Self Management: What is going on?

Mohammad Tawfik, PhD

Table of Contents
Why are you here? .................................................................................................................................. 3 What are your life goals? .................................................................................................................... 4 SMART Objectives ................................................................................................................................... 5 Smile! The magic of a simple gesture ..................................................................................................... 5 Effectiveness vs. Efficiency How to be a better person? ..................................................................... 6 Improving yourself .............................................................................................................................. 6 Getting better with people ................................................................................................................. 7 Your brain at work (Rock, 2009) ......................................................................................................... 7 Positive Intelligence (Chamine, 2012) .................................................................................................... 8 Bibliography .......................................................................................................................................... 10

Why are you here?

How many times have you asked yourself, why am I here?? How many times did you get an answer that satisfied you? Why are you here in this class? Why are you here in this country? Why are you in the world?

I might not be able to give you an answer for any of the above questions; however, I encourage you to try to find them for yourself. Finding answers to the above questions is essential for you to know how your life is intended to satisfy you. If you do not know where you are going, any road will take you there. Lewis Carroll (Alice Adventures in Wonderland) The above quotation is quite essential for any successful life, and most importantly, for any happy life. You need to have a purpose for what you are doing in order to pursue it. If you are studying to get a degree, ask yourself, Why do I need the degree? Your goals should satisfy your needs. What do you need? Philosophers and psychologists have wondered for centuries about what makes humans happy. Is it wealth, power, health, children, strength, or something else? Abraham Maslow, (1908-1970), was a psychologist who was well known for creating a new branch of psychology named Humanistic Psychology. This field of psychology focuses on what makes people happy, rather than, why are they sad or ill. The most famous conclusion of his work was summarised in what is known as the Hierarchy of Human Needs (Maslow, 1943) which ranks the needs of humans according to their importance and assumes that a human needs to satisfy the most important need first then, pursue the satisfaction of the following one. Those needs are: Physiological Needs Need for safety and security Need of Belonging Need for esteem Need for self actualization

Later, personal development skills experts Stephen Covey (Covey, 1989) and Hyrum Smith (Smith, 1995), together with many psychologists, argued that the human needs are not hierarchical in nature, rather flat! That is, the needs of the human need to be all satisfied to certain levels for the human to live in happiness and harmony. They agreed that the human needs are the need to: Live Love and be loved Learn and Acquire new experiences Leave a legacy and feel valuable to others

Note that in this list, the need to live may include both physiological needs as well as safety needs. According to that, you are in continuous pursuit of satisfying those needs. At any particular point in time, you are working to satisfy one or more of those needs depending on the opportunities you have as well as your internal feeling of deficiency in one or more of them. Further, you might risk you life, for example, to satisfy another need such as the need to acquire new experiences such as in the case of bungee jumping or sky diving! Now, let us go back to the question that started all this: Why are you here? The above suggests that you need to set your goals in a manner that will satisfy all your needs as a human being. Accumulating wealth will not give you happiness if you lack the family or friends towards whom you feel love. Similarly, being the most famous person in the world will never make you happy if you cannot afford to pay for your basic life requirements!

What are your life goals?

Do you think that Bill Gates is successful? Do you believe that Alexander the great was successful? Are you sure whether they were happy or not? What would make YOU happy? Have you been told that success is becoming rich, having good family, being the leader of a big company, or being a great engineer? Are you sure that this is what will make you happy? What are you passions? Do you love playing music, studying mathematics, drawing pictures, building machines, teaching children, nursing ill people, swimming, or earning a lot of money? One thing I am sure about, that is, you will never be happy spending your time doing just one thing, nor will you be happy doing everything but the thing you love most! Spend time by yourself, search for your own passions, experiment with a lot of them, and surely, you will find out what it is. Then, examine your life carefully to find out what combination of socially acceptable norms and self passions could satisfy your life goals and human needs and set your plans accordingly. It's incredibly easy to get caught up in an activity trap, in the business of life, to work harder and harder at climbing the ladder of success only to discover it's leaning against the wrong wall. Stephen R. Covey Your plans have to satisfy your human needs, personal needs, and social needs. In other words, do not try to live against nature, regardless of your passions, nor against your society needs. The key word is Balance your life.

