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Outline
• Purpose of Graduate Study
• Habits of Highly Effective Graduate Students
Focus on the first
3 habits
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Acknowledgements
• Personal Experience
• Various Online Sources
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Graduate School:
Not just more years of college!
The Undergraduate
• Student
• Breadth over depth
• Recipient of knowledge
• Externally directed
The Graduate
• From apprentice to expert
• Depth over breadth
• Analyzer and creator of
knowledge
• Self-directed
Source: The University of British Columbia - On Being a Successful Graduate Student
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What is the Purpose of
Graduate Study?
• To understand thoroughly and think critically about
what is known in a particular academic field
• To learn how to conduct research in that field (and
perhaps prepare for PhD study)
• To begin affiliating with the academic community of
the field
The primary purposes of research-oriented, thesis-
based Master’s programs (e.g., MA & MSc) are:
Source: The University of British Columbia - On Being a Successful Graduate Student
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• To understand thoroughly and think critically about
what is known in a particular professional field
• To master skills (including research / experimentation)
that are necessary for advanced practice in a
particular professional field
• To enhance affiliation with the professional community
of the field
The primary purposes of professional Masters
programs (e.g., MEd, MArch, MEng, MPT, MLIS) are:
What is the Purpose of
Graduate Study?
Source: The University of British Columbia - On Being a Successful Graduate Student
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• To master the knowledge of a specific academic field
– and become prepared to teach that knowledge at
the university level
• To make an original contribution, through research, to
the knowledge within a specific field (i.e. “create new
knowledge”)
• To establish oneself as an expert and leader within
the academic community of the field
The primary purposes of Doctoral study (e.g., PhD) are:
What is the Purpose of
Graduate Study?
Source: The University of British Columbia - On Being a Successful Graduate Student
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Habits of Highly Effective Graduate Students
• We are what we repeatedly do
• Excellence is not an act, but a habit
• Habits are learned and unlearned
• Our character is a composite of our habits, and produce our
effectiveness or ineffectiveness
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Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
• Provide an incremental, sequential, highly integrated approach to the
development of personal and interpersonal effectiveness
• How it relates to the goal to be a highly effective graduate student?
Focus on the first
3 habits
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Effectiveness is defined as p/pc balance
• p= production = what is produced, the desired
results produced
• pc = production capacity = producing asset.
Maintaining, preserving and enhancing the
resources that produces the desired results
• Maintain the p/pc balance:
– Balance short term with long term
– Take time to invest in expanding your production capacity
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Habit 1 – Be Proactive
• Proactive - we are responsible for our own actions
• “Response-ability" -- the ability to choose your response
• Highly proactive people do not blame circumstances, conditions, or
conditioning for their behavior (as oppose to reactive people)
• Their behavior is a product of their own conscious choice, based on values,
rather than a product of their conditions, based on feeling
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Habit 1 – Be Proactive Graduate Student
• Take the initiative and make things happen
• Take full advantage of learning activities
• Aggressively seek new ideas and innovations
• Don’t let a negative environment affect your behavior
and decisions
• Work on things that you can do something about
• If you make a mistake, learn from it
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Habit 1 – Be Proactive Graduate
Student to Learn & Get Stuff Done
Source: www.evl.uic.edu
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Habit 1 – Be Proactive Graduate Student
to Learn: Courses
• Grad school is your last real chance to take courses that
you think might be interesting
• Don’t overload on courses per semester, you need time
to do research
• Recommend 8 credits and fill up to a total of 12 with
thesis credit
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Habit 1 – Be Proactive Graduate Student
to Learn: Reading Papers
• Read as many papers as you can now when you have time
• Papers give you ideas for possible thesis topics
- look at “Future Work” section
• Papers give you an idea of where the research community is
heading- i.e. what’s hot and what’s not
• Write an annotated bibliography for every paper you’ve read
- this can later be used for your background research section of
your thesis
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Habit 1 – Be Proactive Graduate Student
to Learn: Thinking About Research
• Why (from your research area standpoint) is this worth doing?
