The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (30th Anniversary Edition) by Stephen R. Covey, PhD

Welcome to Productivity Book Group. I'm your host and facilitator, Ray Sidney-Smith. Thanks for joining us here for Productivity Book Group's group discussion of the book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, the 30th Anniversary Edition by Dr. Stephen R. Covey, with Shawn Covey doing a new introduction to the 30th Anniversary Edition. And so, uh, before we get started, just a little bit about the author and then about the book as usual, then we'll get into the conversation. So, uh, Quoting here from partially from Wikipedia, I made some changes here, but for the most part, this is the Wikipedia introduction to Dr. Covey. So Stephen R. Covey was an American educator, author, business leader, the co-founder of Franklin Covey Company, and keynote speaker.

He's the author of more than a dozen works, his most popular book being The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. His other books include among First Things First, Principal-Centered Leadership, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families, The Eighth Habit, which is our next book, and The Leader in Me: How Schools and Parents Around the World Are Inspiring Greatness One Child at a Time. In 1996, Time magazine named him one of the 25 most influential Americans. He was the John M. Huntsman Presidential Chair in Leadership and professor at the John M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University at the time of his death in April 2012 from complications from a bicycling accident. Covey is survived by his wife, 9 children, and 55 grandchildren at that time. A little bit about the book itself. Again, I'm quoting here from the Amazon description, I believe. Quote, this beloved classic presents a principle-centered approach for solving both personal and professional problems with penetrating insights and practical anecdotes. Steve Covey reveals a step-by-step pathway for living with fairness, integrity, honesty, 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. End quote. And so with that, let's get into the conversation of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, 30th Anniversary Edition. What did you think? What were your immediate thoughts from having read this new edition of the book? And maybe some of you have read maybe an older edition of the book, so maybe you have some compare and contrast. What are your thoughts with relating, relating to that? Dr. Buck, you want to get us started?

Well, first of all, gosh, has it really been that long, 2012, since we lost Dr. Covey? That doesn't, you know, it doesn't seem like it, but, uh, you know, his influence, wow, has it ever lasted. And if anything, uh, has grown and speaks more to our world as we know it now and the need for it than it ever has. And then about this one, I really enjoyed the things that Sean Covey had to say. I think each chapter or so, it just added that new perspective and that insight into, you know, what was life like in the Covey household? What was it like to live with Dr. Stephen Covey?

Well, you know, the thing that I enjoyed most about Sean's perspective, and to some great extent in the afterword, where he kind of talks about the fact that, you know, Dr. Covey was himself on the stage, the same person, you know, off the stage. And he makes a point, that is, Dr. Covey makes the point, and then Sean reinforces it afterward in that afterword, that we all try to aspire to the principles of the 7 Habits and fail, and that it's really the pursuit of it that is the goal. And it's kind of like habits, right? It's not about developing the habit, it's about the journey toward developing the habit that is really the goal. And when you do that, then you actually achieve the creation of better habits and better routines. I tweeted this out, I don't know, earlier this week or last week about how this reading through has been the most insightful reading of the book in its 30 years. I've read it many, many times over, and this time was actually quite heartfelt for me. I felt really inspired by a lot of the pieces. I also note that came out in 2020. And amongst all of the various changes in society, the principles stood up, notwithstanding the fact that there were a couple of, you know, this is a straight white male writing a book 30 years ago, and there are some stories that don't quite fit into the narrative of the 2020s. But it wasn't a bad thing. I just felt like It was certainly interesting to see that contrast, but I still felt like the principles and that whole concept of principle-centeredness really still resonated with me in really deep ways that I thought— Anyone else? What were your reactions to the book?

This is Linda. This was my second read, and I think for me, sometimes you'll read a book and it's not the right time, and I felt like this was the right time for me. Like, it totally resonated differently this time. I loved Shawn's additions. In fact, I have my whole household reading the book right now. So I was like, I'm, I'm reading this edition and my sister's reading the, the old edition. And I said, oh no, you've got to come and read Shawn's additions because they're really insightful and helpful. But I really— it struck me this time. My first initial after finishing was, are we going to just talk about this for an hour? Because there's a lot to this book.

There is quite a lot to the, to the book. So, so we won't be able to cover all of it, but we will try to do as much as we can in the time that we have. And so, let's— first, I wanted to kind of hop into kind of just a quick review of the 7 Habits. And then, and then we can, we can talk about the book from the beginning, but I'll start off with, you know, for those of you who are unaware of the 7 habits, they are Habit 1, be proactive. Habit 2, begin with the end in mind. Habit 3, put first things first. Habit 4, think win-win. Habit 5, seek first to understand, then to be understood. Habit 6, synergize. And then Habit 7, sharpen the saw. And so I want to keep reinforcing the habits so that we can talk about them throughout the conversation. But just to kind of get started, Dr. Covey talks about this concept of the personality ethic and the character ethic. And in his research, realizing that the character ethic was what he wanted to really push forward in terms of these axiomatic habits that he's talking about here. What did you think about the difference between personality and character ethic, and why there was this perspective for Dr. Covey to want to push the character ethic narrative as being useful. I'm going to read some of the comments because some folks are on mute and are unable to speak. So I'm going to just note here, Matthew noted, this is a transformational book. The greatest influence on his life has been on communication with others. And he believes he's become a better listener. Ironically enough, he says, I am having an easier time conveying how I feel, especially without having to filter through things, filter things through the ego. And so Matthew noted cults of personality are dominant narrative of success in the 21st century. And then of course, authentic connection and true wish to empathize, is imperative. Totally understandable there. Owerri, go for it.

