25 Self management for library managers

 

 

I. Objectives

 

The objectives of the unit/module are to:

 

  • Discuss the need for self management for library and information professionals;
  • Elaborate to manage the mind, perceptions, emotions, consciousness, etc. to manage work in libraries;
  • Identify key areas in life for self management;
  • Devise a plan for self management;
  • Impose self discipline for becoming a successful professional; and
  • Able to manage time for carrying out various activities.

 

II. Learning Outcomes

 

After going through this unit/module, you would learn about the need for self management for library and information professionals by managing the mind, perceptions, emotions, consciousness, etc. to manage work in libraries. You would also learn key areas for self management, plan for self management, self discipline for becoming a successful professional, and manage time for carrying out various activities.

 

III. Structure

 

1.         Introduction

 

2.         Self management

 

2.1.  Managing your body

 

2.2.  Managing your mind

 

2.3.  Managing your perceptions

 

2.4.  Managing your emotions

 

2.5.  Managing your neuro-sensory system

 

2.6.  Managing your consciousness

 

3. Reflection and action plan for self management

 

4. dentifying key areas in your life

 

5. Where do you want to go?

   6. The milestones of success

 

7. Setting up agenda for change

 

8. Self discipline

 

9. Time management

 

10. Summary

 

11. References

 

1. Introduction

 

At the beginning of the first time period, analytical skills dominated the profile of the successful managers – we had to be able to select rationally from among many growth options. In contrast, the tasks of today require additional qualities, like imagination, inventiveness and the capability to understand systems of ever increasing complexity. These qualities, part of a larger shift in our methods of perceiving and capturing reality, build on powers of the personality we have ignored for a long time, that is, the power of intuition and management of one’s self.

 

Most managers admit that decision making or judgment is a complex mix of analysis, incomplete knowledge and intuition. This shift, with the emphasis being put on intuition creates a new context in which a good number of managers do not know how to function. The second reason is that the number of managers who are enchanted with their work appear to be increasing. They not only fail to get the satisfaction they rightfully should expect from their jobs, but often they find that they are not able to develop their full potential as human beings. More and more managers seem to yearn for a better equilibrium as human beings, even though it is often difficult to speak about it openly.

 

Management is a lifelong learning process. There are always new management techniques, new methods of administration, new ways to deal with the effects of varying trends and complex issues in the library environment, and new technologies for meeting the needs of library staff and patrons. Library managers with self-knowledge are usually aware of their competencies and their weaknesses, and that helps them run the library effectively. Awareness of gaps in personal skills and willingness to learn and to improve is important to develop one’s own self development as well as self management.

 

2. Self Management

 

“Self management is the process of maximizing our time and talents to achieve worthwhile goals based on a sound value system.” Self management is ongoing: It is not something we do only once or occasionally. Time and talents are unique personal resources which we alone can manage. In essence, this is all we have to offer and can really manage. Goals are the outcomes of our efforts, planned-for achievements. To be truly worthwhile, such goals must be rooted in a sound value system. Ultimately, we move toward that which we value. Understanding our personal values is critical to the process of self management.

 

Self management is the ability to manage one’s personal reactions to responsibilities and challenges in work and life. This involves managing time and adapting to changing situations. Self management is a reflection on one’s own experiences and their effect on one’s physical and mental state.

 

Self management is important to succeed in one’s life as well as career. There are various techniques and methods that could help an individual to manage one’s self better. Regular feedback helps an individual to identify the techniques appropriate for a situation. The techniques such as to develop personal confidence, develop positive attitude, learn from feedback, reward self, develop effective strategies, learn to be patient, etc. will help curtail stress, manage time and stay motivated in life and work situations.

 

This module contributes to answering the questions of how to manage our self in order to achieve a healthy balance between the different levels of our existence and how to improve performance in the interest of accelerating change and uncertainties through management by detached involvement. This leads to asking the following questions:

 

–          Are you as a manager, living for business, or are you in the business of living?

 

–          Are you interested in adding years to your life, or life to your years?

 

–          Is your main interest in making yourself a living, or making a life for yourself?

 

To answer these questions, you need to help yourself to manage your thoughts, your feelings and your emotions effectively. You need to make an attempt toward the management of your ‘consciousness’ as well as your body and mind besides explaining the methodology for reflection and action plan.

 

2.1      Managing your body

 

It is the duty of each developed person to train his or her body to the highest degree of perfection so that it may be used to pursue his or her spiritual purpose. There are five major areas in which body management can be pursued and potentially the human body enhanced.

