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Summary: Highly Effective, but also Learn from "Management by Vice"!
Review: I read this book after getting a copy from our VP/CEO. The positive approaches described are a start, though most of us still have to struggle with negative work attitudes and relations. I learned a lot by reading this book, but also found it worthwhile to read the truly hilarious episodes in the book,"Management by Vice", since it very frankly shows what life can be like in a high-tech company where Covey's highly effective "7 Habits" have not been promoted by management! It can't harm managers or their staff to read and think about both positive and negative habits/attitudes to get a real insight into the workplace!
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Summary: OUTSTANDING JOB!
Review: You cannot live an effective life without using the principles in this book. I have been using these principle for 10 years and they have help me start a business, write books, and attain a high level of joy. Congradulations Stephen Covey for being the first to solve some of life's puzzles.
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Summary: The trouble with self help book and this one.
Review: I would like to say a few things about this book and the "genre", the category it fits in, the self help books in general, mainly because each text is a product of its format and its style greatly influences its content. As with many, if not all, so called self help books this book is marred the following key problems or flaws: 1. It states and then repeats over and over again, overemphasizing to the point of tedium, the obvious and the common sense wisdom, failing to capture the finer details of the proposed subject and thus missing out on all the important variations of life. In this way it midguides the reader, forcing them to believe that the theory is the life they live in and that the map is indeed the territory. 2. It uses in mostly anecdotal (i.e. incidental) evidence and no scientific, philosophical, literary or other basis as a foundation and is thus very unreliable in the information it provides and can only justify its title (i.e. that it is actually helpful for oneself) if the reader accepts the whole system of thought and frame of mind of the author, his beliefs and values, his or her personal history and assigned meaning in life etc, otherwise it is useless. Missing out on the finer details as i mentioned in the first point i made, these book actually demand that the person replicates his or her self as an offshoot of the writer, allowing for little variety and imagination, and creative spirit, in life. The "wisdom" one can possess after reading such books can be found elsewhere in a more scientific and sinsere manner. Which brings me on to my next point. 3. These types of books are full of misconceptions and oversimplifications of psychological, philosophical, religious and otherwise spiritual works. They gratuitously ransack the good library books from their knowledge and wisdom and, with no references, they go about incorporating these elements to their own writing with different name tags or slightly modified content. Hence, the skill to read and understand any form of printed material, ranging from literature to poetry and from philosophy to science, and being able to adjust these skills to the text one is reading, becomes renamed as speed reading and most recently mutates to kevin treudau's ( i don't know if i 've spelt the name correctly) photoreading. Hypnosis skills get a yuppie make-over and turn into nlp, or some new age crap. 4. Most of them attempt to change the readers mind frame with positive hypnosis and affirmations and do not provide a long lasting effect so to speak, so it is not the info they provide that causes any effect one might have but the influence it exerts on the reader 5. Lastly, and this is a key point I am trying to make here, they are nothing but huge public relations enterprises, as other reviewers have mentioned before me, with the sole purpose of making the author rich and famous and his or her books best-sellers. There are plenty other flaws one can point out but I 'll stay with these due to the lack of time and space. About this book in particular. It is priviled enough to have each and every one of the above errors and a few unique ones. First of all, the author is in many cases patronising and bosses the reader around into believing his claims. I wonder is such a relationship or reader and auhor, one of command and subordination an "empowering" one to use one of the most loved terms of Covey. When I first read it in my public library I was astounded at how much of this book reads as gospel, a sacred definitive text on the human condition. With not a hint of distrust towards the validity of its claims or its0 historicity (i.e. it being just a product of a certain time and place, a society and a culture, an individual and hir or her souroundings.) For god's sake, even the number seven has mythical connotations as it is a "magic" symbolic number one finds in various cultures around the world. The main ideas of the book, the responsibility of the individual - a main existential idea of choice and commitment one can fully understand, grasp and practise in the works of sartre, neitsche, heidegger, ortega y gasset et al in philosophy and frankl, binswater, rollo may et al. (in fact Covey name drops some of this existential thinkers in but in a fragmeted, quotes out of context fashion) in existential psycotherapy, the second habit the one of "begining with the end in mind" and commiting themselves and "personal meaning" is again an existential offshoot and over-simplification of the human task to enhance the self, act rather than be acted upon, and assigning meaning to ones life, the third one "first things first" i.e. applying some sort of perspective in ones life and prioritizing is just plain common sense and i will not go in it, the next one to think win win, to care for your relationships with other people is straight forward moralism with no substance if applied the way he understands it and to care for the others as a means of achieving your goal of success is just too opportunistic and deceitful for my tastes, next listen empathically - well, well that's an original thought bravo mr. covey now how long did it take you to come to this conclusion, well, not enough space left due to the 1000 word limit, anyway you can imagine the rest... This book as any other this talentless hack has written is an insult to the human mind and complexity, it chews and digests a wealth of knowledge, our human testament, and spits out an incoherent blather to the reader. Please, if you are not the narrow-minded yuppie sell-out success and control freak, but a wel meaning human being in every sense do not read this, or skim through it at the library at least. Try literature, or theatre or a good therapist or a good friend, or buy a book on existential psychology. Thanks a lot to amazon for the space and to you for your time and effort, hope this review has something to say
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Summary: Millions in sales - but how many readers?
