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| View Larger Image | The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
by Stephen R. Covey
| | List Price: | $15.95 | | Price: | $9.57 | | You Save: | $6.38 (40%) |  | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours | | | | | Sales Rank: | 43 | | Studio: | Free Press | | | Binding: | Paperback | | Number Of Pages: | 384 | | Publication Date: | November 09, 2004 | | Publisher: | Free Press |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
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. |
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 |
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 |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 799 reviews)
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Some good points, some bad points. 
Dr Covey has written a book with some valuable points, which would be useful for any person to remember and apply. Although some say that they're common sense, sometimes we need reminding of common sense. Being proactive (i.e. doing something is better than doing nothing), starting with the end in sight (i.e. visualise what you really want and plan to get it), putting first-things-first (i.e. don't procrastinate), think Win-win (obviously valuable), and Seek-first-to-understand-then-to-be-understood are all useful and valuable habits. The idea of being principle-centred is also worth examining, as is the idea of concentrating on your circle of influence.
However, this book could have been much shorter; probably less than half the length. Dale Carnegie covered many of the ideas fifty years earlier, and wrote more clearly. Dr Covey's writing style would have George Orwell spinning in his grave. Like many authors in the 'self-help' genre, Dr Covey's writing is imprecise, long-winded, laden with exaggeration, and littered with clichés.
The 'Synergize' chapter should simply be excised; Dr Covey spends an entire chapter gushing about situations in which enthusiastic people got together, opened-up, became excited, and produced something wonderful. That isn't a habit; it's an effect. It's all very nice when it happens, but it ignores the situations where enthusiastic people get together, open-up, become excited, and produce something terrible or utterly disastrous because they were all too excited to examine risk. Late-90's dot-com companies in particular spring to mind. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds was written about this phenomenon.
Dr Covey's advice relating to tyrannical bosses is awful. I would expect that anyone who adopts Dr Covey's advice in a situation where they are forced to deal with a sociopath is about to discover the meaning of 'disappointment'. Dr Covey makes the error of assuming that deep-down, all people are reasonable... if they were, his ideas would work. Unfortunately, they are not, and adopting Dr Covey's techniques with a sociopathic manipulator (they're more common than you think), or even worse, a sycophantic group of sociopaths, is a recipe for disaster. Sometimes, the best advice is 'get as far as you can from that person and situation, as fast as you can'; I doubt whether Dr Covey has ever given anyone that advice.
This leads me to another thread common to self-help writers; the unwillingness to admit that their approaches won't necessarily work for all people in all situations, and the accompanying focus on only the positive outcomes that can come from following their advice. Dr Covey's book is an example of this; no warnings, no caveats; the whole thing is presented as a path to salvation.
Finally, the anecdotes... they're tedious. One after the other, we hear unverifiable anecdotes, which could have just as easily have been invented. Or they could be completely one-sided; the other people in the situation may have had a completely different interpretation. I couldn't help when reading the book but wonder if Dr Covey's anecdotes were all that they seemed.
So there you have it; a middling book which promises much and delivers some. This book is worth a read if you go in with your eyes open, and think critically. But for the impressionable reader (it is often impressionable people who buy self-help books) some parts of the book may lead to disappointment.
August 31, 2008 | |
Helps Plan and Maximize A Life 
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
This classic book provides steps to building a productive and organized life. Valuable for personal and business application. I review it in the last two lectures of my Principles of Management course to assist students in developing life and career plans.
August 30, 2008 | |
7 Habits We All Need To Adopt 
Covey shares insight that should be considered by all. His "7 habits" apply to everyone, whether they wish to be more effective as leaders, parents, students, or just more effective as members of society. The habits he outlines perk the minds of and prompt the audience to self-examination. Immediately, I started to think of my own perceptions and attitudes in relation to my personal effectiveness as a Soldier, a leader, a parent, a husband, and as a friend. By adopting the habits, every aspect of my life could benefit.
The habits are not only presented and explained, but the author uses personal anecdotes to help us more readily relate to them. Covey outlines a plan for making the habits our own and explains how we will reap the benefits of using the habits as we journey through life. Covey creates a set of parameters in the habits that can provide guidance and control for anyone who wishes to be more effective at anything. It is not a quick fix, but a personal attitude and behavioral adaptation that can be developed in a positive way. I recommend "7 Habits" to everyone I know.
August 28, 2008 | |
8th Habit: Don't buy worthless generic books 
The reason why astrologers seem dead on is because they are so generic they would seem to fit anyone's situation. The same goes for this book. This books habits are so generic and so vague that they are practically useless. For instance, "sharpen the saw" is so vague and common sense that it is useless. You can sharpen your saw much better by buying a different book.
August 20, 2008 | |
Simple yet profound!
I really enjoyed reading "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen R Covey. Covey starts with the premise everyone is born with these traits and one has to practice and cultivate them.
My favorite chapter is "WIN/WIN". Covey's premise is there are 6 paradigms of humans interaction and that WIN/WIN is not a technique it is a philosophy of human interaction. Relationships can be mutually beneficial, everybody wins! "It is not my way or your way but a better way, a higher way." This chapter reminds me of the "Golden Rule" (Do unto others what you would like them to do to you) which I was taught as a child.
Another book I really enjoyed was Being Here: Modern Day Tales of Enlightenment by award winning authors Ariel & Shya Kane, This is a wonderful book of short stories that are all about accessing the moment and living a satisfying and fulfilling life.
August 18, 2008 | |
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