My Journey to Becoming Marathon-Ready: A Year of Working Out - Essay Sample

Introduction

For the past year, I have always wanted to work out, but I have never been consistent in doing so. Working out would have so many positive impacts on my personal life, but for some unknown reason, I haven't implemented the idea in my life. By working out I would be more healthy and confident in myself. If I started working out I would be fit enough to run a marathon. I have always wanted to participate in marathons whose aim is to raise money or awareness about a particular issue in society. Being a shy person, working out would help me be outgoing, and I would even have the chance to meet more people in places such as gyms and running tracks. This would help me socialize more and make new friends.

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Avoiding Procrastination to Improve My Professional Life

Procrastinating tasks has been a massive obstacle in my life. Although before sleeping, I write down a -to-do list, most days I don't feel inspired to follow my to-do list, and I end up postponing tasks. Instead of doing what is expected of me, I tend to go through my social media accounts and end up spending much time there instead of working on my tasks. Sometimes I start working on a job then I decide to take a 5 min break to reset my mind, and the break ends up being a two hours break. At the end of the week, I get swamped with so much work that needs to be done within short deadlines. Since the work is a lot, I then tend to do it in a hurry to meet deadlines and end up doing mediocre work. This practice gets me in trouble with my boss since I fail to deliver quality work or sometimes fail to meet deadlines

Review of my Habits

According to the four quadrants presented by Covey, the habit of not working out and processing tasks are in the second quadrant. This is because although they are essential to me I end up not doing them since they are not urgent. To change my bad habits, I need to be organized and execute around my priorities. To achieve this, I need to say yes to the essential activities of the second quadrant and say no to other unimportant activities. For me to work out, I will need to stop sleeping in and instead wake up early to work out. To avoid procrastination, I need to say no to the urge to check my social media and instead focus on the essential tasks at hand.

Summary

Putting Things First

Effective management is the practice of putting first things first. To put things first one needs to identify which items need to be put first. Covey suggests that the activities in our second quadrant are what should be put first. He insists that these activities should be put first since they are the core of active management. Events in quadrant two present us with opportunities and since successful people are opportunity minded we need to focus on these activities

Principles of Personal Management

According to Covey, personal management is the ability to make choices that are consistent with the decisions we have created for ourselves. Effective self-management is an equation of the following values: self-awareness, imagination, conscience and independent will. Integrity which is the ability to walk your talk is what measures an individual's sovereign will. The concept of personal management was developed to challenge people who found time management to be rigid and restrictive. With personal management, one is expected to focus on maintenance and improving relationships while delivering expected results.