7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey (A PUA Book Review)

By Ben J

It is a sad day today, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People author Stephen Covey has unfortunately passed away. One of the guys who revolutionized the self-help and business industry with the notion of “always improve yourself” and “be effective,” is no longer with us, but his teachings, memoirs, and more have withstood the test of time, and we still use his exact teachings to this very day, not just in the corporate and business world, but the self improvement, self help, and even the seduction community.

7 Habits of Highly Effective People is a staple book in not just seduction, but life overall. Stephen Covey was, and forever will be a totally effective badass.

How does 7 Habits of Highly Effective People help us out as PUAs? I find the book is a manifesto of the road to success in whatever path one chooses, it starts off with the first three habits as a PRIVATE VICTORY and mastery of the self. As Stephen Covey put it, the first three habits are Self-Mastery.

HABIT 1 – Be Proactive – To become good at women, one needs to take action. One of my favorite quotes is “ACTION is the foundational key to SUCCESS.” This habit has been reassured in even modern days self help books like Tim Ferriss’s 4 Hour Work Week (E-Eliminate). This involves going out, studying up, planning your roadmap for success with women. This also has to deal with responsibility, taking account that the decisions you make will alter your level of effectiveness as a person.

HABIT 2 – Begin with the End in Mind – This is my favorite habit of them all. It forces one to imagine their end goal completely. Understanding what the end of your journey looks like is not just a form of motivation, but also a factor in gauging one’s results and level of success throughout the process.

HABIT 3 – Put First Things First – Priorities are a STAPLE! In this field, we need to make sure we’re learning the right stuff at the right time. Why study LMR tactics when your approaching sucks? It doesn’t make sense to practice how to be good in bed when you can’t create comfort and connection with a girl!

Mastery of the three previous habits will make yourself an effective person and creates a private victory for yourself, so what’s next? The public victory – and this is where the rubber hits the road in terms of awesomeness and getting renown.

The road to becoming great with women involves you and creating relationships with not just women, but men too. Your wings, your friends, and your future significant other(s) will thank you for understanding the next habits and understanding the importance of interdependence.

HABIT 4 – Think Win-Win – No one likes to lose, and Stephen Covey emphasizes this quite a bit with his thorough explanation of compromise, and staying positive to create mutually beneficial solutions. This involves creating plans with your wings, your friends, and most importantly – Win-Win situations with beautiful women!

HABIT 5 – Seek First to Understand, then be Understood – We were given two ears and one mouth so that we may listen twice better than we speak. This is something that a lot of hardcore PUA forum community guys forget. While I myself am one that loves the sound of my own voice, I make a personal effort to LISTEN and UNDERSTAND the people I am talking to. This especially applies to wingmen and dates, as your wings will be a consistent flow of advice, women, and opportunities to go out. No woman wants a man that won’t listen to her.

HABIT 6 – Synergize – My favorite way to synergize is to have a threesome, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves Synergizing is combining the strengths of others to complete a goal no one could have done on their own. By being a part of an team where everyone is utilizing their strengths, one can be more effective as a person. This habit is especially common for those who hold lair meetings, lair talk, group outings as they have to collaborate with others. The first thing that comes to my mind when synergizing is creating a social circle and making social circle hangouts, where me, my girls, and other close friends would head to the beach to hang out and have a good time. What’s the goal? Get closer to one another and build group loyalty!

The final habit in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey is probably the most important as it encompasses just about everything in the previous 6 habits. What one habit could be so important that it affects the other six?

HABIT 7 – Sharpen the Saw – I cannot stress this point enough. We all need to take a break from being Pick up Artists. Asian Playboy did a forty-five day in a row sarge-fest in Europe. Did he get better? Of course! What did he do afterwards? REST and REFLECT on his experiences. Sharpening the saw isn’t just about rest, it’s about reflecting on past experiences to improve your effectiveness in the future. At ABCs of Attraction, we have a little saying. “It’s not experience that counts, it’s evaluated experience that counts.”

Those are the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People summarized. If you read through the information, you will find that it’s an incredibly powerful book, has a ton of content, and I’ve briefly skimmed the surface in terms of information in this book. I liked reading this book in particular because Stephen Covey has an absolutely incredible, concise, and easy to read style of writing that gives you the ideas and concrete examples without all the fluff and garbage in other self-help books.

My only complaint about this book is that it’s extremely geared towards those working in a corporate environment. While I can understand this is the author’s intention, if you want to use this book outside of the corporate office environment, you’ll need to really sit down, digest, and evaluate every little detail and aspect of your roadmap to success.

Overall, I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking at improving the quality of their life, and to become a more effective person. Stephen Covey will be greatly missed, but his teaching will forever change the lives of people today, tomorrow, and for the rest of time itself.