Baby Jessica cries when she is hungry. She manages her basic need.
Joseph spends half of his pocket money on chocolate, saving the other half for a Marvel comic book. He learns to manage his money.
Elena has a party on Friday night. She goes to work early to finish her pending tasks. She is managing her work.
John on his trip to Europe brings the same gift for his mother and his wife. He is managing his home.
Whether we are a baby or an adult, all of us are managing something or the other. In that sense everyone is a born manager. Management is necessary for survival and performance. In fact, management is innate and the concept of management is as old as civilization itself.
External World – What do we really need to manage?
Let’s try to list it down. During our journey in life, we manage our school, grades, play, job, boss, colleagues, finances, bank, taxes, car, marriage, home, family, relatives, peers, sleep, stress, trouble, happiness and the list goes on. Also, at every stage, we need to manage the most sought after ephemeral entity called time.
So how do we handle so many fronts and manage to get them done right?
If we think deeply, we would realize that our performance (you may define it by money, power or any other way you deem fit) is guided by managing basic 5 independent fronts.
Managing Life Performance
Managing 5 Primary Fronts in the External World
However, now let’s examine the importance of these five fronts those govern and define our lives in the eyes of others (External World).
- Honing our knowledge and skills – Developing a certain level of knowledge and skill adds value to our worth and makes us job-worthy. Therefore, honing these two basic tools are important for us to perform. Formal education since childhood is the gateway and as we sail through our student and college life, we start acquiring these two resources through different professional career lines. The higher our education and skill level, the bigger are the chances to perform and thus to manage our lives better.
- Generating revenue for self – Like oxygen we need money to survive. Whatever way the philosophers may describe its utility, we simply need it. Our efforts in childhood and youth place us in the employment that we deserve. Some of us who are creative and ready to take up challenges go for setting up businesses. These are the two alternate vehicles that generate revenue for us. We need to manage either our employment or business during the longest period of our lives (25 to 65 years).
- Managing personal finance – Financial literacy is one of the most important requirements for a successful life. Understanding the fundamentals of budgeting, saving, borrowing, and investing will affect every aspect of our life and can shuttle us between prosperity and poverty. Knowledge and skills help us to generate money, but it’s really important to know what to do with it. We can spend it vigorously a week after receiving the paycheck, donate some of it, invest it regularly, or do whatever with it- the choice is ours. But how we manage personal finance dictates our status. Right or wrong way of using money may make us a king or a pauper.
- Handling relationships – Over the course of time, we constantly juggle different relationships. Whether it is with parents, spouse, siblings, peers or work colleagues, it’s very important to find balance with the people around us. Different relationships require different approaches, and it is crucial that we remember this. We cannot deal with our parents like we do with our boss and so on. We have to play the right card at the right point. Therefore, for a sustainable lifestyle, it is essential to establish and maintain the right relations with everyone around us.
- Gelling with the environment– The environment includes society, government, local bodies, rules, regulations and so on. We must abide by the laws of the land otherwise we risk job loss, revocation of licenses, disruption of business, imprisonment, poor medical care, loss of trust, damage to reputation and much more. Therefore, we must adjust to the environment in which we are operating and learn to take the best out of it.
Internal World – What to Manage?
But another important area of management is our Body and Mind (known as Attitude in the management jargon). Developing, maintaining and controlling of health and attitude have a deep bearing in our lifestyle and wellbeing. Management gurus concur that the Attitude (not education or money) is the single most influencing factor in defining a person’s life. That is why formal education (knowledge / skill) does not guarantee success without the right blend of attitude.
We may call it Internal Management and it has a higher influence in shaping our life. We need to give higher priority to internal management before we start playing in the external world.
2 thoughts on “Everybody is a manager – But what to manage? Part-1”
A manager must able to manage himself with all activities ,what he need to perform with the available resources
,well planned manure ,not always depends on his higher management.
he must be self starter,attractive motivation with his team and deepest co operation with the upward authorities expectation.
Mr.Gee
B V GOPINATHAN
gopinathanbv@yahoo.co.in
0091 9791079139
Good read
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