The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen R. Covey (ISBN: 0671708635)

Read this one if you haven't. It will open your eyes to the power of these business books. Lots of good stuff in here.

The seven habits are as follows:
(1) Be Proactive:
get a personal mission and follow it instead of sitting around on your ass. Counterpoint- sitting on your ass could be your personal mission... hmm.

(2) Begin with the End in Mind:
before you set out on a mission, get a set of GOALS in your head. sitting on your ---?

(3) Put First Things First:
prioritize your activites based on Covey's quadrants... see below.

(4) Think Win/Win:
In business and in life, seek agreements that make everyone happy.

(5) Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood:
Listen to people. They often come from a different background than you so give them a little room for mistakes. Familiarity breeds comfort.

(6) Synergize:
Actively seeking out people who are different from you in order to learn from them and benefit from their strengths... i.e. the 1+1=3 theory

(7) Sharpen the Saw
Keep you mind sharp by reading, writing, keeping yourself balanced across your personal, work, community, and spiritual commitments.

More about Habit number 3:

Life and work items fall into one of four "quadrants".
1: Urgent and Important
2: Not Urgent and Important
3: Urgent and Not Important
4: Not Urgent and Not Important



The goal is to focus on quadrant 2 - Not Urgent and Important.

This way you can control your own life.

You can focus on a task such as managing your finances or getting your car's tires rotated or proactively meeting with customers to get their input - before losing touch of what is important and issues can escalate out of control...

Covey says too much of our time is spent in other quadrants. Personally, I think he misses by not discussing the value of a little quadrant 4 every now and then. Which I am going to do right now.

update: here's another 7 habits for successful people