Yeah, hi everybody. Hey. Especially when I was reading the book, I haven't completed my read-through, but I found a new sense of enjoyment reading it, probably because I'm not grouping it with a certain self-help emphasis, which I did probably when I read it 20-something years ago. In terms of character and personality, I think it really matters the point he's making, because fundamentally there is a long history of character ethics and developing one's own character, but allowing a personality to grow within that I think was very inspirational and something that we need to come to terms with in order to develop the best habits. Especially as an individual. Yeah, that's what I wanted to contribute. Thank you.

Of course. Yeah, thanks so much. Linda? I, I—

what I got was that it's more the emphasis is because the personality is something that we're either born with or is developed and that we're stuck with, and that's just the way we are. And character is something you grow and develop and is more conscious, and you can choose to be a certain type of person as opposed to this is just how I am and everyone just has to kind of deal with me. So that was what I got from the difference between the character and personality was that that's the crux is like you need to take responsibility and make choices for yourself as opposed to just being whoever you just happen to be.

Right.

I was thinking about how the dialogue talks about private victory and then public victory. And that Dr. Covey talks about the fact that most of the time it is the public problem, right? The problems that are surface that ultimately lead to you then recognizing that you need to go back to the private victory work in order to be able to fix, in order for those public problems to go away, which is why he actually usually teaches the public victory first, then circles back to private, because most people are unaware of the problem being associated with a private issue, which is that being proactive is going to solve potentially the problems of public problems. And so if people can't depend upon you for X and Y, these private issues are really the things that are surfacing. You don't know it. You're just unaware. And it's like putting first things first, Habit 3, you're not capable of doing that sense of prioritization because you see external problems. You're thinking, "Oh, well, this person wants things from me," and you're having a very win-lose or lose-win experience. That win-lose or lose-win experience is happening because you're not properly prioritizing things. And so it's like, "Oh, right. Now if we deal with this personal problem, this problem that's on the inside, my problem, then I'm going to solve the problem on the outside. And that's a counterintuitive perspective, but we just have to kind of understand those pieces. And I appreciated that the most in terms of understanding that this character ethic piece, which is developing ourselves on the inside, there's not any level of surface stuff that's going to fix the true problems that we have with the world around us.

Those are—

I really do appreciate that concept. Any other thoughts there related to character and personality ethic and questions maybe that you have about it? Okay, so moving on. Let's talk a little bit about the idea of the inside-out approach. I kind of hinted to it to some extent just now. But what is this whole idea or notion of inside-out? What do you feel like is the thing here. And so Usha is also noting that she agrees character trumps all in her perspective and is good foundation to build on. Yeah, so couldn't agree more with that. But what's the inside-out approach? Dr. Buck, what did you hear when you heard the inside-out approach follow?

Well, I think it all goes back to, you know, just really handling yourself, realizing that you are in command of the choices that you make. That there are certain things that you can influence, there are certain things that you don't have any influence over, and you're concentrating your efforts on those things that you can control.

Yeah, I always, I always think of it as like personal responsibility. And the, the— my favorite— not my favorite book, but one of the— my favorite books of the early '90s was the— what was the name of the book? It was called Oh, it'll come back to me later. Now I can't summon.

I'm okay. You're okay.

No, no, the book is not.

Not that one. Yeah.

No, it's not summoning for me. It was— oh, it doesn't matter. Either way, it was this whole idea about personal responsibility and it was John G. Miller was the author and it'll come back to me as soon as we stop the book club discussion. But anyway, the whole idea of personal responsibility, which is that internally I'm in that I'm the one in control, not just from the perspective of the circumstance, but that my experience is what dictates my reality. And so my perception of experience, more so to say to that. So if I perceive a situation well or poorly, that's my reality. And by virtue of thinking from that perspective, that's an internal world, right? And so if someone has a rich internal world, then it really doesn't matter what their external world is in that sense, right? Because you can externalize what's on the inside. And I feel like that's really where the inside-out approach comes for me is like all of that development, all of that work really starts with you. And so if you feel like a relationship is challenged or strained, it's really not the, you know, it's not the relationship, it's not the other person, It really does begin with you changing your paradigm with regard to how you're relating with that individual. And as soon as you do that, then everything kind of changes around. And so, yeah, so Matthew's noting the— he talks about the concentration camp because it comes from Dr. Viktor Frankl and his experience in the Nazi concentration camps there. And the fact that he realized this space between stimulus and response, as Dr. Covey is famous for saying, of Frankl's work. And the space between stimulus and response is control. And the more you distance those things, stimulus and response, the greater amount of control. So that's always something that has stuck with me. I mean, over the past 30 years, it has stuck with me, which is really phenomenal. Owiri?