 

a) Diet: Analyze your usual diet in the context of your life style, and check whether it is adequate in terms of calorie requirement, taste, and other nutritional values.

b) Exercise: Yoga or Aerobics; you have to develop the most suitable mix for yourself on the basis of your health, inclination and available time. Whatever you choose, you should do it regularly at the same time every day.

c) Breathing: The process of breathing is your life force and your physical and mental health depends on it. It would be beneficial to follow any good book on Yoga by a reputed author and include some of the basic exercise in your daily routine.

d) Recreation and relaxation: Recreation and relaxation relieve stress. They also contribute to the healthy and balanced growth of various organs and systems of the body including the brain centres and hemispheres. Truly focus on enjoyment and really relax and feel good.

e) Achieving wellness: Managing your body and keep it healthy and effective is an essential precondition for managing yourself. The motivation should not be merely to cure or prevent illness, but to achieve and sustain ‘wellness’.

 

The ideas described above for managing your body, along with the exercises that you may choose, if pursued regularly, should enable you to start the process of managing yourself with a relaxed, radiant and energized body.

 

2.2     Managing your mind

 

Managing yourself implies managing your life. Life is a series of experiences. Experience involves an interaction between the internal dynamics within yourself – your body, mind and emotions – with the external dynamics in the environment – people, things, ideas and events. You cannot fully manage the external environment, but you can manage your internal dynamics – if you so choose. This choice depends on the nature of your ‘thinking’. But, unfortunately, most managers do not think about what they are thinking about!

 

In fact, thinking is an operating skill, or instrument – like any instrument you can use it or abuse it. However, while utilizing thinking as a process or an instrument we frequently commit several errors. For instance, you sometimes find that what appears to be logically valid, could be perceptionally invalid. Such contradictions are accentuated when your ego or emotions are involved: you become locked into a set of initial reactions which narrow your perspective. In this state your limited objectivity restricts your thinking ‘space’ and you have only a partial view of whatever you are thinking about.

 

Just as there are blocks to thinking there are also aids to thinking. There are certain attention directors or aids to focusing which help you to concentrate or focus attention. Edward de Bano has suggested several interesting techniques in his books. It is important for every manager to ensure that he or she develops ‘balanced’ thinking.

 

2.3 Managing your perceptions

 

On the basis of heredity and environment every one develops certain attitudes – notions, beliefs, and viewpoints – which influence your responses and reactions to any situation. Your inner experiences, which result from your reactions, therefore depend on these attitudes or view points. The implication of this is that if you want to alter your inner experience (that is your thinking, feelings and behaviour) you can do so by altering your attitudes, and this can only be done if you understand the process by which your attitudes are formed. The ability to perceive people, things and situations in a variety of perspectives is of great value in conflict management; if you are able to see and understand another person’s viewpoint the chances of resolving conflict are much greater.

 

There are a variety of ways in which you become ‘trapped’ in a particular ‘groove’ of thinking, or into a rigid mental habit. If you become aware of such traps, you may be able to avoid them and develop a more open, flexible and even creative mind.

 

2.4 Managing your emotions

 

Emotion, the third dimension of the self, is in fact, the most subtle and complex of the three to manage. Overall, as a human being, you have to manage a physical body, mental faculties, emotional sensitivity, sensory stimuli, and different levels of consciousness. The usual response to the question, “What do you want in your life?” is happiness, satisfaction, harmony, love and joy. All these are feelings. In other words, all our activities are ultimately geared toward achieving “happiness”. Yet all too often you end up with negative feelings such as frustration, anger, fear and anxiety. It is, therefore, of vital importance that we examine why a significant amount of human experience consists of negative emotions. The more frequently experienced feelings, both positive and negative, are those as follows:

 

• Positive: Love, Joy, Pleasure, Satisfaction, etc.

 

• Negative: Fear, Regret, Anger, Sadness, guilt, Embarrassment, Frustration, etc.

 

Negative feelings have adverse consequences in our bodies, minds and ultimately on our performance. Negative feelings are like mental poisons, possibly resulting in all sorts of physical diseases. The event is the same whereas, depending upon our subjectivities, beliefs ad perceptions, behaviours are different. You used to manage your expectations for preventing or minimizing negative emotions. Negative stress results from the gap between your expectations and their achievement or fulfillment. On the basis of this realization we can develop the following “happiness formula”:

 

H (Happiness) = A (Achievement) ÷ E (Expectation)

 

If our expectation is zero, even the slightest achievement or fulfillment will result in infinite happiness. By remaining detached from the expectation of actual results, while keeping in touch with your intentions and commitment to them, you give greater attention and energy to your efforts. As a consequence you are not only successful but you do not incur negative emotions, tensions, frustrations, or stress. In fact you experience full joy and satisfaction at all times. This success and satisfaction emerge from pursuing your objectives with detached involvement.

