• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

  • Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
  • By: Stephen R. Covey
  • Narrated by: Stephen R. Covey
  • Length: 13 hrs and 4 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (39,350 ratings)

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The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People  By  cover art

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

By: Stephen R. Covey
Narrated by: Stephen R. Covey
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Publisher's summary

New York Times best seller - over 40 million copies sold

The number one Most Influential Business Book of the 20th century

One of the most inspiring and impactful books ever written, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has captivated listeners for nearly three decades. It has transformed the lives of presidents and CEOs, educators and parents - millions of people of all ages and occupations. Now, this 30th anniversary edition of the timeless classic commemorates the wisdom of the 7 Habits with modern additions from Sean Covey.

The 7 Habits have become famous and are integrated into everyday thinking by millions and millions of people. Why? Because they work! With Sean Covey’s added takeaways on how the habits can be used in our modern age, the wisdom of the 7 Habits will be refreshed for a new generation of leaders.

They include:

Habit 1: Be Proactive

Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind

Habit 3: Put First Things First

Habit 4: Think Win/Win

Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood

Habit 6: Synergize

Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw

This beloved classic presents a principle-centered approach for solving both personal and professional problems. With penetrating insights and practical anecdotes, Stephen R. Covey reveals a step-by-step pathway for living with fairness, integrity, honesty, and human dignity - principles that give us the security to adapt to change and the wisdom and power to take advantage of the opportunities that change creates.

©2004 Franlkin Covey (P)2004 FranklinCovey

Critic reviews

"The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is by now one of the best-selling books of all time." (Fortune)

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What listeners say about The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

I don't understand these other reviews

Too religious? Irrational? Morality? What book are these people reading?

Does the author mention religion? Yes. He clearly states that he believes in God. That takes up approximately 2 sentences in the entire book (though he says a little more in the afterword). He also mentions that all enduring religions AS WELL AS all enduring philosophical systems agree on certain principles of human maturity and interaction, and those are the principles he bases the book on. But is The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg religious, or even spiritual? Because that's by far the primary principle in the book.

Now, I guess you could say some parts talk about morality, but not in the sense of "you must love your neighbor" or whatever. And yes, the part about being honest could be seen as morality, but considering the whole point is that honesty is a requirement for having people trust you, it strikes me that many of these negative reviews may be written by people who wanted a quick fix, a set of numerical steps on how to be successful.

But that is not what this book is about. The point of this book is that you will never be content in your life if you are looking for contentment OUTSIDE OF your life. It all has to come from within -- that is, your character, who you are. There's nothing moral about that. There's nothing religious about that. But there's also nothing easy about it. This book is work. Lifelong work. And a lot of people simply are not ready for the implications. The first time I read it I didn't realize how far away from the objective I was. But as I've grown and reread the book, I've discovered how deep it goes.

Of course, none of this is scientific. None of it is rational. That isn't the point. We aren't solving sudoku or splitting atoms. We are dealing with human emotions, and there's nothing rational about emotions. But there can be a solid approach to controlling our lives, and that's what this book is all about.

I just wish they'd hired a professional to read it.

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718 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

I did not expect to like this book

I really did not expect to like this book. I generally find the self help genre weak and I expected this title to be one more christian based positive thinking book. There is a tiny bit of faith-based stuff in the afterward, but it strives to be any-god-will-do. Mostly it is detailed, ordered, steps to, over time, improve your effectiveness.

The Seven Habits (plus the new eighth one) are:
Be Pro-Active, Set Goals, Prioritize, Think Win-Win, Listen, Synergize, Maintain, & Inspire
This list seems a bit trite, but the author takes care to build each concept upon another. It is more realistic than most self-help books and does not promise a quick fix, or riches, or power, it instead suggests an effective pattern for somewhat steady improvement. This system goes beyond having a "open mindset" to having an "abundance mindset". This does not mean an abundance of stuff, but noticing that many situations are not zero-sum, and that win-win net-positive situations are often, if not almost always, possible.

Of course doing all the things the author suggests is non-trivial, but they are generally good suggestions for making progress once you are committed to change.

The writing and narration is quite clear, folksy, and pleasant, and far from the exuberance of some books in this genre. Some may find the folksiness a bit slow and boring, try speeding it up.

BTW - some reviews mention chapter ordering issues that seem to have been fixed.

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355 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

A true guide for life

This is one of my top ten books of all time for lifelong contemplation.

Key themes of Proactivity; Setting and following priorities; Re-scripting according to principles; Win-Win; Listening to understand others; Synergy; and Renewal are fundamental, timeless and universal.