• Who else might have done something similar?
(Google is your friend)
• How does this work help society? Pay attention to local, US and
World news
• How do you plan to demonstrate it?
• Make short-term goals that allow you to reach the long-term
goal
- present these goals to your advisor, who can help you make
them achievable given time constraints
• How do you plan to evaluate / prove it?
• Keep a research notebook (either digital or paper-based)
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Habit 1 – Be Proactive Graduate Student
to Get Stuff Done
• Explore as much as you can now
• Don’t over-think a problem - You are not intellectually mature enough yet.
Some times over-thinking leads to paralysis. You become too afraid to do
something because you can’t pick a perfect solution.
• Just try it and fail and therefore LEARN. Eventually through enough failures
you will get smarter and you will gradually be able to think before you do.
• Don’t expect to be spoon fed.
• Your advisor will guide you by course correcting- but won’t give you
step-by-step instructions.
• You need to be ready to tell your advisor what you think the next step
should be.
• If you can’t figure out what the next step should be, it’s ok to ask- but try to
think about it before asking.
• The more quickly you are autonomous in driving your research the sooner
you are ready to graduate.
• If you are stuck on a problem, don’t just keep beating your head against it.
Bounce the the problem off someone.
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Habit 1 – Be Proactive Graduate Student
to Get Stuff Done
• Inevitably at some point in your life you will be assigned something you are
not entirely interested in. If it is a short task, get it done quickly so you can
get rid of it. If it is a long task, try to make this task your own – by perhaps
innovating on it.
• Try to let your advisor know what research progress you have been making
regularly - don’t wait for your advisor to ask for it. If you are new, update
weekly. As you mature and you build trust with your advisor you can stretch
it to bi-weekly- but no more. Otherwise we will think you haven’t been doing
anything.
• Be on time with everything- deliverables, meetings etc.
• Backup your own work frequently.
• For a PhD student plan to write 1 paper per year.
• For an MS student plan to write 1 paper toward the end of your MS degree.
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Light Take on Habit 1 – Be Proactive
Graduate Student
Source: Dr. Tao Xie, University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign & www.phdcomics.com
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Find the RIGHT level of
abstractions to convey your
work details to advisor
• If advisor doesn’t know what is going on, YOU suffer in the end
• Not necessarily the lower level of details, the better
– Remember advisor is busy; likely no time to understand the
messy details
• Solution 1: Provide key summary of work e.g. acceptance tests in
contrast to walking advisor through your tool code base
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http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd080709s.gif
Solution 2: Send Formal Writing
(in Paper Draft) to Your Advisor
Don’t rely (only) on informal writing or oral conversion!
Often the time, students are not good oral communicators
'What your Prof. read'
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24
Be Realistic, Candid, and Transparent
Don’t Over-Promise
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd092107s.gif
'Doing the impossible'
But don’t intentionally pad your schedule to budget more than enough time
for given tasks
But if indeed your skills are not up to expectation, you need to work harder than
others to make your deliverables up to expectation
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Advisor Doesn’t Like (Just) Hearing
Problems after Problems
'Problems'
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd041107s.gif
Be proactive to propose possible solutions rather than just say passively
“I faced this problem and I cannot move on; what next?”
Be proactive to provide insights rather than staying on the problem surface
(provide right levels of details for advisor to understand and give advice)
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http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd072707s.gif
Bottom Line is not Cause Advisor
“Don’t Care”
'Some helpful advice'
Bad sign: advisor doesn’t push you or care even when you
don’t deliver likely soon advisor won’t work with you
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http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd080904s.gif
Driving Force should Come from
You, Not (Just) Advisor
'Summer days...'
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Make Sure You Make Progress
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd0227.gif
'Grad student etiquette'
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Not Spend Your Day Like
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd013008s.gif
'Why? Why??'
