environment, then you subject yourself to the idea that you are a completely reactive being.
- Proactive is the recognition of the responsibility to make things happen.
- It is inherently human to be able to think about ourselves and the nature of thought. We must be willing to understand the subjective nature of how people see and feel about themselves.
“The fountain of content must spring up in the mind, and he who hath so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief he proposes to remove.”
– Samuel Johnson
Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind
Don’t get caught in an activity trap; begin with the ending frame of reference in mind. This could for life as a whole (i.e. thinking about things from the perspective of your death) or for a particular goal.
- When visualizing goals (or larger scale things like life), implement time traveling. Write down how you want the end to look to get a clear picture of success, and work backwards from there. This can give you a clear idea of progress on your way, and ties in well with a technique like backcasting (which specifically is a planning technique for identifying possible future issues).
Habit 3: Put First Things First
The actualization of the first two habits. We often react to urgent matters or spend time doing things that aren’t ultimately important. The following is a “time management matrix” describing the different types of activities we involve ourselves in:
Effective people stay out of quadrants 3 and 4 because they aren’t important. Additionally they shrink the size of quad 1 by focusing on quad 2. “Quadrant II is the heart of effective personal management.” It includes things like relationship building, long-range planning, exercising, preparation, writing a personal mission statement, etc.
- Commit to a “quad 2” task that, if you focused more on that single thing, your personal life would greatly benefit from it. Commit do doing this thing.
Habit 4: Think Win-Win
Toward the goal of creating strong, positive relationships, focus on creating win-win scenarios that are beneficial to both parties.
- When engaging with other people, think about the things that person is/may be looking for. Consider how you can meet one of these desires.
- Identify relationships where you give more than you take, and vice versa.
Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood
Before speaking and offering our own thoughts, it’s effective to first understand another person’s perspective. This habit emphasizes effective listening, which in turn allows you to both better respond to others and to expand your worldview.
Habit 6: Synergize
Identify and embrace value in differences from another person’s perspective, allowing new opportunities through openness and creativity. This relies heavily on habits 4 and 5: need to consider scenarios where multiple parties gain from interaction, and arriving at this via deep understanding of their perspective. Then a synergistic, cooperative, trustful, win-win scenario can be crafted and unleash insight, ideas, and creativity for the problem at hand.
Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw
This habit is the idea of personal PC (focus on long-term production capability). The name comes from the hypothetical where a man has been working hard to chop down a tree. He gets caught up in chopping down the tree that he takes no time to step back and sharpen his saw, an action that could allow him to finish chopping the tree much faster.
- It’s important to step back and renew the four aspects of our nature: physical, spiritual, mental, and social
- Physically: eat well, sufficient rest, regular exercise
- Emphasizes habit 1 of proactivity and purposely staying on top of well-being
- Spiritually: Daily meditation, immersion in literature or music, connection to nature
- Emphasizes habit 2 to continually reconsider values and goals, and keeping the end in the mind
- Mentally: Read from good sources, journal of thoughts and experiences (e.g. this system), limit entertainment to those programs from which you benefit
- Emphasizes habit 3 by helping effectively managing use of time and resources, working on events of quad 2
- Socially: Seek to deeply understand others, contribute to improve others’ lives, seek to help others find success
- Emphasizes habits 4, 5, 6 by focusing on meaningful and rewarding relationships where win-wins exist, understanding others, and opening new creative avenues through connection and synergy.