“Making appointments with yourself and scheduling other things around them is key to proactive self-management.” ― Michael Hyatt.
The concept of self-management isn’t a single-element habit. Instead, it is a culmination of habits and self-introspection that involves exploring deeper within yourself. How efficiently we regulate our emotional intelligence, self-control, and even our leadership styles that help us regulate our emotions and personal and professional skills.
Honing the right self-management skills is crucial to improving one’s role as a leader. These skills contribute to our productivity and empower us to embrace our independence.
Ideally, no human is perfect, meaning no one is born with precise and optimal self-management skills. Instead, they are learned as we progress in our lives. Your personal life and self-management skills support your goal-setting efforts and give you better control over your career.
In this article, I will explore the importance of self-management and 4 ways to improve self-management skills.
Why are Self-Management Skills Important?
To understand the true importance of self-management, one must know what qualities represent self-management.
The top foundational skills that are crucial in self-management are:
- Time management
- Self-motivation
- Stress management
- Adaptability
- Decision making
- Goal alignment
- Personal development
A culmination of these skills is essential to help a person grow personally and professionally.
The influence of self-management skills is more profound in a professional setting, especially when showcasing one’s capability as a reliable part of the team.
Surprisingly, elevated self-management is directly proportional to one’s degree of emotional intelligence. It also supports your self-awareness and overall emotional well-being. Instead of pushing their personal skills, a person with good self-management skills prioritizes their personal needs and stays on top of social cues.
In most cases, self-management isn’t an innate quality. Instead, it's one that a person learns and adapts to their learning.
How to Improve Self-Management Skills?
As an ICF certified life coach who has worked with hundreds and thousands of coaching clients, the one concept that most of my clients are clueless about is self-management.
And, I think it’s not the lack of knowledge. Instead, it's more focused on the lack of “professional knowledge.” Almost everyone knows the concepts of time management, project management, adaptability, goal setting, etc. What most of my clients don’t realize is that these individual markers come together to constitute self-management.
So, when I work with coaching clients to hone their self-management skills, the following are the top tips for self-management I swear by:
1. Prioritize Self Care
I can’t emphasize this enough, but we are extremely engaged in a rat race in this competitive world. And, while chasing money, fame, and success, we often fail to prioritize the most important thing in our life – ourselves and our sanity.
Recently, I had a session with a coaching client whose complaint was, “I feel very clueless and disorganized in my life.”
And, when I asked them how they went about their day, that was enough of a giveaway. One of the reasons why we fail to settle our emotions is because there’s a lot running through our minds.
As Anne Lamott says, “Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.”
Our well-being should always be our priority, irrespective of how busy or fast we are moving in life. If you don’t stop and ask yourself, “Am I okay? Do I need to slow down? Is it time to relax now?”, you are already pushing yourself too hard.
2. Patience is a Virtue
Nothing in life happens overnight. So, it isn’t surprising that getting on top of your self-management skills won’t happen in a day.
However, one skill that’s quintessential to strengthening your self-management skills is patience. Traits like adaptability, goal alignment, and personal development, which are indispensable in managing yourself, need a lot of patience for them to fall into place.
A key factor in improving your patience is to realize that not everything in your life is in your hands. Sometimes, even when things don’t work out as you envisioned, it's okay to take a step back and wait for things to work out.
3. Shift Your Focus on One Task at a Time
Multitasking is a very praised trait, especially in a professional setting. In fact, I remember this one quote from the book, The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results, by Gary Keller, where he mentions, “Multitasking is a lie.”
Another quote from this book stands out, suggesting, “Juggling is an illusion. ... In reality, the balls are being independently caught and thrown in rapid succession. ... It is actually task switching.”
And I think it puts a lot of things into perspective. During my initial years of personal development, I struggled with this toxic trait of thinking that “doing more meant doing better.”
However, it took me some trial and error to realize that “I was not doing multiple things successfully,”; instead, “I was doing a lot of things insufficiently.”
Since then, my target has been prioritizing multiple work and projects, but ONE AT A TIME. I only work on one thing at a time now. Instead, I prioritize time management. I delegate time to each of the tasks and finish them optimally.
4. Focus On the Strengths
We have all grown up hearing, “Improve on the things you aren’t good at.”
And, listen, I am not side-tracking this. Instead, I am shifting my perspective a little. Time is probably the most important and non-retrievable thing in my life.
So, when it comes to improving my self-management skills, I prioritize reflecting on my strengths first. This wasn’t my initial mindset, though; it doesn’t dominate 100% of my time.
I still work on improving my weak links, but I also work on appreciating what I am good at. And, not just for myself, as a certified life coach, this is a common practice I engage in with my coaching clients too.
Final Words
Our thoughts and behavior carve and shape the kind of person we are. So, it's no wonder that it's a requisite in our growth journey as an individual.
Streamlining one’s organizational systems contributes to enhanced productivity, which is key to becoming a better leader in a workplace. But honing these skills takes time, so you must make an effort each day and show up.
Matrrix’s life coach certification integrates these skill sets into you. It enables you to embark on a journey toward growth, visibility, and resilience in your personal and professional life.
For registration and details about Matrrix’s life coach certification programs, visit https://www.matrrix.in/certifications/coaching.
For any queries or further information, visit https://www.matrrix.in/contact-us.
Comments