The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
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40 free The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has sat on office shelves and bedside tables since 1989, and its vocabulary has slipped into everyday speech. People who have never opened it still talk about being proactive and looking for a win-win. This quiz walks through the book habit by habit. It starts with Habit 1, Be Proactive, and the thinking behind it, then moves through planning, priorities, working with other people and looking after yourself. Along the way it asks about the metaphors Covey used to make his points stick, the follow-up books, and the author's own life. It is written for readers who want to check what they remember, for trainers and teachers running a 7 Habits session, and for anyone curious about why one self-help book has lasted so long. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
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Q 01Which US president invited Stephen Covey to Camp David to discuss The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People?
Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton rang Covey over the 1994 Christmas holiday to say he had read the book twice, and Covey flew to the retreat three days later.
Q 02The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People was the first US non-fiction title to sell a million copies in which format?
Audiobook
The audiobook of The 7 Habits was the first non-fiction audio title in US publishing history to pass a million sales, on top of the tens of millions of copies sold in print.
Q 03Which of Stephen Covey's seven habits comes last, the one about renewing yourself to keep up the other six?
Sharpen the Saw
Sharpen the Saw gets its name from the idea that dull or rusty tools work far worse than clean, sharp ones, and that people are no different.
Q 04Sean Covey, who wrote the 1998 bestseller The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens, is what relation to Stephen Covey?
His son
His son Sean simplified the seven habits for younger readers, and the teen edition has sold more than eight million copies.
Q 05The four-box priority matrix in Stephen Covey's Habit 3 is widely credited to which general who became US president?
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower is quoted as saying his urgent problems were not the important ones, an insight he credited to a former college president.
Q 06Habit 2 of Stephen Covey's 7 Habits asks readers to write which document, likened to a personal constitution?
A mission statement
A mission statement applies Covey's rule that everything is created twice, first in thought and then in fact, to a whole life.
Q 07Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits, died in 2012 from injuries suffered months earlier while doing what?
Riding a bicycle
Riding a bicycle downhill near his home that April, he lost control and hit his head even though he wore a helmet; he died in July, aged 79.
Q 08Stephen Covey's 1997 spin-off took his seven habits to which group, promising a beautiful culture in a turbulent world?
Families
Families got their own edition from a father of nine, whom the National Fatherhood Initiative later honoured with its Fatherhood Award.
Q 09Stephen Covey's Habit 5 borrows three Greek modes of persuasion; which does he rank first, ahead of emotion and logic?
Ethos
Ethos, meaning personal credibility, comes first because Covey holds that the order of the three shows their relative importance.
Q 10Which single-word habit, the sixth in Stephen Covey's book, is about teams reaching goals nobody could reach alone?
Synergize
Synergize is Covey's verb for making the whole greater than the sum of its parts, often written as one plus one equalling three or more.
Q 11Which Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist does Stephen Covey draw on in Habit 1, Be Proactive, of The 7 Habits?
Viktor Frankl
Viktor Frankl, who wrote Man's Search for Meaning after surviving the Nazi camps, gave Covey his proof that a person always keeps the power to choose.
Q 12In Habit 1, Be Proactive, Stephen Covey tells readers to focus on things they can change, an area he names what?
Circle of Influence
The Circle of Influence widens for people who work inside it, creating more choices and opportunities as the years go by.
Q 13Which word does Stephen Covey use in The 7 Habits for people who are the opposite of Habit 1's proactive ideal?
Reactive
Q 21In the Habit 3 priority matrix of Stephen Covey's 7 Habits, where does planning sit, as important but not urgent?
Quadrant II
Quadrant II is where Covey wants most hours spent once genuine crises are dealt with, because long-term development lives there.
Q 22FranklinCovey's teaching of Habit 3, Put First Things First, gives which nickname to weekly priorities scheduled first?
Big Rocks
Big Rocks go into the week before anything else, an image from a story told in Covey's 1994 book First Things First.
Q 23Stephen Covey's 1994 book First Things First says to plan life less by the clock than by which instrument?
A compass
A compass stands for purpose and values in the book, pointing to a personal true north, while the clock stands for mere scheduling.
Reactive people, in Covey's telling, get stuck on things over which they have little or no control and wait for life to happen to them.
Q 14In Habit 1 of The 7 Habits, Stephen Covey says human freedom lies in the gap between which pair?
Stimulus and response
Stimulus and response leave room for a decision, Covey argues, which is why this habit comes first: the other six all depend on it.
Q 15FranklinCovey's guide to Habit 1, Be Proactive, names what as a key indicator of whether someone is living the habit?
The language they use
The language they use gives it away: phrases built on can and get to signal choice, while can't and have to signal the opposite.
Q 16Stephen Covey's 7 Habits faults much modern self-help and promotes which approach, built on universal principles?
The Character Ethic
The Character Ethic is set against what Covey calls the Personality Ethic, and he treats principles as natural laws that sit outside us.
Q 17Stephen Covey's 7 Habits maps growth from dependence to which final stage, the goal of Habits 4, 5 and 6?
Interdependence
Interdependence outranks independence in Covey's scheme: the first three habits make a person self-reliant, and the next three teach working with others.
Q 18Stephen Covey's Habit 5, Seek First to Understand, centres on which skill that people are rarely trained in?
Listening
Listening gets almost no training, Covey notes, though people spend years learning to read, write and speak.
Q 19In which US state was Stephen Covey born, the same state where the company built on The 7 Habits is based?
Utah
Utah is where Covey was born, in Salt Lake City in 1932, and FranklinCovey, the training firm that carries his name, has its head office in nearby Draper.
Q 20Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, earned his MBA at which Ivy League university?
Harvard
Harvard Business School gave him his MBA, and as a student there he would sometimes preach to crowds on Boston Common.
Q 24Stephen Covey's Habit 4, Think Win-Win, sets out to shift which mindset, one that treats life as a zero-sum game?
Scarcity
Scarcity thinking says a big slice for someone else means less for me; Covey's answer is to seek outcomes that benefit everyone involved.
Q 25Stephen Covey's Habit 4, Think Win-Win, calls real maturity a balance between which two qualities?
Courage and consideration
Courage and consideration together mean arguing for your own needs while showing real investment in what the other side wants.
Q 26Stephen Covey's Habit 5 warns against filtering another person's story through our own life, a reflex he labels what?
Autobiographical
Autobiographical habits turn someone else's story into our own; Covey's cure is empathy, hearing a person out to understand before replying.
Q 27Which banking metaphor does Stephen Covey use in The 7 Habits for the trust built up in a relationship?
Emotional Bank Account
The Emotional Bank Account is taught even to schoolchildren: Covey's Leader in Me programme has pupils make deposits in classmates' accounts.
Q 28Which 2011 Stephen Covey book expands Habit 6 of The 7 Habits into a method for resolving conflicts?
The 3rd Alternative
The 3rd Alternative argues that the best way out of a dispute is neither my way nor your way but a better one both sides create.
Q 29Habit 7 of Stephen Covey's 7 Habits renews four dimensions of a person: body, mind, spirit and which other?
Heart
Heart means relationships, and investing in them is one of the four renewals; skip renewal, FranklinCovey warns, and burnout follows.
Q 30Stephen Covey's Habit 7 pictures lasting growth as which shape, climbed by repeating three steps: learn, commit, do?
An upward spiral
An upward spiral means meeting each habit again at a higher level, and Covey says conscience is what keeps a person climbing.