I remember when the book by Stephen Covey on the 7 Habits of Highly Effective people was published in 1989. It was one of the books that has weaved its way in and out of my life occasionally. You now hear reference to concepts from the book as part of everyday speech. I heard someone talking about the the “big rocks” concept last week. Get the most important things scheduled in your life first and then fill in all the trivial details with the rest. The book has created a genre that has built almost an entire industry of leadership and skills training. Secretly I was always jealous growing up that I did not come up with something so cool!
The reason that I bring this up is that there is something that bugged me about the book and I never could articulate it. I finally figured it out. The Habits in the book are not really habits! How to do you really make a habit about beginning with the end in mind anyway? How do you really change your personality to be outcome focused? Covey interviewed many leaders and determined these concepts that really successful people follow. The are awesome – but they were always impossible for me to achieve in a practical way. I can recognize when a win win is in play, but I would not be able to create one from thin air. Everyone says that you need to seek first to understand then to be understood (yes that concept if coined in this book as well) but how do you actually LEARN to do that? I always interrupt people all the time just like everyone else does!
What I discovered as I went through my 20’s and 30’s is that I gained these abilities by going through the school of hard knocks. These 7 things were not habits at all, they were outcomes developed after a life time of doing things the wrong way. Eventually you figure it out – if you don’t put what is important to you first – it does not get done. You learn eventually OR you just never get anything important done. What I never realized was that you could actually develop these 7 habits faster by having some real habits! Huh? How does that make sense?
Simple. If you want to learn to always Begin with the End in Mind (another concept coined in the book) then that outcome oriented thinking happens when you learn how to do it overtime and under pressure of getting results. For me this occurred owning a company. If I did not have the end in mind at all times, I quickly learned how quickly my investments would disappear. I think there is a way to shortcut. If I had built a habit of waking each morning and asking myself, how am I going to achieve my most important goals today earlier in life – then I think that habit would have become so ingrained in my thought process that I would have seen that practical habit help me develop the #1 Covey Habit a lot faster. On a similar note, if I would have had a habit of running everyday earlier in life then I might have had greater capacity to focus on unlocking my internal strength and passion and spend time sharpening the saw and not feeling guilty about it.
Creating practical, everyday, real habits are a quick way to get yourself further down the path of building these critical life skills that Covey called his 7 habits. So this is a long way of saying – I wish Covey had told me a little more practical advice then taking all my money on those really expensive Franklin planners back in the 90s.
Guy Reams
365 Alumni
66 Days Left to 1st Marathon
