Notes on Habits 3 and 4 of "7 Habits of Highly Effective People"
Habit 3: Put First Things First
"Question 1: What one thing could you do (and aren't doing now) that if you did on a regular basis, would make a tremendously positive difference in your personal life?" (pg. 146)
Refrain from judging others for having different priorities than me or different values from me or having characteristics that I might find slightly annoying. Assume people have a good reason for doing everything they do and they're just trying, like me, to find happiness and their place in life.
"Question 2: What one thing in your business or professional life would bring similar results?" (pg. 146)
I don't have a business life, but I will count art as my "profession." Do art every day in some form or another. No excuses. I have to get my old skills back. Also get back into writing a poem a day.
"To paraphrase Peter Drucker, effective people are not problem-minded; they're opportunity-minded. They feed opportunities and starve problems. They think preventatively." (pg. 154)
"If you were to fault yourself in one of three areas, which would it be: 1. the inability to prioritize 2. the inability or desire to organize around those priorities; or 3. the lack of discipline to execute around them, to stay with your priorities and organization?
Most people say their main fault is a lack of discipline. On deeper thought I believe that is not the case. The basic problem is that their priorities have not become deeply planted in their hearts and minds. They haven't really internalized Habit 2." (pg. 158
Eh, I really think it is a lack of discipline, in my case.:P I need deadlines and I'm not good at setting them for myself.
"Again, you can't simply think efficiency with people. You think effectiveness with people and efficiency with things." (pg. 169-170)
"[...] To understand and center your life on principles, to give clear expressions to the purposes and values you want to direct your daily decisions. It helps you to create a balance to your life." (pg. 170)
Self-management: principle-centered, conscience-directed, it defines your unique mission, including values and long-term goals, it helps you balance your life by identifying roles. [...] Desired Results: Create a clear, mutual understanding of what needs to be accomplished, focusing on what, not how; results, not methods. [...] Guidelines: Identify the parameters within which the individual should operate. [...] Resources, Accountability, Consequences" (pg. 174)
"Trust is the highest form of human motivation. It brings out the very best in people. But it takes time and patience, and it doesn't preclude the necessity to train and develop people so that their competency can rise to the level of that trust."(pg. 178)
"One day I shared with him the principle of making what is important to the other person as important to you as the other person is to you." (pg. 191)
"Our tendency is to project out of our own autobiographies what we think other people want or need. We project our intentions on the behavior of others. We interpret what constitutes a deposit based on our own needs and desires, either now or when we were at a similar age or stage in life. If they don't interpret our effort as a deposit, our tendency is to take it as a rejection of our well intentioned effort and to give up." (pg. 192)
"Personal Integrity generates trust and is the basis of many different kinds of deposits. [...] Integrity includes but goes beyond honesty. Honesty is telling the truth -- in other words, conforming our words to reality. Integrity is conforming reality to our words -- in other words, keeping promises and fulfilling expectations. This requires an integrated character, a oneness, primarily with self but also with life." (195-196)
"Integrity in an interdependent reality is simply this: you treat everyone by the same set of principles. As you do, people will come to trust you. They may not at first appreciate the honest confrontational experiences such integrity might generate. Confrontation takes considerable courage, and many people would prefer to take the course of least resistance, belittling and criticizing, betraying confidences, or participating in gossip about others behind their backs. But in the long run, people will trust and respect you if you are honest and open and kind with them." (pg. 196-197)
"When we make deposits of unconditional love, when we live the primary laws of love, we encourage others to live the primary laws of life. In other words, when we truly love others without condition, without strings, we help them feel secure and safe and validated and affirmed in their essential worth, identity, and integrity. Their natural growth process is encouraged. We make it easier for to live the laws of life -- cooperation, contribution, highest and best within them." (pg. 199)
Habit 4: Think Win/Win
"Win/Win is a belief in the Third Alternative. It's not your way or my way, it's a better way, a higher way." (pg. 207)
"In leadership style, Win/Lose is the authoritarian approach. 'I get my way; you don't get yours.' Win/Lose people are prone to use position, power, credentials, possessions, or personality to get their way." (207)
"People who think Lose/Win are usually quick to please or appease. They seek strength from popularity or acceptance. They have little courage to express their own feelings and convictions and are easily intimidated by the ego strength of others." (pg. 209)
"When two Win/Lose people get together -- that is, when two determined, stubborn, ego-invested individuals interact -- the result will be Lose/Lose. Both will lose. Both will become vindictive and want to 'get back' or 'get even,' blind to the fact that murder is suicide, that revenge is a two-edged sword." (pg. 210)
"If you can't reach a true Win/Win, you're very often better off to go for No Deal." (pg. 214)
"Abundance Mentality: The third character trait essential to Win/Win is the Abundance Mentality, the parradigm that there is plenty out there for everybody." (pg. 219)