SMART Objectives
I want to live in a good environment! What do you think about that statement? I believe that most of you would agree with that statement. But, have you thought about the definition of good? Does it mean that there is no pollution, the people are happy, or the temperature is adequate? Can you live in an environment with no pollution? What makes people happy? What is an adequate temperature? I want to build an apartment building When? Where? How tall? How wide? How much will it cost? Do you have the funds? Will people want to live in it? Dont you think that answering the previous questions is essential before you start building the building? A goal or an objective needs to be Specific. An apartment building is different from a hospital building or a school building A goal needs to be Measurable. A building that covers 1000 m2 is different from one that covers 200 m2. A building that may accommodate 100 families is different from a building that can accommodate 500 students or 200 patients. A goal needs to be Action-Oriented. Do you want to build the building, or restore an old building? Do you intend to be involved in the whole process from the conceptual design down to finishing the apartment, just be a part of the design team, or actually building the building with your own hands? A goal needs to be Realistic. It is realistic to aim at building a 10 floor building in the centre of Cairo, maybe a little tough to aim at feeding all the starving people in Somalia, but impossible to raise your GPA from 2.0 in your first semester to 3.5 in your second semester! A goal needs to be Time bound. Building a new 10 floor building might not be a hard job, but planning to build it in 2 days is quite impossible. If you do not plan to graduate in the next five years from the school of engineering, might not be a good idea, while putting your plans such that you graduate sometime before you die is a much worse one! Finally, when you are setting goals for a small business projects, you might be able to specify all the above SMART aspects for all or most of your tasks, but when you are planning for your life goals, you might need to define further objectives that may help you achieve each of the main objectives.

Smile! The magic of a simple gesture

Effectiveness vs. Efficiency How to be a better person?

Improving yourself
According to the book, The seven Habits of highly Effective People (Covey, 1989), the human maturity passes through three stages: Dependent Independent Interdependent

Strictly speaking, no one can be really independent! The independence that Covey aims at is the Emotional Independence. An emotionally independent person is one whose reactions to external motivations are built on his personal values and believes rather than the inputs from the environment. According to (Smith, 1995), the 9th law states that: Your self-esteem must ultimately come from within In other words, if you are an independent person, you will not need others to make you feel happy, or force you feel sad. Satisfaction and self esteem can be generated from inside your brain and that is the essence of the first habit Be Proactive (Covey, 1989) that leads to Independence. In the search for proactivity, many scientists and world figures have mentioned a lot of statements. One of the most important ones was by the psychologist Viktor Frankel The last of human freedoms is the ability to choose one's attitude in a given set of circumstances. The second step towards independence is planning. Covey sais that you need two habits to plan properly: Begin with the end in mindand Put first things first. The first (Second habit) draws upon the importance of having major goals in your life (Life Mission) in order to be able to set your intermediate goals. The second (Third habit) involves the arrangement of tasks and objectives according to their priority in achieving your life goals. In a similar track, Hyrum Smith (Smith, 1995) introduces the laws that he believes will get you to achieve more with your time and reach more life satisfaction. The first 7 laws state that: Law 1: You control your life by controlling your time. Law 2: Your governing values are the foundation of personal fulfilment. Law 3: When your daily activities reflect your governing values, you experience inner peace. Law 4: To reach any significant goal, you must leave your comfort zone. Law 5: Daily planning leverages time through increased focus. Law 6: Your behaviour is a reflection of what you truly believe. Law 7: You satisfy needs when your beliefs are in line with reality.

In the process of planning your activities, both Covey and Smith emphasise the importance of reviewing your mission statement or life goals whenever you are setting intermediate goals or tasks in order to make sure that your activities are in line with your main objectives. Further, regular daily

or weekly planning is highly recommended for the tasks you need to do is of extreme value to true efficiency of time management.

Getting better with people

When you reach the level of Independence, according to (Covey, 1989), through embracing the first three first habits, you become ready to go through the second stage of maturity to reach Interdependence. The three habits you need to embrace to go through this stage are: Think Win-Win Seek first to understand then to be understood Synergyze

When you think win-win, you are always seeking the mutual benefit of both you and the other side of the interaction. You will never act in a win-win manner unless you truly believe that there is enough for every one (the principle of abundance). Similarly, the 10th law proposed by Hyrum Smith (Smith, 1995) states that: Give more and youll have more. That was the first step towards gaining people trust, make them feel that you care about their needs; the following step is the fifth habit: seek first to understand then to be understood. This habit needs you to activate your patience and listening skills. Listening to people and giving them the opportunity to express their point of view does not only allow you to understand it, it also gives them the feeling that you care about them and love them (satisfying two of the primary human needs discussed earlier). In the same context Dale Carnegie (Carnegie, 1937) stated two principles, among the twelve principles to Win People to Your Way of Thinking,: Principle 8 - Try honestly to see things from the other person's point of view. Principle 9 - Be sympathetic with the other person's ideas and desires.

