It is very hard to manage yourself. One of my favourite management writers is Seth Godin, and of the many blogs he wrote one of my favourite still is and oldie: “The world’s worst boss”.

Godin states that: “Even if you’re not self-employed, your boss is you. You manage your career, your day, your responses”, and “Odds are, you’re doing it poorly”. Managing yourself is not an easy task. Let me give four areas of potential mistakes.

1. No focus on self-management at all. The consequence of course is that you will be managed by your surroundings, your boss, your family, your friends, your colleagues, etc. This often reminds me on a phrase from the song “Once In A Lifetime “ (Talking Heads) : “Well, how did I get here ?”
2. Focus on time-management only. If you do this outstandingly your boss will be happy, but you run a risk of losing your spirit and fade away.
3. Focus on energy-management only. This is good for you, and certainly better than focus on time only. Nevertheless, in this case you run the risk of working on things you find appealing, but may not be the business priorities.
4. The final mistake is to think you can manage yourself without measuring, only relying on your memory.

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In 2010 Seth Godin wrote: “There are few good books on being a good manager. Fewer still on managing yourself. It’s hard to think of a more essential thing to learn”.

At ForeF we did publish several books on this important topic. But it became clear that books are not enough. We needed to find a method to put our ideas into practise. The result is the MaET method, a combination of tools and principles. Our hope and ambition is that with MaET you will avoid becoming the world’s worst boss.