This morning during my walk to work, I listened to a book that has been recommended multiple times. It’s just a 45 minute read, and I can highly recommend it: Managing Oneself by Peter F. Drucker. You can find my notes below.
By the way, my walks start paying off. I’m now reading 2-3 books a week (instead of 1-2 books a month). For me, it’s one of the most satisfying and motivating feelings to be mentored by the best thinkers in the world. It’s my best new habit this year.
Today’s idea
Read more. Get mentored by the best thinkers in the world.
Managing Oneself – Peter F. Drucker
- Ideas don’t move mountains.
- “Bulldozers move mountains. Ideas show where the bulldozer should do the work.” – Peter F. Drucker
- Find your strengths, by using a feedback loop: Form a hypothesis about what you expect in the next 6-12 months and then measure yourself. You might have different strengths than you think!
- Spend as little time as possible to improve areas of low competence. It takes far more energy and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity, than it takes from first rate performance to excellence.
- Focus instead on competent team members and make them star performers
- How do I perform?
- Am I a reader or a listener?
- How do I learn?
- Know your personality. Know how you perform.
- Too many people do work that doesn’t correspond to how to perform best
- Do I work well with people or am I a loner?
- Do I work best as subordinate or as leader?
- Do I work well under pressure, or do I need a highly structured and predictable environment?
- Do I work best at a big organization, or a small one?
- Few people work well in all kinds of environments. You need to know how you perform best.
- Do not take on work that you can only perform poorly. Choose work that you can excel at.
- What are my values?
- Mirror test: What kind of person do I want to see in the mirror in the morning?
- “I don’t want to be the richest man in the cemetery.”
- Choose your values and how you want to contribute to society. Financial success is just one dimension.
- How to decide where you belong:
- 1) What are my strengths?
- 2) How do I perform?
- 3) What are my values?
- This helps you decide where you belong. And also, where you NOT belong.
- Ask yourself: What SHOULD my contribution be?
- What can I achieve in the next 18 months? What is possible? What is the most important area to focus on?
- Goals need to be visible and measurable
- Manage your relationships:
- 1) Other people are as much individuals as you yourself are
- 2) You need to know their strengths, their performance modes and there values, be work with them effectively
- 3) Take responsibility for communication
- Where there is success, there is failure.
- Build a second career, some area in your life that you can use as a fallback in the case of misfortune or failure. Start it young, on the side.