Thank you.

In terms of— yes, I think you can say it comes from Viktor Frankl's work, but I think it may be a little bit older than that. An individual having the ability to take ownership of what they value or what inspires them or brings them joy, it's a really powerful thing. And I think in reading it the second time through now, Covey conveys that expertly. The idea of what you value rather than a goal per se can actually bring you a lot more joy in what we pursue. So if I want to create better habits, knowing how I value it, what I value, and what I want to invest my energy into can actually make it a lot easier to achieve the goals I want to, rather than just doing it based on the outside of what society says I should value or what society says I should do. I think that's a major part of developing that interior authenticity.

Absolutely. And just to clarify, so the book is The Question Behind the Question by John G. Miller. I had to Google that to make sure I got it, but it's such a quick read, but it's, for me, an important book in my own development in terms of just understanding personal responsibility. And so, yeah, Question Behind the Question or QBQ. And yeah, so on the heels of that, there is a whole set of principles that Dr. Covey presents in succession in leading up to the 7 Habits, one of those being interdependence, the difference between dependence and independence, or the, the natural kind of progression from dependence, say as a child you depend upon your parents in order to survive, then we go on to this desire for independence that is to be separate and apart from the world, to interdependence and understanding that everything in life is interdependent. And that when we try to decouple ourselves through extremes, whether that be independence, complete independence, becoming a hermit, or extremes on the other side of becoming completely dependent upon others, we are going to be in misalignment, lack integrity in life, in general. It's only through interdependence and understanding that we are dependent upon each other to make kind of everything in our lives work well that we ultimately thrive. What are your thoughts there in terms of that principle of interdependence? Do you feel that in your life? Do you not feel it in your life? Do you feel like it made sense to you? Did you grok it this time around? Where are you on the topic of interdependence?

Yeah, I mean, it's absolutely true, you know, the old no man is an island sort of thing. Um, You know, I think any of us that have had a pretty good deal of success in any part of our lives, you can look at other people as playing into that. You know, we, we didn't do it by ourselves, that it was people cooperating with each other, uh, and, and everybody carrying their, their fair share of the load.

Yeah.

And I, I always joke that like, even, uh, if you feel like you are completely independent, you know, like you live off the grid, you know, you're, you're doing whatever, you We still have gravity to thank. There are forces, natural forces that you have to be dependent upon for your survival. And so if you don't have gravity, you're going to die really quick. Humans are fickle creatures in that sense. So we do have a lot to consider when it comes to interdependence, and that when we are truly interdependent, we're not depending upon people more or less for things. And that creates a sense of equilibrium. And I always try to think about that equilibrium in life is like, what am I giving in not necessarily monetary ways, but what am I giving in all of those other soft ways that produces value in people's lives? Ken?

I think that this notion of interdependence is something that's really an idea for our times. The balance of independence and interdependence has been playing out in the media, in people's thoughts, during the period of time going back the last year and a half or two that I call the pandemonium. And where many people have overstressed the notion of independence within the context of community and understressed, underemphasized notion of interdependence, and that this, uh, balance is, uh, something that's underlying a significant amount of consternation and conflict in our communities today. And I wish that more people were able to understand Covey's approach and that there was a more generalized understanding of the importance significance and imperative of our interdependence. It came to the fore early on in the pandemic, pandemic, when people began to identify who was a necessary participant, who were the people who are critical to our communities continuing to operate, and that, that surprised people about our interdependence. But it didn't quite stick in the way Covey would hope, and it doesn't quite stick in the way I would hope. And maybe with Sean's new version getting a new read in the community, we can move in that direction.

Yeah, I really do wish that the 7 Habits were something that was more universally a part of the, you know, education, you know, in globally, really. I mean, it's not a, just like a pandemic, it's not localized to any country. We need everybody to understand these principles. And there are good principles that we can all understand. Linda, did you have something that you wanted to say? Oh, okay. Okay. I just wanted to make sure. So yes, absolutely. 7 Habits in all schools, Matthew. So with that being said, there is then He talks about the parable of the golden goose and this PPC, production versus production capacity concept. Did that relate to you and the concepts of efficiency versus effectiveness? I know that's something that I always think about, which is like, what is true effectiveness, right? Which is basically balancing production and production capability. And what did that kind of summon for you in terms of thought? Did you have any Did you have anything that came to the fore in terms of that whole P/PC balance? Yes, no, maybe so? I'll note that for me, I definitely— I've got some thumbs up, yes. So I know for me, I definitely felt like the concept resonated with me. And so just in short, the golden goose is that the goose obviously needs to be cared for. If you kill the goose, then it can no longer lay the golden eggs. And so you have to actually take care of the means of production, as well as, you know, the concept of the production itself. So, you know, production capability, the golden goose itself versus the eggs, need to be decoupled in terms of your thought process for how to maintain those things. It's very appropriate considering many people talk today about taking care of yourself, you know, how taking care of yourself or self-care, as many people call it, is so important to the ultimate productivity that you can have. And so, I apologize, I muted someone. So if you want to talk, by all means, unmute yourself. I'm just hearing a little bit of background noise. So with that, let's— go ahead, Linda, go for it.

