The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Free Press Title: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

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The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Free Press

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is a classic.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is a classic. If you have never read this book, do so now. For your convenience it's available in print and audio. Just pop a cassette into the car's player and you can be rewarded with some of the best advice ever presented. Turn your commute into a classroom.

This book was first published in 1990, but remains a favorite with business leaders. The author tapped into a basic principle; namely that success is a result of both personal and professional effectiveness. These pages systematically show how to achieve this level of productiveness in both areas through what he calls a "paradigm shift". That merely refers to changing your perception of how the world works. The author challenges the reader to make this shift by highlighting key areas, like time management and positive thinking. Once this change has taken place, the person is then ready to climb the corporate ladder with confidence.

Building on the premise that change comes from within, this book has the potential to solidly impact the reader's life and workplace. But, it's not a quick fix. These concepts will take time to understand and master. It's recommended that this book be read slowly, allowing the principles to be fully understood before moving to the next one. In fact, to fully apply these concepts may take years. Yet, that's not a negative aspect of the author's work. Stephen Covey realizes that success is not an overnight happening; it comes in stages and by degrees. Yes, it can be painstakingly slow, but when it comes, it's here to stay.

The title mentions "habits" and that's important. A habit is something that develops over time. Successful businesspeople comprehend the necessity of thinking the right thoughts to bring about the right kinds of decisions. Covey demonstrates this through anecdotes as well as concise writing. The entire idea of being stuck in a negative mode of perception will be a startling revelation to readers, but more importantly is the author's advice on moving beyond that obstacle. There is a good amount of psychology presented in these pages, all of which is incredibly useful in bringing about effective changes.

These seven habits are fully explained, and yes, you may need to slow down to capture their full meaning. The first three habits deal with personal responsibility, leadership and self-management. Granted, these are huge areas to deal with, but once again, if the author's words are taken in small segments, they can bring about amazing results. To the author's credit, he's able to take these larger issues and present them within the framework of everyday occurrences. This sets the ideas more firmly in the reader's mind by associating them with real life scenarios.

This holistic approach makes a lot of sense, but you will need time to fully master it. As the author explains, success and effective leadership is not something that will come to you without an investment of time. The formula for enduring success is right here in these pages; study it, apply it and watch the incredible results.


Raymond Le Blanc. psychologist & economist
Author: Achieving Objectives Made Easy! Practical goal setting tools & proven time management techniques
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Free Press

Audio Book

Having read the book, I was left with a sense that the abridged audio book lacked more detail. However, the concepts are still magnificent.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Free Press

Gotta Get Effective? Read This

To put first things first, Stephen Covey's treatise on principle-centered self-improvement is still engaging and worthwhile almost 20 years after it was originally published.

In this age of lifehacking and making technology work for you, Covey's insights are actually more relevant than ever, because people are increasingly believing that gadgets and gizmos will solve all of the world's communication and productivity issues. In fact, more often than not these communication and productivity tools hinder the very things they are supposed to help, and this happens because people lack the basic principles and skills to work effectively with people.

Adding technology to un-principled and ineffective lifestyle is like never running more than a mile, then buying brand new trainers and thinking you can win a marathon.

The Seven Habits avoid talking about technology and focus on human contact. The habits help us use our ideas and abilities to become interdependent and be able to work effectively with ourselves and other people to achieve overwhelming success. And while he does use a lot of jargon that may seem bureaucratic, Covey conveys his ideas through very simple anecdotes that help explain exactly what he means and how to accomplish it.

His writing style is so accessible and he makes his ideas seem so easy to implement, it's no wonder this book has been the go-to source for managers and company leaders for so long. I plan to buy this one and re-read it once a year or so to help keep me on track to becoming more effective.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Free Press

Outline for Success Personally and Professionally

Live by these steps and you'll be successful personally and professionally. These habits will definitely make sure you do everything with integrity.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Free Press

Highly Effective People

This book change my life and the way I look at things. I would highly recommend it. My opinion is, it should be used as a college course.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Free Press

Product Description

In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, author Stephen R. Covey presents a holistic, integrated, principle-centered approach for solving personal and professional problems. With penetrating insights and pointed anecdotes, Covey reveals a step-by-step pathway for living with fairness, integrity, service, and human dignity -- principles that give us the security to adapt to change and the wisdom and power to take advantage of the opportunities that change creates.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Free Press

Amazon.com

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change was a groundbreaker when it was first published in 1990, and it continues to be a business bestseller with more than 10 million copies sold. Stephen Covey, an internationally respected leadership authority, realizes that true success encompasses a balance of personal and professional effectiveness, so this book is a manual for performing better in both arenas. His anecdotes are as frequently from family situations as from business challenges.

Before you can adopt the seven habits, you'll need to accomplish what Covey calls a "paradigm shift"--a change in perception and interpretation of how the world works. Covey takes you through this change, which affects how you perceive and act regarding productivity, time management, positive thinking, developing your "proactive muscles" (acting with initiative rather than reacting), and much more.

This isn't a quick-tips-start-tomorrow kind of book. The concepts are sometimes intricate, and you'll want to study this book, not skim it. When you finish, you'll probably have Post-it notes or hand-written annotations in every chapter, and you'll feel like you've taken a powerful seminar by Covey. --Joan Price

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Free Press

Amazon.com Audiobook Review

Anyone who thinks the audiocassette adaptation of Stephen Covey's bestseller, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, is a shortcut to reading the book has another thing coming. As a preview, the cassette is worth every one of its 90 minutes; as a substitute for the original, it will only leave you wishing for the rest. There's a reason 7 Habits has sold more than 5 million copies and been translated into 32 languages. Serious work has obviously gone into it, and serious change can likely come out of it--but only with constant discipline and steadfast commitment. As the densely packed tape makes immediately clear, this is no quick fix for what's ailing us in our personal and professional lives.

The tape opens to the silky-smooth, overtrained voice of the female narrator, who's responsible for tying together audio clips from actual Covey seminars. Leaving aside the occasional attempts at promoting Covey and his institute, her script does a first-rate job of making sense of Covey's own intense, analogy-rich style of explaining his habits. There's nothing simple about his approach to becoming an effective person. The first three habits alone--which have to do with personal responsibility, leadership, and self-management--could take years to master. Yet the last four are unattainable, the narrator insists, if you can't acquire the personal security--the "inner core," says Covey--that presumably comes from a mastery of the foundation.

Throughout our lessons, Covey's presence is both learned and thoroughly appealing. He drops references to the likes of Socrates, T.S. Eliot, and Robert Frost with the aplomb of an English professor. And his knack for mixing everyday stories with abstract concepts manages to clarify difficult issues while respecting our intelligence. You could argue that the cassette is nothing more than a clever marketing tool for selling another few million copies of the book. But, even at that, it's worth the investment in time and concentration: in the end, we're moved to learn more about integrating all seven habits in our struggle to become better and, yes, more effective people. (Running time: 1.5 hours, one cassette) --Ann Senechal