Self Management

“In addition to self-awareness, imagination and conscience, it is the fourth human endowment, independent will, that really makes effective self-management possible. It is the ability to make decisions and choices and to act in accordance with them. It is the ability to act rather than to be acted upon, to proactively carry out the program we have developed through the other three endowments. Empowerment comes from learning how to use this great endowment in the decisions we make every day.”
– Stephen Covey

“Motivation,” the author of The Psychology Of Winning Dr. Dennis Waitley wrote, “comes from within and not from without; all motivation is self-motivation.” You can not find motivation outside of you but can develop motivation inside of you. Oftentimes, it is sleeping within you. People can get pepped up, enthused, encouraged, or even inspired by others, but they can never get motivated by them.

Effective personal managers are efficient, satisfied, motivated, and happier. They have higher self-esteem, are more likely to get promoted, and find more and better opportunities in life.

All great achieving men and women are effective self-managers. They master their lives instead of manage their time. In fact, they do so almost instinctively without it being a goal in itself. On the flip side, however, ineffective personal management leads to procrastination and under-achievement.

It’s like the typical workaholic who manages to accomplish many tasks in an expedient fashion but must work long hours in order to do so or falls “sick” more days in the year than the average. Usually, an ineffective personal manager is moody, restless, sleepless, stressed, irritated, or sick. These are some of the natural side-effects of working without a sense of purpose.

For instance, if a salesperson is excellent in selling, he can close on a larger number of presentations than the norm. But if he is a poor self-manager, he only finds poor quality prospects or sells using unethical tactics.

Therefore, he will have to work harder in order to find more people in order to meet his sales goals. Additionally, he will compromise his peace of mind that will ultimately affect his presentations and the relationships with his clients.

If he works very hard, meets a lot of potential customers, manages his time well, and accomplishes many tasks efficiently, but works on lower priority activities or on low priority values, it will cost him precious selling opportunities.

He is limiting himself as a result.

Truly successful people live in a way consistent with their personal values. They also know how to reach their goals without having to work themselves into the ground. Remember that what is urgent is seldom important and what is important is seldom urgent. Having goals that are aligned with one’s priorities will cause a person to do what is important and not necessarily urgent.

However, the beauty of following such a process is that it will help to create a sense of urgency with what is important. It may not necessarily be urgent, but it is to that person. That person will positively procrastinate.

In other words, he will delay that which is not important to him and urgently attend to that which is. He will focus on quality of life rather than quantity of time. He will drop his goals and manage his life.

Jim Rohn once said, “Without a sense of urgency, desire loses its value.” In essence, activities that follow one’s uppermost values become priorities as well. The things that are really important in one’s life are given a sense of urgency rather than left on the back burner.

Nevertheless, if you say “I wish someone would come by and motivate me,” what happens if he doesn’t show up? As Jim Rohn said, “You’ve got to have a better plan for your life.” You have to become an effective self-manager. You have to manage your life and not your time.