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Concretizing my growth

There are three areas in which I have directed my growth. This effort will make my growth focused. These three areas are: Learning, Job and Extras.

The first area is learning which I will do on weekdays after office hours and on Sundays. This is based on two principles. The first principle is not to study abstract subjects such as philosophy. This is because studying a philosophy essay by Aristotle is very exciting owing to its potential implications and solutions but one can’t completely relate to it. The second principle is to study concrete subjects. The reasons for this are because it is easy to study, I can immediately apply this to my life, and there is a pre-defined syllabus I can follow. The course work that I plan to study is as follows: The first course is in learning how to think well. This I will do by studying Logic following the course taught at IBA in the BBA Program. The second course is aimed at learning how to communicate well. For this I will follow the composition course taught at LUMS. The remaining sets of subjects are aimed at internalizing the courses from my MBA degree that are relevant to my career as a business analyst. These include two courses on marketing which are Principles of marketing and Marketing Management, one course on finance, another on management/organizational structure, another on strategic management and the final two courses covering the basics of economics: microeconomics and macroeconomics.

The second area that I will focus on is my job. This I will do during office hours from 8:30 to 5:30 during weekdays. There are two approaches to my job. The first is to understand the big picture of my job. The big picture would include understanding the different departments in my company and their relationship, the culture of the organization, the vision, mission, objectives and strategy of the company, where I fit into this strategy and finally how my current job is in line with my career. The second approach is to understand the small picture and the way to do this is to firstly prioritize the list of outstanding tasks I have and secondly to create time-boundaries for tasks. Tasks should be time bounded in three ways: firstly as tasks I have to do in the next five minutes, tasks I have to do in the day and tasks I have to do in the next three days.

The third area I call the extras for which I have dedicated Saturday. These include tasks such as buying trousers, getting the car fixed and socializing with family and friends.

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