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This assignment indicates Reflective analysis on the ways which instigated to identify the skills as weakness

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Reflective analysis

Introduction

In a globalized world, where the world is full of opportunities and options, it is always essential to learn, adapt & implement. Gaining knowledge not only helps to hone the skills one have but also helps in increasing the credibility to the outside world. An informed & knowledgeable person is always more powerful and effective in terms of carrying out the desired work and to achieve new heights. In this context, self-reflection plays an important role to help understand the gaps in oneself along with analyzing the different ways by which the skills & knowledge could be further improved. Self-reflection is somewhat similar to looking into the reflection of one-self on the ways of doing & understanding things and thereby understanding the ways by which the weaknesses could be worked upon and strengthened to help oneself in a globalized world.

Context & Structure of the report

The report will contain the reflective analysis of one of the skills which has already been indented in the beginning of the module. In my case, the skills which I have identified to be one of the major weakness in the “Time Management Skills”. This report will focus on the ways which instigated me to identify this skills as my weakness and therefore would go on describing the efforts that I have taken to identify the steps for developing & improving my skill. This report will further highlight my efforts along with explaining the effectiveness of the same towards polishing the skill being identified in the report.

Self-Reflection is an Art or Science?

Self-Reflection

Self-Reflection could be defined as the capability or capacity of an individual or rather an ability of the individual to recognize the faults or rather the weaknesses in oneself and thereby think of alternatives or options to rectify the same or rather to modify the same based upon the resources present at hand (Eva, 2017). Self-Reflection could be defined as a sub-set of Self-Awareness, which in turn could be defined as the capability of an individual to introspect and to recognize the different weaknesses & strengths of the individual as separate from the other individuals and environment (Halloran, 2016). Self-Reflection is related to the concept of “Philosophy of Consciousness” and the topics related to awareness, conscious or general alertness of mind (Hickson, 2012).

Self-Reflection is a tool

Self-Reflection is an effective tool which helps to gather & collate the thoughts in a careful & mindful way and thereby help in generating specific insights (Kabat-Zinn, 2011). However, the self-reflection which is actually useful for the leaders in the context of the corporate setting is rather a process by which the beliefs & the actions could be analysed and considered in order to learn from the past actions and thereby understand the mistakes (Helyer, 2015). Reflection helps the mind to unwind and pause in the middle of chaos and thereby sort different experiences and observations so that multiple things could be interpreted and the meaning could be derived from the same (Dumay, 2016). This meaning further gets converted into learning which in turn helps in developing future actions & beliefs (Victor, 2018). For the leaders of tomorrow, this process of meaning making is very important as it is very much crucial from the process of development & the ongoing growth (Porter, 2017).

Benefits

The different benefits of Self-Reflection are (Kovary, 2015):

•             Helps in acting with integrity (Sims, 2013)

•             Helps in strengthening the emotional intelligence (Bennet, et al., 2016)

•             Helps to be more confident

•             Helps in becoming clear of the core values (Victor, 2018)

•             Helps in becoming more & more refined in specific skills

Identifying My Skill for Self-Reflection

Steps of identifying my Skill for Self-Reflection

 

Fig: Steps for Identifying Weakness for Self Reflection

The different steps being applied by me to understand skill for Self-Reflection are:

Step 1 – Understanding the Abilities – In the beginning of the course I tried to analyze my capabilities, capacity & abilities which helped me to understand my gamut of strengths & weakness.

Step 2 – Writing down doings – I wrote down my past work & ways of living & thereby tried to filter out the different skills in which I am not comfortable.

Step 3 – Reflecting on values – I reflected on the different values being instilled in me from my birth by my parents, teachers & mentors.

Step 4 – Examining patterns & themes – I tried to identify the themes and the ways of understanding my beliefs and thereby self-introspect on the ways of beliefs.

Step 5 – Determining alignment – I tried to determine the alignment of the identified themes & patterns with that of the core values.

Step 6 – Identifying Weakness – Finally I identified my major weakness.

I finally identified my skill which needs to be improved which is

“TIME MANAGEMENT SKILL”

Identifying My Style of Learning

Style of Learning

I used “HONEY AND MUMFORD” questionnaire for Learning Style in order to identify my ways of learning style. I found that I fall in the category of “Reflectors”. I belong to that group of individuals who prefer to sit back & ponder on the various experiences of the past in order to understand the different past actions from the different perspectives. I have a habit of collecting data points by observing on the first time experience of the others so that I am being able to analyze the same to identify the weaknesses in communication skills and other related matters. I wait & ponder before coming to conclusion and always analyze the data gathered and compare it with my own positioning with respect to the others. This is a more “Cautious” philosophy which helps me to consider different implications & angles before actions could be taken further. I am more tolerant & patient towards others and prefer to maintain a low profile before making new moves.

Plans for Self-Improvement

Thus the plans which were taken by me to improve my “Self-Reflection” Skills of “Time Management Skill” were based on the above analysis of the ways of learning.

Plans & Steps taken for Improving “Time Management Skill”

Need for Time Management Skills

Time management skills are very important not only in day to day functions but also to help improve the working style and the operational functions in mid-term & long-term and actions. Some of the importance of Time Management Skills are (Tran, 2015):

•             Time is very limited and that is why it should be used cautiously

•             One can accomplish many things with less effort

•             Helps in improving decision making

•             Helps an individual to be successful (Activia.co.uk, 2018)

•             Helps to learn more new things

•             Helps in stress reduction (Walker, 2012)

Why I needed to improve the same?

