Self-management is the ability to manage our workflow and productivity without a supervisor. No one can stay by our side constantly, we must be able to tell ourself what to do at any circumstances. Developing and practicing self-management skills can help us improve our performance and positively impact our life and career development.
Declare what you will do
We are all facing a bunch of tasks every day. Some of them can be done instantly, but some are larger tasks and require significant amount of work. The first step is to split larger tasks into actionable subtasks that we feel easy to finish. Until we think the subtask is difficult, we have not done this splitting step yet. The second step is to rearrange subtasks and process one by one. The next section will show some methods to prioritize items in the task list. In the next step, we will combine the subtask results and evaluate the status of larger tasks. Quite easy? No, it's not. The hardest part is to achieve high performance, and this depends on how we split the tasks. That's why the last step, which most of us ignore, comes in. We need to stop a bit and review how good we did. After some cycles of these steps, we will find a way suitable for us. Don't let others do this for us. Do it ourselves!
Decide what to do first
After knowing what to do, we should know what to do first. In normal cases, we may be not aware of task priority, because we can finish them instantly. But we will find problems when under pressure. There are hundreds of ways to prioritize task, but I can't remember and apply all =)). So, I think it simple: importance and urgency. Just evaluate all tasks against that 2 factors. If the task is important and urgent, do it, right now! If it is not important to us but must to get done soon, just delegate to trusted people. if there is no urgency, we can delay or even delete it from the task list if it is not important.
Dedicate to the real goal
After knowing what to do first, we should pursue it until the end. Most of us expect the result comes right after our actions. But, the larger the object, the higher momentum it needs. Can we keep going until surpass momentum preparation time? This time may fulfill with disappointed feeling and take us down. But don't stop and think how bad it is, think about the happy ending. When our progress has enough momentum, it will run incredibly fast and reach our targets soon. And again, don't stop and waste the momentum. Good is not enough. Try our best, we will find our undeniable achievement at the end.
Discipline to earn true freedom
After knowing the importance of pursuing the real end goal, we should know how to motivate ourselves to keep moving forward. And the key is self discipline. I think all of us don't want to be restricted to do something. We want to do anything we like, prove ourselves to the world. However, don't misunderstand! Discipline may be not freedom, but self discipline is freedom. If we let ourselves be distracted by others, we may not reach to any milestones. Enhancing skills increases our capability and enables us to do big things. We keep doing small things randomly as we like but cannot do the big things we want. How can this be called freedom? One tip is using progress tracking tools or just using notes. Write down all things and check mark if anythings are done. People tend to keep moving forward if they see how many percentage of the progress they made.
That's all. Love to see you reading my blog.