Stephen Covey (1932–2012) was an American self-improvement author. His chart-topping The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People has sold more than 12 million copies since its 1989 publication and helped spawn a business empire based on the “Seven Habits” premise.
Born into a Mormon family in Provo, Utah, Covey got a bachelor’s degree in business administration at the University of Utah and an MBA at Cambridge. He also served as a Mormon missionary in Nottingham, England. Covey later taught at Brigham Young University, earned a PhD in business and education in 1976, and left academics to start the Covey Leadership Center in 1983.
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (1989) became immensely popular, appearing on the New York Times best-seller list for more than five years. The Covey Leadership Center—a spin-off management-training center that focused on the book’s tenets—merged with Franklin Quest in 1997 to form the day-planner publisher Franklin Covey.
Covey wrote a number of other books on related themes, including Principle-Centered Leadership (1991,) First Things First (1994,) The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families (1997,) The Eighth Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness (2004,) and The 3rd Alternative: Solving Life’s Most Difficult Problems (2011.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Stephen Covey
Writing is another powerful way to sharpen the mental saw. Keeping a journal of our thoughts, experiences, insights, and learnings promotes mental clarity, exactness, and context.
—Stephen Covey
Topics: Habit, Power, Thoughts, Experience, Learning
If you’re proactive, you don’t have to wait for circumstances or other people to create perspective expanding experiences. You can consciously create your own.
—Stephen Covey
Topics: Chance
Independent will is our capacity to act. It gives us the power to transcend our paradigms, to swim upstream, to rewrite our scripts, to act based on principle rather than reacting based on emotion or circumstance.
—Stephen Covey
Be patient with yourself. Self-growth is tender; it’s holy ground. There’s no greater investment.
—Stephen Covey
It’s easy to say “no!” when there’s a deeper “yes!” burning inside.
—Stephen Covey
Live out of your imagination, not your history.
—Stephen Covey
Topics: Imagination
How different our lives are when we really know what is deeply important to us, and keeping that picture in mind, we manage ourselves each day to be and to do what really matters most.
—Stephen Covey
Personal leadership is the process of keeping your vision and values before you and aligning your life to be congruent with them.
—Stephen Covey
Anything less than a conscious commitment to the important is an unconscious commitment to the unimportant.
—Stephen Covey
The key is not to prioritize your schedule, but to schedule your priorities. Do the important things first – because where you are headed is more important than how fast you are going.
—Stephen Covey
Topics: Habit
Almost all of the world-class athletes and other peak performers are visualizers. They see it; they feel it; they experience it before they actually do it. They begin with the end in mind.
—Stephen Covey
Topics: Experience
To touch the soul of another human being is to walk on holy ground.
—Stephen Covey
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Tom Peters American Management Consultant
Orson Scott Card American Author
Peter Senge American Management Consultant
Robin Sharma Canadian Writer, Motivational Speaker
Margaret J. Wheatley American Management Consultant
Peter Drucker Austrian-born Management Consultant
Thomas S. Monson American Mormon Religious Leader
Gordon B. Hinckley American Mormon Religious Leader
Sheryl Sandberg American Executive, Author
Neal A. Maxwell American Mormon Religious Leader