Effective Cooperation

Cooperation is a extremely difficult thing to fully achieve. Yet, it's a skill we eventually learn just by simply growing up. Through our many interactions in life, we have to make choices along with other people. Being an older brother, arguing with my younger brother is typical, and our decisions often directly clash with each other. Something as simple as "What's for dinner" can turn into a "No I don't like that" fight in the family, making everyone stressed out until we finally figure something out.
Well, that's what the 4th Habit's for, to find out how to effectively cooperate with each other, without everything turning into chaos over very simple things.

Covey boils down human interaction into six main categories; Win/Win, Win/Lose, Lose/Win, Lose/Lose, Win, and Win/Win or No Deal (206). These six categories are in essence, what happens when we argue or agree with each other in a discussion. For example, people that like to build off each other's ideas when contributing in a group would be a Win/Win scenario. Both ideas are being portrayed equally, and support each other. Covey also describes it as it being "not your way or my way; it's a better way, a higher way" (207). Going back to my crises over dinner, I'm sure a lot of people wanted to have their option chosen over others in many other situations. That is a example of a Win/Lose scenario, one person's idea is the one that is accepted or wins, while the other is forced to go along with that idea, despite not liking the idea fully. Now if you're more of a passive person when it comes to arguments, you would be in a Lose/Win scenario. At your expense, you are letting others have their way, just to keep things peaceful (209). As a older brother, it's really relatable as it's something I have to do often just to make sure my brother stops annoying me. When conflicts get out of hand, to the point where you're practically screaming at each other, that's a Lose/Lose scenario. No one gets any good out of it, and essentially it's just a argument with no one listening to each other. There is also just the plain Win category, a sort of selfish method of securing your own victory, while letting the other person do their own thing (210). The final, sixth type is Win/Win or No Deal. It is essentially the same as Win/Win, however both people "agree to disagree agreeably" should there be something both parties are not in full support of (213). The hopeful goal to reach effective cooperation is to go for Win/Win, or Win/Win or No Deal scenarios as much as possible.

Some of the things I have done to deal with my little brother is to either take turns or share, not very often though. Fortunately some of the games I play have split-screen, so just plain sharing the video game is an option. Sometimes, we also play a game to see who wins and gets to play. Then, when it

comes down to things like dinner, each person has a say of what they want to eat that week. These simple things help prevent a Win/Lose scenario from escalating into a Lose/Lose.

We often settle it with our own created characters in Soul Calibur IV

Well, thank you again for reading this post! I know this one was more wordy than my previous ones, but it's all to help you guys become more effective people!

Alright so my question for this post is,

How effective do you think your cooperation skills are, based on your recent interactions?

Covey, Stephen R. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990. Print.

Manage Your Time Effectively

Alright, so typically as students, we are given a variety of options to do when we get home. Some of us elect to do our homework like a responsible student, while others may slack off and may go onto YouTube, or play video games. This is especially prevalent when going into a break. Knowing myself, I would start said work, only to slack off until the last few days of break. Doesn't this beat the point of having a "break" in the first place?


Well, if you struggle with this, Habit 3 will help you. The 3rd habit deals with time management, a skill that is greatly improved with learning how to be proactive, and how to begin a task with a end in mind, so if you haven't checked out those past posts, they might be interesting to look through. Either way, Covey says there are four generations of time management skills. The first is based off of notes, the second based off calendars, and the third generation is based off goal setting and priorities (149-150). These first three are based off old values of focusing on things and time; as a result, very rigid. For the 4th generation, it throws everything off by focusing on the results, and building relations with others, or self management. The whole goal of the 4th generation of time management is, according to Covey, "[to] organize and execute around priorities" (149). The advantage the 4th generation has over the others is the flexibility it allows in the future by planning and accomplishing things in the now that may not be as important until the future.

Covey categorizes how we spend our time into two groups, importance, and urgency. He states that urgent matters, "press, they insist on action" (151) and that important matters, "contribute to your mission, your values, and your high priority goals" (151). Urgent things could include due dates for huge projects or a ongoing problem that suddenly appeared. Important things include planning for the future, or looking for more opportunity. Although these important matters are well, important, they can seem not that urgent to do now. As a result we spend our time doing things that aren't urgent or important, therefore wasting it. Going back to the whole break thing, we wait to do our homework later, saying "I have time to do this later" only for the matter to become urgent and a problem. The goal of effective time management is to focus on planning these things out, applying Habit 1 and Habit 2 by being proactive and beginning something with a end in mind, although it may not ask to complete the task. Below is a chart showing what I am doing that is urgent, important, and neither.

Now I know, we all may be guilty of wasting time, and it's fine every once in a while. 

My main time waster but fun

But make sure to look ahead to do some things, so you don't have to be worrying about everything at once. The Culminating Project comes to mind, and with all these announcements about seniors needing to finish it, I'm thinking why not get a head start and finish some of this stuff early, although it may not be as important right now. Thank you again for reading my post, and I hope it helped you!

Alright so my question for this post is,
How much time do you spend doing unimportant, not urgent things in your daily life? What do you do?


Covey, Stephen R. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990. Print.

Why We Work, and How to Effectively Start Work

Have you ever started a something, or created a goal, only to fall short of completing it? Being sort of a procrastinator, I have the habit of starting on something like a big project, only to not work on it until the few days before the deadline. It's something that many of us will do, and I'm sure are struggling with, with cramming for finals happening right now. And as for goals, the whole New Year's Resolution comes to mind. How many people actually finish those?


