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Stephen Covey’s second habit of highly effective people is “begin with the end in mind”. I don’t know where I put my copy of Seven Habits so I am unable to check his references. Covey believes that to be effective, we should work backwards – start by imagining where you want to be, and then think backwards on how to get there. You will then have a clearer path toget to your target.

Read what Ibn Khaldun said 600 years before Covey:

The world of the things that come into being as the results of action, materializes through thinking … This is because thinking perceives the order that exists among the things that come into being either by nature or through arbitrary arrangements. When it intends to create something, it must understand the reason or cause of that thing, or the conditions that exists among the things that come into being. (Reason, cause, or conditions) are, in general, the principles of that particular thing, since it is secondary to them, and it is not possible to arrange for something that comes earlier to come later. Such a principle must have another principle to which its own existence is posterior … Now, when man, in his thinking, has reached the last principle on two, three, or more levels, and starts the action that will bring the (planned) things into existence, he will start with the last principle that has been reached by his thinking. Thus, (that last principle) will be the beginning of his action.
Source: The Muqaddimah by Ibn Khaldun, translated by Franz Rosenthal (2005, p. 334-335)

600 years ago, Ibn Khaldun did not just say that actions begin with the end in mind, he provided an explanation why.

Has anybody linked Stephen Covey to Ibn Khaldun? Can I claim the honour?

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