posted at 10:36:27
By Flipping Heck!

Posted In
Motivation

Stephen Covey has launched a new community site, based around his "7 Habits of Highly Effective People"

From the Stephen Covey Website:

Stephen Covey has announced the official launch of stephencovey.com, a first-of-its-kind social networking and online learning community that gives individuals an opportunity to learn first-hand as he personally teaches them the principles of setting, tracking and achieving personal goals.

By recognizing and embracing the role that social networking communities now have in society, Covey has given individuals the ability to learn and implement his life changing 7 Habits principles. They can now participate in an uplifting and inspiring Web 2.0 setting that is comfortable, where they control the pace and where they can literally interact with other people around the world who are trying to achieve similar goals.

The site allows you to make friends, set goals and start your own groups. Current groups include:

Body Goal Groups
Heart Goal Groups
Mind Goal Groups
Spirit Goal Groups
Life passion groups
Occupation Groups
Geographical Groups
School Groups
Company....

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Aug

29th
2008

7 Habits: Habit 7 - Sharpen The Saw : Principles of balanced Self-Renewal

posted at 18:29:44
By Flipping Heck!

Posted In
Motivation

Habit 7 is the habit that makes all others possible (Er, so why isn't this the first one then or am I being picky?). Basically "Sharpening the saw" is the process of learning, evolving and building on the habits that we've mastered; It's self-improvement and self growth in all areas of our lives.

This habit sees us applying learning and growth over 4 main areas:

Physical (excercise, nutrition, stress management)
Social/Emotional (Service, Empathy, Synergy, Intrinsic Security)
Spiritual (Value Clarification & Commitment, Study & Meditation)
Mental (Reading, Visualising, Planning, Writing)

In order to "Sharpen the saw", we need to practice improving the Physical, Social/Emotional, Spiritual and Mental aspects of our lives. Covey breaks this down into sections and gives us pointers on what we could be improving in each of these areas:

Physical

Looking after ourselves
Eating properly
Resting properly
Exercise - Covey puts a lot of emphasis on this, tying mental and physical activity together.

Spiritual

This is highly related to Habit 2 (Start with the end in mind)
Meditation
Self Discovery
Self Examination of our inner se....

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Aug

22nd
2008

7 Habits: Habit 6 - Synergise

posted at 09:00:00
By Flipping Heck!

Posted In
Motivation

Oh dear, the title of this chapter alone had me cringing before I even started to read it. I detest management speak and jargon and this word really grated on me. But, being the trooper that I am, I got over it and read the chapter anyway.

For those not familiar with the ~~evil~~ word "Synergy", the definition from Dictionary.com:

syn-er-gy

- noun, plural -gies.

combined action or functioning; synergism.
the cooperative action of two or more muscles, nerves, or the like.
the cooperative action of two or more stimuli or drugs.

Hmm... I think we can discount the last two, don't you!

The start of the chapter explains how all of the previous habits build up to reach this point of where we can interact in a "synergistic" way with others as synergy, Covey says, is the essence of "principle-centered leadership".

Covey defines his idea of synergy in a different, and slightly more fitting way than the dictionary definition:

The whole is greated than the sum of its parts....
[so] One plus one equals 3 or more

Basically, synergisti....

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Aug

8th
2008

7 Habits - Habit 5: Seek first to understand then to be understood

posted at 09:00:00
By Flipping Heck!

Posted In
GTD/Productivity

It's been a while since we looked at Steven Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective people. It was meant to be a weekly series but I'm having trouble getting though a chapter a week, not very effective is it?

To recap what we've covered before, we've looked at:

Habit 1 - Be Proactive - Here we learn to take charge of situations and work towards our desired outcomes
Habit 2 - Start with the end in mind - We need to know where we're going in order to get there
Habit 3 - Put First Things First - How to become "personally effective"
The Public Victory Phase - We begin to move from our own private area of influence into the public arena
Habit 4 - Think Win/Win - We need to reach mutually beneficial outcomes to become more personally effective and build up our "Emotional Bank Account"

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Jul

4th
2008

7 Habits: Habit 4 - Think Win/Win

posted at 09:00:00
By Flipping Heck!

Posted In
Motivation

This is the habit of creating effective interpersonal leadership. In order to manage our relationships with others properly we need to think "Win/Win". This isn't just a technique that you can apply to every day situations and relationships, it's a philosophy - a whole way of thinking and being.

This philosophy is based on 6 paradigms of interaction. Basically, every time we interact with others it fits into one of these categories:

Win/Win
Win/Lose
Lose/Win
Lose/Lose
Win
Win/Win or No Deal

Let's look at each of these types of interactions as Covey describes them:

Win/Win - Mutually beneficial and co-operative. All parties come out on top

Win/Lose - "If I win, you lose." This is very authoritarian in style and can be seen as overaly competitive. It' a win at all costs mentality which is usually instilled from childhood.

Lose/Win - "If I lose, you win." This is usually the attitude of people who want to keep the peace and not upset the applecart. The problem with Lose/Win is that whilst you may feel happy your friend/colleague etc. has come out on top, this can however lead to an eventual breakdown in relationships as resentment builds up.

Lose/Lose - This happens when two Win/Lose people clash, it leads to a stubborn impasse as they try to beat each o....

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Jun

27th
2008

7 Habits: The Public Victory Phase

posted at 09:00:00
By Flipping Heck!

Posted In
Motivation

Covey takes a break from the 7 habits and introduces a new phase, one of "Public Victory" where we move from our first 3 habits of Private Victory in to the 4 habits of public victory.

The Public Phase is one where we move from our newly formed independant selves into "interdependant" people; we learn to trust and rely on people, build relationships and become trustworthy and reliable ourselves. He states:

Self-mastery and self-discipline are the foundation of good relationships with others.

In the first three habits, we learned to become masters of ourselves, to know our destinies and priorities and with these in place, we can now move into the "Public" phase and start building meaningful relationships with others - whether that be friends, colleagues, spouses or children.

The main thrust of becoming truly interdependant is that we need to be true to ourselves (our character ethic) rather than to be superficial (our personality ethic). People can see right through superficiality and will lose all respect for us.

In order to be interdependant, we need to have mastered the following skills from the first three habits:

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Jun

16th
2008

7 Habits: Habit 3 - Put first things first

posted at 09:00:00
By Flipping Heck!

Posted In
Motivation

I did plan to post this in the regular 7 habits Friday slot but I was a bit too busy - apologies for the delay! Also, because of this, I may be slightly later getting Habit 4 out as well - whoops, that's not good time management is it?!

Habit 3 begins with looking back over the previous two habits providing a re-cap of what we've learned so far.

Habit 1 - I can do it, I'm in charge
Habit 2 - The vision to see the results and potential (The first creation).
Habit 3 - I am doing it (The second creation)

In previous habits we've used our "right brain" to instill personal leadership in ourselves by defining our beliefs and destination. Habit 3 teaches us to become "personally effective", to manage ourselves. In order for us to understand how this fits into the overall scheme of thinsg, Covey cites his over personal effectiveness maxim:

Manage from the left [brain];
Lead from the right [brain].

This habit centres mainly around the notion that personal effectiveness equals a good work/life balance (although that's a rather simplistic way of looking at it). Covey uses a time management matrix to illustrate his point.

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