Making my American Dream

            Carl Jung stated “Who looks outside, dreams; who looks within, awakens.” After listening to the speaker named Mauricio Garcia, nicknamed   Mo, owner of MG Success Services LLC, a motivational coaching service and good colleague of Professor Warren; I was inspired to evaluate what I could improve upon. The speaker shared the story of his journey to the present state of working and living his life’s passion and calling it his career.  Mo shared that when he and his family came to the U.S.; although he faced many challenges beyond his control, there we situations that he experienced because he did not allow himself to change and grow. For example; he did not even attempt to learn fluent English until he was in the country for at least five plus years. Not being able to fluently speak English was a major barrier that stood in between Mo reaching his Dream.  Once Mo faced his fears, did a self-survey and then applied the information towards his goals; was he then able to overcome his shortcoming and move towards reaching his optimal career potential. I looked at my challenges and fears.  If certain every day challenges are resolved, people benefit as a result. Individuals looking for success in their lives and careers must start with managing their time properly.  I wanted achievable goals. Graham Greene wrote that the price for setting unrealistic goals is a feeling of despair. Time has always seemed to slip through my fingers. Proper time management is attainable and favorable. In researching Time management, it’s discovered that one must also be organized and learn to delegate task.

Geoffrey Chaucer referred to time gone as something that couldn't be recovered. Time management can be looked at in many different ways. “Time is the scarcest resource. Unless it is managed, nothing can be managed” (Dobson). Quite often people either have feast or famine when it comes to time. It seems when people have a lot of responsibility and issues to handle, they don’t have the time needed. Actually, everyone has twenty four hours in a day. How one chooses to use their 24 hours is what impacts ones success or failures.  Many people avoid task that are overwhelming, tedious, not of immediate importance, or that they just don’t feel like doing. This avoidance is called procrastination. Procrastination is one of the main issues of poor time management. Ways to avoid procrastination are: complete task on a list of importance, delegate task when applicable and getting organized.

            Managing one’s life is an eventful task. In order to get it all done, there will be times that people need to ask for help. For example, if an adult is a husband or wife, parent, student and has a career; he or she may need to assign their child task to wash the dishes a few days a week in order to have clean dishes. No matter how wonderful and efficient a person is, he or she just can’t do everything that physically needs to be done in those three roles. A lot of people are not comfortable with delegating, especially in the workforce.  Delegating is a management practice that is highly talked about but less used (Dobson). No one wants to be the bad guy or the overly bossy person that is always telling everybody what to do. Yet in order to handle great and large responsibilities, a manager must know when and how to ask or empower others to help. Taking time to teach others empowers them to learn a new task and allows the leader to focus on other issues that need attention. The task can be delegated but the responsibility still belongs to the parent, teacher, manager or person of authority to delegate. Delegating is an art form and must be practiced. In order for a leader of any sort to delegate; he or she must first be organized to know what the overall project or task consist of. Disorganization makes task more difficult (Leeds). Just image using Turbo Tax to file your taxes; and the many relevant documents accumulated throughout the year. As the computer program generated questions continue to arise, various documents hold the answers to the questions. Filing taxes is already a difficult and consuming task; but to have to stop and search through pile of papers throughout various places is even more taxing.  Now imagine preparing a file in a file cabinet at the beginning of the year.  Further imagine that as the documents and tax related situations arise throughout the year; placing the documents in the labeled file.  The following year at tax time, simply take the tax file and all of the needed documents are present. This scenario would be a lot less stress more and thus help the filing process go smoother. Good time management includes assessing of a project beforehand, anticipating needs and then putting a plan into action. An unknown author once said, “To not plan is to plan to fail.”  In the book “The Eight Minute Organizer” the author explains how spending just eight minutes of preparation can help a person become more organized.

           

It is sad, shameful but true that something like poor time management can assist in hindering a person from reaching their full potential. Successful time management can be accomplished with delegating task, getting and staying organized, and managing one’s self with the given time we all have (Leeds). Like Mo the motivational speaker, I have decided to face my fear and consciously work on something that I know is holding back opportunities for success. One can be more than hopeful that the American Dream, whatever that may be for the individual, is reachable. 

Works Cited

Alexander, Roy and Michael S. Dobson, Micheal S. Chapter 1 - How to Think About Time

Real-World Time Management, Second Edition.  AMACOM © 2009.

Forsyth, Patrick. Time Management. Kogan Page. April 28, 2010   Most Recent Edition

Leeds, Regina. The 8-Minute Organizer: Easy Solutions to Simplify Your Life in Your Spare Time. Da Capo Press. May 1, 2012

Mackenzie, Alec, and Pat Nickerson. The time trap: The classic book on time management. Amacom, 2009.