Reading “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” felt familiar in a way that few books do. More than once I wondered if I hadn’t read it before and forgotten. But as I got deeper in, I understood that many of the authors of the book I had read had also read and integrated aspects of “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” into their work, and other books that I have read had informed Stephen Covey as he wrote this book.

You could assume that means I didn’t get a lot from this book, but that isn’t true. In part it is because I have yet to internalize many of the things in this book that I know and in part it is because Stephen Covey does a brilliant job of setting out simple things that can be done rather than suggesting that they be done or using things that are overly specific. One that I have begun to put into action is creating a personal mission statement. An idea I like as a supplement to the goals I have previously written because while goals are valuable, they are typically external and change far more.

I would be a bit surprised that anyone who is interested in reading this hasn’t heard of “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.” that said, having heard of or even knowing what is in this book isn’t the same as having read it. Even with the strong feeling through much of this that I had heard most of it before, there was something about the structure that made it useful. If nothing else, it reminded me that external changes in my life almost always come from the internal choices first.

The closest thing to a negative I have to say about this book is that there is little or anything in this book you can’t get from other places. The author himself points this out more than once, explaining that we see the principles in this book in religions and philosophies all over the world. But Stephen Covey has done a good job of distilling and organizing those ideas and sometimes it’s easier to hear the same thing in a different way.

Listening to this book has convinced me I may near the end of this part of my journey. There is far more to learn, far more growth to be done. But I’ve reached the point where I have more ideas of how to do things than time to do it and reading more books is impeding the implementation of the things I’ve learned. So I am going to be taking a brief break from the self-help books to put more of them into practice. That doesn’t mean I won’t be reading any more or that this break will last long. It’s even possible that the break will be over before I post this, as I am considerably ahead, but it’s time to focus on improving my writing. I hope it shows.