SELF-MANAGEMENT
Self-management, also referred to as ‘self-control,’ is the ability to control one’s emotions, thoughts
and behaviour effectively in different situations.
This also includes motivating oneself, and setting goals. People with strong self-management skills
are better in doing certain things better than others. Therefore, employers too strongly prefer people
with good self-management skills.
BASICS OF SELF-MANAGEMENT
To perform well at work and life in general, you must be able to manage and improve yourself in
various skills including discipline and timeliness, goal-setting, problem solving, teamwork,
professionalism, etc. Once you develop your personality and abilities in these areas,you will be able
to succeed in personal as well as professional life.
Skills you must master to succeed in life:
SELF-AWARENESS: Ask for honest feedback. Gather insights on your personality and work-specific
proficiencies. Think about your daily interactions and how you handled situations well or could have
handled them differently.
RESPONSIBILITY: Taking responsibility for your tasks is very important. Taking ownership is the step
towards self-development. For example, if you have been assigned a task by a teacher; ensure you
take complete ownership. Even if you are unable to complete the task on time, you must report it
and then correct it.
TIME MANAGEMENT: Prioritise the things you have to do. Remove waste and redundancy from
work. Make a time table and follow it diligently.
ADAPTABILITY: Stay current with best practices and read up on new information always. Prepare
yourself for new changes, so that you can transition seamlessly.
STRESS MANAGEMENT
Have you ever felt worried that you will not pass in an exam?
Do you feel pressurised when people around you bring up certain topics for discussion (issues that
you are not comfortable with)?
Do you fear that you will be unsuccessful in life?
If yes, then you are going through stress. Stress motivates you to achieve more but when you are
under stress for a prolonged period of time, it can cause health problems and mental troubles as
well.
WHAT IS STRESS?
Stress can be defined as our emotional, mental, physical and social reaction to any perceived
demands or threats. These demands or threats are called stressors. Stressors are Stress the reason
for stress.
For example,
• you are too close to the exams but feel unprepared.
• you are worried about what people would think of you if you don’t dress well or cannot speak
confidently.
• you are stressed due to lack of sleep.
Class 10/AI 1 Self Management
STRESS MANAGEMENT
Stress is a part of everyday life. There are many instances when stress can be helpful.
A fire alarm is intended to cause stress that alerts you to avoid danger.
The stress created by a deadline to finish a paper can motivate you to finish the assignment on time.
But when experienced in excess or for a long period of time, stress has the opposite effect. It can
harm our emotional and physical health, and limit our ability to function well at home, in school and
within our relationships.
Managing stress is about making a plan to be able to cope effectively with daily pressures.
The ultimate goal is to strike a balance between life, work, relationships, relaxation and fun.
By doing this, you are able to deal with daily stress triggers and meet these challenges head
on.
Always keep in mind the ABC of stress management
A: Adversity or the stressful event
B: Beliefs or the way you respond to the event
C: Consequences or actions and outcomes of the event
Stress management can help you to
• have a joyful life.
• focus and complete tasks on time.
• be a happy person as you are stress free.
• be more energetic and spend quality time with your friends and family.
Class 10/AI 2 Self Management
STRESS MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES
Here are a few simple stress management techniques.
Time management: Proper time management is one of the most effective stress-relieving
techniques.
Physical exercise and fresh air: A healthy lifestyle is essential for students. Stress is generally lower
in people who maintain a healthy routine. Doing yoga, meditation and deep breathing exercises help
in proper blood circulation and relaxes the body. Even taking a walk or playing in the park will help
you get a lot of fresh oxygen, which will help you become more active.
Healthy diet: Having a healthy diet will also help you reduce stress. Eating a balanced diet, such as
Dal, Roti, vegetables and fruits will give you the strength to do your daily work efficiently.
Positivity: Focusing on negative aspects of life will add more stress. Instead, learn to look at the good
things and stay positive. For example, instead of feeling upset over a scoring less in a test, try to
maintain a positive attitude and look at ways to improve the next time.
Organising academic life; no delaying: By keeping class notes organised, finishing in assignments on
time, and keeping track of all deadlines, stress can be reduced to a great extent.
Sleep: We should get a good night’s sleep for at least 7 hours so that your brain and body gets
recharged to function better the next day.
Holidays with family and friends: Going to a relative’s place, such as your grandparents’ house or a
new place during your summer vacations can help you break from the normal routine and come back
afresh.
Ability to Work Independently
If you can become a calm and relaxed person, you will be have the ability to work independently,
which means.
becoming self-aware, self-monitoring and self-correcting.
knowing what you need to do.
taking the initiative rather than being told what to do.
recognising your mistakes and not blaming others.
having the ability and the will to learn continuously.
