Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review Classics)

Short read but a very very good read! Its like a bible for self-improvement lol I have scribbled all over the book with notes and highlighters! A great, short and very informative read to add to your collection

Managing Oneself is an essay, as opposed to a book; which is not surprising as it started off life as an article in the Harvard Business Review (HBR). This series by HBR is of only important and seminal articles, and this one is no exception. It brings important themes in an easily accessible prose and is well worth a read. Managing the second half of your life is an especially interesting section! That said, if you have access to an academic library, you'll be able to look it up in the physical or on-line archives of HBR and maybe save yourself a few pounds in the process.

I was not a book reader until I was recommended this book about managing one self. It bought tears to my eyes, because the knowledge gained from this book is invaluable. It has encouraged me to look within myself, and it helps you to realize things that were kept hidden from you. Anyone who is looking for a book in their list, I would highly recommend this is a great book for LIFE. Thank you to Tai Lopez for adding this to the recommended book list. I'd say please give this a try and I guarantee you will gain more than the price of the book. Knowledge is definitely powerful :)

There are some very good questions to ask yourself here in terms of your personal development, but there are also a lot of assertions in the book backed up only anecdotally and without evidence.

The book is short and concise. It does not go into long winded stories but rather gives short examples straight to the point. It starts off with a simple yet powerful idea that we must build upon our strength. But in order to understand where our strength lies we must first understand how we operate. Key questions to ask ourselves on how we operate are: -How do we learn? -What are our values? -What are the best environments we efficiently perform at? -and of course knowing where we think we might belong? To achieve this the author describes an exercise called the feedback loop where we predict how far we will go and assess how well we fit this prediction to expose our weaknesses and strength. Once we have discovered our strength we must double down on it and minimize the time to improve our weaknesses. It is better to go from good to excellent instead of incompetent to mediocre. Finally the author mentions that as we become excellent in our job we might not have any challenges and this can make life less exciting, so we can try seeking for a different field to master once we are older. Absolutely loved the book.

Really good read. I might be biased as I know that Peter Ducker is a reference when it comes to Business matters but I really recommend this book. The book give you a few interesting questions to ask yourself to ensure you are functioning at your best. It is a short read so even if you have a busy life, those 30 minutes should be a good investment of your time .

It's a very brief book but I think that it part of its appeal. I found the content to be especially insightful and although it's commonsense stuff, it's important to remember that commonsense is not always common so is good to be reminded. My takeaways from the book are to think how do you best perform, how do others best perform, what culture/values are important to you in a workplace and then aim to find/create a workplace or job that brings the best of those things together in unison.

This is all fairly simply advice but it's essential reading. Often if you apply the basic fundamentals of this book to life you can't go wrong. Not much else to say other than read this. It should be a day 1 to any workplace reading list.

Excelente. Livro maravilhoso. Uma pérola no que se refere ao autoconhecimento e autodesenvolvimento. Vale ler e tomar notas. Colocar em prática. Pois são dicas para a vida. Muda totalmente nossa maneira de encarar nossos pontos fortes e deficiências.

This booklet is an excellent start and guide for the adventure of managing oneself. Drucker provides rare examples of well-known historic figures who managed themselves, e.g. Napoleon, da Vinci, Mozart. These examples show that there is a difference between self-management and successful self-management. Kierkegaard, Drucker’s most preferred philosopher, taught us that we have to live our lives forward and understand it only backward, in the hindsight. The famous Abraham H. Maslow wrote in his book “Motivation and Personality” first published in 1954 that according to extensive experiments probably 5% to 30% of the population in USA are making their own decisions which is a key indicator for self-management. If we sharpen the question to “how many are applying systematic self-management” the percentage is pretty low. At the same time young people, adult people and even people moving towards retirement need self-management skills without knowing where to get it and how to apply it. Very often famous self-help books are more esoteric and spiritual compared to techniques derived from proven practices of management. Drucker recommends the following steps: Identify and develop your strengths with regular reviews within 9-12 months and subsequent tuning. According to Drucker such a feedback analysis is by no means new, it was invented in the 14th century and applied by John Calvin and Ignatius of Loyola 150 years later. Analyze how do you perform, e.g. are you a reader or listener? Find out how to do you learn, because teachers do not know that for every person, every person is different. You have to transform what is taught into your personal learning system. One of the best ways to learn is teaching including the feedback analysis. Define and sharpen your value system. Drucker recommends the mirror test: “I refuse to see a pimp in the mirror in the morning when I shave.” You should avoid working in an organization or in an environment which is contrary to your values and principles. It is important to know where you belong and where you do not belong. It is closely linked with your value system. Understand and develop your contributions – what is expected from you and what do you consider as your best possible contribution. Strive for performance and wherever possible for excellence. Take responsibility for your relationships. Freedom without responsibility does not work. As you expect that your environment takes care of you, you have to care about your specific environment. Freedom and responsibility are mutually intertwined. Prepare yourself for the second half of your life, be on time. The lead time is longer than you think. My experience is: 10-15 years. Drucker describes several ways how to do it. According to my experiences this is an excellent agenda to start with. Peter Drucker provides details of his personal development resp. self-management in his excellent book “Managing the Non-Profit-Organization” published in 1990. In his excellent book “Management – Revised Edition – revised and updated by Joseph Maciariello” published in 2008, three years after Peter Drucker passed away, you find updates in Part X – New Demands on the Individual. There are other serious sources I can recommend in addition to this book: How to get Control of your Time and your Life by Alan Lakein, How will you measure your Life by Prof. Clayton M. Christensen, Total Leadership by Prof. Stewart Friedman and See You at the Top by Zig Ziglar. Philosophical views are excellently covered by Seneca in his essay “On the shortness of life”, by Marc Aurel in his “Meditations”, by Balthasar Gracian in his “Art of worldly wisdom”, by Khalil Gibran in his “Prophet” and by Antoine de Saint Exupery in his “The Little Prince”.

Es breve pero el contenido es bastante interesante.

The first article on Managing Oneself is truly priceless advice: It really makes you think whether you are 25, 35 of 45 this are the questions you should ask yourself in order to be happy and productive. The second article is about the manager everyone would like to work with: helpful and effective. So now you know why :-) Peter Drucker was a journalist so he knows how to write well and entertaining without fluff.

Must read for all executives striving for excellence and impact in their daily life. Useful learnings to make desired impact.