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Habit 2
BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND
1
Be
proactive
2
Begin
with the
End in Mind
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Habit 2 – Begin with the End in Mind
• Start with a clear understanding of your ultimate goal
• Know where you are going and make sure all of the steps are taken in
the right direction
• First determine the right things to accomplish, then the right way to
accomplish them
• Sit down with your advisor--if you haven’t already done so--and plan out
your entire program
• Think about where you want to be when you graduate
• What needs to happen between now and then to attain your goals?
• Take relevant courses to do your research
• Take relevant courses to fulfill your interest or career goals
• Work backwards so you fill in all the action steps in your master plan
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'What do you want to be?'
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd031008s.gif
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‘Your life ambition’
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd050508s.gif
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'The grandeur of his vision'
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd030508s.gif
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'Outside interests'
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd110806s.gif
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Habit 3
PUT FIRST THINGS FIRST
1
Be
proactive
3
Put First
Things First
Things which
matter most
must never be
at the mercy of
things which
matter least
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Habit 3 – Put First Things First
• Prioritize your activities and eliminate those that are urgent but not as
important
• Time management is such an important part of graduate school
• Know your priorities
• Put your energy in your “circles of influence”--where you know your time
is well spent on things that matter
• Also, check on those dates when things are due!
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Two Factors to Define Any Activity
• Urgency - an activity is urgent if you or
others feel that it requires immediate
attention
• Importance - an activity is important if you
personally find it valuable, and if it
contributes to your mission values, and
high-priority goals
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Time management matrix
I -I -
Urgent
Important
II -II - Not
Urgent
Important
III -III -
Urgent
Not Important
IV -IV -
Not Urgent
Not Important
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The Time Management MatrixThe Time Management Matrix
Urgent & Important
Activities Results
• Crises
• Pressing problems
• Deadline-driven projects
• Stress
• Burnout
• Putting out fires
II
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The Time Management MatrixThe Time Management Matrix
Not urgent but Important
Activities Results
• Prevention, PC activities
• Relationships building
• Recognizing new
opportunities
• Planning recreation
• Vision
• Balance
• Discipline
• Control
• Few crises
IIII
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The Time Management Matrix
Urgent but Not Important
Activities Results
• Interruptions, some calls
• Some mail, some reports
• Some meetings
• Proximate, pressing
matters
• Popular activities
• Short-term focus
• Crisis management
• Feel victimized, out of
control
• Broken relationships
IIIIII
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The Time Management Matrix
Not Urgent & Not Important
Activities Results
• Trivia, busy work
• Some mail
• Some phone calls
• Time wasters
• Pleasant activities
• Dependent on others
• Total irresponsibility
• Fired from jobs
IVIV
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. Crisis
. Pressing problems
. Deadline-driven projects,
meetings, preparations
. Preparation
. Prevention
. Values clarification
. Planning
. Skill building
. True re-creation
. Empowerment
. Interruptions, some
phone calls
. Some mail, some reports
. Some meetings
. Many proximate,
pressing matters
. Many popular activities
. Trivia, busywork
. Some phone calls
. Time wasters
. “Escape” activities
. Irrelevant mail
. Excessive TV
II IIII
IIIIII IVIV
UrgentUrgent Not UrgentNot Urgent
ImportantImportantNotImportantNotImportant
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Habit 3 – Put First Things First:
Time Management
Source: Randy Pausch, Carnegie Mellon University
http://www.randypausch.com
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Why Time Management is Important
• “The Time Famine”
• Bad time management = stress
• This is life advice
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Hear me Now, Believe me Later
• Being successful doesn’t make you
manage your time well.
• Managing your time well makes you
successful.
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Goals, Priorities, and Planning
• Why am I doing this?
• What is the goal?
• Why will I succeed?
• What happens if I chose not to do it?
