The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Summary & key ideas explained

Picture a shelf of success books from the last two centuries. Stephen Covey, then a business professor at Brigham Young University, more or less read that shelf. He noticed something odd. For roughly the first 150 years, the books talked about character: integrity, patience, courage, humility, treating others as you'd want to be treated. Then, not long after the First World War, the tone changed. Success became a matter of image, charm, positive thinking and clever techniques.

Covey called the old approach the Character Ethic and the new one the Personality Ethic. The new one isn't useless. But it's a coat of paint. Use a technique to win someone over when they can't trust you, and sooner or later they see through it.

His 1989 book went on to sell tens of millions of copies, and its argument is simple to state and hard to live. Real change works from the inside out. You can't build a better marriage, team or career on top of a person who hasn't changed.

The seven habits follow a path of growing up. You start dependent, relying on others. The first three habits make you independent: you run your own life. The next three make you interdependent: you can achieve with others what no one manages alone. The last one keeps the whole system in working order.

But before any habit can take hold, you have to deal with something you probably don't know you have. What exactly are you looking through?