This might be the first self-help book I’ve ever read, and I wasn’t hugely impressed. This book is so often cited in the productivity community online, but I was surprised by how much of it has little to no relevance to working life, particularly if you aren’t in a managerial role. Instead, Covey focuses on the ‘character ethic’, a series of principles that he claims are evident in most religious, social, and ethical systems. The overall message is more focused on moral or values-based principles rather than productivity tips, so the use of ‘effective’ in the title is somewhat misleading.

The advice is generally pretty straightforward, and Covey uses some familiar concepts like the Eisenhower matrix, and I liked the exploration of different perspectives and how two people can see the same thing differently — this is undeniably a valuable point in all social interdependencies. It may come across as more generic because the book has been so influential — I’m not sure of this. There’s also a lot of Mormon influence, because of the author’s background — in fact, the principles of the book are essentially those taught in the Mormon Church, and he brings in this aspect initially in secular terms, then more explicitly in religious terms towards the end of the book. Again, this will probably surprise people looking primarily for productivity tips, but I agree in a values sense that it’s important to live one’s life with consistent principles applied throughout our behaviour. In that sense, I found the author’s views fine, but not particularly enlightening or revelatory.

Since I have already consumed my fair share of business and life advice through at-work training, productivity influencers, and various magazine articles and the like, I’m not sure I necessarily needed to read a whole book’s worth of unsurprising pieces of advice. There are lots of pithy, often deftly-phrased maxims, but I’m not sure how useful they actually are in application beyond the obvious. Nevertheless, there might still be new information to be found elsewhere, so I will not give up on this genre just yet.