In this current world, Self-Management Skills are a must for a person. These are a set of skills by which a person can organize & manage their own life. There are many things to manage: stress, time, anger, motivation & many more. You can’t afford to go smash-smash like Hulk after being angry, nor go on a spending spree like Bruce Wayne, AKA Batman. You need to manage everything about them.
If you can’t manage these simple aspects of life, you most likely won’t be able to manage your professional life. It will result in lower productivity, lack of attention & dedication, & eventually less success. To manage your overall life, you must realize the Importance of Self-Management Skills.
Must Have Self-Management Skills
1. Time Management
They say, ‘Time is money.’ If you manage & invest your time in a fruitful way, money, success, and achievements will be drawn to you. Time is a resource we only have a little. It can’t be bought, can’t be preserved, can’t be renewed. Therefore, one of the most vital Self-Management Skills is time management skills.
You need to revise your schedule wisely to find which activities are eating up most of your time. Then find out which activities are productive & which are not. Then weed out those unproductive activities. After eliminating them, you can have some extra hours at your disposal. Plan & dedicate those hours to some productive activities.
We often consider break times & relaxation times to be a waste of time. They are not. You can’t utilize your time if you are exhausted & have no energy. Those break times & hours dedicated to relaxation enable us to refill our energy & move ahead with a full boost.
2. Stress Management
Stress is one of the awful by-products of the current world, which moves at the speed of a racing car. Most working professionals are the victims of it. Most likely, you are one of the victims, too.
Even scenarios were not like this intense even a decade ago. Then came the rapid development of technologies, rapid growth in the industrial sector, newer roles & responsibilities & a sudden rise in stress among us.
No matter how intensely we feel it, we must keep going for the sake of ourselves & our families. Therefore, managing stress effectively is a must-have self-management skill. You need to know how to manage & reduce stress that’s affecting your productivity.
You need to explore newer ways to manage it. If you are unsure about it, research on the internet. There are various articles & videos available on this topic.
3. Self-Motivation
One of the Importance of Self-Management Skills is that it helps you stay motivated. Let’s admit you can’t always find helpful people around you when you feel down to motivate yourself. In such cases, you need to be your own cheerleader, pat yourself on the back & help yourself to get on the track again.
We are often like the Hindu God Hanuman, who was cursed that he will forget his own potential in vital times until someone reminds him of them. Like Hanuman, we can feel good if someone reminds us of our abilities & inspires us. As stated earlier, people like that are not always readily available. Therefore, we need to help ourselves while feeling down.
There are several ways to do it. Use positive self-talk, remind yourself of your achievements, read inspirational books, or watch motivational videos. The main point is to ensure that your level of motivation stays high.
4. Financial Management
You may earn quite handsomely, but that’s no good without sound Financial Management skills. There’s no point in earning a six-figure salary if you need to borrow cash from your friends or relatives at the end of the month. Therefore, financial management skills are considered one of the most vital Self-Management Skills.
You need to make an effective budget & stick to it to ensure your hard-earned money is well spent. Always remember, ‘Waste Not, Want Not.’
You need to allocate some part of your monthly income to vital aspects like grocery shopping, medicines, bills & other things. You must also ensure a small part of it goes to your monthly savings. Instead of making those savings idly sit in your bank account, invest them in profitable schemes. If you are not sure, talk to an investment expert.
5. Anger Management
We can’t always stay in a good mood. In our homes or workplaces, we often feel that an ugly green monster is trying to come out from us & wreak havoc. We can’t afford to lose our temper every time & everywhere. In this world full of stress & pressures, it is very easy to lose calm, but the real challenge is staying calm even in the face of severe provocation.
Therefore, we must maintain our cool, especially in the workplace. Imagine you just finished caring for a heap of files & your supervisor arrived with another heap of files. You may feel like you would feel good if you smashed that keyboard on his face yelling, ‘F*ck it!’. But in a professional workplace, you can’t be expected to behave like that.
Instead of doing something uncivilized & unprofessional, you must find some way to cork that bottle of bubbling anger brewing inside. Many people are short-tempered. They can’t make some remarkable progress in their lives only because of it. Therefore, you must do something to manage your temper to succeed in life.
6. Improvisation
You can’t always predict life. There can be many instances where life throws something at you that you never imagined in your wildest dreams. We all move forward with a particular goal in mind & a roadmap to reach there. Sometimes disruptions come & we become so perplexed that we don’t know what to do next. In such cases, our improvisation power can come in handy.
Nobody prepared us for the pandemic, which turned our lives upside down and shut off the world. Many people lost their lives, families, jobs & businesses. Still, slowly but steadily, the world is moving towards being normal. Life always finds a way, and so should we. Hardships and disruptions are inevitable parts of life. But we must apply our improvisation power to find a way.
7. Accountability
Managing yourself starts when you try your best to keep your words & turn them into action. This action creates accountability. When you become accountable, it creates trust & confidence in the workplace & family. People can depend on you & ask for your help in tough times.
Not only that, but being responsible for your own actions & words is also vital. We often blame someone else after some errors from our side. It is our instinct to keep our hands clean. But that is a very ill-instinct. We need to remember that if we have made some mistake, it’s totally on us & it’s our responsibility to amend that.
Some Self-Management Books
Many books can help us to hone some Self-Management Skills. Here are some:
- Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen.
- The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg.
- Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport.
- Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown.
- Managing Oneself by Peter F. Drucker.
- First Things First by Stephen R. Covey.
- Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Getting Things Done by David Allen.
- The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin S. Sharma.
FAQs
Q: Is being self-aware one of the Self-Management Skills?
A: It certainly is to manage yourself; you must need to know yourself.
Q: What is a SMART Goal?
A: SMART is an implicative acronym that offers criteria to guide you for objective setting in your projects.
Q: How to improve my Self-management skills?
A: First, try to identify the flaws within you. Then go ahead & take effective steps to rectify them. Make an effective schedule & stick to it.