Well, the 2nd Habit brought up is why we decide to work, and how to make sure we finish said work. Covey breaks the reason of why we work into ten centers. These ten centers include: family, money, work, possessions, pleasure, friend, enemy, church. self, and spouse (126). How we see certain situations, and our reasons why we are bothering to do this work depends on these centers. Let's use studying as an example. Student A will study due to wanting to have a better grade in a class. This student would be a work centered student, a person wanting to perform well in their job, or in this case their class. Student B will study so he/she can hang out with friends while studying. This student would be a friend centered student, working because his/her friends are also doing it. I always wondered about the motives that go behind people's decisions. Fortunately, this chapter helped me understand that concept, as well as grasp what my motive could be.


Now let's move on to the next topic, how to effectively start your work! Covey brings up point to "begin with an end in mind" (99) when starting things. While we may be focused in the short term, focusing on the small victories of "Yes, I finished this assignment", those small wins will not help in the long term "Oh dang it, there's a test tomorrow" cram session. If we go into a new unit with the unit test in our minds, or a semester with the final in our minds, then we can effectively study throughout the course of the unit, without being sleep deprived the day before the test. A very exciting prospect mind you. There are two types of ways that can help with beginning with an end in mind, expanding our perspective, and visualization (131-132). My example that I brought up about starting new units or even semesters shows how to expand your perspective, something I would like to try with a new semester coming up soon. The second way applies more to goal setting, like how you would do a race to break a time.


In order to help my procrastinating self to get some sleep, I decided to apply Covey's ideas, and create a schedule of sorts highlighting the things I need to do, in order of descending importance.

I invite you readers to try applying either of the ideas, whether to help with goal setting, or to simply get your work done, and hope you learned something useful!


Alright, so the question for this post will be
What are some methods you use to stay on schedule? Or if you aren't one to use those methods, what is one time that you were adversely affected by procrastinating?


Covey, Stephen R. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990. Print.

How To Be Proactive

In our world filled with so many rules, and so many consequences for breaking those said rules, it can be hard to want to take the blame. We always end up pointing fingers at each other saying "He/She did it!" and never taking responsibility for our own actions. I'm pretty sure every single one of us has at least done this once, maybe to a sibling or a close friend. And I know I've done this to my brother countless times.


Well, the 1st Habit brought up by Covey is to be proactive. While most dictionaries would describe the word "proactive" as taking the initiative, Covey expands the definition further. He states, "It means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions" (71). What this means to us is that we can take the initiative, and be responsible by choosing our actions carefully, by not letting our outside factors control us. If we let these outside factors control us, then we become reactive.


What kind of outside factors can apply to us? Well one really good one I can think about is homework. It's there, we may hate it, but we can't really do anything about it other than to just do it. Covey brings up a really good point about the language people would use. Reactive students would use a reactive statement such as "I have to do this homework or...". Proactive students would use a proactive statement such as "I choose to do this homework because..." (78). In other words, the reactive student would curse that the teacher, or our outside factor, gave the homework, whereas the proactive student chose to do the homework for reasons in their control, such as to maintain a high grade. I know for certain that I have been both types of student before, so what I'm really going to strive for from now on is to be proactive.

To help with this concept, Covey used a diagram showing two circles, the Circle of Concern, and the Circle of Influence. In essence, the Circle of Concern includes problems you cannot control, like environment or homework for us, and the Circle of Influence includes things you can control like our decision to do the homework. As we grow in being a reactive or proactive person, this can cause the circles to change in size, with reactive choices making the Circle of Influence smaller, and proactive choices making the Circle of Influence larger (83). By allowing our Circle of Influence to grow, we too can grow as people by being more positive with our life.

By adopting this use of proactivity, and lessening reactiveness, I look forward to the New Year!


Alright, so my question for this post is:
How often would you say you use reactive statements daily? Weekly? Monthly?


Covey, Stephen R. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990. Print.

Assumptions and Their Truths

Just in the first section of this book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen R. Covey, I learned something interesting about human nature. I’m surprised I haven’t thought about it yet, but do you ever wonder how people can get different ideas from the same concept? That would be due to our differing values that define who we are. According to Covey, “Each of us has many, many maps in our head, which can be divided into two main categories: maps of the way things are, or realities, and maps of the way things should be, or values” (24). By this definition we interpret things in two ways: the way reality would perceive them, essentially our social/cultural norms, and our own personal beliefs on the matter. I find it interesting how these two categories of maps form our opinions on different things in life. One thing I have struggled with constantly, though especially when dealing with friends, is understanding a point of view that contrasts with mine. By being aware of the factors that goes into someone’s thoughts of something, you can understand the other person’s point of view.

We also tend to make assumptions based on these maps. Whether we are aware of it or not, these assumptions build up our own behaviors and attitudes, or our personality, due to these differences in the taking in of information (24). Allow me to use a picture of a used in a study from the book to demonstrate Covey’s point (26).

 



 Now I want you, the reader, to make an assumption on what the picture shows; is it a young woman or an old woman? Keep that thought in mind until the end.





In the study, two groups were given cards showing a definite picture of a young woman, or an old woman, and looked at the cards for ten seconds before handing them back in. When both groups were shown a superimposed image of both pictures, each group saw their original picture in the new one. Once both sides began explaining their point of view however, the other side could understand both perspectives of the picture. Although it's crude, I circled the details each side made to prove they were correct.



This study applies the map idea as each group applied their knowledge, or their map, into assuming what the picture was. Fascinating, right? Next time when my group chat lights up with an argument, I now understand what goes behind each opinion that my friends have.

These strange quirks of human nature make me wonder what other ones exist and how prevalent they are in society. I can’t wait to read further into this book!

Originally, what did you first assume the picture was? What values were associated with that assumption?

Covey, Stephen R. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990. Print.