subject: Managing Yourself [print this page] If you go to work and your boss gives you a project to complete by a certain time and/or date and you decide that there are other things that you would rather do such as check your email, take a bunch of bathroom trips or catch up on your office gossip, it won't be long until you have realized that you never actually got around to doing the assignment. Suddenly, at the last minute, you find yourself pressed for time as you scramble to get your work done and turned in. In the meantime, if you had actually written out or worked out a schedule for yourself with goals of when you wanted to try to accomplish certain tasks by, then you may have just avoided all of the unnecessary confusion.
In some instances, because of past experiences of employees not being able to manage their time or themselves effectively, this can sometimes lead supervisors and/or employers to turn into the all-too-dreaded micro-managers. However, can you really blame them? After all, if you had been burned several times in the past by employees, you would probably want to make sure that future employees didn't fall into the same pattern of behavior. This is often why you will see some employers become paranoid over how much work you were actually able to accomplish within a given time frame. Some employers will even ask for an hour-to-hour or minute-by-minute break down so that they can be doubly sure that they are not getting the shorter end of the stick from someone they have hired and is paying a halfway decent salary to.
Managing yourself is especially difficult if you work from home. Because you are working from home, you don't have to worry about your boss randomly popping into your office to hang out or rather, hang over your shoulder as he or she makes sure that you are at least doing something that they have assigned you versus something they have not (such as texting your best friend about going out later that night). However, this is not to say that there aren't people who find that they are quite successful-in fact, more successful- working from home than they ever were in an office setting. There are quite a few people, myself included, who work much more effectively and efficiently from the comfort of their own, private office versus having to get up every day and battle traffic to sit in close quarters with other people who would rather chit chat then get work done.
In order to manage yourself more effectively no matter what the setting, be focused. This starts with getting enough sleep, plenty of exercise and eating right so that when it comes time to make quick decisions and think clearly at work, you will be able to. Set out goals for yourself of the things that you want to accomplish and keep track of any work that you do in either a word document or a spreadsheet to help you stay organized.
