Balancing Time

I always have a problem with balancing my time. I am always late in my life until I started to work in a Japanese firm. It is always so hard to focus when you have to many things on your check list. I always end up doing nothing and feeling bad for myself.

Getting back into school while working is the toughest and demanding phase of my life. I am having a middle manager role where I need to exert greater effort on exceeding expectation to achieve my career goals and I have to balance that with my MBA requirements. More to that I have personal matters which include getting engaged and preparing for a wedding. In the early years of my career I learned how prioritizing is critical and very important lesson but what should you do if everything is in priority?

I have listed below some techniques that helps me currently to get though a highly demanding job with extensive travel requirement and a demanding MBA schedule and deadlines.

1. Create a check list

This is very important because it will give you a gausge on how much time you need. Start listing all of your responsibilities and list under that the things you need to accomplish. Below is a snapshot of my to do list on both work and school.

Once you are done with listing the requirements, put the deadlines beside it and put everything in your calendar. This will prompt you whether you are done with the deadline or not. Putting it in your calendar will also give you a reminder if you are on track or not. It is very difficult to keep on pushing back your targets and ending up to have to do three hard tasks in a day. Once you are done, start ranking your deadlines based on date and put it in your priority list.

2. Productivity Applications

There are several applications in android or appstore that are meant to help you with productivity. The key is to focus and keep your eyes on your target. There are too many distractions around you, do not fall on the traps and feel sorry later. Its better to finish your deadlines first before you do unnecessary things.

3. Stick to your goal

Your biggest enemy is procrastination! Finish everything that you can while you can. The best thing that could happen is to have free time and stress free day or week or even months. This is only possible if you keep on focusing in your goal and keep on pushing yourself to finish your deadline and starting ahead of other requirements so you have plenty of time to finish it. Finishing ahead of time is always a good feeling and a great achievement to be proud of.

4. Stop complaining and just do it

Sometimes we complain first before we actually do something. I remember there was a time where I cried because I was too busy and I have a lot of things to do. I feel so pressured and helpless so I just cried. After crying I realized nothing happened so I ended up wasting my time complaining and feeling sorry for myself. No one can really help you but yourself. So man up and face all the consequences of your choices because at the end of the day, what you do can make you better. The challenges you face today will make you stronger tomorrow. The best thing to do is to pray for guidance and do your best until you are done.

5. Have a good support system

I am lucky because my fiance is very understanding and he is also very supportive so I am not having a hard time. It is very important to have a partner that will support you in everything that you do and will bring out the best in you. I talk to him to share my insights and issues and he gladly listens and sometime argues with me if I’m being emotional. He comforts me when I am so tired and he gives me all the things I need. If your partner does not understand you, you should start thinking.

At the end of it all, stay focus in your goal which is to succeed in life. Find the things that motivates you and if you feel losing on track always remember the moment you chose that path. Keep a journal of your life goals so you get back on you feet and start again.

Practice makes Perfect

I wanted to share my friend’s story and how his example inspired me to become a better me. During my first year in college, I have a classmate named JB who claims he used to live in  Payatas. Well he doesn’t look like he was but told us that he got a working scholarship to study in UST due to the help of an organization called Pathways in Ateneo. He invited us to be part of the UST expansion of the organization where I became a physics tutor to 4tth year public high school students.

I have small encounters with JB because we have different set of friends. I remembered everyone in the room laughs at him and talks behind his back because he talks in English all the time. Sometimes his grammars are incorrect and he tries to sound very elite or expert on the way he speaks which makes him look really funny. Even when he answers to the professor or casual conversations, he will talk in English.

During third year we parted ways because I got finance as my major and he went to get a major in marketing. In one of the organization activities in Business Administration department, I was asked to get a volunteer for debate team to compete with other departments such as Economics, PreCom and Entrepreneurship. Getting a volunteer is very hard because UST BA students doesn’t like to speak in English and are typically shy people. Since I am part of the organization, even if its against my will, I have to be part of the team and I remembered JB and though he would love to join the competition.

On the day of the competition, we were handed by our topic and decided on which role to take where I decided to be the deputy prime minister because I think I am the weakest link and it would be hard to construct an argument and definitely harder to close one. JB then took the role of whip because he is the most confident among us. When it was his turn to speak everyone in the room got amazed on how good he is. We won and was able to reach second place. People got so amazed with him he was offered to be part of the university team of debaters which he gladly accepts. I was so proud of him and I thought practice and determination will really make you improve and get where you want to be. I thought If I practiced along with him, I might have been as good as he was.

