Sunday 12 July 2015

Managing Oneself

If you're not motivated by status / power / glamour like myself, you'll soon come to realise that all jobs suck, with some jobs sucking more than others. So the best job to do is one that pays you the most money on an expended effort basis, in order for you to maximise your savings rate, invest your money wisely and get to living life asap.

The key to being able to get to a position where you can kiss your job goodbye is simply to, as trading parlance goes, "keep your seat". You want to be there to collect a monthly pay cheque, grab your yearly bonuses, and the other typical benefits that come along with that (overtime meal and taxi allowances, health insurance, etc.). Keeping your seat is a little similar to keeping a relationship going. There must be a desire on both ends of the relationship to keep the flame alive. Your employer must want to keep you, and you must want to keep your employer.

Let's talk about the former first. Simply put, you've got to be competent enough to execute your job well and be likeable (i.e. get along well with your team members, be a team player, that kinda stuff) to prevent your employer from terminating your contract. Sometimes even that isn't enough, the Volcker rule which was implemented post Lehman brothers saw many proprietary trading jobs being wiped out "overnight". More often than not, you'll need an element of luck on your end. That being said, internal locus of control ya.

Now to touch on the latter, which seems a little strange to discuss, given most people would only focus on the former. Well, an upfront thought is that this might not apply (I am leaning however, to the notion that it does apply) to situations where you are trying to jump to a better ship, to a higher paying gig, or if you think your team/employer are fucktards in general and you can't wait to get out of the house before it crashes and rains burning embers all over your already tired soul.

Essentially, what I'm driving at is that you've got to maintain an even emotional response to your job, and not burn out in the long run. Two schools of thought for maintaining equanimity in the workplace. The first school of thought is to not give too much of a fuck and just do the necessary in order to maintain your perceived competency. The second school of thought is to throw yourself into the role that your job requires and yet be able to maintaining a strong level of detachment from your job once you're done for the day. In other words, being able to manage yourself, your emotions and desires when you're working daily such that you become adept at compartmentalizing and develop grit through the process.

People do think that the first school of thought is an easier proposition. My own experiences have led me to come up with a differing opinion. If you hang around the fringes as opposed to being wholly immersed in the process, time passes a lot slower, your personal development (in terms of soft skills, general character attributes, hard knowledge (not generally enthused about hard knowledge given it's mostly non transferable)) gets stunted and you just end just treading water instead of slowly moving forward.

But when you go all in all the time, you tend to get burnt out after a while. The key really, is to manage yourself, to manage your responses to daily events and stimuli. That, I do feel, is really a never ending process of daily personal development and self improvement. How to do so? I'm still figuring things out, though I have benefited a lot from stoical perspectives and self meditation.

The more experienced and wiser personal financial bloggers might have better tricks up their sleeves. Care to share?

13 comments:

  1. You do describe a challenge which most of us face or faced in the past.

    I do not think that there is one single trick to fix it all.

    What worked for me was to always remind myself of taking care of my own business as well despite all the hectic of working for others.

    Everything origins from your mind. So the ability to help yourself is already built-in. Your stoic approach and meditation are great ways to "listen to yourself" and deriving the appropriate actions for a fulfilling life in this world of abundance.,

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    1. Thanks for your comment Tacomob. The more I have thought about things, the more I come to understand that the mind controls everything. Good or bad it's up to the mind to decide.

      I do believe that growth is possibly of some significance for an individual being, and perhaps undertaking a more growth oriented mindset, stopping and seeking ways to improve thyself in different situations and roles, might be of some use.

      I've spent some time on your blog and have found some great content. Keep up the good stuff and I look forward to more of your writing. Cheers.

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  2. hi Retireby35,

    "The second school of thought is to throw yourself into the role that your job requires and yet be able to maintaining a strong level of detachment from your job once you're done for the day. In other words, being able to manage yourself, your emotions and desires when you're working daily such that you become adept at compartmentalizing and develop grit through the process."

    That is basically what i tried to do and its a delicate balance. if you do not push yourself hard enough, people will see you are not commited enough, but there should always be a button that you tell yourself "Ok this is the limit, do not accelerate further"

    But even then, do you feel that, as you get closer to "the day" every day seem like a year?

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    1. I used to feel that way, but to a certain extent have not felt too strongly about that recently.

      The challenge would lie in psychologically managing your thoughts, instead of counting down to that day passively, to actively seek out new opportunities and challenges in your day to day life so that you do not waste time contemplating about the future.

      Easier said than done though.

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    2. i think comes down to knuckling down and being busy at work, or if you are free, really start the FI lifestyle.

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    3. Perhaps it's all about the mindset and accepting challenges and the role you're currently based in, to do the best with what you have and develop your abilities.

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  3. Hi

    I hope this is the answer to your question : http://frugal-daddy.blogspot.sg/2015/03/love-what-you-do.html?m=1

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    1. Frugal Daddy, what you have written is a great answer, but it's not certainly not easy to implement. Perhaps you can share some examples from your experiences in your next series of posts? :)

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  4. very interesting! i think its a matter of 2, but only to the extend of half of your ability. There are times when a company needs you to accelerate. By working at acceleration speed all the time, the chances are your boss starts expecting that of you, and your exceptional ability is now a norm, nothing special

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    1. The classic way of managing upwards by under-promising and over-delivering I see! :)

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  5. There are people who naturally numb themselves and people who don't. I lean towards throwing everything you and passion towards your work will develope alongside compentency and take the pain.
    eventually the pain will be so constant and so overwhelming that naturally you move or you can brush the pain aside naturally.

    I am told doctors who started young and caring go through the same process so much so that seeming care and concern for patients are very much practiced and mimicked on a surface by a certain number of years of experience. Until you get to a certain job security level of seniority like professors or head position whereby you simply cannot bother to hide your lack of giving a f***.

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    1. Or perhaps one can actually grow in his / her ability to be detached in situations. That's something my boss is extremely good at doing. What do you think - you can learn and develop competence at practically everything? Or are just some things based on your inherited personality and therefore "unlearnable"?

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