Habits of a Highly Effective Person – Part 6

Welcome to the sixth, of a seven-part series on Habits of Highly Effect People by Stephen R Covey.

In this series we will look at seven habits, identified by Covey, designed to help you to change your lifestyle, and in return, become a highly effective person. This resource intends to give a useful overview of these ideas, and will hopefully inspire you to read the book in full

Habit Six: Synergise

The habit “Synergise” is probably the weakest of the seven. If you have read The 3rd Alternative which another book by Covey, he goes onto explain synergy in more detail, and even here it doesn’t come across as a very strong habit.

Synergy comes from the Greek word for “working together.”

We use this so much in the work place; communicating with different departments, organising meetings to work together on a project. It’s a simple 1+1 = 2.

Not just in work though, if you play an instrument and you collaborate together then BOOM synergy. Playing in a sports team, you need to work with your team mates to achieve a positive result, SYNERGY!

We need synergy in the different roles in our life. Our work life, social life, family life etc… they need shouldn’t be separate from each other. Now separating work and private life is a good thing; but there can also be downsides to that. Your life can become torn into two because of it. Because you work long hours you may have a negative relationship with your family. But then you may feel that you can’t take time off of work to fix these issues, or speak to anyone at work about the issues at home, and there things just get worse.

There will always be some amount of conflict in the different roles that you have in your life. But you can create a stable, healthy synergy between the roles in your life.

Covey outlines two primary ways in which we can create more synergy in our life.

1 – Complete 2 roles/tasks together

Perhaps one of your goals is to lose weight, but you want to balance family time. Workout with your family.

Enjoy playing sports, bring your family along.

Remember though that you have to give and take as well. You can’t just expect everyone to succumb to what you want to do. If your family wants to do something, put aside time and make the effort to participate in said activity.

Maybe you want to read more, but feel like you have no time. Why not listen to audio books when you are commuting or working out.

If there is a hobby you want to learn, you might have a friend who wants to learn it as well; here you can spend time on that hobby, while spending time with your friend and building up a meaningful friendship.

2 – Treat your life as an interconnected system

While it is all good to find ways to accomplish two things together, you need to see each role/task in your life not as separate, but as related and influence each other. When you sleep well, it’s easier to eat right, and when you eat right, you’ll have more motivation to work out, and from that you’ll feel more confident, and then you’ll want to socialise more, and so will see more friends…. you see where I am going with this.

“Your life is like an electrical circuit board, and the more positive pathways and amplifying connections you make, the more the power can build and flow.”

Going off from this analogy, we need to remember that there are breakers in our system. Minute of time, toxic friends, things that are causing you to feel down and depressed. With these things though all we need to do is remove that breaker and our system will get going again.

As you start to find out which roles mix together in your life, which don’t, you will eventually find the key combination that maximises you effectiveness and fulfilment.

So, there we have it, our summary of the sixth habit of highly effective people, as identified by Stephen R Covey. In the final part of this series, we will look at:

• Sharpen The Saw

If you have enjoyed reading this, and are looking forward to the future parts of this series; then why not check out one of our personal development courses. We have an incredibly informative one: Personal Planning and Organisational Skills. Why not check it out here.