Developing Career and Life Decisions

SELF-MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES

Self-management skills help people take control of their thoughts, feelings,

and actions. Having these skills allows them to set goals independently and
work toward achieving them.

The following are examples of self-management skills:

 Organization - being organized helps in planning, prioritizing, and

carrying out important activities, which enables you to manage your
essential workplace responsibilities
 Goal Setting - being able to clearly and definitely know what you
want to achieve helps in prioritizing and coming up with an action plan
that lets you reach your goals
 Time Management - having strong time management skills enables
you to work on tasks with no distractions, defined priorities and clear
focus, which helps set and meet deadlines and become highly
productive.
 Self-motivation - completing tasks while encouraged by your desire
to succeed and not by external factors allows you to be more
productive and progressive with your projects and activities in the
workplace.
 Stress Management - managing stress can be done through different
activities such as maintaining a healthy diet, exercising regularly,
meditation and journaling. It is important to have this skill so that you
can remain calm and manage your emotions in times of stress, and
keep steady progress at work.
 Accountability - being able to maintain responsibility for your actions
and thoughts helps in evaluating work and determining the best way to
move forward.

The following are ways in improving self-management skills:

MANAGING EMOTIONS AT WORK

Here are some tips on how to manage emotions at work:

Gibbs Reflective Cycle

The Gibbs Reflective Cycle, created by American sociologist and psychologist

Graham Gibbs in 1988, set up a systematic way of thinking about what
people experienced during a specific event.
Step 1: Description
o Detail the situation, event and activity without going into the
conclusion. Make sure all information is complete.
o Helpful questions asked:
o What happened?
o When and where did it happen?
o Who were the people involved?
o What actions were done by the people involved? What was
the result?
Step 2: Feelings
o Discuss the feelings felt and thoughts that came up during the
event. They do not need to be discussed in detail, but awareness of
these thoughts and feelings must be obtained.
o Helpful questions asked:
o What did you feel before the event happened?
o What did you feel during and after?
o How do you think others felt during and after the event?
Step 3: Evaluation
 o Assess if the experience described in Step 1 was good or bad.
Determine what approach was effective and how it worked, and
what approach was not. Be as objective as you can be.
o Helpful questions asked:
o What went well during the event?
o Why did it go well?
o What didn’t go well?
o What did you contribute?
o What did other people contribute?
Step 4: Analysis
o Identify the learnings obtained from the situation to help you know
what to do in case something similar happens in the future. Steps 3
and 4 are usually done alongside together.
Step 5: Conclusion
o In this step, think about what else you could have done in the
situation in hindsight. Use the information from the preceding steps
to help you come up with a good conclusion.
o Helpful questions asked:
o What were the positive and negative effects of the
situation?
o What will you do differently if it happens again in the
future?
o What skills do you need to develop to deal with such a
situation?
Step 6: Action Plan
o Come up with actions to be taken in future situations. Refer to the
conclusions identified in Step 5 when making concrete promises to
yourself on how to deal with such situations.

DEVELOPING AND MAINTAINING POSITIVE ATTITUDE AT WORK

Your career and life at work are influenced by your attitude. It is important to
have a positive attitude in the work to have the following benefits:

 Foster a positive workplace environment

 Limit stress
 Increase levels of productivity
 Give more energy
 Improve relationship with clients and workmates
 Demonstrate capacity as a leader
 Develop decision-making skills
 Inspire others
Here are ten ways in developing and maintaining positive attitude in
the workplace:
DEVELOPING
 Do not engage in office gossip. Gossip disrupts the morale and trust in
a team.
 Lessen your complaints. Reflecting on when and why you complain
helps you come up with more positive and productive ways to respond
to the issue.
 Make your vocabulary more positive
 Smile more often. Smiles are contagious and lift up moods.
 Do good things without expecting anything in return. Acts of kindness
and selflessness can lead to your work mates appreciation, thus
making you feel good.
MAINTAINING
 Get enough rest. Resting and having sufficient sleep contribute to a
good mood and clear mind.
 Take breaks when needed. It helps refresh your mindset and lessen the
potential of stress and negativity.
 Be grateful and appreciative. Focus on the good things that have
happened.
 Keep visual reminders to help you maintain a positive viewpoint in
times of stress.
 Surround yourself with positive people. Like smiles, a positive attitude
is contagious, which is why it is good to keep interacting with people
who can share their positivity.

