Managing yourself
Md. Amirul Islam Khan
Did you ever wonder, why some people like you are very much successful when you are not? Maybe yes; but did you think, why they are successful, what additional thing they are doing to succeed? I have a recipe for you to be successful which is managing yourself.
We are responsible for everything that happens in our life. We should learn to accept total responsibility for our failure and success. If we do not manage ourselves, then we are letting others have control of our life. Managing ourselves is the key to bring the best of our capability. We should learn to develop ourselves. We should have to place ourselves where we can make the greatest contribution.
So, to manage yourself you have to do few things. Lets have a look on how you can manage yourself.
Personal SWOT Analysis
Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threat SWOT analysis of each individual is an essential step for managing yourself. Even though SWOT was originally used for business, it can help assess a persons Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats too. This kind of simple analysis structure will provide you guidance. It looks at internal and external factors.
Self-analysis is perhaps one of the most complicated things. But, it plays a very significant role in personal progress. The personal skills SWOT analysis will help you to learn more about you. Carrying out a personal SWOT analysis is an important step towards finding life and career direction.
The main purpose of a SWOT is to promote the identified strengths, reduce weaknesses, exploiting the opportunities and having contingency plans to minimize threats.
There are many benefits and advantages of using SWOT Analysis for personal development. It is good for your success and betterment. It shows where you currently stand on the path of success and measures your scopes of reaching desired goals. It boosts your career, life and personality and helps to better understand who you really are as a person. It maximizes your strengths and helps to convert your weaknesses into strengths.
Start a Stop Doing list
Once you know what are your weaknesses, be your judge and maintain a stop doing list. As you know where to stop yourself, now it is time to make it a habit to stop yourself where it requires. Review monthly your stop doing list and take control.
Maintain To-Do list
Planning is always a wise mans habit. Plan your month, week and day. Keep consideration on important things in your personal and professional life while doing your planning. Then you can take enough preparation on doing the important things perfectly and more importantly you are not missing any key things if you do smartly plan. If you dont do that, unimportant things may occupy your quality time, which is one of the biggest obstacles of managing yourself.
Time management
Wait, Time Management!? Are we actually able to manage time or we manage ourselves within the time?
According to me, Time Management is a wrong term. We cannot manage time. What we can do is only manage ourselves, our tasks within the time. So, to manage our tasks, we should prioritize our tasks. We should put important thing first before it becomes urgent task. What is an important task? Which task is aligning with our goal/vision is an important task. So, prioritize and manage your tasks within the time.
Etiquette
Etiquette is one of the most important things to consider for managing yourself. Etiquette implies behaving politely while interacting with others in society. Etiquette helps to forge relationships with people. A lapse in etiquette may offend the other person and may result in a breach of friendship or may even cost a person his job.
It is important to get acquainted with the etiquette of the place or culture one is likely to visit as each country and culture has its own set of rules to judge personal behavior in society. In a way, a mans etiquette can make or break his fortune. A family which practices good etiquette invariably has children who imbibe the same as part of their upbringing.
Different places has different ettiquette. You should be carefully learn and excercise all the etiquette as it represent your personality.
Keep yourself updated
We are living in the blessing of the Internet legacy. Whatever comes in your mind, when you are curious about anything, just ask Google. It will clear your confusion and you can update your knowledge. Instead of only wasting your time, enhance the area of your knowledge and make yourself updated. Staying updated will give you a profound feeling and you can always take control of yourself and of any knowledge centered discussion. Tagging yourself with knowledgeable person is also a tool for being updated.
Be optimistic
Always keep a smiling face. Your body language should speak about yourself. Always carry a positive attitude whatever the situation is. Carry your own weather around you all the time. Always keep your head cool and be optimistic. It will refrain you from getting frustrated and you can manage the situation with a cool head.
Maintain a notebook
Always carry a notebook. It will help you to stay focused, to manage your task effectively and efficiently. If you are a gadget person, you can do it in your gadget as well. When you are going to attend a meeting, carry a notebook and take notes. For the professionals, notebook should be a part and parcel of your professional life.
Stay hungry, stay foolish
Personally I live by this quote of Steve Jobs Stay hungry, stay foolish. It was Steve Jobss ending comment in the Stanford Commencement in 2005.
You should always stay hungry to learn more, to achieve more, to be more and be humble despite of whatever you achieved, whatever you become.
The Golden Rule
Last but not the least, the golden rule - Treat other people the way you want to be treated. Because without being empathic, you wont be able to be emotionally intelligent, without putting on others shoes, you cannot feel their situation and cannot create WIN-WIN situation.
These are the few points of managing yourself. There are a lot more points or ways to do so. The main point is to stay focused and plan ahead and execute accordingly. If you are good manager of yourself, nothing can stop you to conquer the goal you set.
So, lets start managing yourself.
The writer is an HR, Training and OD professional
He can be contacted at https://bd.linkedin.com/in/aamirkhan20
