I’ve dug about half way into the first of the “Seven Habits” now, I’m not sure how I’m feeling about it right now, for a start I keep getting told there are no “Quick Fix” solutions. Damn.
Oh well, the first habit is “Be Proactive“. I was a little mistaken in what I though this meant at first, I sort of looked at it in lines of the Next Actions and the art of actually getting down to doing the things that need to be done. But it goes a lot deeper then that, suggesting that you should not just do all you need to do, but all you can do.
This makes sense, but is also really hard to do. I 100% agree with the principle, I used to live by the principle that if I do great work, I’d be noticed and rewarded, and if I hadn’t been working within internet start-ups in a boom and bust period of the webs birth, I probably would have gone far. As it turns out, I got screwed over as companies went under and I have been rather cynical ever since.
That obviously isn’t the most productive train of thought to have, I know that, and yet it’s not something I really think about, it’s just a habit, and habits can be changed, as the book continues to discuss. Not least because I’m a lot wiser (And yes, older) then when I was working in the worst situations, I shifted fro naive to cynical pretty hard, and so evolving into a more productive frame of mind at that level is no bad thing.
The only thing I’m not so sure about as I continue reading is the constant real world examples, some times I think they are longer then they need to be to make the point. And at times where I skip ahead a bit, I find I’ve missed a vital point, so have to dig around though what seems to me a like a lot of line fillers. But I guess some people will warm to that, and my motivation to digest as much of the information as I can without really “living” them perhaps means I need to evaluate just how I’m reading the book. For a start I want to keep some notes as I go along, but that’s a little tricky on the train.
So, round up of today’s reading from the top of my head and paraphrasing a little:
- Don’t settle for what needs to be done. Excel in each task.
- Stop wining about things and look for ways to improve a situation instead
- Stop making excuses for things. Take control of a situation.
- No Effort yields no reward.
- Effort yields reward, sometimes in unexpected ways, even if it’s just a personal victory.