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify and manage one’s own emotions, as well as the
emotions of others. It is generally said to include at least three skills:
EMOTIONAL AWARENESS: the ability to identify and name one’s own emotions.
HARNESSING EMOTIONS: the ability to harness and apply emotions to tasks like thinking and
problem solving.
MANAGING EMOTIONS: the ability to regulate one’s own emotions when necessary and help others
to do the same.
Some steps to manage emotional intelligence are as given below.
Understand your emotions: Observe your behaviour and note the things you need to work on. You
can then work on the things you need to improve.
Rationalise: Do not take decisions abruptly; be rational in your thinking.
Practise: Do meditation and yoga to keep yourself calm.
Class 10/AI 3 Self Management
SELF-AWARENESS— STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS ANALYSIS
Being self-aware means that you can identify your strengths and weaknesses.
Self-awareness, therefore, will help you in converting your weakness into strength and strength into
an exceptional talent.
Analysing your strengths and weaknesses helps you to attain success in life. However, strength and
weakness analysis begins with knowing yourself first.
Knowing Yourself
Understanding who you are, what you like or dislike, what are your beliefs, what are your opinions,
what is your background, what you do well and what you do not do well is important because only
then can you actually measure your strengths and weaknesses
Strength and Weakness Analysis
Understanding who you are means looking outside your usual characteristics, such as your name,
qualification and interpersonal relationships. In other words, being self aware actually means
knowing your inner strengths, hidden talents, skills and even weaknesses. Let us look at how we
define strengths and weaknesses.
Examples of strengths
• I am good at creative writing.
• I am confident of speaking in front of an audience.
• I play guitar very well.
Examples of weaknesses
• I find it difficult to solve mathematics problems.
• I would like to speak English fluently.
• I do not like to lose in any game or sports.
Techniques for Identifying your Strengths and Weaknesses
Finding Strengths (or abilities)
• Think of anything that you are always successful at.
• Think about what others like in you.
• Take out time and think about what you do well.
Finding Weaknesses
• Point out the areas where you struggle and the things you find difficult to do.
• Look at the feedback others usually give you.
• Be open to feedback and accept your weaknesses without feeling low about it. Take it as an area
of improvement.
You can find your strengths and weaknesses once you find answers to the questions given here.
• How am I different from others?
• What do I do better than others?
Class 10/AI 4 Self Management
• What do other people admire in me?
• What makes me stand out?
• Where do I worry and struggles?
• Where, how and why do others perform better than me?
• What advice for improvement do I often receive from others?
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN INTERESTS AND ABILITIES (STRENGTHS)
INTERESTS ABILITIES
Things that you like to do in your free time that An acquired or natural capacity
make you happy.
Things you are curious about or would do even Enable you to perform a particular job or task
if no one asked you to do it. with considerable proficiency.
Things you want to learn or would like to do in
the future.
When your interests do not match your abilities, you can either improve your abilities or follow some
other path.
SELF-MOTIVATION
Have you heard of the story of the hare and tortoise? Who won that race in spite of being slow? The
tortoise. The key to win was that the tortoise never thought less of itself and stayed motivated even
though it was lagging behind. But slowly and gradually it crossed all hurdles and continued the race
without being demotivated.
Self-motivation is simply the force within you that drives you to do things.
Self-motivation is what pushes us to achieve our goals, feel happy and improve our quality of life.
In other words, it is our ability to do the things that need to be done without someone or something
influencing us.
TYPES OF MOTIVATION
There are broadly two types of motivation that we’ll be covering in our syllabus:
Internal Motivation: LOVE
We do things because they make us happy, healthy and feel good. For example, when you perform
on your annual day function and you learn something new, such as dancing, singing, etc., you feel
good.
External Motivation: REWARD
We do things because they give us respect, recognition and appreciation. For example, Suresh
participated in a 100m race and won a prize. This motivated him to go for practice every morning.
Mr E Shreedharan, Former Managing Director, Delhi Metro Rail Corporation Ltd, was a self-
motivated and energetic person. With his dedication and respect for others, he motivated his team
to work hard and achieve results.
Class 10/AI 5 Self Management
Mahashay Dharmapal Gulati, the founder of Mahashian Di Hatti (MDH) Private Limited started with
a small shop in Karol Bagh but with his focus, dedication and clear ideas, MDH (Spice Company)
became one of the most popular brands in India besides having a good reputation all over the world.
BUILDING SELF-MOTIVATION
There are four steps for building self-motivation, which are as given below.
1. Find out your strengths
Identify your likes and dislikes. Understand what makes you happy. For example, I love cooking.