 

We perform much better when we are free of anxiety or tension and particularly when we enjoy the process – it becomes almost effortless. Remember there is no stress in the world, there is only stressful thinking.

 

2.5 Managing your neuro-sensory system

 

Broadly speaking, you have four basic drives: two physical (sexual and kinesthetic), intellectual and emotional. Depending upon which of these drives is dominant at a given moment, your ‘mind’ will register that segment of incoming stimuli which satisfies that particular drive. The ‘information’ that is distilled or filtered through our sensory receptors and psychological drives is your ‘input’. This is then ‘processed’ together with stored ‘data’ in your ‘memory box’ consisting of thoughts, images and beliefs. Such data processing results in an ‘output’ that is to say what your experience, at two levels. One level is internal in your body. The other is external, in the form of your ‘behaviour’, both verbal and non-verbal.

 

Neuro-sensory activity is a kind of ‘live wiring’ within yourself. It is therefore of utmost importance to understand this neuro-sensory activity and to develop the skills and competencies to manage the same. This will enable you to manage your experiences, yourself, your work and your life.

 

2.6 Managing your consciousness

 

Consciousness can be viewed as a form of awareness. There are different levels of awareness ranging from state of walking, dreaming, deep sleep, transcendence, lucid awareness, creativity, to cohesive consciousness. Awareness can be of two types, namely, of the ‘self’ and of other ‘objects’. Within awareness of yourself, you can be aware of both your individual self and of your ‘being’ level or ‘pure’ self. Similarly, awareness of other objects is either absolute or relative.

 

Meditation is a ritual skill for managing consciousness. Meditation is mental process which enables us to be aware of, access, and achieve different levels of mind and states of consciousness or awareness. It is like turning an instrument ‘readying it for playing’. It enables you to generate an inner state or context in which not only you experience a ‘joyous energy’, but also open up a few intuitive knowing.

 

3. Reflection and Action Plan for Self Management

 

Take a moment of your time and reflect on the following issues:

 

  • What are you doing with your life?
  • What have you achieved so far?
  • What is your purpose in life?
  • Why are you doing what you are doing?
  • Do you consider yourself a success?
  • Are you happy?
  • Are you contented or complacent?
  • Are you dissatisfied or disillusioned?
  • Are you getting up every morning ready to live another brand new day, or are you living the same old life every day?
  • Are you living life to the fullest or are you merely existing?

 

If you are getting somewhere with your life, achieving what you want to achieve, generally contented – it is great, well done!. You are well in charge of your life. You are probably happy and managing yourself well. But if you:

 

  • Feel that you are not living life to the fullest.
  • Want to change, but somehow have not been able to get started.
  • Feel uncertain about where you are really going.
  • Lack of motivation to want more.
  • Have a need to prioritize and choose every time.

 

Then you need a crash course. Inside each of us is the Creator, Executor, and Judge of our destiny. You only decide what you will make of your life. You only will decide how you want to spend your resources and direct your entire journey of life. You are master of your own life and destiny. Most of us get through life by trial and error. There is a way to get more out of life. There are three strategic questions:

 

–          Where are we now?

 

–          Where do we want to go?

 

–          How do we get there?

 

Remember, a journey of thousand miles always begins with the first step. Only you can decide for your own meaning of happiness or savoir the taste of success.

 

4. Identifying Key Areas in Your Life

 

You need to define your own key areas. Begin by making a list of what you deem to be the important facets of your life. These may be the following:

 

  • Your career
  • Your relationships
  • Your health
  •  Your wealth

 

Uncover the present status and with imagination using the following quadrant, you can draw a picture of “Where you are now”.

This will give a snapshot of lack of the key areas in life. With the picture in sight, it will be easier for you to examine and answer the issues relating to “Where do you want to go”.

 

Are you happy with the total picture you see in respect of each key areas of your life? Are you choosing the key areas at the expense of others? Are you pursuing wealth at the expense of health? This should help you to assess yourself and point the way to where you feel changes and improvement are required to lead a more balanced life. Too much wealth with no health to enjoy it is useless. Too much wealth and health with no one to share them with is equally disturbing.

