Stephen R. Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is a business and self-help book that has been in print since 1989.  Covey proposes a method for achieving success in one’s endeavors by orienting oneself toward a set of values he calls “true north,” which are grounded in a character ethic he describes as universal and timeless.

According to Covey, efficiency is the “art and science” of getting things done while also taking care of the means by which those things are accomplished. He gives the story of the goose that lay the golden eggs as an example. He goes on to argue that efficiency may be measured in terms of the P/PC ratio, where P is the proportion of time spent caring for what really creates the results and PC is the proportion of time spent acquiring the results.