I’ve talked previously about managing oneself, and that was about Peter Drucker and Knowledge Work. That podcast is very popular, and it probably resonated with you. It’s one of my biggest downloads.
There’s another aspect to Managing Oneself.
I get a lot of questions like this: You might say “I’m pretty good at my Work, when I can find time to do it.”
This can be particularly challenging if you work for yourself
And we start worrying about work/life balance. We’ll address that and specifically look at management outside of our work (for money).
Drucker said: “if you want to find someone that is going to be good at managing in your organization, look for someone who manages their own affairs well”.
Managing oneself
- Hey, I’m pretty good at my work, when I can find time to do it
- what’s keeping you from focusing on your work? Well, non work.
- We see this and we think “work-life balance”
- Your brain doesn’t distinguish money-work from not-money-work – it’s focused on urgent and incomplete TASKS
- Let’s think about that
- Money-work is about 1/3 of your available time; Sleep is another 1/3 – hard to manage productivity here; Therefore 1/3 of your life might not be well controlled
- Hard boundaries are not possible and not (actually) desirable. Therefore, We need to manage our attention in that 1/3
- But, work and ‘not-work’ are too vague, we need more categories
- Management mindset.
- Simple – take ownership of your system and subcategorize your money-work within that system
- Special topics: I don’t want to manage my “life”
- We seem to be comfortable with managing the things we do for money, less with the other stuff.
- Therefore, the “not-money-work” category is vague and mushy
- Recognize: we’re doing tasks on the things that don’t earn us money. But still, we don’t want our people to feel ‘managed’.
- So, let’s divide that 1/3 into relationships and not-relationships
Money roles
- There are money roles in your life, those are largely defined by other people.
- Special topics: Multitasking over roles
- We might try to multitask over roles.
- Bad idea: how wonderful of a parent are you when your child is dragging their feet getting ready to go to go to school, and you have to get to work?
Relationships
- Relationships can usefully absorb all the attention that you can put towards them.
- Relationships
- People want to be known and understood – mere physical presence is not attention
- Shared experiences (i.e. things to do ~ tasks)
- Some of it is “heart-to-heart” talks
- The rest is “I’ll help you meet your goals” (i.e. tasks)
- Relationship Task hierarchy
- Top level tasks – doing a task we “enjoy” and interacting while we do it
- Next level – one participant and one observer – tricky
- “bottom” level – occupying the same time and space while both people are being entertained together on the same subject – limited interaction. (TV?)
- Let me plan these, so I can give you my attention
- Special topics: hobbies and other growth roles
- Activities like cooking, golf, or fishing
- If there are one or two areas in which you want to be excellent, okay, that’s probably a hobby
- If other people who are important to you share you’re hobby, take advantage of that.
Maintenance roles
- Make them easier, less attention intensive
- I may love the person that I’m doing them for, but I don’t love the task, not a hobby.
- A well maintained car is a car that doesn’t produce emergencies. Nobody is telling you how clean your car needs to be
- Who sets the standards in your life? You do!
- Special topics: Entertainment and “relaxation”
- We’ve adopted entertainment as a relaxation technique and we indulge our base curiosity. Let’s not call it something that it’s not.
Let’s apply management philosophy to those maintenance tasks in our lives.
- I think we can usefully focus on the maintenance roles and managing them very tightly, doing the work to minimize the amount of attention that they require.
- Manage = scope the amount of attention required based on meeting the standards
Examples of managing maintenance tasks. Check point: What is your standard here and why?
- Example – Standards for visitors at my house
- I like to have my buddies over from time to time. I just want you to come over and spend time with you.
- But we invite our friends over, and we think our house needs to look like a Southern Living photo shoot.
- So, if I can’t put forth that time and effort, then I just don’t invite people over. Well, what’s the what’s the goal?
- The comparison trap: think about those standards, and where you get them.
- Example of a maintenance task and standards
- “premium gas is recommended for better performance”.
- I experimented and am convinced that there is no performance improvement by running premium gas in my car.
- “this sticker subsidized by ExxonMobil”
Back to Peter Drucker: If you want to find somebody that’s a good manager in your organization, find somebody that’s a good manager in their own stuff.”
- Managing maintenance tasks
- Track them. Think about them.
- “What’s the standard?” “Is that the right standard?” Then, “How can I efficiently meet that standard?”
Refers to Episode 17:
https://dobusyright.com/managing-oneself-peter-drucker-and-the-second-quarter-of-the-21st-century-dbr-017/