Manage Yourself to Achieve Your Life Goals and Objectives

By Nazimudeen Saleem

In this brief book, the author stresses the need to manage our personal affairs and responsibilities and introduces a framework which is based on the model of managing an organisation by considering an individual as an entity.
The concept of ‘Individual Entity’ with a cluster of functional units of personal affairs and responsibility areas helps us plan and allocate the limited resources of time and money to manage them effectively. The author has identified eight common functional units called the Strategic Management Units (SMU) which can be analyzed and prioritized based on the basis of importance and urgency using time and money.
As an essential feature, the author first identifies and briefly analyses all the SMUs that are required to be managed effectively and attempts to help the reader understand and develop his or her own strategy based on the framework provided. Since the type of issues and the nature of problems and strategies needed differ and vary from individual to individual, examples are also provided to illustrate the different ‘Individual Status’ (IS). Moreover, the book provides a framework for the analysis of ‘individuals as organizations or entities’ in the light of the external environment in which they operate (live) and the internal environment that determines the strengths and weaknesses of an individual. Therefore, it is essential that we understand the concept called Individual Environment (IEN) or the overall environment in which the individual lives which are internal and external in nature. This would essentially help us identify and analyse the SWOT factors within the context of one’s lifecycle stage and Individual Status (IS), the author notes.
The author believes that personal affairs and responsibilities of an individual as an entity can be and should be managed responsibly and effectively in order to achieve life goals and objectives. Among several affairs and responsibilities, every individual would need to focus on a handful of core management units such as health and fitness, work and career, leisure, relationships, and sleep. All of these units would also need the input of two key resource factors noted above, time and money. Here, he also discusses how these scares resources can be allocated effectively to manage the core SMUs identified.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nazimudeen Saleem
• Release date: Nov 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005163709

Book preview

Manage Yourself to Achieve Your Life Goals and Objectives

Expert Guide to Understand and Manage Your Affairs

Preface

We need to manage ourselves to achieve our life goals and objectives. This involves managing one's personal affairs and responsibilities. It takes us to engaging in activities and tasks and even projects. This, in fact, requires us to identify and prioritize the key areas of responsibilities and efficiently allocate two vital and scarce resources; time and money. Obviously, personal affairs and responsibilities of an individual as an entity can be and should be managed effectively in order to achieve life goals and objectives. This requires the individual to focus on a handful of core individual responsibility units such as health and fitness, work and career, leisure, relationships, and sleep. This, in fact, requires the input of two key resource factors noted above. In this brief book, the author first examines these management units in detail and present a framework for managing them effectively using the limited resources of time and money. This book is an e-book of the original title `Managing Personal Affairs and Responsibilities

Nazimudeen Saleem, London. Copyright @ N Saleem November 2020.

Contents

1. Why do you need to manage yourself?

2. A Framework for managing the Individual Entity

3. The Individual Management Units (IMU)

4. Brief analysis of the Individual Management Units

5. A Framework for managing the IMUs

6. The role of Time & Money factors in IMU management

7. Micro managing the Time and Money factors

8. Step by step approach to manage your affairs

1 Why You Need to Manage Yourself?

The society we live in today is characterized by having increasing competition among individuals and diminishing opportunities for secure employment. Globalization of the world economy said to have moved the traditional center of production from the West to the emerging economies from 1990s onward. The influx of female workforce to the labor market after the Second World War may also have been a contributor to this situation at first. Another cause remains the impact of advanced technology in the production process. Moreover, ours is a liberated society in which the individual independence reigns and everyone enjoys the freedom to pursue one's own way of life.

In the meantime, the status of women has undergone unimaginable changes, which a half a century ago would have been impossible to think of. The current life-style in the West centers arounds the `individual' than the family. Even the dependent teenage children enjoy greater freedom than what their cousins would have enjoyed as grown-up individuals some fifty to seventy years ago. Moreover, the traditional conservatism of the Victorian or rather pre-war era has all disappeared gradually after the arrival of the post-war boom and `hippie era' of the 1960s. This also meant change in value system, attitude, and aspiration as well as divorcing from the traditional family-centered life-style and social structure. Individuals, both men and women, with a strong emphasis on individuality and personal freedom, have taken to live their lives rather independently. It is fair to say that women of today have been instrumental and still play a vital role in defining the current life-style. Gone are the days of nuclear family and paternal breadwinner. Not only the average family size is decreasing in the western world, but the average family income seems to dwindle too.

The technology-led modern-day world is influenced by a consumption-driven economy that is facilitated by freely available credit. It means, an educated workforce undertaking low-paid jobs, particularly in the booming service sector, but living with a burden of high level of personal debt. All these issues together with globalization and outsourcing, western world is in a dilemma with numerous challenges to face such as tackling the credit crunch in the 2007-2008s and the still stumbling economies. With increasing economic instability and an uncertain future marred by the intrusion of robotic and AI technology coupled with declining job security, survival remains the basic objective for many but for the ambitious men and women, the objectives and priorities in life are different. Aspiring to achieve and reach the top of the career ladder or the pinnacle in the corporate hierarchy drives the ambitious individuals to work harder and long hours at the mercy of family life, entertainment, leisure, and health.

Obviously, we have seen the traditional family structure crumbling and the divorce rate are also reaching all-time high in the West. Moreover, single-parent families, single households, partnership-couples and cohabitation have been growing from the late 1980s and the 1990s. Although sharing of resources and responsibilities by individuals living in a household have diminished, their desire to accomplish and perform better in an ever-competing society has not abated. This newly emerging life-style had made individuals more assertive and competitive.

Everyone in the modern society is an `individual entity' with specific values, aspirations, and expectations. This means, instead of the `family entity', where we tend to share resources and responsibilities, the `individual person' has become an organizational entity where one manages or needs to manage his or her affairs effectively. Although the word management does not seem to have appeared before within the proposed context to deal with the day to day chores of an individual, it may prove to be useful and effective in this regard. In a complex world of uncertainty, we need to think strategically. It means proactively with a vision for the future and not simply managing the day-to-day affairs.

The key objective of this brief book is to introduce the principles and the process of personal management, as we practice in the management of private and public sector organisations, to manage effectively the affairs of an individual entity. In so doing, the author identifies a number of key issue areas which act like different functional areas of a business organisation.

In business management, these areas are sometimes called the strategic business units (SBU). In the proposed framework of personal management of an individual as an entity, we like to call them as the Individual Management Units (IMU) consisting of personal Responsibility Areas (RA). Only the key RAs are identified as IMUs for every individual but some of the responsibility areas may be shared by more than one individual such as spouse, partners or children. As in any management situation, all critical issues of each IMU are to be identified and prioritized, objectives set, and strategies formulated for the day to day running as well as for the long-term operation of the `individual entity' (IE).

As an essential feature, the book examines all the SMUs that are required to be managed effectively and attempts to help the reader understand and develop his or her own strategy based on the framework provided. Since the type of issues and the nature of problems and strategies needed differ and vary from individual to individual, examples are also provided to show the different `Individual Status'. Moreover, the book provides a framework for the analysis of `individuals as organizations or