The concept of self-management may be applicable to various fields but generally, it is a psychological term which pertains to an individual’s goal of being able to manage personal activities, skills, objectives, and personal autonomy. Managers or high-ranking officers are not the only ones entitled to develop the skill of self-management.

Anyone who hopes to achieve personal autonomy can also learn the skill through practice and perseverance. If you think managers or leaders find their functions easy and stress-free, it is actually the other way around. Apart from supervising and facilitating their members, creating schedules and developing programs, they also need to constantly manage their own priorities which they have developed over time. In your own way, how can you become skillfully self-managed?

Three Components of Self-Management

How can you successfully achieve self-management? It is more than the discipline and motivation. Many factors have to be considered. Mastering this personal quality allows us to become independent in leading our own lives and also at work. Self-management skill has three basic components:

1. Self-monitoring: Personal awareness of behaviors and values is the goal of self-monitoring. We are taught to be more attentive and conscious of the way we deal with people and the behaviors we manifest toward others. At work, for example, your boss may remind you to keep track of your own behavior or a certain work attitude. Unless you correct a certain undesirable work attitude, your boss will continue to remind you until you become more conscious of your own actions.

2. Self-evaluation: This is an element of self-management that teaches the person to learn how to assess personal behaviors in relation to the personal goals. If you want to achieve something, you have to have realistic and attainable goals, and must know how to determine if these objectives were met or not.

3. Self-reinforcement: Being able to acknowledge and recognize personal successes and achievement of goals is the concept of self- reinforcement. This can be done through self-delivery rewards to compensate oneself for the job well done.

Assessing the Skill of Self-Management

The goal of being able to independently direct your own life may not come easy. But start it with simple steps, even with the aid of the people around you. In your workplace, if you need your supervisor to closely monitor you, learn to be open to constructive criticism. Initially, it may be hard to personally gauge how well you are able to improve on this skill, so we need the people around us to guide us in gradually becoming successful in managing our own lives. How can the quality of self-management be assessed? Here are some methods and techniques:

Delivery of Feedback: Ask those who you trust to give their feedback on how well you did. Employees are normally given feedback sessions on their performance on a regular basis.

Follow-Up on Plans: Make sure to have a follow-through on your self-management plans to ensure progress and consistency in delivering outstanding results.

Prompting: This can be a little challenging, but it takes open-mindedness to do it. Just like giving of feedback, prompting is also the process of giving inputs and remarks, only that it is real time, or instantly after the action or process is performed.

Boosting Self-Management Skill

Self-directed learning and managing one’s decisions, actions, and goals is a critical skill. It requires an ample amount of time and effort to hone this personal quality. One important thing you should do is not to keep on relying to people all the time to tell you what to do and how to do it. Make a conscious effort to decide on your own, make your own plans, and act according to your will. If you find it difficult at first, try the modeling method. This technique requires you to set other people as an example, especially those who have mastered this skill. From there, you can design your own way of managing yourself.

Overcoming resistance and hesitation is important in developing this personal attribute. You can never learn if you will not give it a try, and will not realize your flaws if you turn your back from the challenge. A fully self-managed individual is also able to manage time and can become a potential leader.