The 7 Habits: How to Live Life

Hey Y’all, Max here. 

The 7 habits of Highly effective people is effectively a self-help book, and simply, how to be your best possible self. The book preaches 7 habits:

Habit 1: Be Proactive. Being Proactive is about taking responsibility for your life. Proactive people recognize that they don’t always have to react to situations. They don’t blame circumstances, conditions, or chance for their behaviour. They know they can choose their behaviour.

Habit 2 : Begin With the End in Mind. Beginning with the end in mind means you envision what you want to happen, and then carry that out. 

Habit 3: Put First Things First is the exercise of independent will toward becoming principle-centred. It is about taking care of priorities before other less important actions or tasks. Habit 3 is also the proactive of habits 1 and 2.

Habit 4: The idea behind “think win-win” i.e. habit 4 is to seek mutual benefit from all human interactions instead of having winners on the one side and losers on the other.

Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood is the habit of listening to other people’s ideas and feelings, then taking that information, and sharing knowledge that is now relevant to contribute.

Habit 6: synergy means “two heads are better than one.” Synergize is the habit of creative cooperation, and finding new solutions to old problems.

Habit 7: Sharpen the saw. the key concepts of this are Spiritual, Mental, physical, and social/emotional. It’s about balance, renewing yourself, and following the previous habits. 

These habits are what we learned about, and what I am now trying to practice in my everyday life. Since February, almost every maker class has been dedicated ( or partially dedicated ) to learning about the different stages of the 7 habits. these stages are the set up, the private victory, and the public victory. There is also renewal, which was all about the final habit, renewal. Throughout learning about the 7 habits, we were required to do choice board habit activities, which were creative exercises that demonstrated our knowledge of each habit. 

The first assessment of my learning wasn’t exactly a choice board activity, but it was a good activity that made me think about my learning. In this, I was tasked to make a table of people who I either look up to, I’ve learned from, or are important figures in my life. I ended up making a literal table in SuperImposeX, and writing an explanation as to why each person who’s there deserves to be. 

The first actual choice board assignment was focusing on the private victory. We also did an assignment called the Personal bank account, which was basically a swear jar. I would make deposits if I had done a good deed, helped anyone, or another random good act. I would make withdrawals if I had done the opposite. I didn’t finish it, but the last time I checked, I think i was positive. Anyways, the private victory is referring to the first three habits, which are meant to be individual habits. What I ended up making is somewhat abstract, but that’s only because I got confused as to what the message of this piece should be. You can take look below.

The second choice board activity was about the public victory, the next three habits that focused on more social lessons on how to be a better person, with other people. I made a drawing this time. I can’t say Im proud of how basic it is, but I was in a rush with other schoolwork at the time, and couldn’t manage much more than what I did. 

The third one I did was another drawing. It was for the renewal part of the 7 habits. I do not know why I did another drawing, maybe it didn’t occur to me that there were other mediums I could show my knowledge with. I’ll talk more about that at the end of this post, but for now you can look at the drawing I made for the third choice board assessment activity.

And finally, the last choice board assessment activity for the end of the 7 habits project. This time, I got a bit more creative and linked up with Mateo and Sepaus to make a collaborative audio message about each of our chosen habits to show the thinking aspect of the 7 habits. 

I also was featured on Sylas’s mini-podcast, which coincidentally was about the exact same thing as my collaboration with Sepaus and Mateo. 

https://youtu.be/e-yPauD8NOE 

To conclude, I must answer two questions. the first is for the competency empowered learner: “How might I use technology to construct knowledge?” This is a question that’s good for not only the 7 habits project, but also for the entirety of PLP. I think it’s best to say that PLP uses technology to achieve a more in-depth and deeper understanding, by making technology not only a necessity for entry, but it’s literal core. So to answer, I would say that using technology is a more convenient and effective way of learning, teaching, and exploring, and these are all necessary aspects of education, therefore making education easier.  

the second question ( for creative communicator ) is “How might I use technology to create and communicate?” This is a similar question to the previous question, so I’ll keep it short and say that technology allows more efficient ways of creating and communicating with than without. 

Overall, I think this question has been a bit strange, but somewhat enjoyable. the part I least enjoyed is how the book the 7 habits seems to have all the answers to life, it just makes you read through it all. I really liked how the lessons and habits have meaning, and how none of what is written is just filler, or made to sound philosophical but actually has little practical meaning. I would give it a weak 6 / 10. 

Well, that’s all I’ve got for today. See you.. next time I post I guess. PLP has just finished a lot of projects at similar times, so I wrote 3 blog posts in the span of 5 days. I’m wiped out to say the least. 

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