Book SummaryManaging Oneself, by Peter F. Drucker

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Managing Oneself

Managing Oneself is a guide to finding success in your career. Peter Drucker asserts that through careful self-management, you can build a career where you thrive and feel rewarded. Drucker likens managing yourself to taking responsibility for yourself and your own career development so that you can grow and achieve throughout your entire working life.

Other Views of Self-Management

Rather than giving a precise definition of what self-management is, Drucker slowly reveals his concept of self-management throughout his book.

Other authors have offered a more concise view of the concept of self-management, sometimes drawing on Drucker’s ideas. For instance, in The First 90 Days, a guide to succeeding in your new job, author Michael D. Watkins outlines two pillars of self-management. The first is to create habits that will ensure your success, such as blocking off time to pursue your medium-term and long-term goals. The second pillar is to build yourself a support system, such as a network of people whose advice you know you can trust.

In this guide, we’ll cover two of Drucker’s key principles of self-management: working from your strengths and setting—and achieving—impressive targets to make yourself stand out.

Self-Reflecting to Find Your Strengths

Drucker suggests that self-management begins with self-reflection, which helps you get to know yourself better. The most important quality that self-reflection helps you discover is your strengths.

Drucker states that discovering your strengths is necessary to success because working on your strengths is the most efficient, and thus best, way to make yourself stand out and advance your career. It doesn’t take much effort to improve something you have a natural ability in, and this effort could turn you into an exceptional performer. Conversely, it would take a good deal of effort to work on areas in which you’re less skilled, and the results would be less impressive—taking you from poor to mediocre.

The Importance of Favoring Your Strengths

Drucker’s advice to work on the things you’re already good at may seem counterintuitive because you may assume...

Managing Oneself Summary Shortform Introduction

Managing Oneself discusses how to take charge of your career to maneuver yourself into your ideal job. Peter Drucker, the author of many works on management theory, outlines the most important factors that he believes will help you succeed in your career efficiently. He asks that you manage yourself and take actions now that will lead to a flourishing career in the future.

About the Author

Drucker, who died in 2005, is referred to as the founder of modern management. A global leader in management theory and practice for over 60 years, he wrote 39 books and countless articles, including more than 30 essays in the Harvard Business Review. He also coined the term “knowledge worker,” and he considered the measurement and increase of the productivity of knowledge workers to be the next great challenge for managers.

Born in Austria, Drucker received a doctoral degree in Frankfurt and worked as a reporter in Germany before fleeing to England upon Hitler’s rise to power. He moved to the U.S. in 1937, later becoming a citizen, and taught at New York University and Claremont Graduate University, among other...

Managing Oneself Summary Chapter 1: Defining Self-Management

Managing Oneself is a guide to finding success in your career. Peter Drucker provides a template of the necessary steps to build a career where you thrive and feel rewarded, complete with self-reflection exercises to apply his ideas to your career.

In this guide, we’ll explore Drucker’s ideas on how to manage yourself. We’ll begin by discussing why self-management is necessary. We’ll then look at the steps of self-reflection Drucker recommends, as well as how to put this self-reflection into action. Finally, we’ll look at Drucker’s notion of a second career, which is a new career starting around the midpoint of your working life.

In this chapter, we’ll discuss what self-management is and why it’s a practice that Drucker believes you should engage in.

What Does It Mean to Manage Yourself?

According to Drucker, managing yourself is taking responsibility for yourself and your career development so that you can grow and learn throughout your working life. In other words, it means taking the initiative to develop your skills so that you maximize your chances of having a successful career.

When managing yourself, Drucker notes that it’s helpful to think of...

Shortform Exercise: Find Your Self-Management Role Model

In this chapter, Drucker explains the necessity of self-management to take responsibility for yourself and direct your career. In this exercise, you’ll identify a self-managed person and explore how to emulate them to get started on your path to self-management.

Describe someone who you think embodies Drucker’s notions of self-management. This could be someone from your personal or professional life or a famous person.

Managing Oneself Summary Chapter 2: How You Can Begin to Manage Yourself

So far, we’ve explored Drucker’s idea of what managing yourself is and why it’s necessary. Next, we’ll explore how you can begin to manage yourself. Drucker’s first step in self-management is self-reflection, a process that helps you get to know yourself better.

Knowing yourself is part of the process of taking responsibility for yourself and will help you to advance in your career. Drucker says that once you have greater self-knowledge, you can and must actively seek out situations where you’ll thrive.

What Is Self-Reflection?

Despite discussing it extensively, Drucker doesn’t fully define what self-reflection is. In this guide, we define self-reflection as looking inwards to discover things about yourself that are hidden from your conscious mind. This could include any biases, your habits, and your deeper emotions.

Many writers recommend self-reflection and outline the benefits it has beyond advancing your career. For instance, in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey suggests self-reflection as the starting...

Shortform Exercise: Reflect on Your Strengths and Values

Drucker says that self-reflection is the first step towards self-management. In this exercise, you’ll apply his techniques of self-reflection and start thinking about your strengths and values.

Looking back on the last 12 months, identify an achievement that came from working from one of your strengths. How did this strength help you to succeed?

Managing Oneself Summary Chapter 3: How to Put Self-Reflection Into Action

In the previous chapter, we discussed various elements of self-reflection that Drucker recommends to manage yourself so that you learn who you are and what your personal recipe for career success is. In this chapter, we’ll look at how to put that advice into action.

Drucker outlines two suggestions: First, we’ll explore his ideas on setting targets. Then, we’ll discuss his ideas on managing relationships with people in your working life.

Use Goals to Excel in Your Role

Once you’ve thoroughly worked through the stages of self-reflection, you should have identified what your strengths are and the kind of job where you produce excellent work. Drucker recommends that you then answer the question, “How can I excel in my current role?”

You excel by making a notable difference to your workplace using your strengths and other kinds of self-knowledge. Do this by setting a work-related target and then working backward to make a step-by-step plan for achieving it.

Drucker gives several target-setting recommendations, including:

• The target should engage your strengths.
• It should be an ambitious target that you’ll have to push yourself to achieve.
• It should be...

Shortform Exercise: Act on Your Self-Reflection Insights

Drucker gives two main steps to apply the knowledge gathered from self-reflection to your career. In this exercise, you’ll see how to apply the information gathered from your self-reflection to your career so that you can advance and receive recognition from those around you.

What target could you set that would play to the strengths you identified during self-reflection and make a difference to your workplace? Explain how your target fits these criteria.

Managing Oneself Summary Chapter 4: Your Second Career

The last concept Drucker outlines is that of your second career, which is a change you initiate around the midpoint in your working life. This could be a complete switch in careers or a gradual transition towards something more suited to you. Drucker states that those who have a successful second career are the natural leaders who’ve mastered the principles of self-management.

The Second Career and “The Great Resignation”

Drucker’s concept of the second career is one that played out in “The Great Resignation,” a movement caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. According to surveys from 2021, 50% of the U.S. workforce wanted to make a career change, and at the peak of this trend, approximately four million Americans quit their jobs every month.

While some of these people cited working conditions such as greater flexibility in other positions as the main reason why they quit, 61% of employees who quit said that [a newly-gained industry-recognized credential was part of the reason they got a new...

Shortform Exercise: Plan Your Second Career

Drucker encourages everyone to have a second career, to keep their working life interesting and to increase their chances of career success. These exercises will help you to plan out your transition to your second career.

First, identify what your ideal second career would be. (Would it be a shift into a totally different field or a change to a different role within your current industry?)