Work and everyday life, family and leisure – sometimes we alternate between work and private life, overwhelmed by all the tasks. To prevent stress from taking over your entire life, there are a few simple tricks you can use to create a better work-life balance through self-management.
The definition of self-management
Self-management is often equated with, or at least compared to, time management. In fact, effectively managing your time is only one aspect of self-management. Time always passes at the same speed and cannot be actively changed – but you can! It's entirely up to you and your self-management skills to determine how you make the most of your working time, how you plan your daily routine, and how you organize your everyday life.
There are four important factors for your self-management that will help you optimize your work and lifestyle and get more out of yourself:
1. Planning
Consider in advance what you need to do and what you want to accomplish. After you wake up, you can create a daily schedule, or a plan for the entire week. Even achieving larger life goals is the first step on the right path.
2. Organization
Good organization brings structure to your day. This allows you to avoid detours and get to your goal more directly – this also applies to your cognitive abilities. Structured thinking sharpens your focus, and you're less likely to be distracted by small details. Work with concentration and effectiveness, and then you can treat yourself to a short break, true to the motto: First work, then play.
3. Motivation
You certainly can't deny that things you enjoy are simply easier than tasks you don't feel like doing. Unfortunately, in everyday life, these unpleasant tasks also have to be done. So it's best to get them done right away, so they're off the table and can't dampen your motivation anymore. It can also be motivating to put a positive spin on negative things. Instead of thinking "I have to do this," think "I want to do this." Positive thinking allows your creative energy to flow more freely and helps you achieve success faster.
Another motivational method can be to imagine how proud you will be of yourself once you have completed your tasks and achieved your goals. A study by the Marshall School of Business using three test groups [1] shows how effective this visualization alone is. Each group was led into a room where a chocolate cake was ready and the participants were allowed to eat it. Group A was made to feel guilty about the high calories, Group B was asked to imagine how proud they would be of themselves if they forwent the pastry, and Group C was given no instructions. In fact, Group B had no problem at all ignoring the cake, in contrast to the others.
4. Goals
If you only live from day to day, you'll realize in the evening that you weren't actually productive and wasted a lot of time. There's nothing wrong with that on weekends or on vacation. But it won't get you anywhere in everyday life. Setting clear goals is therefore an important part of self-management. What do you want to have achieved by the end of the day? What professional or personal goals are you pursuing? In which area do you want to improve? Having a goal in mind sharpens your focus and continually boosts your motivation to achieve it. You can set your goals ambitiously, but they should be achievable.
Self-management is essentially about how you organize your own life efficiently and effectively, using your own resources, to achieve your goals. One of the most important goals, no matter how hard you strive, should be a good work-life balance. To increase your motivation to achieve your goals, you can use the if-then strategy. Psychologists Tanya Faude-Koivisto and Peter Gollwitzer discovered that people achieve their goals faster if they have already developed a strategy for certain situations, for example: "If my cell phone rings, I'll ignore it" or "If my colleagues are talking, I won't let myself get distracted" [2].
Motivation researcher Gollwitzer and his colleagues also discovered that it's better to keep your goals to yourself rather than share them with others [3]. Test groups of psychology students showed that those who kept their goals to themselves worked more diligently to achieve them. Those who were previously questioned about their goals seemed less motivated to achieve them.
Take-home message #1: Planning, organization, motivation, and goal setting are the four most important points in self-management.
Self-management methods
Similar to time management, self-management also uses several methods that bring better structure to the daily work routine and set priorities from high to low. In addition to the SMART method, the Eisenhower principle, and the ALPEN method, which are primarily used for better time management , the GTD method is an effective self-management technique used by managers.
The GTD method was invented by American David Allen. GTD stands for "getting things done." It means getting things done or getting things done. The method describes five steps:
Record : Make a to-do list where you write down everything that's on your mind and absolutely needs to be done. Once you've written everything down in a structured way, you can refer back to it at any time and check off the checklist. This frees up your mind for new things.
Work through : Divide your to-do list into two sections:
1. Tasks that are required. You can
- execute immediately
- delegate
- postpone until later
2. Tasks that do not require any action. You can
- directly from the list and forget again
- archive as reference material
- maybe do it sometime
Organize : To do this, divide the tasks into categories
- Next steps: Divide the tasks into context lists
- Projects: Tasks that require more than one action step
- Pending: Tasks you have delegated
- Maybe/Someday: Ideas for future projects
- Calendar: Meetings, conferences, travel
- Reference material: Archive for supporting material for ongoing projects
Control : Regularly checking your calendar and the context lists you've created always gives you an organized overview of all your to-dos. Things that have already been completed are removed from the system.
Getting things done : After organizing, the next step is to complete the tasks, which can now be done in a structured manner.
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Exercises for better self-management
To better manage your life, once you've set your goals, you should change your behavior to achieve them – both short- and long-term. Sometimes just a little more discipline, better time management, or simply saying no sometimes is enough to improve your performance. Here are a few tips and exercises to help you achieve optimal self-management:
Setting priorities : The most important discipline in self-management is to separate the important from the unimportant.
Making decisions: Sometimes it's difficult to make a decision. But you can practice that, too! Instead of weighing things up for a long time, rely on your gut feeling or your intuitive first decision. Once you've made it, stand by it, even if it has consequences. To get a feel for your intuition, you can start small: Make quick decisions about the menu, leisure activities, shopping, etc. Gradually, you'll learn to trust yourself and be more decisive, even with larger projects.
Admit mistakes : Everyone makes mistakes. For good self-management, you should accept this fact and take responsibility for a faux pas yourself, instead of blaming others. Because you can learn from mistakes and then move forward with renewed strength.
Recognize strengths and weaknesses : Self-knowledge is the first step to improvement, as the saying goes. So, question yourself and be completely honest with yourself: What are you particularly good at? And what are you not so good at? Through self-observation, you'll discover when you're most focused and productive, and when you're more likely to get in your own way. If you know your strengths, you can use them effectively to achieve better performance. You can even turn your weaknesses into strengths if you use them skillfully or compensate for them with strengths.
Practice patience : Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you still seem to have gotten no closer to your goal. But sometimes it just takes a bit of perseverance. If you notice that you haven't achieved your goals the way you imagined, they may not have been realistic. In any case, the key is to keep at it!
Continuing your education : You never stop learning, and everything new makes us more successful. So expand your skills; it might open entirely new doors and ideas you hadn't even considered before.
Take-Home Message #2: You can practice self-management. Set priorities, recognize your strengths and weaknesses, make decisions, and don't give up if you don't achieve your goals right away.
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Self-management and health: everyday life for biohackers
Essentially, as a biohacker, you already practice self-management every day when it comes to your health and mental power. You manage your diet, create a training plan, and always strive to get the best out of yourself. Your self-management goal is self-optimization. With this goal of your personal peak performance, you start the day motivated and can muster the discipline necessary to improve your performance.
Through this self-management, you take responsibility for your body and make decisions about what's good for it and what limits its development. You provide it with the nutrients it needs through food. What it lacks, you supplement with supplements to get even more energy and cognitive performance (e.g., FOCUS with vitamin B5). You maintain control over your performance and develop a strategy that leads to success. You can apply this to all areas of life.
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Studies
[1] https://msbfile03.usc.edu/digitalmeasures/macinnis/intellcont/jcp_article-1.pdf
[2] https://kops.uni-konstanz.de/bitstream/handle/123456789/17196/Faude-Koivisto_171968.pdf?sequence=2
[3] http://www.psych.nyu.edu/gollwitzer/09_Gollwitzer_Sheeran_Seifert_Michalski_When_Intentions_.pdf