BOOSTING SELF-CONFIDENCE

Self-confidence is your belief in how good you are at something, or how likely
you are going to accomplish a task. However, it does not actually measure
your skill.

Here are some ways to improve your self-confidence:

Be ‘hyper honest’ with yourself

If you find yourself hesitating or wanting to hide something about yourself,
then it means you have to consider if you need to stop doing it completely or
start accepting that fact about yourself and owning it.
Start working out.
Exercise helps in improving your mood. Also, committing to this habit makes
noticeable physical improvements in your body and health, which can
translate to self-confidence.
Try things that make you uncomfortable.
Training yourself to do things you are uncomfortable with gradually stretches
you are comfortable with gradually stretches your comfort zone until you are
able to feel comfortable even outside of it.
Try a new look.
Wear clothes that you feel great in so it can translate to your overall self-
confidence.
Defy your impostor syndrome.
The impostor syndrome is an idea that makes you doubt your skills and
accomplishments, and that you are a fraud. Fight it by writing down the
things you can do very well do it will be easier to remember them when you
need a confidence boost.
Adjust your posture.
An act as simple as sitting up straight can help you feel more confident in
what you do.

Self-Regulation Theory

The self-regulation theory (SRT) details the components and processes in

deciding on your thoughts, feelings, words, and actions. The SRT posits that
the following factors determine our behavior:

 Personal standards of good behavior

 Our drive to meet those standards
 Our level of awareness of our actions and situation
 Range of our willpower to avoid temptations and choose the best path

Four Components of SRT according to Roy Baumeister

1. Standards - of desirable behavior;

2. Motivation - to meet standards;
3. Monitoring - of situations and thoughts that precede breaking
standards;
 4. Willpower - allowing one’s internal strength to control urges.

These four components are interconnected to help establish our self-

regulatory activity.

Empathy Mapping

An empathy map is a tool used to help you better understand your clients
and their needs. It has four (4) quadrants that signify key traits that clients
demonstrated during the observation or research stage, such as what they
said, did, thought, and felt. The following are steps in empathy mapping:

Step 1: Fill up the empathy map

 Create 4 quadrants on a board or paper

 Look back on your notes, videos, and other recordings of the research
or observation, and take note of the following:

o What the client said - include significant quotes and keywords

o What the client did - describe, illustrate, or take pictures of

actions or behaviors
 o What the client thought of - this must be based on careful
observation and analysis about the client’s thoughts,
motivations, goals, needs, desires, and beliefs

o How the client felt - this must also be carefully tackled. This can
be gauged through subtle cues like body language, choice of
words and tone of voice.

Step 2: Synthesize the needs

 Make a synthesis of your client’s needs using the empathy map as

your reference to help you determine your design challenge.

 Remember that the needs must be verbs or action words, which signify
activities and desires.

 Determine your client’s needs using your observed traits, more

specifically the contradiction between two traits. This refers to the
disconnect between what the client says and what the client does.

 You may use Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to help you

understand and define your client’s underlying needs. Refer to this
hierarchy also to determine which need must be prioritized:
achieving a person's full potential, including creative activities
prestige and feeling of accomplishment
intimate relationships, friends
security, safety
food, water, warmth, rest

 Write down the identified needs of the client.

Step 3: Synthesize your insights

 Insight refers to your own realizations that can help solve the design
challenge.

 Combine the insights that you had, especially the ones about the
contradictions between two of the client’s attributes.
 Write down your insights.