I subscribe to an e-mail from a company marketing their wares as they pertain to time management and yesterday they sent me an email which opened, “Getting organized is a sign of self-respect.” That’s very much, in a nutshell, the raison d’etre for what I promote in this blog and m’book. Early work by Charles R. Hobbs, reproduced and expanded upon by Hyrum W. Smith and delved deeply into by Stephen R. Covey, reinforced the idea that being in control is a precursor to a life of reduced stress and heightened self-esteem. Therefore, one of the ways in which we can create and reinforce self-respect is to decide, here and now, that we will seek to be in control as much as we can within the reality that life represents, with its challenges, influences, experiences and – other people.
‘Self-respect is something that you possess when you believe you deserve it.’ Well, that is partly true. It is partly true in the sense that psychologically we are prone to putting ourselves down, but it is false in the sense that you can choose to respect yourself. You can decide that ‘you are worth it’, which means deciding to treat yourself properly. That means many things, and those ‘many things’ are included under the headings of self-leadership and self-management.
Once you choose self-respect you can also decide to ensure that, at the very least, you aren’t going to be the one to undermine it. You decide that what you do will be the best you can do for you, and that means living in accordance with your personal values (chapter 18), pursuing goals that represent and fulfil those values (chapter 19), and managing yourself in terms of how you spend your time in the framework of life (the rest of the book). Click one of the links, they all go to the same place. 😊
Whenever I see scruffy, I see a lack of self-worth. Even those who dress that way ‘cause it’s the trend are following rather than leading. There is a well-known YouTube video where a Special Forces Admiral promotes the idea of ‘just’ making your bed in the morning – because that first personal setting of a standard tends to endure through the rest of the day.
The same goes for a lack of punctuality – not when circumstances create lateness, but when it appears to be based around a lack of caring. You may think it doesn’t matter if you’re a ‘bit late’, but the person you’re disrespecting when you self-create delay thinks you don’t care about them, either. Your loved ones worry when you aren’t when you said you’d be. (Deliberate.) And tell the truth – how do you feel when someone you’re expecting, is late? Exackerly.
It is a fact of life that everything we do is a reflection of what we are. So an unplanned lifestyle, a poorly managed workload, a lack of workplace competence are (conditionally) reflections of a disorganised individual, and a disorganised individual demonstrates a lack of self-respect just as much as they demonstrate a lack of respect for others. I say conditionally because sometimes this (anagram) happens, but occasional, excusable, explainable mistakes happen. But when they happen all the time – like my dear friend who was always exactly 10minutes late for work and decried the idea he should leave ten minutes earlier – it reflects upon the party concerned.
It may seem unimportant – but one day it will bite you on the bum.
Self-respect demands and is served by self-organisation, and since training in the latter is not hard to come by it behoves you, the professional, to seek it out and apply it.
Because oddly, the organisation doesn’t seem to provide it for you.
Police Time Management 