3 Surprising Secrets to Self-Management
Time pressure is more pervasive than Covid.
Your schedule reflects your life. The person who can’t manage time can’t manage life. When you hate your schedule, you hate life.
Time management is self-management.
3 surprising secrets to self-management:
#1. Healthy self-management includes self-inspection.
Choose standards for family time, hobby time, and development time, for example.
Acknowledge self-deception when it comes to self-inspection. You don’t see yourself clearly. Discuss your standards with family, friends, mentors, and or coaches. Include your boss if they are trustworthy.
#2. Heathy self-management includes self-government.
Others attempt to govern your life. At work it’s bosses, colleagues, and employees. At home it’s a spouse or children.
We all submit to others. Unconscious submission degrades you. Conscious submission is service. You submit to laws or the board, for example. When you say yes to someone, they govern your life in small ways.
Self-governing is noticing when you give authority to someone.
Self-governing is maintaining responsibility for life even when serving others.
#3. Healthy self-management requires courage.
Goals, priorities, self-awareness, and boundaries require courage.
Your schedule is out of control for many reasons. You don’t have goals or priorities. You don’t notice that others control your time. You don’t have boundaries.
Others rule your life when you can’t say no.
Develop backbone by setting clear goals. Your report needs to be completed by 5 p.m. You can’t spend all day solving other people’s problems.
Begin small. Perhaps your goal is feeling less frantic during the day. Adopt the 50-minute rule. Hour-long meetings end in 50 minutes. Give yourself time to recalibrate and prepare for the next meeting.
Accept frailty. Don’t imagine you’re Wonder Woman or Superman. You can’t run at full speed all the time.
Humility gives birth to courage. When you accept frailty, courage for self-care isn’t selfish. It’s necessity.
What self-management tips work for you?
More resources:
How to Manage Your Schedule When Your Hair is on Fire
The Importance of Self-Management Skills
Dan the key for me, especially when a senior staff person, was learning to say No and doing it politely, still acknowledging the request and sometimes even suggesting an alternative way to solve it.
Brad
Wonderful suggestion, Brad. It’s unfortunate when we need to be rude or angry to set boundaries.
I agree. It has taken me a long time to learn how to say no, and I’m still trying to do it politely. I should say I’m still learning to say no. Opportunities are all over the place, but time is short. At this very moment, I’m reviewing all the things that are on my plate and trying to figure out what I’m going to let go.
I. Needed. This. 🤦🏽♀️ Being pulled in so many directions, with so many “depending on me” requires that I protect me…that I say no…that I self-manage/self-regulate versus letting others manage/control my life. I’m tired. No, exhausted. It’s time. I humbly thank you, Dan.