By Eva Ciabattoni

From Stephen Covey comes “The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness” (Free Press, 2004), a follow-up to his best-selling “7 Habits” books. Unfortunately, the 8th habit is not brevity. It’s a two-parter - “Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs.” Covey stresses that it’s not a habit he forgot, but rather one that adds a third dimension to the first seven as the industrial age segues to the “Knowledge Worker Age.”

Larded with superlatives, bristling with italics, Covey’s prose works against his message. Covey doesn’t have conversations with his family - he has meaningful conversations. Not only that, he has them while exercising after eating a nourishing dinner and drinking eight glasses of water. He urges readers to do the same. His book promises to shed a profound light on the paradigm shifts leading to the sea change - gasp - and to provide a comprehensive road map to true fulfillment, significant relevance, powerful influence and great contribution.

Implementing the 8th habit can lead to more fulfillment. It’s the Zen principle of mindfulness translated into corporate-speak.

Covey is not a critic of the systems that are causing people to feel that they are working harder for less, have less free time, and are falling behind despite their best efforts. He dismisses government policy and free-trade agreements as unimportant factors in unemployment and outsourcing trends. Covey is here to tell readers how to thrive in the post-industrial age; i.e., how to be a better cog in the corporations that pay him the big fees. It’s a beautiful business model.

What’s troubling about Covey’s context is the propagation of the Horatio Alger myth, which can be understood to mean that 100 percent of the people can be in the top 1 percent if they work hard enough - and study Covey’s book thoroughly enough. He cites many individual examples - from Mahatma Gandhi to the courageous, inspiring worker who decided to stay with a bad boss rather than interview for a new job.

The problem is the assumption that the individual examples scale to an entire society. They don’t. Covey ignores the importance of relative position, a concept in Cornell economist Robert Frank’s book “Luxury Fever.”

And is there no room in Covey’s world and in our society for what German expresses so well as Gemütlichkeit, a word that connotes cordiality, cheerfulness, the absence of a hectic pace?

Must we all be ever more efficient and productive? Some of the best things in life are anything but efficient.

Maybe that will be the 9th habit - glorious, imperfect inefficiency. But don’t hold your breath.