5 Minutes Self Analysis a Day Keeps Professional Diseases Away

How many hours do you spend daily at the Gym or Exercising or doing Yoga to keep you physically fit and healthy? When I asked around, I got responses varying from half an hour daily to as long as 2 hours a day. It’s great to see general awareness around physical health. But when it comes to Professional health, generally people tend to be lazy.

I urge you to spend 5 minutes daily in the evening/ after-hours (while relaxing on the back seat of your car while your driver is taking you back to your home, or while taking shower before going to bed, or whenever you can spare 5 minutes for your own self) to do self analysis – Rewind your day and think about how it went and where your Manager can help you.

Think about:

1. Tasks that you feel you performed very well and you were satisfied/ happy after executing them. These are either your accomplishments/achievements, or your strengths or your likings. Your Manager should know about them.
2. Tasks where you don’t really know how you performed because either requirements or the expectations were not clear to you. You need more clarification from your Manager for next iteration.
3. Tasks where you know you didn’t perform your best, and you yourself were not satisfied with the output. These are your weaknesses. You need coaching/guidance from your Manager to do it better next time.
4. Tasks that you didn’t really like performing. These are your disliking. You need to discuss them with your Manager.
5. How well do you think you managed your time that day? Do you need your Manager’s help in doing better multi-tasking/ time management?
• Did you spend too much time on not-so-important (according to you) tasks? Or, Did you not get enough time to spend on really important (according to you) tasks?
• Did you complete all assigned tasks for the day? Did you work on additional tasks as well?
• Did you come up with any new innovative idea/approach?
• Did you learn anything new?

Now, put down 2-3 points in your diary and come with the complete weekly list in your weekly 1:1 with your Manager. This will create enough constructive and productive discussion agenda for the meeting. This will also help your Manager to help you better, and he would be able to take timely corrective actions.

This 5 minutes daily self analysis will also help you utilize your mySWLD matrix for your professional betterment. Tick all those entries in your “strengths” quadrant that correspond to the strengths/abilities which you were able to utilize while performing your assignments in this week. Tick those “weakness” entries which blocked you from showing your best in the assigned job. Similarly map your this week’s tasks to the “liking” and “disliking” quadrants of your mySWLD matrix. Now take this filled matrix to your Manager in your 1:1, and take his help on:

• How your current/future responsibilities, tasks, ownerships, or the mode of execution can be planned/tweaked, so that not only your currently used strengths (ticked items in the “strengths” quadrant) but also your unused strengths (unticked items in the “strengths” quadrant) can be utilized.
• How you can improve in the areas where your weakness is impacting your performance (ticked items in the “weakness” quadrant). This will lead to creation/updation of a training/coaching/development plan for you.
• How you can come out of your comfort zones (some of ticked items in the “disliking” quadrant), and how you can take on additional tasks to pursue your liking/passion (some of unticked items in the “liking” quadrant) without deviating from your organizational goal.