Monday Motivation! For this week’s blog I continue on the topic of self, for today, Self-Management. This last week, I went to see the LUX: New Wave Of Contemporary Art exhibition, which was laid out confusingly but had some great displays across it. This last week also marked bonfire night in the UK, leading to more great displays across the weekend, although it is a shame several had to be scrapped due to a lack of local government funding. COP26 continues into it’s second week, over the last week we’ve seen Joe Biden pledge to cut methane emissions by 30%, and world leaders agree to end deforestation. It will be interesting to see if these are followed through with meaningfully. It was also was a shame to see the lack of meaningful conclusion from the Rafiq report, which concluded that no disciplinary action was needed, and only following the reaction to it were resignations seen.
So what is self-management?
Self-management is our ability to manage our behaviours, thoughts, and emotions in a conscious and productive way.
Self-management builds on self-awareness, as where that is based on understanding our feelings and behaviours, self-management is the steps we put in place to regulate those feelings or behaviours. One common example is putting your alarm cross across your room so that you’re forced to get out of bed, even if you’d like to hit snooze. Self-management makes up another key aspect of emotional intelligence, as through a developed ability to self-manage, we’re able to improve how well we emotionally react and respond to stressors. General life and work can be pretty ‘dynamic’ on a more frequent basis than I’m sure we’d like, so the ability to react in a collected and measured way goes a long way. Keeping with last week’s sports analogy, the best penalty takers are able to manage themselves in such a way to filter out distractions and nerves. They tend to use techniques such as visualisation or the centering technique to remove or reduce those nervy feelings.
To improve self-management, your focus needs to be on yourself. It’s in the name after all, you’re probably aware of a bad habit or two, how about taking some time to consider interventions to address them. If you’re not aware of them, ask a friend or a colleague, my friends and family would flag my mumble. When assessing those bad habits, also consider your strengths, these are great springboards on how to continue to develop, and my friends and family ironically enough would highlight my communication as a strength. As mentioned with the penalty kick example, identify methods for putting you in the best frame of mind or position to succeed. That can come from planning ahead and finding your methods of stress relief. For me, I like to set out my gym clothes in a hyper visible way before I sleep so I can’t avoid it, on top of that my workouts are a great break.
Are you a morning person? If not, where possible you may want to look for ways of rearranging your working pattern to be in step with your best working style. Personally, I’ve found that as much as I am not initially a fan of writing a to do list for the day or the week, the structure it gives me is invaluable! From completing the MBTI last week, it assessed me as ESTP-T, and the T does not stand for Temi, rather it stands for Turbulent, so a little structure does go a long way for me. To dig down further, to do lists can become endless, and it’s normal for new things to pop up, making some tasks not possible for the day or week. You can improve your lists by using the MoSCOW technique:
M – Must do
S – Should do
C – Could do
W – Won’t do
Apply this to your lists or however you track your tasks and your self-management of tasks will enhance, if you’re in need of additional information on the role of admin check it out here.
Research has suggested that self-managed employees are an optimal way for organisations to achieve organizational excellence. Which is predictable, as when we’re clear on what we have to do in our role, we can act without hesitation. Furthermore, the study also advised that employee training and ongoing development programs can help individuals in self-management. So an investment in it’s staff can really be fruitful to organisational performance. So even in these times of hybrid working, I would implore companies to find alternative training packages than classroom learning for their staff. Self-managed teams are especially desirable in agile projects, teams with an increased scope display more dynamism in there ways of working, innovation and resourcefulness
Winter is coming, it’s dark by 5 and for those of us who celebrate Christmas, that is on the horizon too, along with a lot of sales #BlackFriday, so another form of self-management to consider is budgeting. We’re approaching 2022 (Welp!) so this is good time to look back and reflect on any goals set.
Were they met? If not, why?
Were they too optimistic?
Was there not enough time? (Why wasn’t there enough time?)
Are there any methods you can employ to achieve those goals before year end, we’re not at 2022 yet, or is there anything that you can adapt to achieve these goals next year
I hope some of these acts as prompts for reflections or encourage you to work on your self-management. Please share any of your tips and tricks with self-management
Are there any methods you can employ to achieve those goals before year end, we’re not at 2022 yet, or is there anything that you can adapt to achieve these goals next year
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Temis2Pence