Rating: 
Summary: Easier to learn when you listen sometimes!
Review: A cassette of an all time favorite. Do I know people who have read the book - Yes! They are very successful and have a ton of friends. My parents also highly recommend the book. I think the audio version is easier to fit into our busy lives these days.
Rating:
Summary: Profound!
Review: 7 Habits is brilliant! It offers principled solutions to problems in all avenues of life. I loved this book! Anyone who takes the time to seriously study and ponder what he teaches will be deeply changed and will turn to 7 Habits over and over again for solutions to problems through out life.
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Summary: Handbook for all Parents
Review: Excellent! A must for every family... to be re-read as a guide; it refreshes you and gives you more insights each time you read it
Rating: 
Summary: Oh pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeze!
Review: Stephen Covey has gone way over board. This book is pretentious, complicated and exclusionary. Just say it! Four quadrants, seven habits. . .blah, blah, blah. He makes life management way too complicated and his ideas are too abstract and do not "connect" with each other. If you want an "technical" book on the "concept" of life management, this is your book. If you want a practical "life" management book that's easy to understand and apply, try "The 10 Natural Laws of Successful Time and Life Management" by Hyrum Smith.
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Summary: patronizing and disturbing
Review: When Covey gives example situations of codependency, which he does alarmingly often, it is always from the _first person_. Don't listen to everything he says because he berates both himself and the reader throughout the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Good but wordy - A copy of Dennis Waitley's earlier book
Review: I found this book to be a good book filled with sound, basic principles, but it was a bit wordy. A better book written three years earlier though is Dennis Waitley's "Seeds of Greatness." As far as I can tell, Covey read Dennis' book, added a lot more filler, and somehow got credit (and money) for Dennis' work. Check out Waitley's book, you will like it a lot.
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Summary: Very Important Book...
Review: Great lessons! This book was recommended to me as a teaching tool for personal development, and I have since used it to teach about five hundred entrepreneurs in California. The inspirational messages contained in these worthwhile pages bring lessons that will benefit readers for a lifetime. A person should walk away from this book, and return to it many times, having shifted paradigms, knowing that no time was SPENT reading this book, but their valuable time was INVESTED. Yet another wonderful book in which one can invest and produce lifetime returns is "Danger Close" by Mike Yon. "Danger Close" is the true story of a man who applies these principles at every hard turn in life, and eventually lives to tell his story. "Danger Close" actually received the prestigious William A. Gurley award for creative nonfiction. Mike Yon's book is a reference for many people who "sharpen their saws" on a daily basis. It was great to see the real-life application of the "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" in "Danger Close."
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Summary: From 7 Habits to A Way of Life.
Review: I first read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People in 1991, and I got physically sick after reading it. It brought out the fact that my life was seriously out of balance. And 'balance' is one of the main points of Dr. Covey's book. Well, time passed and my life changed. So much so, that now, 9 years later, I not only live the 7 Habits (well, most of the time), I sometimes teach them. The point is, that Dr. Covey's book has changed lives, mine among them. So, if you're at a place where you're ready for a change; where you would like to be more at peace with yourself and also more in harmony with your world...GET THIS BOOK!
Rating: 
Summary: What a load of rubbish
Review: I was doing pretty well with this book until I came to the part where he was demonstrating effective listening skills with a conversation he supposedly had with his son about staying in school. The conversation was ridiculous to anyone who has teenage children. With just a few choice sentences he convinced his son that staying in school is the right and proper thing to do and the beauty part was the kid thinks he convinced himself! Rubbish! This was a dialogue made up by the author to make a point although he says it really happened. If it did then I'm Santa Claus. I stopped reading at that point.
Rating:
Summary: If wishes were horses we'd all be highly effective.
Review: Author's Qualifications Stephen Covey brings "25 years of working with people in business, university and marriage and family settings," as his credentials in writing this book. With an MBA from Harvard, a professorship at Brigham Young University and a marriage that has survived many years and nine children, these credentials certainly ring true. The principles he describes are not the products of academic research or controlled studies. Neither do they stem from deeply moving personal experiences that a Nelson Mandela or a Viktor Frankl may speak about. They are the principles that grandma may have talked about, if only she were more articulate. And yet, for this very reason, one feels compelled to listen to Covey for his experiences are close to those of us common folk. Thesis and Critique The book certainly presents a well structured attempt at restructuring our lives in the pursuit of personal excellence. In this review however, I will focus on its role as a management handbook. Covey makes a special effort to remind us that his is not a "time management" book. While this is a book about organizational excellence, Covey emphasizes that the foundation of organizational excellence is personal excellence. The seven habits he describes in great detail are tools leading to that goal. They can be applied in nearly every situation in our lives, and, if successfully practiced, will help us to improve our personal as well as professional lives. In describing Habit 1 (Be Proactive) Covey uses a vast array of allusions ranging from Pavlovian conditioned reflexes to Frankl's holocaust experiences. His erudite tone, laced with pithy personal anecdotes soon lulls the reader into acceptance in true Socratic fashion. The second Habit emphasizes a sense of mission. Under the influence of Covey and his cohorts, every corporate office now has some variation on a mission statement. The more inept and slow-moving the organization, the more prominent is the display of "The Vision of Our Corporation." While mission statements are valuable for organizations such as Procter and Gamble and Coke, they can be a hindrance in today's fast moving biotechnology and information systems companies whose very survival is based on constant redefinition and opportunistic adaptation to market demands and new technological developments. Habit 3 deals with time management and is perhaps the most useful section of the book. A reader in love with the Pareto principle could read this section and get most of the utility out of the book. A unique feature is the analysis of activities based on four quadrants. Covey stresses quadrant II activities such as relationship building and recognizing new opportunities. These are certainly critical management skills and deserve to be emphasized. Covey's worksheets for time management are also novel and represent an improvement over to-do lists and appointment books. The division of time based on ones many "roles" certainly is a way to achieve greater balance between the personal and the professional. With Habit 4 Covey again descends into sermonizing. Predecessors such as Jesus and Buddha have done a far better job at illustrating this principle through their lives and words. From a modern author angling at the management crowd one would expect a more "how-to" approach set in a real-world context, but this is lacking. A far superior treatment of this aspect is Adam Brandenburger and Barry Nalebuff's Co-opetition that shows the applications of this noble principle in a business setting. Habit 5 emphasizes empathic communication. The chapter showcases Covey's talents as an empath. Habit 6, Synergy is another great concept much touted by merging organizations. This chapter alone could explain Covey's tremendous success in an otherwise astute business community. Habit 7, picturesquely called "sharpening the saw," belongs more in a Deepak Chopra book with its quasi-religious overtones. The overwhelming success of this book emphasizes the human mind's love of simplification. If seven, easy to understand habits could enrich our lives, the world quickly would become a much better place. These habits and their virtues are not new to us and have been an open secret for millennia. The difficulty of course lies in their application. On closing the book the following verse from Alice in Wonderland comes to mind: 'You are old,' said the youth, 'as I mentioned before, And have grown most uncommonly fat; Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door-- Pray, what is the reason of that?' 'In my youth,' said the sage, as he shook his grey locks, 'I kept all my limbs very supple By the use of this ointment--one shilling the box-- Allow me to sell you a couple?'
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