Principles of Self Management - Assignment Example

1 Principles of Self Management A Bachelor’s Degree Assignment Name Cardinal Stritch University 2 Introduction This paper consists of four interrelated topics/essays that explain the principles of self management. To be a successful person, it is imperative that one must first of all understand, analyze and apply in one’s life some useful quotes about self management; it is important that one should possess a dream job that he or she would work towards achieving every time; an action plan is highly required to attain a situation whereby one would become professional fulfilled; and, finally, doing a community service is another way to give back to the society in a way that is satisfactory to both the community service volunteer and the people in the community. All these interesting issues are explicitly dealt with in this paper, giving cogent reasons why they are essentially considered as principles of self management. 3 Great Quotes “Think wrongly if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.” Doris Lessing (British Writer). Doris Lessing’s quote is very important in this sense that it posits that self-initiating thoughts should be the springboards upon which one would build his or her dreams or plans. Unlike in undemocratic countries where governments and leaders force their people to follow a single line of thought, the United States constitutionally grants its citizens the freedom to think for themselves, and this engenders self-confidence and power to confront whatever results from bad thinking that people sometimes engages. The most interesting aspect of this is that when people think wrongly one time, they learn from it and prevent such from happening the next time. “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” Ghandi: Ghandi’s quote above combines two possible elements of self management, which are living modestly and learning about living. These two ideas are thematically conjoined if one considers the issue of living longer (forever), it is important that learning about how to live modestly is mandatory. Self management embodies knowing the things that are glorious, helpful, harmful and life-sustaining. If people could understand these issues clearly, they would be able to avoid harmful things; they would be able to embrace glorious ideas; they would be able to pursue life-sustaining goals and eventually live for a long time. It is nothing but foolhardy to live roughly in this life and expecting longevity! 4 My Ideal Job My ideal job is to become an Analyst Programmer. This is the job I have often dreamt about. An analyst programmer is expected to work within the Enterprise Data Warehousing Data Integration Unit, which handles the design, development and support of Extract, transform, and load (ETL) processes to expand the Enterprise Data Warehousing Environment. Depending on the dressing code of my future company, I could go to work in a suit or in company’s overall. This job requires some technical skills, some of which I currently possess; I would have to develop the other required skills in the course of my studies. These include but not restricted to great verbal and written skills, excellent analytical and documentation skills, great team-playing capability and having the useful knowledge of organizational structure. This job requires that the applicant should be a graduate in Computer Science, Systems Engineering or Information Systems. As a result of this, I am qualified to work as an Analyst Programmer. In addition to processing Enterprise Data, the most suitable candidate for this job would have to demonstrate other considerable technical skills in Data Modeling, SQL, Data Warehouse Design, ETL Development, or handling Business Intelligence Solutions using IBM InfoSphere Information Server (DataStage) ETL tool or other practical tools. I think my current line of study and the exposure to practical Enterprise Data Warehousing would prepare me for this ideal job of mine. And I duly hope that I would be able to begin work shortly after my graduation from the college. 5 Personal Action Plan for Professional Advancement Principles of Self Management Assignment Name Cardinal Stritch University 6 Introduction This essay deals with the issue of experiencing professional advancement in my career as an IT Analyst at Mayo Clinic. The first part of this paper comprises of my self-reflection strategies using the following MBTI tools as indicated in my textbook: these strategies include the Learning Style Assessment, the Personality Style Assessment, and Time Management Techniques. The second part of this paper describes the practical “Action Plan” I would undertake to improve areas where weaknesses have been observed in my life. This part also includes my Degree Completion Plan. 7 Self-Reflections on Personality, Learning Style and Time Management Applying the MBTI Assessment procedures as detailed in the textbook, the following assessments are obtained about my personality, learning style and time management. My Reported Type is ESTJ, meaning that I demonstrated a great deal of Extraversion, Sensing, Thinking and Judging (Ellis, 2007). Analyzing the characteristics associated with ESTJ Type, I am recognized to be practical, matter-of-fact and decisive in my approach to study, use of time and personality. I always like to do everything accordingly but sometimes dislike rigid schedule—this attribute may have resulted in my weakness of procrastinating; I sometimes procrastinate about studying or doing some tasks. Though, MBTI Assessments find me to be a good team-player with forceful determination to achieve a goal, I am mostly evasive when it comes to solving conflicts among my partners (Cloke and Goldsmith, 2005). I may be realistic as the assessment report shows, but I know that I also overspend money. Concerning my learning style, I am more interested in theories, concepts and believable explanations for everything I study. I prefer teachers that are logical, even though harsh; I loathe the learning system whereby students are constrained to one type of ideology that may not be factually substantiated (Konig, 2007). I am meticulous with time—this is the main reasons I am a kind of on-the-go person who jumps at every opportunity to achieve a goal. Although this may sometimes prevent me from having a well-thought-out plan for something, but I dislike a situation whereby I 8 would have to waste precious time on something when I could do it as quickly as possible (Ellis, 2007). Likewise, it does not take me a long time to chat up new acquaintances at the meeting or parties. All the personal attributes highlighted above portray both my strengths and weaknesses as a person, and it depends on how I manage these characteristics so as to have a wonderful self management. The Actions Necessary to Improve My Self