...Or are we?
After spending most of the day taking care of my advising for the Spring 2012 semester, it occurred to me that there are three levels of management when it comes to getting through life in a non-floundering way. I really do think that everyone is able to operate on at least one of these three levels. Furthermore, the level you're best at may hint at your ideal station in life.
The Degree Plan
Also known as the "Big Picture." Your degree plan plots out a course for you, as a student, from 0% to 100% complete. You start with nothing, and that one piece of paper outlines every single credit you'll need to earn between day-1 and your graduation day.People who are able to manage the "Degree Plans" of their lives know where they are, where they want to go and how to get there. They are the dreamers. Their strength is keeping their eye on the prize and plotting the course to get there. Their weakness is in the particulars.
My degree plan says I have to take a Drawing Concepts class, but it doesn't say which one to take, from which professor or on what days. These people are generally the entrepreneurs.
The Class
Normally, the syllabus you receive at the beginning will outline how things will be scored and provide a basis for you to calculate your own grade as you progress through the semester. When you're in the middle of a semester, you're not worried about our degree plan - it's all about the classes you're taking now.Each semester is a new 15-week juggling act, and the trick is creating a routine. This routine will shift as each new semester arrives, but the principle is the same. Those who are able to handle heavy workloads on account of their extreme juggling abilities are the planners.
Planners generally maintain their finances on a budget and keep a daily planner on their person (or in their phone) at all times. They are experts at developing micro-systems to keep several tasks running smoothly and efficiently. Their weakness is that they cannot operate without structure, and they are the most adverse to change. They are typically the managers in a company.
The Assignment
The third level of management is the Assignment level. Here, you'r only worried about the one thing you're working on at this moment. When I'm working on a painting, I'm not concerned with the animation project that's due in two days. Each class consists of multiple assignments, but they come at you in waves (usually), allowing you to pour all of your focus on them one at a time.The people who operate on this level have laser-like focus, but they also have blinders on. These are the doers. Their strength is that if you give them one task to do, they'll do the heck out of it, and the result will be magnificent and glorious. Conversely, their downfall is that if you give them two tasks simultaneously, they'll get overwhelmed and shut down completely.
These people are the technicians within a company. By that I mean that they actually do the grunt work that the company ultimately gets paid for. Sadly, they are almost always the lowest on the pay scale. They're the ones in the sandwich shop who actually make the sandwiches. They're the ones on the sales floor who actually make the sales calls.
The Bottom Line
As I said, I truly believe that every single human being is naturally adept in at least one of these styles of management. I personally am awesome at the first and third, but fail miserably at the second. My wife, on the other hand, is a Planner all the way.Don't think you're not a complete person if you aren't good at managing life on all three of these levels. The trick is to figure out which level you work best on, and own it. Learning how you manage the things in your life will bring you one step closer to learning who you were designed to be.
This is all for now.
-R.