Well, I was just going to say, when you hear production capability, you think production, right? But to me, it's like, relationships and that kind of— I mean, it's not— it's a universal concept. It's not just about like a business thing or something like that, or manufacturing. It's literally, if you want to have a relationship, you have to have the— you have to take care of the capacity for the relationship as well as the actual relationship. So that balance, I think, is there for— if that makes sense.

Yeah, yeah. It's kind of like he talks later in the book about the emotional bank account and how we can put deposits into emotional bank account, but we can also overdraw on that bank account as well, right? You know, there is the the holding container of a value, right? And he also talks about values versus principles there. But the idea here is that we can have containers of value, right? Which is the goose itself. And then we can have the thing that is the value, which are the golden eggs. And we can deplete one of those things and produce more of it. But we can't deplete the other of those things, which is the container of the value or the production of that value. And so we have to be mindful of those, kind of the paradigm, the object of those two items in our minds. So let's get into the habits then, right? So we have the 7 habits and we start with being proactive. And so in essence, what does it mean to be proactive? What are the What are the components of proactivity and how do they relate to your kind of interpretation of that? Frank?

Well, that you're the one who's doing the planning. You have a vision for how you want your life to work, that you see your, your role in how you can make a difference and that the things you're doing on a given day are instead of reacting to what comes towards you, you know, instead of being the the cashier at the store who's going next, next, next, and just handling whatever comes your way, that you're more or less guiding the ship. And I think back to my days as a middle school assistant principal. That is a job that could be all day, every day. You're waiting for the next discipline problem to show up at your office. Or it can be a job where You're trying to figure out what is it that we can do to prevent these problems? How can we supervise better? How can we arrange things and traffic flow in the halls and this sort of thing that will prevent problems rather than dealing with the problems as a result? And one of them takes a little more thought, but it sure saves a whole lot.

Linda.

Well, I mean, this might speak to where I'm at personally, but I feel like if you, if you said, like, you know, with GTD, it's always like, oh, if you just want to do one thing, you know, pick this thing. Or if you were to pick one habit, to me, this is the habit. Like, if people were just proactive, the whole world would be a completely different place, right? If we all— and basically, to me, it's like taking your power, saying, okay, I have a choice. I'm going to make decisions in my life. I'm not going to just react to what happens to me. I'm going to take the initiative and make choices. And this was huge for me personally reading this again, because I tend to be a reactive person, or have tended— I'm going to say I have tended to be a reactive person in the past, like last week. But now it's like, you know, really seeing that, like you talked about, the space between the stimulus and the response as control, you know, really taking control of your own destiny and making decisions for yourself as opposed to just reacting to our environment. I mean, I look at what's happening globally right now. It's like if, if, if we were proactive about what's happening to us now as a civilization, things would be so different. Right now it's just reactivity. It's like, oh, let's do this because this happened to us. And, you know, so I just think this is the, this is the big one. To me. Yeah, the rest are really— is all important. But this one is like the crux. And I think that's why it's first, because if you don't get this, it's going to be hard to do the rest.

And I think Matthew mentioned in the comments about the circle of concern. And that was the other thing in this chapter for me, the idea of the circle of concern, the circle of influence. I'm concerned about a whole bunch of things. You know, how the coach is doing his job, how the president is doing his job, the price of eggs in China. All of those things concern me. But what are the things I can actually do something about? And when he talks in the book about how the more time you spend within that circle of influence, the things you can actually do something about, the larger that circle becomes and the more time that you're spending on the outer circle, the circle of Concern. All the things that I don't like the way those things are, and somebody ought to do something, and you bang your fist. Well, the smaller the inner circle, that circle of influence becomes. It's kind of like the old men that you see sitting at that table over at Jack's Hamburgers or whatever, eating breakfast, talking about, oh, how that coach is so dumb and he should have called this play and he should do this, and the president ought to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And nobody cares what they think except them sitting around that table.

I think to you, I think if the more you understand your circle of influence, the less reactive you become, because then you know what you can act upon on Sunday. Yeah, I felt like I had that this morning. It was like something was bothering me and I was like, well, I could take this action and that would stop this thing from happening. As opposed to reacting with agitation or irritation, I could just take this action that will eliminate that bothersome thing. Because I could see the difference between my circle of concern— my circle of concerns, I wanted to stop— but my circle of influence is, well, I could do something to change it. It won't stop the thing from happening, but it'll be away from me.

