The 7 Habits That Help You Become More Effective

We all work hard to gain efficiency in our professional and personal life; striving to maintain our personal relations while fulfilling our professional commitments. This is what fulfils our life and gives us a sense of contentment.

However, to attain this level of efficiency in life, you need to put in daily efforts with consistency. There are life coaches to help you understand the basics of life and make the required changes in your personality to attain the desired success. One of such coaches was the very famous Stephen R. Covey, whose bestseller ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’, helped many change their lives in a positive manner.

The seven habits as stated in the book help you understand how to build a perception of work-life balance. The principles of the book can be applied to professional life, personal life, and in any area of life where you strive to see positive development. The concepts given by Covey can help you evolve your life and transform yourself into a more effective and proficient person.

Let’s have a look at these 7 lessons and learn how to incorporate them into our lives so as to gain the maximum benefit.

1. Be Proactive: The very first quality of effective people is the ability to change decisions and act upon them. To change anything around, you must first bring a change in yourself. You should be willing to take decisions in life that can help achieve the change you are looking for.

2. Always Start With the End in Mind: Whether it is a personal goal or a professional one, the end should be clear in your mind. You should be able to look into the future and analyse if your goal produces the result you want in life. And once your vision is clear, your actions should focus on creating the path to achieve that goal.

3. Learn the Art of Putting First Things First: This simply means prioritizing. Sorting out your priorities is very important, be it personal or professional. To utilize your potentials and time to the maximum capacity, you should know what tasks need urgent attention and what can be put on hold for a while. This way you will be able to accomplish more than what you plan and be more productive in life.

4. Create a Win-Win for All: in a professional and personal space, your goal should be to create situations and agreements that can benefit both parties involved. A win-win situation for all is what goes on to create good interpersonal relationships. Moreover, this type of approach even helps you stay more committed to the agreement and thus motivate you to gain admiration from all.

5. Learn First to Understand & Then Focus on Being Understood: Engaging in interpersonal relations is very common for us humans as we are social creatures. And when we interact with fellow people, conflicts are normal to arise. To maintain peace, it is important to develop an understanding. As per Covey, the first step to achieving this understanding is learning to understand the other person rather than jumping to conclusions or imposing your understanding on another person. When you learn to listen, you will find an audience that responds to you. Always listen with the intention of understanding and not replying.

6. Synergizing is Important: A team can only work like a well-oiled machine where there exists trust between the members. It should be a trust that allows every team member to be honest about his or her strengths and weaknesses. You must strive to stimulate this rectitude and trust through leading by example. Once you discover the weaknesses and strengths, you should work to create a network where the total strength of the group stands more than the total competency of its parts. This way, you will be able to resolve conflicts better and make collective plans.

7. Sharpen the Saw: no matter how occupied you are in your personal and professional life, it is of utmost importance that you find some time and invest in improving your skills. Polishing your existing skills can help you enhance your performance capability. Working on your skills and making the necessary changes or developing them on a consistent basis happens to be the vital key for individual and organizational development.

Take Away: With these valuable principles, you can upsurge your efficacy in any field. Not just this, these principles when implemented the right way can even help boost the efficiency of your family, team, and organization. Learning and applying these wonderful lessons will aid you to make a step forward in your professional and personal life.