Managing Oneself
by Peter F. Drucker
February 24, 2021 [12:00 AM — 12:25 AM]
Los Angeles, CA
I've been wanting to tap into the HBR Must Reads and HBR Classics for a while. Lately, work has been on the rise and the projects on our agenda are becoming more volatile, I wanted a short read and picked this off my shelf. It's a decent book, I’m not stunned (had high expectations with the amount of praise), but I’m pleased. It fits and summarizes strong concepts into a simple read, that anyone can understand, I appreciate how his writing style is very straightforward with people and gives you a sense as if he’s talking or explaining things to you. The book focuses on understanding yourself to be able to manage yourself better, understanding yourself comes in three parts: Your strengths, performance, and values. Then once you've understood yourself to begin deciding on how you'll proceed with life. It also covers your responsibility for relationships with others, and my favorite part: figuring out the second half of your life.
One should concentrate and improve on their strengths while figuring out what things are inhibiting them. I appreciate how he says not to keep focusing and trying to improve your weaknesses (contradictory to what a lot of people try to do), and instead use that time and effort to keep building on what you know you have a strength in. You can discover your strengths by doing a feedback analysis, by comparing your predictions and expectations with the results you get after an extended time period. The only aspect that I clash with the author is that he doesn't resonate with generalists (which I am). Performance, this lesson was key to me. You need to figure out how do you learn best, he presented readers vs. listeners. I always assumed I'm a better reader, it turns out after testing my learning methods, I'm actually more of a listener. I prefer to learn or catch up on reported updates by listening to something instead of reading it (sounds ironic for someone who's into books). As for values, it was a more simple lesson that basically the idea of finding a workplace where both the company and individual values align with each other.
Figuring out where you belong usually happens in your mid-twenties, it’s rare for people to know what they want to be or where they want to go in life at an early age. The author says to figure out where you belong you should use your strengths, performance, and values as a determining guide to go somewhere you can thrive. Then figuring out what you should contribute, by setting a plan and goals with a timeline of nothing more than 18 months. It should be clear, specific, and reasonable, with results being measurable and visible. He does mention that results should be hard to achieve and require “stretching” but within reach, this concept resonated with me due to my ambition. I always challenge myself and those working with me, however, at times, these goals can be outstretched; my practice of setting sky-high ambitions can be debatable though because we actually achieve a lot more on our journey when the end goal is farther, however, it’s harder to measure our results this way. As he mentions in our responsibility for relationships, you must understand the people you’re around and work with, just as much as you understand yourself.
The second half of our life is a very interesting point that I haven’t seen many authors of business books or even management books touch on. As we know from the “Conquest of Happiness,” boredom is a killer. We need to start figuring out what we will be doing in our second half from an early age since it takes time to build up. The author suggests the possibilities of starting a different career and/or in a different organization, having a parallel career (staying in your current job and start a parallel work either full or part-time), and/or starting your own organization. I've been hopping between all three, it's been an interesting time in my life journey these days.