Dr. Covey's approach is unequalled in breadth and depth, while being entirely accessible to any human being. Everything he writes complements everything I've learned in life, while laboring to uproot any weeds that have grown in my internal garden. Having Dr. Covey read the material to me personally... it's the icing on the cake!

I read "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" when it first appeared decades ago; read it a second time five years later; and now, thanks to Audible, I've begun a profound study and contemplation of the material, that would have otherwise been too tedious to handle, given my other time commitments, as well as the fact that, since my work is about 90% in front of the computer, my eyes tire quickly before printed material in my non-work time.

I organize my listening in two ways: listening in the logical, step by step, chapter by chapter method on the one hand, imagining myself attending a 7 Habits seminar or class; and listening for hours at a time as I lie down to rest/relax/sleep on the other. The result is I end up hearing the material over and over, provoking thoughts and contemplations about where I am in life, where I want to go, and what I need to do to get there. I expect the process to last about six months. My goal from the reading: A complete paradigm re-adjustment for life.

This book has my highest recommendation for any person anywhere.

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328 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Great book bad audio

The material in the book is great and I highly recommend it. This audio version, however, is very difficult to listen to because the author speaks so slowly and pauses so often. I had the feeling that I could have listened to the unabridged version in half the time if read by another narrator. I found myself zoning while listening to the book, rewinding it so I could listen to it again, and by the time I got to the part I had missed, I was zoning again.

My 3 star rating is based on the audio itself, not the content. I highly recommend the book itself, and I may even buy the abridged version so I can refresh myself on the material.

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254 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

The real deal...

Sadly this book is contrarian to a lot of what goes on in our society. Thus I constantly have to "try" to practice these principles. But the trying is worth it. I have used this book as a standard for turning around the cultures of two manufacturing plants after I was hired from the outside. Those turn-arounds were only accomplished because the principles in this book work and because, if patiently applied, they give a management team a common vocabularly for they way they treat each other and their associates. My only function was to act as catalyst and insist that these principles be practiced. After a couple of years, in both cases the stress levels were way down, the morale was way up, and the performance was beyond anything known before and certainly beyond expectation. In my current assisgnment we're saving over $3M per year (450 people) and the roots of that accomplishment are in this book. It's a book to listen to, to absorb, and to go back to over and over again. An annual tuneup by listening to this program, is typical of those who REALLY try to adopt the 7 Habits (and model them). It's tough to be a perfect practitioner. One can only read and try...

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175 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Change your Life

If you really want to change your life for the better, read this book. I would suggest not listening to this in the car, but in the quiet of your home and make notes as you do. You will truly change the way you go through life and the way you understand other people.

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144 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Unhelpful, insulting.

I was expecting insight into how to organize my life better, as the title would suggest. This book was more of sermon on how you should live a moral life and consider that successful. Even then, I was willing to judge it by what it was, rather than what I wanted it to be.

But still bad. The writer seems like a self-centered control freak who one day found religion and realized he was a self-centered control freak, and so he became a more virtuous, by his standards, type of self-centered control freak, dragging his family into his new vision of reality, and telling everyone else they should be like him, without realizing that most people were never as bad as he was in the first place.

Those were my impressions. Others obviously felt differently. This is not a book to help you become more successful, it's more of a sermon on the life he thinks you should live, and that life revolves around God and a mythical vision of the past as simpler and more virtuous than the present. If you are a normal person who is pretty decent in the first place, and who values family over materialism and appearances, you are already a better person than he is talking to. That's why I felt insulted--he assumes the reader is bad, and if the reader doesn't become like him, the reader is dragging the rest of the world down.

So I didn't like it. Others have. But be aware it's not a guide book to organizing life or gaining insights into achieving your goals. It's about changing your goals to his goals and being happy with that.

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139 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Author not good reader

The reader for this book is the author. He is almost monotoned and says, “new heading” when he comes to a new heading or topic. It’s hard to listen to. He should be using tone and intonation to illustrate a new topic is starting. I’m not even going to listen to the entire book. I can’t stand it anymore. It’s like doing homework. That is not the desired effect of purchasing an audiobook.

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137 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

LIFE CHANGING

I have listened to this one over a dozen times and can't get enough. The material is easy to understand but so challenging that you must listen several times to even start to take it all it. Dr. Covey's book has helped me double my income in 18 months and has helped me improve my marriage tremendously with habit 5. By far the best program I have ever listened too!

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98 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Good audiobook but bad reader

Good audio book but the reader has a whistle to his voice after most words. It reminds me of the old man from family guy highkey.
You can also hear him breathe heavily as he reads so it kinda makes taking the book seriously more difficult.
Sounds like my grandpa reading it with the whistle and heavy breaths

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92 people found this helpful