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Planning
• Failing to plan is planning to fail
• Plan Each Day, Each Week, Each Semester
• You can always change your plan, but only once you have
one!
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TO Do Lists
• Break things down into small steps
• Like a child cleaning his/her room
• Do the ugliest thing first
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The four-quadrant TO DO List
1 2
3 4
Important
Not
Important
Due Soon Not Due Soon
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Scheduling Yourself
• You don’t find time for important things, you make it
• Everything you do is an opportunity cost
• Learn to say “No”
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Learn to say “No”
• Will this help me get tenure?
• Will this help me get my masters?
• Will this help me get my Ph.D?
• Keep “help me” broadly defined
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Gentle No’s
• “I’ll do it if nobody else steps forward” or “I’ll be your deep
fall back,” but you have to keep searching.
• Moving parties in grad school…
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Everyone has Good and Bad Times
• Find your creative/thinking time. Defend it ruthlessly,
spend it alone, maybe at home.
• Find your dead time. Schedule meetings, phone calls, and
mundane stuff during it.
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Time Journals
• It’s amazing what you learn!
• Monitor yourself in 15 minute increments for between 3
days and two weeks.
• Update every ½ hour: not at end of day
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Using Time Journal Data
• What am I doing that doesn’t really need to be done?
• What am I doing that could be done by someone else?
• What am I doing that could be done more efficiently?
• What do I do that wastes others’ time?
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Procrastination
“Procrastination is the
thief of time”
Edward Young
Night Thoughts, 1742
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Avoiding Procrastination
• Doing things at the last minute is much more expensive
than just before the last minute
• Deadlines are really important: establish them yourself!
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General Advice
• Eat and sleep and exercise
• Never break a promise, but re-negotiate them if need be
• If you haven’t got time to do it right, you don’t have time to
do it wrong
• Recognize that most things are pass/fail
• Feedback loops: ask in confidence
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Recommended Readings
• The One Minute
Manager, Kenneth
Blanchard and Spencer
Johnson, Berkeley
Books, 1981, ISBN 0-425-
09847-8
• The Seven Habits of
Highly Effective People,
Stephen Covey, Simon &
Schuster, 1989, ISBN 0-
671-70863-5
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Habits One, Two & Three
• The first three habits help develop a deep base of
character and personal strength
• There transform individuals from being dependent to
independent
• Once these 3 habits become part of who you are you are
then ready to begin building rich enduring highly
productive relationships with other people
– and that’s where habits four, five and six come in
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Habits Four, Five & Six
• These are the habits that lead to interdependent relationships
• Habit Four : Think Win-win
– The attitude of seeking solutions, so that every one can win.
– Do this by communicating. This is done by Habit Five
• Habit Five : Seek first to understand, then to be understood
• Habit Six : This is the habit of creative co-operation - Synergy
– This happens when two sides in a dispute work together to
come with a solution which is better than what either side
initially proposed.
