Improving Self-Management Bit by Bit

Editor’s Note: This month’s column is the first of two to explore Self-Management.

According to a 2020 article on npr.org, the human brain is capable of processing 11 million bits of information every second. The conscious mind, however, maxes out its processing capacity at just 40 to 50 bits of information per second. 

What’s a bit?  Encyclopedia Britannica states that a single letter in a word consumes two bits of information.

No matter how simple or complex the scenario, our minds will always be capped at being conscious of no more than 40 – 50 bits of information per second, even though there are millions of other bits of information around us.  As a leader, thinking about how to more intentionally allocate your consciousness bits budget can have a direct impact on your self-management competency.

With that in mind, CASEL.org defines self-management as: 

“The abilities to manage one’s emotions, thoughts, and behaviors effectively in different situations and to achieve goals and aspirations. This includes the capacities to delay gratification, manage stress, and feel motivation and agency to accomplish personal and collective goals.”

Let’s try to contextualize our conscious processing capacity, ahem, a bit more and then ultimately connect it to why developing self-management skills ought to be a part of your leadership practice.

We can start with a seemingly simple exercise. Box breathing is a technique used by a wide range of people and professionals, including Navy Seals and athletes, to quickly induce a state of calm.  We trace the “box” by inhaling for a count of four, holding our inhalation for a count of four, exhaling for a count of four, and holding our exhalation for a count of four.  We then repeat that cycle.

Easy, right?  Don’t be so sure.  Most likely, your mind will also bring forth other information beyond just counting to four.  Notice any thoughts that pop up in addition to your count.  Notice if you lose count and find yourself needing to restart the box.   Notice whether or not you are able to maintain your focus exclusively on your four counts.

Set a timer and take one minute to box breathe, noticing your capacity to maintain focus and any distractions your mind may introduce. 

Once you’ve finished, make a mental note of any distractions you observed and how successful you were in managing them. 

Now, let’s compare the relatively simple scenario of one minute’s worth of box breathing with a far more stimulus-rich scenario such as leading a staff meeting. What would compete for your consciousness budget?  You’d be aware of your physical surroundings, your staff, and your own experience to some degree moment to moment. Any and all of those stimuli will contribute to your self-management decisions, depending entirely upon what information is consuming your bits budget.

Unattended, if your self-management skills are not strong to begin with, or under your intentional development, no one would fault you for feeling overwhelmed by the combination of recognizing and handling all of the information present.  In addition, you may be overwhelmed by the very limited, but potentially emotionally-charged information that you are processing internally  (for example, staff may seem distracted and aren’t paying attention to you).  

Return now to your box breathing experience.  If you are like most of us, even in a relatively simple exercise like this where the stimuli are constrained , your mind probably wandered away from “only” counting to four on each side of the box. If we can be distracted when our only task is to count to four, what might that suggest about how effectively we are managing both ourselves and others in the staff meeting? 

That’s just one of a number of questions that may arise as you explore increasing your capacity to self-manage.  We submit that these questions are important to explore and answer, as a lack of self-management skills can lead to health issues due to increased stress, or to damaged relationships in school, where relationships are arguably the essential building block in the social and emotional act that is instruction or leadership.  More striking still, neither teachers nor principals typically receive any kind of training on this topic in credentialing programs, so it is no wonder that the demands school place on educators can exact such high tolls.

Fortunately, it is possible to sanely and sustainably increase your self-management skills.  Here’s how you can break down the challenge to increase the odds of your success:

1. Pick a very narrow time of day to focus on: this might be the first 15 minutes of your day, or five minutes right before lunch, or 10 minutes from when you walk in the door.  Pick a time when you are either at your best and most likely to have the energy necessary to make a good choice or a very small window when you’d like to improve the quality of choices you might make.
2. Set yourself up for success ahead of time.  If you know your patience is likely to be short during your focal window, consider including a few minutes of box breathing to calm yourself down and give yourself the chance to focus on the choice that you want to make.  Hack your brain by having a short affirmation or paragraph that you can read to yourself that affirms the behaviors/choices you want to make.
3. Remind yourself of who you want to be.  Remind yourself of the benefits of improving your self-management.
4. Celebrate and track your successes.  Check the self-management box each day.
5. Reflect on your progress and challenges on a weekly basis.  You will start to notice differences immediately if you are consistent.  Give yourself the opportunity to see those and to identify new challenges that need to be overcome as you increase your self-management.  Rinse and repeat with changing new behaviors, racking up wins one at a time.

Developing self-management allows for increased openness to moderating our actions based upon our awareness of the complexity that may be present in even seemingly simple situations like counting to four.  Our brains are already limiting what we can pay attention to, filtering out potentially millions of bits of information every second, and leaving us to contemplate no more than a relative handful of information.  We’re focused, to a certain degree, by default.  It’s our job, however, to do our bit to increase our capacity to self-manage our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors in order to, ultimately, improve student outcomes.