Yeah.

So it's— I think it, it really is really important to understand that concept that you brought up. Was it Matthew? I think so.

Yeah, I saw that Matthew had put something in the comments. Yeah. And you know, on those days when I feel like I really am operating in that circle of, of influence, if I truly am putting shoulder to the wheel, I'm so busy with those kind of things, I don't have time to worry about all those things out there that I can't influence.

Yeah, kind of binds together all of those concepts of, of inside out of personal responsibility and about the fact that reactivity is really a, I don't know, it's a generator of worry and concern and all of the negative outputs. Barry Schwartz, I believe it was, who wrote— I apologize, I keep having to mute someone. But Barry Schwartz wrote that book about good stress, bad stress, or I think that was the name of the book. And in that he talks about the fact that good stress are the things that open doors and open dialogue and productive conversation and those kinds of things. And bad stress are the things that close doors and opportunities and those kinds of things and make you feel smaller and so on and so forth.

And I think about that each time I think about circle of influence and circle of concern in that the more you increase that circle of influence, by having a proactive focus, you're really gaining greater interdependence, you're less victim thinking, all of those things fall away in terms of the negative stuff and the positive stuff starts to happen. And again, going back to question behind the question, that's a very insightful small dialogue on the whole concept of just being proactive. And I appreciate that.

And your, and your circle of— if you're— the more reactive you are, the more your circle of concern increases because you're like a ping-pong ball bouncing against everything else. And those things matter. You can't control them, but they matter because you're constantly reacting to all of those things. So they grow and your circle of influence shrinks. But the less reactive you are, the more you can grow that circle of influence because you're focusing on what you can control.

And this is, and this is conjecture, but I have a tendency to believe that you then tend to think of those things that you're becoming more aware of as being more negative, even though they may not be, right? You may take them the wrong way because the increased stimuli become more aggravating to you, right? And I know that I've experienced that in my own world.

Oh, reactivity makes you more negative. It makes you see things more negatively, right? Because you're concerned about it. You're worried about like, what is this person going to think? Or all those things that you do when you're reactive. Because if you're reacting negatively, you are probably producing negativity, right? So it's not— you're not delusional. You probably are feeling negative about you because you're being negatively reactive.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so moving right along, we could talk, continue to talk about all of these things, so by all means, but moving right along to the second habit, habit number 2, beginning with the end in mind. We have all probably heard some version of this in our worlds, which helps to resonate the importance of habit 2. Was there anything new in thinking through the end-in-mind concept in this particular read and other thoughts there? And I'll note for myself, this was a refresher. So I felt as though in the past, I had a pretty good concept of planning and preparing for an outcome. And in the last year and a half to 2 years, it's just been a little bit different. And now all of a sudden I'm remembering those muscles of like, "Oh, yeah, that's right. Why am I not thinking about the outcomes I want?" They may be different at the end, but they'll be better for me having thought them through. And I felt like there was like a living in the moment, I don't know, kind of ethos that I was experiencing. And I've now taken myself out of that and said, "Okay, let me just step away from all of this. And what does the end project look like for these things?" Which means I'm also going to have to get rid of some of my darlings, right? I'm going to have to kill some of my darlings. I'm just going to have to shut down some projects in order to really focus on making these things happen in light of the other stressors in my life right now. And You know, it's been, as I said at the start of our conversation, it's why this particular read-through has been much more, you know, kind of impacting on me is because I have felt that sense that, oh yeah, this has been this period of time where so much has been happening in so many different areas of my life, mostly good, notwithstanding, you know, global pandemic and all. And I needed to step back and actually do some forward forward planning and looking at what the end would look like so that I can start saying, okay, if I do all of that retrospective planning, that backwards planning, then some of these things just can't be here. They're getting in the way of that future outcome. Even if it doesn't look exactly the same at the end, it will be, it will be a better product at the end if I actually get rid of these obstacles that are in the way of that.

I think a big chunk of this does. This habit is the, the mission statement. And for me, it wasn't new information, but I received it in a different way, and I was able to write a mission statement that was unlike any that I'd ever seen before. Like, okay, I'm just going to write what I think, and it was completely different. It was kind of nice and freeing to be able to, to do that with this. But I think that's— I think without a mission, it's really hard to write goals. It's really hard to plan ahead because if you don't have a direction to go in. Even if that direction is— even if you're Leonardo da Vinci and your direction is to basically do everything, you know, then that's a direction, right? But if you don't have a direction, if you don't have a mission statement, it's really tough to, to do all that planning.

And so moving right along to habit number 3, which is the one that we probably all know most in our, our study of personal productivity literature, is of course Putting first things first. And this is all about prioritizing. And again, to me, this still hearkens and feels like the interconnectedness of all of these various habits. But this is a distinct skill set, which is being able to focus on something and know that's the right focus for right now.