These are relevant to your relationships with your
advisor and fellow students
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Work With Others
• Working with others is crucial to your success in the real world
– The “lone wolf” does not get far
• Almost always collaboration is better than competition
• Way to fail – compete ruthlessly with other students
– You can’t get ahead by helping others
– The really smart people don’t need to work together
– I can work harder than everyone else
• The best way to learn is to teach – mentor others in your lab
• Working with others enables you to be a co-author on papers- increases the
number of papers you’re credited. Important for when you graduate and for
your future promotion
• Network, network, network
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Habit 4
THINK WIN/WIN
1
Be
proactive
3
Put First
Things First
Think
Win/Win
4
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Habit 4 – Think Win/Win
• Identify the key issues and results that would constitute a
fully acceptable solution
• Make all involved in the decision feel:
– Good about the decision
– Committed to the plan of action
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Six Paradigms of human interactions:
• Win/Win
• Win/Lose
• Lose/Win
• Lose/Lose
• Win
• Win/Win or No Deal
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Win/Win
• Seeks for mutual benefit
• All parties feel good about the decision and feel committed
to the action plan
• Sees life as cooperative, not competitive
• There’s plenty for everybody
• Believes in the third alternative
• Listens more, stays in communication longer, and
communicates with more courage
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Habit 5
SEEK FIRST TO UNDERSTAND THEN TO BE UNDERSTOOD
1
Be
proactive
3
Put First
Things First
Seek First to Understand
Then to be
Understood
5
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Four common levels for listening
• Ignoring: Making no effort to listen
• Pretending: Making believe or giving the appearance
you are listening
• Selective listening: Hearing only the parts of the
conversation that interest you
• Attentive listening: Paying attention and focusing on
what the speaker says, and comparing that to your
own experiences
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Principles of Empathic
Communication
• Seek first to understand: Fifth level: Empathic listening (most effective
level):
– Requires high levels of consideration
– Deep understanding of the problem first
– Requires more than practicing listening techniques
– It’s listening with intent to understand (changing our perceptions)
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– Get inside another persons’ frame of reference and see things
the way the person sees it
– Increases our influence-ability (more & accurate information
to work with)
– It is diagnosing before prescribing
Principles of Empathic
Communication
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• Then seek to be understood
– Requires high level of courage
– Equally critical in reaching win/win solutions.
Principles of Empathic
Communication
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Habit 6
SYNERGIZE
1
Be
proactive
3
Put First
Things First
Synergize
6
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Principles of Creative Cooperation –
Levels of Communications
Defensive (Win/Lose or Lose/win)
Respectful (Compromise)
Synergistic (Win/Win)
Low
TRUSTTRUST
High
COOPERATION
Low High
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• Deeply understanding each other becomes the
stepping stones to synergy
• Synergy means that the whole is greater than the sum
of its parts
• One plus one equals three or more
• Identifying a third synergistic alternative/solution that
will be better for everyone concerned
Habit 6: Synergize
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More on Work With Others
• In a highly competitive world, compounded sometimes by our values, our
world is thrived with competitions
• We could easily get trapped into the thinking of zero-sum-game; if someone
else gets all the pieces of a pie, we'd get nothing
• In fact, if we work together, we could actually expand the size of the pie
• We could get a larger amount, even if the percentage might be lower
– For example, 1% of 1 million dollars is bigger than 10% of 1 thousand
dollars
• Key ideas from a bestselling business book entitled "Give and Take: A
Revolutionary Approach to Success”:
– Helping is not the enemy of productivity or success
– Helping others could increase our productivity, creativity and innovation
– Last but not least, nice guys can indeed be number one
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Habit 7
SHARPEN THE SAW
1
Be
proactive
3
Put First
Things First
Synergize
6
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• It’s preserving and enhancing personal production capacity
– continuous improvement
PHYSICAL
Exercise, Nutrition,
Stress Management
SOCIAL
Service, Empathy,
Synergy, Intrinsic
Security
SPIRITUAL
Value Clarification &
Commitment, Study &
Meditation
MENTAL
Reading, Visualizing,
Planning, Writing
Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw
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A BREAK FROM
TRADITIONAL WISDOM
A BREAK FROM
TRADITIONAL WISDOM
TOWARD
7 HABITS PRINCIPLES
TOWARD
7 HABITS PRINCIPLES
Habit 1 We are a product of our environment
and upbringing.
Habit 2 Society is the source of our values.
Habit 3 Reactive to the tyranny of the urgent.
Acted upon by the environment.
Habit 4 Win-lose.
One-sided benefit.
Habit 5 Fight, flight, or compromise when
faced with conflict.
Habit 6 Differences are threats.
Independence is the highest value.
Unity means sameness.
Habit 7 Entropy.
Burnout on one track - typically work.
We are a product of our choices to our
environment and upbringing.
Values are self-chosen and provide
foundation for decision making. Values
flow out of principles.
Actions flow from that which is
important.