 

 

5. Where Do You Want To Go?

 

The ability to visualize vividly what your destination looks like – what success and happiness actually mean – will have a dramatic effect on your ability to manage and control yourself. When you know for sure what you want and can visualize it, actualizing the result is a relatively easy step. What you need to do is to look at individual key areas (you have decided) and defining your personal combinations, which will result in the pursuit of things that are important to you.

 

By doing this, you will avoid choosing the key areas at the expense of another. Hopefully, the combination you develop will balance the things in excess and the things lacking in the key areas of your life. The choice is in your hands. When you have done that you will have committed your thoughts in writing so that in the end you would have produced a ‘script’ of your life.

 

Self management or ‘Managing Self’ is like making a movie. In this movie, you are the producer, director, actor and you write the script and decide who will be the supporting players. The good news is that you can decide whether the movie is going to be box office hit or destined to be telecast between three and five o’ clock in the morning.

 

The process of visualization involves mentally seeing, feeling, emotionalizing, what success is all about. When the picture is insight sharpen and focus it by including as many details as you possibly can. Then step back, freeze the picture and write it down.

 

6. The Milestones of Success

 

Sun, that is where you want to reach, and that is what you have visualized for yourself. Let us see how you can get there in three steps:

 

Step 1: Setting up milestones.

 

Step 2: Setting up your belief mechanism.

 

Step 3: Setting up an agenda for change.

 

The characteristics of a good milestone are: SMARTY

 

–          Specific

 

–          Measurable

 

–          Achievable

 

–          Realistic

 

–          Trackable

 

–          Yours

 

You can alter or change the milestones as needed so that they remain valid and realistic. Your plan should be reviewed when the circumstances change.

 

Remember, everything starts with a thought. Our thoughts govern our emotions. Our emotions dictate how we behave. Our behavior and action create reality which makes dreams come true. It is, therefore, important that you firmly believe that your dream will come true. Therefore, the very first task you have for managing yourself is to manage the thought process. And the first thought in our journey to success is to believe that we can and will reach our destination.

 

7. Setting up Agenda for Change

 

Identify the gap between situation now and the next milestone in respect of each key area. When you have done that, your ‘gap analysis’ will have given you a foundation to make the agenda for change. The agenda for change should contain answers to one basic question “what would you have to specifically do to reach the milestone?”

 

The agenda is, therefore, an action plan containing specific things you will do to propel you to the desired destination. Draw out clearly your goals, make plans and create a list of the most important; the most urgent; the most wanted things in your life. Remember successful people succeed because of two Ds, i.e., ‘Decision’ and ‘Discipline’. Do not let excuses prevent your dreams from becoming reality. Half- hearted efforts always get incomplete results. So, involve yourself totally.

 

Good luck on your journey to success and happiness. And when you do succeed, please remember to give back to the society what society has abundantly given to you. The world would be a perfect place if everyone just did that.

 

8. Self Discipline

 

The golden thread of a highly successful and meaningful life is self discipline. Discipline allows you to do all those things you know in your heart that you should do but never feel like doing. Without self discipline, you will not set clear goals, manage your time effectively, treat people well, persist through the tough times, care for your health or think positive thoughts.

 

It is simply getting tough with you. Actually it is a very loving gesture. By being stricter with yourself, you will begin to live life deliberately, on your own terms rather than simply reacting to life the way a leaf floating in a stream drifts according to the flow of the current on a particular day.

 

The tougher you are on yourself, the easier life will be on you. The quality of your life ultimately is shaped by the quality of your “choices and decisions”, one that ranges from career choice to the books you read at the time that you wake up every morning and the thoughts you think during the hours of your days. When you continuously flex your will power by making those choices that you know are the right ones (rather than the early ones), you take back control of your life. Effective fulfilled people do not spend their time doing what is most convenient and comfortable. They have the courage to listen to their heart and to do the wise things. This habit is what makes them great. “The successful person has the habit of doing the things failures don’t like to do” – E M GREY. They don’t like doing them either, necessarily. But their disliking is subordinated to the strength of their purpose.

 

The 19th century English writer Thomas Henry Huxley arrived at a similar conclusion, noting: “Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it is ought to be done, whether you like it or not.

 

And Aristotle made this point of wisdom in yet another way: “Whatever we learn to do, we learn by actually doing it; for instance, by doing self-controlled acts, we come to be self controlled; and by doing brave acts, we become brave.”