For long I have been pondering upon the reasons of not being successful despite my best efforts in different things I do. I sometimes doubted my intelligence & in other time blamed my luck for not achieving things. I was always inclined to live in the present & never pondered on my actions or ways of handling different things in life. Success was not coming to me in alignment with the effort I was giving towards achieving the same. When all my peers and colleagues were improving in their life, I was thinking that I was being undermined in many ways. At that time, I found that my way of learning style is “Reflection” and thus slowly started giving importance to the same. As I delved more & more into the topic of reflection I found that being a reflection is a boon in the form of a bane. I took many steps to self-criticize myself for doing many things and thereby identified that my greatest weaknesses lie in the fact that I am not being able to manage my limited time in an effective manner. Hence I decided to work upon my time management skills and devised a plan for doing the same. The next section would talk about some of the steps that I took in order to make an improvement on my time management skills.

 Steps for improving Time Management Skills

Below are the 10 major steps that I took to improve upon my time management skills. While I have assigned different numbers to the steps, but all have been done simultaneously and the numbers are do not bear any significance with respect to the priority of one step over the other.

Step 1 – Delegating Tasks

I was never good in assigning tasks or delegating tasks to other and that is why I was always full of anxiety in each & everything I do. I tend to avoid delegating tasks so that I could do it in a better way. But this used to result in extreme pressure level leading to anxiety because of micro-management I used to do. Thus I made a mandate to delegate the tasks to others and thereby ponder upon the ways of helping them to achieve the things. This helped me to get some free time and thereby use it effectively for polishing myself and planning for future.

Step 2 – Prioritizing Work

I started writing down my schedule & the work I am being left with and then prioritize them as per the feasibility. This step helped me to finish all my work in due course of time along with getting some extra time to relax and unwind. I discarded my previous approach of working on easy tasks first and I started prioritizing the work which I needed first.

Step 3 – Learning to Say no

I was always sceptical about my approach of saying no. But I started to delegate tasks and started saying no to take on responsibilities of others.

Step 4 – Scheduling Tasks & Deadlines

I maintained a personal notebook of my own, where I write down my day to day activities in the form of list and checks them after getting completed. This has helped me to manage my deadlines in an effective manner.

Step 5 – Avoiding Procrastination to avoid Stress

I used to procrastinate a lot and thus developed a habit of doing things for later. This used to increase pressure from pile up work. I developed a daily habit of doing some things which are important & of highest priority. This helped me to distribute my work properly.

Step 6 – Avoiding to Multitask

I used to multi-task and think of that to be most effective, but little before I realized that it is not the most efficient route of doing many things as one cannot be productive or rather loose productivity in other things. Thus I started focusing on one thing at a time. Previously I used to check mails continuously and do my work, but that used to hamper my productivity. I started following a strict rule of checking mails at logical breaks in between my work. This was a great start of concentrating on only one thing & achieving excellence in that particular thing at hand.

Step 7 – Taking Regular breaks

Taking regular breaks was an idea which cropped out of my belief of breaking the monotone. Thus after each logical things being completed by me in 45 mins to 1 hour, I started taking logical breaks to check mails or to reward myself. This helped me improve my productivity.

Step 8 – Rewarding oneself

This is an extension of the previous step which helps in relaxing & to unwind myself. However, I added the concept of gamification and started rewarding myself with chocolate breaks or breaks for having some quick bites from the nearby snack shop. This helped me to covet those small breaks in the designated timings and to enjoy the earnings or the rewards more than I used to do in my daily routine more.

Step 9 – Effective use of downtime

In my downtime I used to plan for my future activities and this used to burn me out more in comparison to other times. Thus I stopped doing the same and started using my downtime in planning for something new and to prioritize things. For example, there have been instances when I was sitting idle in traffic or in between classes or workshops. I used the time effectively to start writing down things I have for that day & thereby prioritize things as per the feasibility & suitability of my capability & time.

Step 10 – Continuous improvement

I have realized that improving upon “Time Management Skills” is a dynamic activity and thereby should not be stopped or discontinued. Thus on a regular basis I do the following activities:

•             Documenting the actions & activities

•             Analysing the decisions I make along with the implemented actions

•             Always in lookout for laziness or lack of effort from my side

•             Bring in the changes I need to adopt & implement the identified changes and retrospect

 

Conclusion - Effectiveness of my improvement & development plan

The above mentioned steps have been great to develop myself as an individual and to improve upon my time management skills. Some of the direct benefits which could be seen are:

Improvement in finishing work in time & increase my time for other activities

As I learnt to default from my habit of procrastination, I was able to finish 95% of all my scheduled work in time in contrast to only 70% of my finish rate before. This is a drastic improvement in my ability to manage time & to deal with the different activities in hand.

Prioritization

My habit of maintaining a diary or rather a journal of my own, has helped me to write down things and thereby forego the unimportant things. Previously I tried to remember all those things and in the process forgetting some of the important things. This used to cause me failure in terms of missing deadlines. However, my checklist plan worked extremely well and I now I avoid having penalties.

Anxiety Level Improvement & Improvement on the balance of work

One of the direct consequence of the time management skill improvement is the increase in my skill with respect to the balance of work & personal life. I now have enough personal time to enjoy my passion & hobbies. This help me to unwind and relax and to start from fresh on each & every day. In fact my anxiety levels have become minimum and I feel relaxed in my ways of working. For many days, I was stuck up from doing some of my personal pursuits in life, but the extra time I have been able to manage by delegating tasks & saying no has helped me to improve my social involvement.

Improve self-satisfaction & confidence

My plan of taking logical breaks along with rewarding myself for the completion of the scheduled tasks has worked wonders. After the completion of each task, I am now being able to feel satisfied with my own creativity and this has helped me to improve my confidence and self-satisfaction. I have been able to improve upon my habits of procrastination, which in itself has instilled in a feeling of confidence. This in turn motivates me to reach great heights and to dream for achieving unique things.

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