Win-win.
Mutual benefit.
Communication solves problems.
Differences are values and are
opportunities for synergy.
Continuous self-renewal
and self-improvement.
Paradigm Shift
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INEFFECTIVE
PEOPLE
INEFFECTIVE
PEOPLE
EFFECTIVE
PEOPLE
EFFECTIVE
PEOPLE
HABIT 1
BE REACTIVE
•Don’t take responsibility for their
own actions
•Feel victimized, a product of
circumstances, their past, and other
people
BE PROACTIVE
•Take responsibility for their own
actions
•They determine the agendas they
will follow and choose their
response to what happens around
them
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INEFFECTIVE
PEOPLE
INEFFECTIVE
PEOPLE
EFFECTIVE
PEOPLE
EFFECTIVE
PEOPLE
HABIT 2
BEGIN WITH NO END IN MIND
•Lack personal vision and have not
developed a deep sense of
personal meaning and purpose
•They have not develop a mission
statement and thus live life based
on society’s values instead of self-
chosen values
BEGIN WITH END IN MIND
•Use personal vision, correct
principles, and their deep sense of
personal meaning to accomplish
tasks in a positive and effective way
•They live life based on self-chosen
values and are guided by their
personal mission statement
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INEFFECTIVE
PEOPLE
INEFFECTIVE
PEOPLE
EFFECTIVE
PEOPLE
EFFECTIVE
PEOPLE
HABIT 3
PUT SECOND THINGS FIRST
•Crisis managers
•They are caught up in the “thick of
thin things” and are driven by the
urgent
PUT FIRST THINGS FIRST
•Plan and execute according to
priorities
•Spend significant time in
Quadrant II
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INEFFECTIVE
PEOPLE
INEFFECTIVE
PEOPLE
EFFECTIVE
PEOPLE
EFFECTIVE
PEOPLE
HABIT 4
THINK WIN-LOSE OR LOSE-WIN
•Have a scarcity mentality and see
life as a zero-sum game
•They have ineffective
communication skills and low trust
levels with others, resulting in a
defensive mentality and adversarial
feelings
THINK WIN-WIN
•Have an abundance mentality and
the spirit of cooperation
•They achieve effective
communication and high trust levels
with others, resulting in rewarding
relationships and greater power to
influence
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INEFFECTIVE
PEOPLE
INEFFECTIVE
PEOPLE
EFFECTIVE
PEOPLE
EFFECTIVE
PEOPLE
HABIT 5
SEEK FIRST TO BE
UNDERSTOOD
•Put forth their point of view based
solely on their auto-biography and
motives, without attempting to
understand others first
•They blindly prescribe without first
diagnosing the problem
SEEK FIRST TO UNDERSTAND,
THEN TO BE UNDERSTOOD
•Through perceptive observation
and empathic listening, these non-
judgmental people are intent on
learning the needs, interests, and
concerns of others
•They are then able to
courageously state their own needs
and wants
91. ide 91
ILLINOIS - RailTEC
INEFFECTIVE
PEOPLE
INEFFECTIVE
PEOPLE
EFFECTIVE
PEOPLE
EFFECTIVE
PEOPLE
HABIT 6
COMPROMISE, FIGHT, OR
FLIGHT
•Believe the whole is less than the
sum of the parts
•They try to “clone” other people in
their own image
•Differences in others are looked
upon as threats
SYNERGIZE
•Know that the whole is greater
than the sum of the parts
•They value and benefit from
differences in others, which results
in creative cooperation and team-
work
92. ide 92
ILLINOIS - RailTEC
INEFFECTIVE
PEOPLE
INEFFECTIVE
PEOPLE
EFFECTIVE
PEOPLE
EFFECTIVE
PEOPLE
HABIT 7
WEAR OUT THE SAW
•Fall back, lose their interest, and
get disordered
•They lack a program of self-
renewal and self-improvement and
eventually lose the cutting edge
they once had
SHARPEN THE SAW
•Involved in self-renewal and self-
improvement in the physical,
mental, spiritual, and social-
emotional areas, which enhance all
areas off their life and nurture the
other six habits
99. 99 HSF, 03/15/17
The AIChE Round Table
“What would you tell graduating seniors about having a
