Habits that will Change your Life (For the Better)

We make thousands, if not hundreds or thousands of decisions each day. They can range from what we eat for breakfast to what our next million dollar idea is. Making decisions is not the hard part, the hard part is deciding which decisions we should focus our time on.  

With this habit, Covey illustrates a decision-making framework to put First things First and make the right decision that aligns best with our goals developed from Habit 2. The basis of this framework is to identify decisions based on importance (how closely it aligns with your goals), and urgency (how immediate is addressing this activity). This framework is broken down into four quadrants:

• Quadrant 1 (High importance, high urgency): Putting out fires and crises situations
• Quadrant 2 (High importance, low urgency): Focusing on big-picture activities
• Quadrant 3 (Low importance, high urgency): Perceived to be highly important, but waste of time 
• Quadrant 4 (Low importance, low urgency): Nothing important and mundane 

We tend to react to emotional activities, which means we are naturally responsive to high urgency situations. However out of all the quadrants, the optimal one to shoot for is Quadrant 2. The reason being is the fact that activities with high importance and low urgency tend to be the activities that align best with our personal mission. Working on Quadrant 2 activities allows us to become effective to optimize our time. This usually involves saying no to many requests such as administrative work, as we prioritize personal management activities. 

As good as it feels to win all the time and beat the competition, it is paramount to build positive relationships that are mutually beneficial. Sporting icons such as Kobe Bryant, Cristiano Ronaldo and Tom Brady emphasize that there is nothing more important than winning. However by shifting this thought, instead of focusing on solely winning, it is equally if not more important to focus on creating win-win situations. 

Through human interactions, there are several dynamics that play out when it comes to establishing relationship roles and discussing agreements to achieve certain outcomes.  Every interaction involves roles or character certain parties are playing based on their values, resources and emotional well-being which ultimately affect the outcome.

Covey illustrates a framework that represents different paradigms of human interactions, however states that the ideal approach is to achieve a win-win situation. Under these circumstances, a win/win is where both parties mutually benefit from the interaction as everyone is satisfied. For example, in a negotiation between two parties, both would come out of the interaction getting exactly what they wanted without compromising the other. Think of it as enhancing the pie as opposed to simply dividing the pie.

While every option would depend on the circumstances, other dynamics such as win/lose, lose/win or lose/lose don’t tend to be optimal interactions as parties with losing outcomes would breed resentment or future conflict. Ultimately, to aim for win/win situations, the parties in the interaction should focus on a high level of consideration for other parties involved, and the courage to speak out to understand the underlying issues. 

With our natural impulses to speak first before listening, perhaps this is one of the hardest habits to master. The irony is in order to effectively speak we must listen first, however, we often find ourselves often doing the exact opposite. 

Listening is often one of the more underdeveloped and overlooked skills when it comes to communication. By developing the ability to listen, you would inspire openness and trust with others when it comes to building relationships. The reason why it is often overlooked is the fact that during interactions, we tend to put ourselves on autopilot with an intent to speak our mind right after the other person is done talking. 

When you think about it, it’s like when a doctor prescribes medicine before understanding the symptoms and health history of the patient. Covey refers this to “Diagnose before you prescribe”.

When it comes to situations where you provide advice or solve problems, the concept of empathetic listening is practiced to further develop our intent to understand what the other person is saying during these interactions. By getting inside another person’s perspective, we are able to deepen our understanding of the problems they are experiencing, so that we can figure out more effective solutions. 

Covey’s system of applying empathetic listening involves four stages:

We often hear that when it comes to effective teamwork, the whole should be greater than the sum of its parts. Building off Habit #4 (Think Win-Win) and Habit #5 (Seek to Understand then to be Understood), the habit, Synergize is to optimize the output of a collective group. Practicing this habit involves combining empathetic communication with the mentality of producing win/win outcomes to achieve the ultimate form of synergy.

The concept of synergy is to have 1 + 1 = 3, as opposed to just having 1 + 1 = 2.

By creating a group dynamic where each individual can collectively contribute their strengths while covering each other’s weaknesses, the amount of possibilities would be endless. By applying synergy in team environments, this would enable groups or organizations to exercise their creativity to overcome obstacles and to maximize the talent of each individual.