There are four main functions of management, and yes, it's written as the title of this post. But no, I'm not gonna explain it or talk about management in business at all. Even though I'm a management student, still I need to learn more if I ever gonna write about that. Business, management, strategic management, and these kind of stuffs are sooo complicated. Trust me, it's not as simple as what you read in book or in your class. Make a business is one thing, but managing a business is other thing. And before I'm planning to have a business on my own, I'm more concern to implement the management function to my personal life first.
I think I haven't been a good manager for myself, I haven't been able to manage my life well, so how can I manage other things (ex. business if I'm going to be an entrepreneur, or people if I'm going to be an employee and of course one day be a leader) ?
You can't just say "let it flow" to everything. Like that quote in my previous post, there are some parts in this life that needs our full attention and concentrated effort. But since we can't really know which one, so we have to prepare for every possibilities.
Before this, I never really thought about my life that much. I was more like a just-let-it-flow person. But since I started to hanging out with uccil, my friend, frankly I started to change. She is kind of people who manages her life well. She plans every thing that she needs to do everyday, she makes budget and writes her expenses everyday, etc. And I don't remember since when, I started to do those kind of things too. I started to plan for tomorrow before I go to sleep. And first I only think about that in my mind, but then I really started to write things that I need to do on the next day before I go to sleep everyday. And now I even make plans, for short term, like what am I going to do tomorrow, this weekend, and make targets on every task that needs to be done. Not really by myself actually, she helps me, a lot. Especially when I was too messed up in this skripsi thingy, she helped me to manage my time, made targets, etc. And it feels really good, you know? Having a plan everyday makes me more focus and productive. It's not like I have a schedule of what I need to do from hour to hour, no no no. But I know what I need to do today and which one that needs to be done today, just the big picture. Planning your life won't make your life boring. I still let some spontaneous things or events happened, but with the plans I've made, I can prioritize things and be more responsible to myself. If I already have plan to do my thesis on 1 p.m-5 p.m, but suddenly my friend ask me to go and hang out, then I know that I need to wake up early to do my thesis, so I can go with my friend and still I can finished my task. You can't do the "work hard, play hard" thing if you don't have a plan of your life, you'll end up just do the "work hard" part or, mostly, the "play hard part". Been there, done that.
Planning, is the easiest part though. Leading, or directing myself to follow the plan everyday is like........huuffft. Basically I'm a super-lazy person, so it takes a billion tons of effort to be discipline with my own plan. There are some days that I let myself ruining the plan. Sometimes I chose to loosen up, and that's fine, as long as I can be responsible for that ruined day. That part, I do the "organizing". I organize which part of my plan that I can skip, or postpone, and which one that needs to be done immediately. This one is tricky, a lot of external factor can influence the decision I made. In this part, I really need to prioritizing every thing, so the plan will goes well.
And last but not least, "controlling". In this part, I checked of what I've done and compare with the targets I had. I do the measurement. I do the review. Make some corrections if necessary, or give a little reward for myself if everything went well.

Sounds good, right?
The thing is, I'm stuck with the "planning" part, most of the time. Yeah you know, maybe this sounds like an excuse, but this is a big step for me. From the lazy-me, now trying to be the better me. It needs time. I hope, I can really implement all of this step completely, soon.

Ciao!