Review: A sad mixture of ong-winded, turgid prose, bad psychology and poor research. Yet it has sold by the million. I'd love to know how many people read it all the way through, though? At a guess, not many. A triumph of marketing over common sense this is the ultimate "quick fix" business book. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If the book has sold millions, and it's really so full of great ideas, why isn't the world of business being revolutionised - for the better - even as we speak?
Why isn't the world in general being revolutionised - for the better - even as you read these words? Because the Emperor ain't got no clothes, that's why!
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Summary: An invaluable book
Review: My life was changed by this book. I find Covey succesfully integrates a bleeding obvious paradigm into a work orientated lifestyle scenario schedule overview bla bla bla. Amusing diagrams of circles around other circles with arrows pointing in. Then the same ones with different colours or the arrow reversed just in case you didnt understand the obvious points. If you like this book buy "Should I drink poison or not", "Is Godzilla real", "How to make commone sense sound like a deep philosophy by using the word paradigm" etc.
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Summary: The G I F T
Review: I was really excited to read this book. Thanks to my brother in-law who introduced me to it. The most USEFUL advantage of this book, is that you get to UNDERSTAND. Many times in life we fail to know the answer for the most common questions "WHY/WHAT/HOW?". This book helps you find the answer. For example: "Why did this happen to me? Or why did I/he react this way? Or Why do I feel this way?". "What can I do?". And "How can I solve this?". To those who want to understand, to those who want to change, to those who want to make a DIFFERENCE, and to all my friends to whom I'm buying this book as a G I F T... this is a GREAT BOOK!
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Summary: The best book I've read
Review: Maybe it's because I'm only nineteen, but I found the book to be very informative. I am very curious, and it is hard to find a good book to answer my questions. When I read, I felt relieved to finally get some answers. He clears up certain things I feel are important by being precise and by looking at things in a different way. I've always known that our beliefs govern our lives but now I understand it on a deeper level. He says that having an accurate view of the world brings about almost complete change. That when we have the "why" (correct principles); the "what" (habits), "how" (skills), and "want" (desire) come easily. Knowing the facts about yourself and the world is the biggest cause of change. This is something that seems like "common sense". It seems "obvious". But how many people do you know who try to change by improving their habits, skills, and desire; while oblivious to their beliefs. Another idea that caught my eye was the comparison of the "personality ethic"(ethic means: principles of behavior) verse the "character ethic". He says that we need to focus on the kind of person we are, rather than the kind of person we portray. Changing to the kind of person who is successful and happy is the only way to enjoy lasting success and happiness. The character traits that he says are effective, are also moral. So becoming a generally good person becomes an incentive. My favorite part of the book is habit seven. I thought his view on self-renewal was very informative and exciting. The only downfall to this book is that it's a lot of work to read. It takes patience and dedication. I found that the lessons it teaches are exciting, but the way he writes it is dull. On top of that, he uses a big vocabulary where you have to keep looking up words. Despite this though, the lessons learnt in "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" make this book well worth the five stars and the best book I've read to date.
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Summary: Of Course
Review: Duh - If you haven't read this by now - gimmie a break.- DaveDavidson.com
Rating:
Summary: I can't help seeing all the way through
Review: I've tried to read this book several times. I realize that it has been helpful to many people, but it just doesn't do it for me. Mr. Covey seems to be a master of the obvious. I find the book boring. It doesn't engage me to finish the next section. I don't find many of his examples to be exciting. I don't find his commentary to be very insightful. It's just a lot of empty fluff. The book seems to be written at a very low level. Perhaps that makes it useful to the maximum number of people. To me, its just too light weight. I had an opportunity to see Mr. Covey speak several years ago. When he started talking about writing a "mission statement" for his family, he really lost me. To me, it just seems weird and unrealistic. I have found Wayne Dyer's books to be much more interesting.
Rating:
Summary: 7 habits of highly effective people-an effective book
Review: Great book-I definitely recommend the audio version. It's great to listen to during rush hour traffic to and from work. Something you can listen to again and again and still gain insight.
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