successful career” Participants
Sid Sapakie, Vice President, General Mills and President of AIChE
Rakesh Agrawal, Sr Mgr, Air Products and AIChE Board of Directors
Gavin Towler, Manager, UOP and AIChE Board of Directors
Jeff Siirola, Manager, Eastman Kodak and President of AIChE
Plus 2-3 Other Chemical Engineers in Top Level Management
The 7 Actions Necessary for a Successful Career
100. The 7 Actions Necessary for a Successful Career
1. Enjoy. Find a job you enjoy, one that doesn’t really feel like work.
Feel good about what you do or do something else
100HSF, 03/15/17
101. The 7 Actions Necessary for a Successful Career
1. Enjoy. Find time to take care of your health.
Work hard, but have fun.
Life is short, so save time for yourself.
101HSF, 03/15/17
102. The 7 Actions Necessary for a Successful Career
2. Learn. Continue to learn and expand your skill set.
Listen, question, and learn.
Learn about the business, the culture, and the politics
of the organization to which you belong.
102HSF, 03/15/17
103. The 7 Actions Necessary for a Successful Career
2. Learn. Figure out what it takes to succeed.
Learn to manage up and down.
Learn how to take feedback, both positive and negative.
Learn how to communicate and market yourself and
your results.
103HSF, 03/15/17
104. The 7 Actions Necessary for a Successful Career
3. Communicate. Develop strong communication skills
– oral, written, and listening.
The best work is of little value if you can’t
communicate it clearly and succinctly.
.
104HSF, 03/15/17
105. The 7 Actions Necessary for a Successful Career
3. Communicate.
Develop “active listening” skills.
When you have something valuable to say, say it.
105HSF, 03/15/17
106. The 7 Actions Necessary for a Successful Career
4. Work hard. The harder you work, the better you’ll do.
Work to build a network of peers, colleagues and
mentors who can provide excellent advice and
guidance.
106HSF, 03/15/17
107. The 7 Actions Necessary for a Successful Career
4. Work hard. Recognize what you know and you don’t know.
Take advantage of other people’s knowledge.
107HSF, 03/15/17
108. The 7 Actions Necessary for a Successful Career
5. Evolve. Be prepared for changes in your career, and remember
that every change is accompanied by new opportunities.
108HSF, 03/15/17
109. The 7 Actions Necessary for a Successful Career
5. Evolve. Challenge yourself.
Find useful problems to work on.
Be willing to tackle different problems.
109HSF, 03/15/17
110. The 7 Actions Necessary for a Successful Career
6. Plan. Figure out what you want to do in your career and your life.
Talk to people who are doing what you want to do in 10 years
and learn what experiences you will need to get there
110HSF, 03/15/17
111. The 7 Actions Necessary for a Successful Career
6. Plan If the criteria for success in your organization are
incompatible with your beliefs and your style,
maybe that organization is not the right place for you.
111HSF, 03/15/17
112. The 7 Actions Necessary for a Successful Career
7. Share. As your experience grows, share your knowledge
with others.
Find a way to give something back to society.
112HSF, 03/15/17
Editor's Notes
Proactive people focus their efforts in the Circle of Influence.
They work on the things they can do something about.
They make decision to improve their lives through influencing things around them rather than simply reacting to external force.
When faced with a problem, they take initiative to find solutions rather than just reporting the problem and waiting for others to solve for them.
As not all things are within your control, you need to identify those you could exert changes and focus your effort on them.
Reactive people focus their efforts in the Circle of Concern.
They focus on the weakness of other people, the problems in the environment, and circumstances over which they have no control.