The 7 Habits, Read Through Seneca

Why read Covey with Seneca

Covey’s book is built on what he calls the “character ethic”, the idea that lasting success rests on principles such as integrity, fairness and patience, rather than on techniques and personality. He contrasts it with the “personality ethic” of quick fixes and image management that he saw dominating self help in the twentieth century.

That framing is already close to Stoicism, which places character above everything else. Seneca, writing letters to his friend Lucilius in the 60s AD, covers many of the same subjects: time, priorities, reactions, relationships, renewal. The two writers lived in different worlds, but they addressed the same kind of reader: a busy, capable person who wants to live better.

What follows is not a summary of either. It is a reading of each habit alongside what Seneca and the other Stoics said.

Habit 1: Be Proactive

Covey’s first habit is the foundation of the others. Between what happens to us and our response, he argues, we have the freedom to choose. Reactive people are driven by conditions; proactive people by values. He illustrates it with the Circle of Concern and the Circle of Influence: proactive people focus on what they can do something about, and their influence grows.

This is the most Stoic part of the book. Epictetus opens the Enchiridion with the distinction between what is in our power and what is not, and places our judgments and responses firmly in the first category. Seneca says the same throughout his letters. We discuss the comparison in detail in circle of control vs circle of influence.

The main difference is in the goal. Covey wants your influence to grow. Seneca wants you free, whether your influence grows or not.

Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind

Covey asks readers to imagine their own funeral and what they would want people to say about them, and to write a personal mission statement based on it. The exercise is meant to clarify values so that daily choices align with them.

Seneca would have recognized the exercise immediately. The Stoics practiced remembering death precisely to clarify how to live. See memento mori. And Seneca’s essay On the Shortness of Life makes a closely related argument: life is not short, but we make it short by wasting it, because we have no clear idea of what it is for. A person without a purpose, he writes in his letters, is like a ship that does not know which harbor it is making for. No wind is the right wind.

Seneca would add one thing. Covey’s mission statement can contain anything the reader values. For Seneca, there is a right answer: the end in mind should be a good character. Wealth, fame and achievement are, at best, preferred indifferents.

Habit 3: Put First Things First

Covey’s time management matrix divides activities by urgency and importance. Most people, he argues, live in the urgent quadrants, putting out fires and responding to interruptions, while the important but not urgent activities, relationships, planning, health, learning, are neglected. Effective people protect time for them.

Seneca’s criticism of the Roman elite is almost the same, written with more irony. In On the Shortness of Life he describes people so busy with clients, banquets, political maneuvers and other people’s affairs that they never get to their own lives. They are generous with their time, he says, in a way they would never be with their money. Busy people, he concludes, are the last to learn how to live.

Covey gives the method. Seneca gives the urgency.

Habits 4 to 6: the public victory

The next three habits concern relationships. Think Win-Win asks us to seek mutual benefit rather than victory. Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood asks us to listen empathically before making our case. Synergize asks us to combine differences into something better than either side would produce alone.

The Stoics would see these as expressions of justice, one of the four virtues, and of their conviction that human beings are made for cooperation. Marcus Aurelius writes that we exist for one another. Seneca, in his letters, argues that friendship is chosen for its own sake, and that we should live with people as if a god were watching, and speak with a god as if people were listening.

The Stoic emphasis is slightly different. Covey presents these habits as the way to effective interdependence. The Stoics present them as what a good person owes others, whether or not it pays.

Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw

The last habit is renewal: regular care for the physical, mental, social and spiritual dimensions of life. Covey’s image is a woodcutter who is too busy sawing to sharpen his saw.

The Stoic equivalent is the daily practice of philosophy: the morning preparation, the evening review, reading, reflection, the occasional exercise in voluntary hardship. Seneca describes his evening review in On Anger. Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations are, in effect, a record of sharpening the saw. See Stoic practices.

Where Covey and Seneca part

The two books share a great deal, but they differ at the root.

Effectiveness and virtue. Covey’s title promises effectiveness. Even his character ethic is justified partly by results: principles work. Seneca would say that principles are good whether they work or not, and that a person who is honest only because honesty pays has missed the point.

Influence and freedom. Covey wants the Circle of Influence to grow. Seneca wants a mind that would be free even if it shrank to nothing, as it nearly did for him when Nero ordered his death.

Method and depth. Covey’s book is easier to apply. Seneca’s letters are wiser and less systematic. Read together, each fills a gap in the other.

A practical combination

• Write your mission statement, as Covey suggests, and then test it against the four virtues. Is there wisdom, courage, justice and temperance in it?
• Use the time matrix, and add Seneca’s question each week: what did I spend my time on that I would not have spent money on?
• Practice proactive language, and add Epictetus’s question: is this up to me?
• Sharpen the saw daily, with five minutes of evening review in Seneca’s manner.