Right?

It's like, why this? Why now? And the ability to answer both of those questions and be both motivated and committed to that end. Was there anything that you thought of when you were reading this component? And then we're probably going to, after this— this is the private victories part of the book— we'll probably just open up the dialogue to any of the other thoughts you had there. But I'll note Matthew's note here. He said, looks like there is a much better way to organize that, to do weekly planning rather than the daily response to urgency, kind of dealing with the latest and loudest, as David Allen would say. In the important and urgent kind of quadrant there. It's all about aligning your long-term goals, habit 2, with the current moment. And then Usha's asking, how do you handle pushback from others when they see you doing this? And I'm not sure what this means, but Usha, if you want to clarify.

Let me clarify that very quickly.

Yeah, go for it, Usha. Yeah.

Yeah. I've been particularly focused on putting first things first many times, like in spurts. And others, particularly in the family, have accused me of, you know, doing something that's important to you, or, you know, whatever, that's your priority or whatever, and you're getting it done, but how about the rest of us, you know, kind of thing. It's like not putting what may be important to somebody else, even though at the end of the day, in my book, This is still the first priority, all things being considered.

Right. So I think this is a little bit more of the think win-win and synergy and synergizing. I think both of those habits need to be— I tend to not think of them as habits, as more skills. But like, those are two skills that need to be worked on here when it comes to it. Because in reality, if they are thinking that first things first are different than what you believe they are, then you're in a lose-win. Or lose-lose situation. And of course, win-lose or lose-win, Dr. Covey says, is a lose-lose proposition. So you're ultimately feeling this distress from the fact that there's a misalignment. And so where can you actually synergize? And the idea here is that if you can, it's not just about convincing people, because persuasion is a faculty independent of that, and you can almost consider that a personality, ethic kind of situation. But in reality, if you can make something better by virtue of the people coming together and involving themselves in, whether that be buy-in and ideas and all kinds of other pieces there to want that same end, that same prioritization, then people are much more likely to gel. They're much more likely to just come together and make that thing happen. And quite honestly, I always try to explain to people, like, if we can get aligned, like just literally like compass direction, move all cardinal north, then whatever the order, we're going to get there faster. So if you just follow my lead, right? Even if you don't particularly like exactly what it is and the way it is I want it to get done, just by virtue of aligning yourself in the same direction, we'll get to your thing that much faster, right? And so it's not necessarily about we have to agree on every component because Lord knows not everybody agrees with me on every, everything. But if you can at least look in the same direction and know that that is the direction we all want to go in, then by virtue of us all going in the same direction, we're going to be able to find the efficiencies that actually help us combine together and create that effectiveness. So I think, you know, it comes back to, and this is just my suggestion, is to just sit down with everybody and say, "Okay, I understand that there's this misalignment, but this is where I'm coming from. Where are you coming from? Let's see if we can't make something better that moves us all in the same direction." And then from that point, you can say, "Well, you know, what I want to do right now is going to take this amount of time. If we all really urgently move toward getting to that thing faster, then I will immediately put the next thing first as soon as we get past that finish line.

And I think that's a good way to open up the dialogue and see if there isn't some synergy that can be created.

I would just flip what you just said, Ray, and ask them where they're coming from first after reading this book. Now, before reading this book, I would have said where I'm coming from first, but I, You probably want to do the flip there.

Absolutely. Yes. So certainly a Habit 5 technique there. Yes. Or Seek to Understand.

Yeah. And these all work so well together. And I think Habit 2, if we understand where we're going, if we have that end in mind and maybe we all don't agree on the same end, but if you know what the end in mind I have is, then you can probably understand a little bit better why I'm putting this thing as first. And I guess if Stephen Covey and David Allen wrote a book together, the next action and the outcome. Yeah, wouldn't that be great? Your next action and outcome, Habit 2, Habit 3, that the outcome, that's the Habit 2. That's the end. And the next action, that's the thing we're doing now. That's the Putting that first thing first so that you get to the end that you wanted to get to instead of being distracted somewhere else.

Yeah, that, Frank, you— I want to put in my request because what came up for me was how do you integrate GTD with this book and with his, his work? And I would love a discussion just on that personally. Yeah, because I think it's really interesting.

I mean, they obviously overlap, but I'm interested how practically people actually Do it well, you know, and one was always talked about as being the top-down approach and the other the bottom-up approach. And I guess no matter which way you start, when you arrive, when you come to the middle, when both of them arrive at the middle, you know, I think the balance there, you can't go with one or the other.