Management As hinted in the foregoing, procrastination is a big weakness that I constantly face in my professional life working at Mayo Clinic. As an IT Analyst, there were times that I postponed my duties to other days due to procrastination. However, is procrastination a serious problem in every other people’s life? Henegar (2004) reckoned that every human being in confronted with the problem of procrastination, but the rate of overcoming it is different from one person to other (Henegar, 2004). As a result of this, the first step to take is to carry out time management procedure: this involves dividing the tasks at hand to their order of priority and going for the ones on the top of the schedule (Ellis, 2007). Self-motivation or the use of constant reminder can help someone overcome his or her procrastination problem (Henegar, 2004). Invariably, if I put up a piece of information about some duties to do on the notice board in my office as an IT Analyst at Mayo Clinic, such an effort will help me to constantly remember the first thing first, and it will urge me to carry out the duty at the appropriate time (Ellis, 2007). I will forget the lazy feeling that often postpones every important thing I am supposed to do. Take for instance, if I follow 9 every thought with action, procrastination will find it difficult to creep into my mind on most occasions (Ellis, 2007). And If I continue in this fashion, it may become a habit that I usually get things done on time on the spur of the moment or within the period that had been previously allotted for it (Ellis, 2007). Secondly, spending too much is a weakness that could arise from thoughtlessness. If I am engaged in critical thinking before spending my money on things, there is every possibility that I would have a second thought before throwing away chunks of my hard-earned money. Critical thinking involves analyzing the pros and cons of an action, and eventually going for the action that seems quite appropriate or reasonable (Ellis, 2007). For instance, two IT solutions may appear to good for the same purpose, but one is cheaper than the other; what should stop me from purchasing the cheaper one once they seem to possess similar functionalities? Since creativity fuels critical thinking, this necessitates that I should have been aware of the usefulness of each IT solution before making the final decision to purchase the expensive one (Ellis, 2007). Similar examples can be found in situations whereby people have to choose between objects that have long-lasting usefulness and the ones that could only be used for a short time. Hence, if I can constantly engaged myself in critical thinking, I believe that I could make the appropriate decision about my bad spending habit and be frugal at using money (Ellis, 2007). This entails making appropriate budgeting prior to my expenses. With this in mind, it is possible for me to overcome this problem of overspending. 10 Lastly, I consider myself quite weak in the area of settling conflicts: I normally avoid having any conflicts with my co-workers at Mayo Clinic. However, I discovered that this character occurs as a result of my poor communication skill (Cloke and Goldsmith, 2005). I notice that can overcome this weakness if I can only listen, thinking and try as much as possible to reach out to people through communication (Ellis, 2007). Communication is like a channel through which one can connect with other people around us—in this way, I will be able to reach into people’s thoughts to feel their true minds and their honest opinions about matters (Cloke and Goldsmith, 2005). Good communication erases misconceptions and bring people together to agree on issues without having to argue long and hard on them (Cloke and Goldsmith, 2005). This kind of conflict resolution ability is what I need to advance my career at Mayo Clinic as their IT Analyst. My Degree Completion Plan Based on the MBTI Assessment results outlined above, I need to undertake the follow plan in order to successfully complete my degree: Pay more attention to time management and overcome procrastination Be methodical, realistic and practical in my approaches Be more communicative and work hard to master conflict resolution skill Learn how to avoid overspending and stick to budgets Undergo critical thinking and spend more time connecting with the other people 11 References Cloke, K., and Goldsmith, J. (2005). Resolving conflicts at work: eight strategies for everyone on the job (2nd ed.). London: John Wiley and Sons. Ellis, D. (2007). Becoming a master student (12th ed.). Florence, KY: Cengage Learning. Henegar, W. (2005). Procrastination: first steps to change. Philipsburg, NJ: P& R Pub. Konig, M.E. (2007). Theory of learning styles and practical applications. Munich, Germany: GRIN Verlag. 12 Reflection on Community Service Project I had a wonderful time during my community service project. I visited an orphanage downtown and met with about thirty kids. The orphanage was established by a Christian organization that raised funds through events and fun activities in the orphanage. I played cards with the kids there and also sang “Amazing Grace” hymn to them. They were quite excited participating in the card game, and at the end of the activities, they all rushed to me to shake my hand and took my autographs. Before I finished with the orphanage on that day, I was also allowed to read books to the kids. Some of them found it difficult to understand my accent because they were only accustomed to their teachers’ accents. However, I could see smiles on their faces as they danced around and jumping up to pat my hand. I later discussed with the management at the orphanage that they should establish a culture of book-reading so that the kids could gain some knowledge outside the four walls of their orphanage. I also encouraged their teachers to use more graphic images that would show the kids about the world and the people in it. I strongly believed that if the kids are informed that they are not alone in the world, they could draw some strength from it and remain happy as they were when I visited them. I realized that kids in their positions often think that they are the unluckiest persons in the world and not fit to live. This mentality must be changed by their teachers. 13 Conclusion Self management involves series of processes: it includes but not restricted to carrying out self assessment to determine the kind of personality, learning style and time management ability. Once these assessments have been concluded, it is possible to discover some areas of weaknesses, which could be improved upon. In this paper, three major weaknesses are discussed: procrastination, overspending and conflict avoidance. Solutions are offered about how they could be dealt with. Finally, a piece on self-fulfilling community service is described in this paper. Read More