Your brain at work (Rock, 2009)

In his book, Your brain at work, David Rock introduced an excellent model for the brain as a stage with actors playing their roles and the director trying to manage them in a way that with make the play perfect. He also presented the concept of energy needed to light the stage and retrieve actors from the audience to perform their roles. When reading the book you may come out with different important concepts such as: Prioritize prioritizing, this concept dramatises the importance of setting priorities to what you are doing as well as emphasising that it is an energy consuming process that needs to be preformed when your brain is still fresh and full of energy. The Prefrontal Cortex, that is where you perform your planning, decision making and creative thinking.

Multi-tasking decreases performance dramatically, there is no real multitasking, you just switch between tasks reducing your performance and consuming a lot of energy in the process. E-mail and instant messaging reduce your IQ to the level of a 4th grader! To increase your attention, you might need to increase your blood glucose level or just prioritize prioritizing and control spending your energy There is a limited number of information that can be held by your brain at a single time, thus, try to simplify the ideas to the simplest possible phrase to be able to handle several ones Control distractions. Internal and external distractions Managing external distractions. Switch off all communication devises when trying to focus on mental activities Internal Distractions. Most distractions are internal. The idle brain constantly creates thoughts randomly, also, ideas will normally stay in your brain for about 10 second if you do not keep them there! Your brain needs a good level of stress and alertness to work properly. Dopamine is a chemical that help your brain to work it is generated by good expectations or rewards. Humor and positive expectations generate dopamine. Fear produces adrenaline which also help attention, but it might have negative effects as well. So be careful using the fear technique so that it might not turn into panic! Over alertness reduces your capability to concentrate!!! To get out of over alertness try to activate other parts of your brain take a walk or have a shower Activate your director: Meta-cognition, or think about your thinking

Positive Intelligence (Chamine, 2012)

This book, Positive Intelligence by Shirzad Chamine (Chamine, 2012), is one that describes a lot of the everyday problems that we may face with our minds. It describes 9 different types of destructive ways of thinking and gives them names as different charactes: STICKLER: Perfectionism and a need for order and organization taken too far. PLEASER: Indirectly tries to gain acceptance and affection by helping, pleasing, rescuing, or flattering others. Loses sight of own needs and becomes resentful as a result. HYPER-ACHIEVER: Dependent on constant performance and achievement for self-respect and self validation. Highly focused on external success, leading to unsustainable workaholic tendencies and loss of touch with deeper emotional and relationship needs. VICTIM: Emotional and temperamental as a way to gain attention and affection. An extreme focus on internal feelings, particularly painful ones. Martyr streak. HYPER-RATIONAL: Intense and exclusive focus on the rational processing of everything, including relationships. Can be perceived as cold, distant, and intellectually arrogant. HYPER-VIGILANT: Continuous intense anxiety about all the dangers and what could go wrong. Vigilance that can never rest.

RESTLESS: Restless, constantly in search of greater excitement in the next activity or constant busyness. Rarely at peace or content with the current activity. CONTROLLER: Anxiety based need to take charge and control situations and peoples actions to ones own will. High anxiety and impatience when that is not possible. AVOIDER: Focusing on the positive and pleasant in an extreme way. Avoiding difficult and unpleasant tasks and conflicts.

Then the author presents different techniques that may be used to overcome those saboteurs. First, he introduces the Three gifts techniques which is based on the fact that any bad situation has its positive outcomes! Then, he introduces techniques to weaken the saboteurs, namely: Empathize o Visualize the child Explore o Curiosity and fascination of what is being explored o When exploration is needed? o Fascinated Anthropologist (power game) o Discover things as they are o Try to be fascinated by exploring how the other parts of the situation Innovate o Change the way you use to find solutions o Come up with as many ideas is you can WITHOUT evaluating the ideas o Yes And (power game) o Every idea is appreciated by getting what is good about it and then adding some more value to it o Yes, and what I love about this idea is .. and maybe we can Navigate o Check more paths o Setting main life goals and values, helps you like a compass to reach the target through different paths o Flash forward (power game) o Look back at this situation from the perspective you will have at the end of your life Activate o Get things done without procrastination o Get everything else out of your mind o Pre-empt the saboteurs (power game) o Anticipate the saboteurs actions and be ready for their attacks

At the end, he introduces some techniques to increase the muscles of the Sage or your controller. Activate your sage by being aware of your physical senses 10 seconds 100 times per days. Use your daily routines to remind you of the fitness routines; 10 to 15 minutes per day may help you and 21 days is the target to get you in the habit of PQ strength.

Bibliography
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