2. Set and focus on your goals
Define the goals you want to achieve and focus all your energy to achieve your goal. For example, I
want to be a chef.
3. Develop a plan to achieve your goals
Plan and set timelines to achieve your goals, Plan a list of activities that you will do to achieve each
goal. For example, after schooling, you may be required to appear for a competitive examination to
join Hotel Management Institute.
4. Stay loyal to your goals
Work towards achieving your goal, even when you are facing difficult time. For example, even though
I did not clear the Hotel management entrance exam, I will find out other ways to become a chef.
GOAL SETTING
Goals and Setting SMART Goals A man was travelling and stopped at an intersection. He asked an
elderly man, “Where does this road take me?” The elderly person asked, “Where do you want to
go?” The man replied, “I don’t know.” The elderly people said, “Then take any road. What difference
does it make?” How true is that? When we do not know where we are going, any road will take us
there. So in life, we need to have a clear vision of what we will do and where we want to go.
Goals:They are a set of dreams with a deadline to get them, for example, saving pocket money to
buy a favourite mobile phone by a particular date.
Goal setting:It is all about finding and listing your goals and then planning on how to achieve them.
Goals allow you to separate out what’s important. It helps you to focus on the end result instead of
less important work. This will make you successful in your career and personal life.
How to Set Goals? We can use SMART method to set goals.
SMART stands for:
SPECIFIC:
A specific and clear goal answers six questions.
Who is involved in the goal?
What do I want to do?
Where do I start?
When do I start and finish?
Which means do I use?
Why am I doing this?
Not a specific goal: “I would learn to speak English.” Specific goal: “I would learn to speak English
fluently by joining coaching classes after my school everyday, and in six months I will take part in the
inter-school debate competition.”
Class 10/AI 6 Self Management
MEASUREABLE:
A measureable goal answers the questions-
“How much?”,
“How many?” and “How do I know that I have achieved results?”
Not measurable goal: “I want to be rich.”
Measurable goal: “I want to have 5 times more money than what I have today in my hand at the end
of this year.”
ACHIEVABLE :
Breaking down big goals into smaller parts will make the goal achievable.
Bigger Goal: “I want to become a teacher in my school.” Breaking it into smaller goals:
Complete Higher secondary
Complete Graduation
Complete [Link].
Apply for jobs in the teaching field
REALISTIC: A realistic goal would be something that we want to achieve and can work towards.
Example of unrealistic goal: “I will read my entire year’s syllabus in one day and get good marks.”
Realistic goal: “I spend 3 hours every day of the year after school to revise my subjects to get good
marks in the exams.”
TIME BOUND: A SMART goal should have a timeframe by when the goal needs to be achieved. This
encourages us to take actions to completely fulfill the goals.
Not a time bound goal: “I want to lose 10 kg someday.”
Time bound goal: “I want to lose 10kg in the next 6 months.”
SELF-REGULATION— TIME MANAGEMENT
Time Management and Its Importance Sameer was a very lazy boy and always used to postpone
things. His father tried to make him understand the value of time. Sameer promised his father that
he would never postpone his tasks. One day, he won the first prize in a singing competition. He was
asked to collect the prize the same day. He didn’t care and went to collect the prize the next day. But
the prize was now useless for him, as it was a ticket to a circus show for the previous day. That day
Sameer learnt an important lesson — the importance of doing things on time
Time management is the thinking skill that helps you to
• complete tasks on time.
• make a daily timetable.
• make a good guess at how long it will take you to do something.
• submit homework and assignments on time.
• not waste time during the day.
EFFECTIVE TIME MANAGEMENT
Four steps for effective time management
ORGANISE
We plan our dayto-day activities.
We make a timetable that we follow.
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We keep our surroundings and study table clean and mess free.
We put things back where they belong.
It helps us save time!
PRITORTISE
We make a to-do list that has all our activities and we rank them in the order of importance.
For example, you may rank doing homework as the most important task.
It helps us to get the most important task done first and also to track what is pending.
CONTROL
We have a control over our activities and time.
We avoid time wasters like chatting on the phone, surfing gossip sites, etc., and focus on more
important things.
TRACK
We identify and note where we have spent our time.
This will help us analyse if we have used our time effectively or not.
It also helps us to identify time-wasting activities.
Tips for Practicing the Four Steps for Effective Time Management
• Avoid delay or postponing any planned activity • Organise your room and school desk
• Develop a ‘NO DISTURBANCE ZONE’, where you can sit and complete important tasks
• Use waiting time productively
• Prepare a ‘To-do’ list
• Prioritise
• Replace useless activities with productive activities
Class 10/AI 8 Self Management