7 Habits Review

I recently finished the book "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen Covey. LifeHacker.com offered a free download of the audiobook on audible.com. I thought there were some good principles and wanted to share them.

• Habit 1: Be Proactive - Take responsibility for every aspect of your life. Decide you're in charge. So take initiative and action.
  
• Habit 2: Begin with the end in mind - Create your own personal mission statement based on principles you create. Set long term goals and measure everything you do against those.
  
• Habit 3: Put first things first - Prioritize tasks using a 2x2 matrix with "Urgent" and "Important". Tasks that are important should always come before urgent. We often choose urgent tasks first, but we should choose important first.
  
• Habit 4: Think win/win - Always look for mutually beneficial solutions. Find people's needs, not just their symptoms.
  
• Habit 5: Seek first to understand, then to be understood - Take the time to understand where people are coming from. With people, slow is fast and fast is slow. So slow down and take the time to truly understand them before offering up advice.
  
• Habit 6: Synergize - Similar to win/win, this is a way of working in teams. Value differences, use creative collaboration and leverage innovation. 1+1 should be greater than 2.
  
• Habit 7: Sharpen the saw - Focus on improving yourself. Watch less TV, read more and write more.

That's them in a nutshell. These are all good habits and I recommend listening to this book. Here's the lifehacker link again.