MANAGING YOURSELF (PART 1) Part 2 | Final Part
By Dusit Jaul, Project Coordinator, INTAN Malaysia Sarawak

Higher Expectation

In general management principles and practices, it is generally recognized that the 'human capital' is one of the key determinants that can contribute effectively towards high performance organization. This is achieved through proper alignment of individual and organizational goals. As a result of this, greater emphasis is now given to the proper, effective and maximum utilization of the human asset. In her paper, Public Service Perspective On Human Capital presented at the AHRI National Convention in Canberra, Australia in 1998, Ms Helen Williams, Public Service Commissioner, mentioned that " the most successful organization of the future will be those best able to maximize the contribution of their people. For organization to achieve that, she recommended the following steps to be taken:

• Recognize that information and knowledge are as important to them than tangible, or capital.
  
  
• Realize that investment in their people is critical to success, because the people hold much of the important knowledge, and control the flow of information
  
  
• Focus on the efficient management of information and knowledge; and
  
  
• Show that this is demonstrably boosting organizational knowledge

Yes, the demand side is on the human capital, but on the other side of the coin, how do one get to manage himself in the face of mounting work pressures and increased expectation to perform excellently?

Self Management

In his article, Four Time Management Don'ts for Students of which I feel is also relevant to working adults, Dr. Donald E. Wetmore, an accomplished speaker noted that "Our lives are made up of Seven Vital Areas: Health, Family, Financial, Intellectual, Social, Professional, and Spiritual. We will not necessarily spend time every day in each area or equal amounts of time in each area. But if in the long run, if we spend a sufficient quantity and quality of time in each area, our lives will be balanced. But if we neglect any one area, never mind two or three, we will eventually sabotage our success. Much like a table, if one leg is longer than the rest, it will make the entire table wobbly. If we don't take time for health, our family life and social life are hurt. If our financial area is out of balance, we will not able to focus adequately on our intellectual goals, etc."

What Dr. Donald E. Wetmore mentioned above boiled down to a specific subject, i.e. the need to have and to master simple time management technique. An array of books and articles have been written about time management even down to the very specific, for example books specific to saving time in school, business timesaving technique, computer time savers, home time savers, personal time savers and travel time savers. However, at this juncture, one point which I would like to highlight is the pre-conceived notion quite prevalent among the general public that often equate working harder and spending more time on your work with high production and a sensible display of efficiency. Not at all according to Lisa Kanarek. In her article, ' Finding way to Work Smarter, Not Harder'. She makes it very clear that, "the amount of time you work does not always correlate with the amount of work that you accomplish. Working long hours doesn't mean you'll accomplish more. It's possible to be productive without working overtime, risking burnt out and compromising the quality of work you produced because of fatigue".The strategy to be adopted according to her is "to work smarter, not harder. It is one way to accomplish more, feel better about your work and have time to enjoy other activities".

On the same note, Debra Allcock gives us a timely reminder that we "need to make a life as well as a living and that your family and friends have as much right to some of your time as your employer does". Theoretically sounds good, isn't it. In real life situation, it may not be that easy. To figure out what are reasonable demands on our time is difficult. The best course of action is to remind ourselves of an old English adage that says, "do not bite off more than you can chew". In management it means don't try to take on more than you can reasonably handle and finish. In managing yourself, the overall framework for you to work on is to start realizing your limitations. You have to be very honest with yourself. As Dawn E. Reno put it nicely in her book, The Unofficial Guide to Managing Time. "We all have strength and weaknesses. No one is perfect. But if you expect yourself to be, than you'll never be satisfied".

Creating A Balance

Other than honesty with ourselves, another important point in self-management that we have to be aware of is to seek balance in life. That means valuing and dividing our time between work, play and relaxation. The problem with most of us is that we often push ourselves to the limit. We think of deadlines, unfinished work and at the same time over-committing ourselves to new task. We drive ourselves to produce. Dr. Donald E. Wetmore must have noticed the seriousness of this habit to offer us this useful piece of advice, i.e. "The most powerful word in our Time Management Vocabulary is 'no'. Dawn E. Reno believes it too when she writes that "The best time managers in the world know that the strongest word in the English language is 'no'. Better start practicing it".

From the physiological point of view, balance is also a good way to boost our body immune system. This is the strong opinion of Elinor Levy and Tom Monte in their book, The 10 Best Ways to Boost Your Immune System - A Total Health Prescription for Today. Elaborating further they point out that 'the study of the immune system is teaching us that balance is essential to good health. We are learning the lesson from many different angles, from the purely physical to the physiological and even to the spiritual." A Balance life according to them requires us to be good to our body, seek out small pleasures and get a good night sleep.

The opposite of balance is of course, imbalance. Elinor Levy and Tom Monte give a strong advice that this one is to be avoided. The reason being that an imbalance view of life is focused on the negative, and the more imbalanced our perspective, the more worries we have. If these persist, ultimately we'll lose control of ourselves.

In order to seek balance in life, managing ourselves-means that we have to get organized. Proper organization of our activities will alleviate us from the common problems that we often encounter, such as our inability to differentiate between the urgent and the important, and the differences between what we really need and what we want.

To be continue ...