 

9. Time Management

 

While a vast majority of people confess faltering to come to grips with it, extremely few can claim to have made the most of it. How is it that they have got it all done? It is because they have managed a way to figure out how to manage their time effectively. Time management is more than just managing time. It is about controlling the use of the most valuable – and undervalued- resource. It is managing oneself in relation to time. Time management is about setting priorities and taking charge of the situation and time utilization. It means changing those habits or activities that cause waste of time. It is being willing to adopt habits and methods to make maximum use of time. One cannot control time as one can control other resources, such as financial capital, physical capital, human capital, information, etc., one can only control how one uses it. Time cannot be replaced or re-created. It is therefore not for us to choose whether we spend or save time but to choose only how we spend it.

 

10. Summary

 

Self management is an essential part of being human, and also is the state of mind that occurs when you focus on yourself. If one is not able to manage self,managing other will be a difficult task one has to face in the real life and work situations. Self management is all about knowing self to manage self and involves managing time and adapting to situations. Self management improves efficiency; it bestows peace, cheer and equanimity and equips one to handle the complexities of life in a balanced way. Self management is important to realize satisfaction to sustain motivation for further progress in life and career.

 

11. References

 

1.    Gordon, R S (2004), “The accidental library manager.” Medford, NJ: Information Today. 362 p.

2.    “Handbook on soft skills for public managers.” Hyderabad: Centre for Good Governance. 358 p.

3.    Hariharan, Meena and Rath, Radhanath (2008), “Coping life with stress: The

Indian experience”. New Delhi: Sage. 286 p.

4.    Palmer, Sally (1998), “People and self management”. Woburn, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann. 241 p.

5.    Parmar, Shalini, Saxena, Manjula and De, Trilokes (2012), “Self management vis-à-vis educational management. Unit 4.” Available at: http://www.egyankosh.ac.in/handle/123456789/40288

6.    Kirkpatrick, Doug (2010), “What is self management?” Available at: http://self-managementinstitute.org/about_self-management/

7.    Sabhlok, B M (2011), “Training module on self development.” Chandigarh: MGSIPAP. (Unpublished).

8.    “Self development Omnibus.” New Delhi: Research Press, 2008.

9.    Sreedhar, C P (2003), “Training module on personality development.” Sponsored by Department of Personnel & Training, Government of India and UNDP. Thiruvananthapuram: IMG.

10.  Srinivasan, N S and Balasubramanian (2003), “Brain re-engineering: the art of

being mentally tough”. New Delhi: Response. 217 p.

11.  Timm, Paul R. (1993), “Successful self-management: Increasing your personal

effectiveness.” USA: AXZO Press. 72 p.

12.  Wilson, Lucile (1996), “People skills for library managers: A common sense guide

for beginners.” Englewood: Libraries Unlimited. 125 p.

 

Learn More

  • Managing Self Tips http://www.liraz.com/tselman.htm
  • 12 rules for Self Management http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/12-rules-for-self -management.html
  • Managing Self and Personal skills http://www.bris.ac.uk/staffdevelopment/professional-behaviours/managing-skills.html
  • Managing self http://www.euromedyouth.net/IMG/pdf/tkit1.pdf
  • Building self confidence http://www.mindtools.com/selfconf.html
  • 5 ways to promote creative thinking and idea generation http://leeiwan.wordpress.com/2006/08/28/5-ways-to-promote-creative-thinking-and-idea-generation/
  • Time and Task Management for the Library Professional – http://ala-apa.org/newsletter/2011/01/01/3951/
  • Anger Management in the Library Workplace http://ala-apa.org/newsletter/2011/01/01/going-postal-in-the-library-anger-management-in-the-library-workplace/
  • Motivation: The Care and Feeding of Library & information science Professionals  http://ala-apa.org/newsletter/2010/07/12/motivation-the-care-and-feeding-of-library-information-science-professionals/
  • Self-Awareness and Personal Development http://www.wright.edu/~scott.williams/LeaderLetter/selfawareness.htm
  • How to Manage Your Self (And Massively Boost Your Productivity) http://www.easisell.com/blog/how-to-manage-your-self-and-massively-boost-your-productivity.pdf

Did you Know

 

  1. Self management is a reflection on one’s own experiences and their effect on one’s physical and mental state.
  2. Managing yourself implies managing your life. Life is a series of experiences. Experience involves an interaction between the internal dynamics within yourself – your body, mind and emotions – with the external dynamics in the environment – people, things, ideas and events.
  3. Self management or ‘Managing Self’ is like making a movie. In this movie, you are the producer, director, actor and you write the script and decide who will be the supporting players.