Yeah. I absolutely came to, obviously, first things, basically first things first, but I came to 7 Habits before Getting Things Done was published. And so I was very much steeped in the Covey perspective of setting goals and all of that. And that was in kind of the height of Tony Robbins, Anthony Robbins' work of RPM and just like set a big audacious goal and go after it. And that never really— it never quite resonated with me, that whole concept. But First Things First really helped me understand that there needed to be a method that I invested in. And with the Franklin Covey Planner and the way in which I just organized naturally, it worked for me. It also worked in that particular world that I was in, like professionally at the time. And then right at that point in which I felt, I want to say friction, I probably felt some friction with regard to my system, was when 2001 turned around and the book came out. So I had this like natural, like going from being steeped in the Covey perspective to then immediately experiencing the value of implementing Getting Things Done. So I had done a mission statement. I had created all of the goal-oriented material. And it wasn't until the 8th habit and making it all work when those two methods actually ended up synergizing, so to speak, to use that term. But I feel like for those who are, who have come to GTD and they've learned GTD really well, it can sound and seem like what Dr. Covey is saying is in conflict. But once you look at the way in which they're both seeing the world, they're just asking you to do the same work in a different order, right? So it's like, start one place and you'll eventually get to to this place, and if you start in this place, you're going to end up getting to this place. Either way, you end up in the same spot if you personalize your system. And I think a lot of people, what they try to do is they try to say, "I'm going to do this pro forma," and by doing it pro forma, they run up against the edges of the system not working for them, because they haven't made it their own. And I I think very much so. You have to understand your own personality, your own history, right? Your own trauma. All of those things are necessary to say, "Okay, for me in this life, I want to do these things. And so what do I need to do? What infrastructure do I need to put into place? What skills do I need to set up in order to support myself through those?" And when you do, things just start to work better. And I think GTD is a little bit more prescriptive, right? It's like set this in tray on your desk. It's a little bit more illustrative in that sense. And then of course with the 7 Habits and ultimately the 8th Habit, it's a little bit more of the internal work of thinking how you're going to do things by virtue of working with people. And that's like, I mean, the number one thing that I think that GTD lacks is It doesn't talk about working with other people until you get to that little tiny slim section about meetings and how people should talk about getting things done and next action steps inside of meetings. So I think the two work well together in that sense. Matthew's noting that— oh, so yeah, there was an introduction to 7 Habits in the GTD meetups and after reading each chapter, the aha moments regarding that. So yes, you're more than welcome. You're more than welcome. Uh, Linda, does that make any sense? Questions from there?

It does. And I kind of feel like, uh, David Allen kind of assumed his audience had already read The Seven Habits too, so he was like not doing that part of it. He was doing a different part of it, you know, that kind of—

I absolutely agree. I absolutely agree.

I was—

he was writing to at that time probably had read The Seven Habits.

And yeah, you're talking about, you know, do that work over. 1996, the 25 most influential Americans, Dr. Covey was one of them, right? David Allen published Getting Things Done in 2001. And so he absolutely knew in the development of the '90s that the biggest name in that space was Covey and that people knew of his material. So why would he try to rewrite that for people? So he was like, okay, let me write the, basically the rocket ship manual, do X, do Y, do Z. And that's why he wrote Getting Things Done the way he did. Also, he's an organization consultant and he wanted to be hired as a coach. So he wrote a book that was going to get him hired by those types of big names out there. And that's really why he wrote the book the way he did. And so I very much see the two being different and valuable in such different ways. I know I've said this now several times, our next book is The Eighth Habit, and I still find The Eighth Habit to be the best Covey book. And it's just, it's the book that most speaks to me, and I absolutely recommend to everybody the audiobook. Read the physical one, but definitely listen to the audiobook, even if you just listen to the introduction of Dr. Covey, just with, he's got that booming bass baritone voice. And just the way he introduces you to the concept of finding your voice and helping others find their voice, it just gives me chills thinking about it. But yeah, I never saw them in necessarily conflict. I always found it to be like, okay, now that I understand this about myself and I've done this internal work, now is time to think about the practical components. How do I actually manifest this in my external world. But I'm certainly not the only viewpoint on that. So if anybody else has other thoughts, by all means, share them. I wanted to kind of lead us to our final point, which is, what was your greatest takeaway from the book? And were there any parts in the book that you just like disagreed with, that you perhaps just, you know, you didn't get for some reason, just didn't seem to work for you? But greatest takeaway, maybe greatest disagreement, something like that. Be useful, interesting to hear where people aligned or misaligned with regard to the material, or other kinds of moments or parts from the book that were really, you know, enlightening for you.

To me, it's been the staying power. You read so many articles about the rise and fall of XYZ. You don't read about the rise and fall of the 7 Habits. I think they are, they are eternal. They speak to us now more than they ever have.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think, I think that it has staying power. Uh, there's some, you know, outdatedness to the book in, in the sense of, uh, you know, the context. Uh, but I think, I think the principles And certainly, as was noted earlier, just having Sean Covey kind of spruce up the book in that way and give that color to the pages again was really, really helpful. I think in future reads, I'll probably still go back to— for me, I think it was like the 20th anniversary edition or whatever that particular edition was that I was reading earlier. I have it on the bookshelf somewhere here. But that's the one that I've marked up the most, and so I'll probably feel most comfortable going back to that version. But I did enjoy the additions there and certainly the foreword from Jim Collins.

