Self-Management

Self-Management can simply be described as a set of skills, strategies and tactics that can be used to achieve the desired personal and professional outcomes. This book provides an approach for self-management that can well be summarized as a 'Focus-Analyze-Alter'. In order to achieve any desired outcome, you must set the right objectives and keep focus on them. Once you know your destination, it's time to find the right path to your destination. You can find this path by analyzing Goal setting and identifying objectives, personal or professional, is central to our existence. However, fulfillment of the same often remains questionable. Self-management is a set of strategies that can be highly instrumental in helping you set the right goals and work in an organized and decisive manner towards fulfilling the same. Organization, in this context, includes several facets like management of time and resources to facilitate a smooth and focused path to success. It cannot make your path to success shorter, but it can surely make it easier. Decision making and choosing the right options is integral to effective management. This facet can certainly shorten your path to success. With decision-making comes inevitable stress, which can lead you to uncertainty and indecisiveness. This makes it essential to manage this stress, frustration and anger, which may arise as an outcome of the aforementioned. Therefore, self-management has been identified as a smart balance of resource management, time management and personal management. This book gives you an insight on the three main aspects of self-management namely, time management, life management and personal management. Self-Understanding the criticality of time management in our daily lives, a task-based approach for the effective administration has been provided. Besides this, the different facets of life personal management, like self-confidence, anger and stress have been considered. Environmental factors also have a significant role in self-management. The approach for self-management that has been followed, described and prescribed in this book is based on the thought "You are your biggest help " The book suggests strategies and techniques that can be implemented at a personal level without interference or intervention of a third party. This helps you in more than one way. This works towards building a positive attitude and energy in your life. This positivity will motivate you to change yourself for better. Once you are able to observe positive outcomes, you will be encouraged, and this is a key motivator. Secondly, the human psyche is such that we tend not to do things that we are asked to do. This book works on a two phase basis, preparation phase and implementation phase. The chapters on 'Building Self-Confidence and Courage' and 'Developing a Positive Attitude' work towards building a belief in you that you can break this chain and become a pioneer of change in your life. This is a preparation phase, which mentally prepares you for a change. The rest of the chapters suggest real life implementations that can bring about the required change. The chapter on 'Plan and Organize' suggests techniques that can help you in organizing your resources while the chapters on 'Time management' and 'Anger and Stress Management' provides suggestions for management of time and personality respectively. Any 'do-it-yourself' approach is incomplete without discussing the pitfalls that you may face in your path to successful implementation. Although, every human is different, and so are their responses. We have a knack of making unique mistakes and falling into the same trap in unique different ways. The chapter on 'Common Mistakes' warns you of the traps to ensure speedy implementation of the suggested techniques. This book provides a comprehensive approach towards overall management and improvement.