Walter P.
St. Louis, Missouri

Mark Guerrero
Dallas, TX

Charles Snell
Beverly Hills, CA

Robert Stroz
Reno, NV

StocksAtBottom.Com Book Reviews

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
by Stephen R. Covey

You Can't Make Better Use of Your Time than to either LISTEN to or READ this Book - DO IT TODAY!!!!, February 3, 2007

Extraordinary and as valuable as the day it was published

The 7 Habits are timeless. Covey spent his life trying to put this book together, and it shows. I have read this book completely. I also own the audio version, which is recorded in the author's voice. Whichever you decide to do, you want to own this book, and take OWNERSHIP of its contents.

This is an important point. My friend Mark is among the most gifted people intellectually on the planet. One day he is describing to me the people that take courses at colleges later on in life. The most interesting students to him were the ones who didn't just take the course, go to class, and do the homework. They were the ones who decided to OWN the knowledge in that course.

They devoured the information. They challenged the professor in his thinking. They read the other UN-assigned books that the professor spoke about. Their interest was not in the letter grade at the end of the course. It was in knowing that they had done a magnificent job in DRAINING the mind of the guy, or gal in the front of the room.

I feel the same way about Covey and what he has to offer because it is timeless. I can't imagine how anyone can sit in a car, and listen to inane music from a fellow struggling to sing hip-hop about the hood. The alternative is you could be altering your life for the better by absorbing the knowledge bank of this outstanding author from your CD player.

Now remember, you are not going to get out of a CD what you are going to get out of a book. They are radically different media experiences. With a book, you can annotate the margins, underline, write on the inside blank pages. I hate it when there are no blank pages in the back of the book where I can write whole sentences, and refer back to the page in the book where the thoughts came from.

With the CD's in the car, you are taking what is essentially wasted time, and turning it into wonderful, well-spent time. Covey's concept of "Sharpening the Saw", which is a summary of the habits, and how you can RENEW yourself is worth the whole price of the book or audio set alone.

I also love the fact that Covey is not talking about highly successful people, because what does that mean? He's talking about EFFECTIVE PEOPLE, and that makes all the difference in the world. As Americans we tend to concentrate too much on successful people, while most of us don't realize that a great part of success can be attributed to LUCK. It's simply the guy competing against a thousand other guys for the same gold ring, and he's the one that comes through the funnel.

A perfect example is Bill Gates creating the operating system that eventually dominated the personal computer world. There were a thousand brilliant minds trying to get that one done. These fellows included Steven Jobs of Apple who decided not to license his far superior Apple system to the PC world. Had Jobs decided to do this, he would be the wealthiest person in the world, and I doubt we would have ever head of Bill Gates. What this means is that there are a thousand people running around loose out there that simply never made it through the funnel, although they all might have been capable.

Now what Covey is talking about are "Highly Effective People". Anybody can drastically improve their effectiveness if they simply take the time to master what Covey is trying to convey to them. The beauty of these habits is just that, they are habits. You don't have to change your personality, or put on a façade to become effective. You have to adopt new habits. Once a habit becomes part of your daily routine, the effectiveness just kicks in automatically.

As I would listen to these CD's, I could feel transformations taking place. If you go the CD route, you want to replay them every couple of months. Your mind becomes receptive to different parts of what Covey is conveying at different times. That's what makes you a human being.

If you want to rock your world, than you listen to Covey. Of course for those of us who want to remain the same stagnant person, getting up in the morning and repeating the experiences of our lives over and over again - THERE'S ALWAYS HIP-HOP.