I would say the big takeaway for me was just reading it at a time when it is really making sense. So that kind of life-changing, and it happened as I was reading the book. Like, it wasn't like, okay, I'm going to schedule this for 3 weeks from now. I'm going to implement The 7 Habits. It was as I was reading, I'm like, okay, I can make different choices. This is what I'm going to do instead. Um, but I have a lot of the book that I don't agree with, and I was— it was nice to be able to read it and say, well, I don't agree with this, but that's okay. That doesn't negate the 7 Habits. That just means that, uh, Mr. Covey and I have a different worldview, and that's fine. And so that was nice because I have a tendency to be one of those people who reads something and I come upon something I don't agree with and I'm like, ah, throw that book across the room. I wouldn't do that to this. But, but yeah, so there was a lot of things that, you know, he had a lot of work ethic things and just stuff to me that says very— it feels very 20th century to me. So I really did enjoy Sean's additions because a lot of it I think is kind of mired in the way I was raised, and I'm trying to move away from some of those paradigms of you're a good person if you do certain things and that kind of thing, and more towards a better paradigm in my mind.

I enjoyed, just in closing out the conversation, I really enjoyed the components of the book, especially this edition, because again, like you, Linda, it resonated at the right moment, you know, right material, right time. But also because Covey has this way of just identifying a set of steps that help you logically think through the principles that he's trying to teach. And so I'm always like, "Okay, how do I think through this particular concept?" And then he's like, "Oh, well, if you want to be able to do empathetic listening or empathic listening, then you need to do these things." Right? Like, "Here goes your 4 steps." And it's just like, "Oh, that's right." right. Okay, well, if I evaluate, then I probe, then I advise, then I interpret, then I'm going to be doing this thing correctly. And he does this in The Eighth Habit, I think, just masterfully. I know we're not having that discussion yet, but he does this so masterfully in The Eighth Habit. But he does it here in The Seven Habits really well also, which is that he just lays it out for you that this is the kind of book that you just can't read once and feel like, okay, I got all of it. You do have to go back over the book and really dwell on some of these things because they, just like Getting Things Done, these are skills you are developing over time to be able to get better and better at them. And the better you get at those skills, the better your life is going to be overall. You're going to be able to make the changes necessary in that, in that way.

So just to add real quickly, Shawn's edition, and at the back of the book, the new insights on Inside Out where they give you what they do in the workshop on the actual things to do for each habit, I think this book is worth buying just to get that, this new edition, because it's nice to have it laid out like, oh, these are the steps that we teach people in the workshop.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I really enjoyed the afterword and him answering questions, including his question about whether he's really bald and the way in which he responded to it. I actually listened to the audiobook as well. I'd read it and then listened to the audiobook for this discussion. And his intonation in his voice when he read the answer to whether he's bald or not is just priceless because you could really hear his sarcasm in his voice. He clearly had a good personality.

And with that, we've reached the end of this book discussion about The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, 30th Anniversary Edition by Stephen R. Covey with Sean Covey's additions to that 30th Anniversary Edition. A few comments and announcements before we end this episode for you. So here we go. First and foremost, we host quarterly live discussions of personal productivity books, just like the one we discussed today. And of course, you're invited. Simply head over to productivitybookgroup.org. Again, that's productivitybookgroup.org, and visit the upcoming books page for details. It has all the dates for the year and a handy Google Calendar that you can subscribe to. That'll put all the events on your calendar automatically and update them as we make changes if we do. We usually don't, but if any changes happen, they'll automatically update there. There on productivitybookgroup.org, you'll also find all of our past book discussions, our summary episodes, and author interviews under Episodes in case you can't find a Productivity Book Group episode in your podcast app or podcast directory. It'll usually only hold maybe the last 100 episodes or so. Or sometimes less than that. So if for some reason it's not in that podcast app, go over to productivitybookgroup.org, click on episodes, and you'll see all of them there. Directions on how to subscribe and/or now in Apple Podcasts world, it's follow, but just directions on how to subscribe for free to Productivity Book Group in your favorite podcast app is on the website. So just click on subscribe and it'll provide you instructions there., we really appreciate you taking a few minutes to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher and otherwise. That really helps us expand our readership and bring new readers and callers into the fold, into the Productivity Book Group world. And so thank you for spreading the word to help our Productivity Book Group lovers find us. Finally, we have a new digital community. It's not particularly new now, but we have a digital community where we discuss the books we're reading. You can access it from the web as well as from Android and iOS applications. And so if you go ahead to productivitybookgroup.org/community, it will take you over to the digital community for you to join. It's free, it's easy to sign up, and then you can discuss books that you're reading as well as the books we're reading together, all in that same space. And so we look forward to seeing you there. And with that, thank you to everyone for listening to us here on Productivity Book Group. I'm Ray Sidney-Smith. Here's to your productive life.