During my first year in the corporate world I realized how important it is to be able to speak in English fluently, most specially if you are working in a treasury department of a company and all your dealings with bankers are in English. It was so hard for me and I almost gave up, but I remembered JB and how he became successful in his journey. From then on, I strategized on how to learn to speak conversational English fluently which includes watching series , internal narrative and practicing.

Whenever I watch series, I tried to answer back and try to explain how I feel about the episode. My internal narrative involves describing everything around me in my head as I commute on my way to work. I keep on answering in English even though I know I sounded struggling.

Now, I have gained the confidence to speak in front of anyone and I still practice to sound more professional. JB is one of those inspiring people who are never ashamed of where he came from and he is truly deserving of how far he had accomplished in life because he worked hard for it. He is one of the reasons I keep believing that I can do anything as long as I put my best effort into it and keep on practicing to be better.

The One Principle of Learning

 

I never dreamed to be where I am today, I guess that’s why I always end up in the worst and best situations. I became who I am because I follow this one principle in learning which I am about to share.

Since I was young I always dreamed to be a doctor which is probably a dream of 80% of children in the world. I was so sure I will be a doctor because I wanted heal people and cure sickness. Like really invent new medicine for most sickness. Until I was in send year in high school when my parents told me that my younger brother should be getting medicine because he is more intelligent. It felt like there was a wrecking ball that hit my dream and shattered it into pieces. I was lost at an early age, I really do not know what to do. I do not know what I want and what to be anymore.

I went into college still not knowing  what to be, I just thought that I still have 4 years to think about it. I thought maybe getting rich would be a good dream so I enrolled in accountancy. I did not know that it would be very hard for me because in science everything should be defined and explained, even gravity has an explanation and now no one can explain to me why profit is on the credit side? The only way I understood and managed to pass it is when a fourth year student who spent his whole day trying to help me understand that all I have to do is to remove what I know and just follow the rules. Of course I find it unreasonable but when I reflected on what he said I realized that he was right. I really should leave what I know so I can allow myself to learn something new.

Since then I never let my knowledge or my existing understanding stop me from creating new knowledge. It is important to open yourself to the many wonders of the world. I started to keep an open mind to anyone who shared their views whether it is right or wrong. I even left my religion so I can remove all the prejudice in my mind.

“Never let your existing knowledge stop you from learning or creating new knowledge”

In career I was able to accomplish things and climb the corporate ladder by doing the same principle. When I graduated my goal was very clear: I wanted to be a Forex trader in bank. It was very hard to get into a bank treasury department if you did not graduated with flying colors so I landed my first job in Citibank as junior compliance analyst which is too far from my initial plan. So when I got the opportunity to get a treasury job in Phinma I grabbed it right away. There was a caveat though, I need to start at the bottom because I did not have the experience yet. I accepted the challenge to learn the long process, be an operations person and eventually learn the trading and cash management aspect of the work. My eagerness made me do my job during weekends and learn doing the treasury job on weekdays.

When I transferred to another company they offered me the treasury position but I will also handle syndicated loans. I never backed out on a challenge so I took it and study loan management on the job. I did pretty well so they let me handle project financing in which at that point my skill set was cash management, investment, loan management and project financing.

Again, I transferred to another company where they offered me a financial modelling and business development position which I have zero knowledge. It was a big risk for me because at that moment my career duration is reaching five years and at that point I should be harnessing my skill set for managerial position. It was a scary option since I have to let go of what I have learned and again open myself to something new. So I took the chance knowing that the opportunity was laid in front of me by circumstances, by the universe, by God.

After two years of learning how to do financial models I got a managerial position for business development and currently other companies are still trying to get my skill set because it is a great advantage on making the right decisions and on creating strategic plans. Now I just have to build tenure and my career has been amazing only because I follow one principle in life and learning.

It is very easy to say “I already know that” to someone and disregard the chance to learn something new. For all you know he was about to share with you a trivia or secret you never heard before. You lose a potential learning by shrugging off or mentally zoning out someone’s idea. Be a blank slate in Latin – tabula rasa.