Personal Policy

Before I begin this week’s post, on Monday last week I received a phone call from Awards Australia saying that I had made the top three in the Career Achievement Category of the NT Young Achiever Awards so that means I’m in the finals!!! My competition for the award this year is Rachel De Viriglio from Rachael’s Design A Cake and Tashka Urban, a singer/songwriter from Central Australia. They have both achieved quite a lot and have already won many awards for their achievements so it’s a great honour to be competiting with some of the best young achievers that reside here in the Northern Territory.
Now, last week I caught up with Ian Dennis to ask his advice on this policy document that I’m writing for ACS Young IT. Ian has a wealth of knowledge in statistical analysis and policy development and I thought he’d be a good starting point to understand the intricies of policy development. During the hour or so that I spent with him, Ian outlined his simple strategy for writing policy and gave me some useful tips and tricks on writing effective policy as well as some reference websites to help me strenghten my own policy document. Thanks for all your help Ian, now all I have to do is follow your advice!

Also last week I had my usual catch up session with Nathaniel Peek from Pixel Harvester. He never ceases to amaze me with his stories and he’s got some pretty out there tales. I can’t wait for his autobiography to come out! During lunch he said something very interesting (and also very out there). We were talking about his inability to get ADSL into his new apartment and how he was being too nice about it all and wasn’t complaining enough to his service providers to get results. He said to me “I don’t get angry very often. I don’t have time in my life to get angry.” and I thought what an interesting statement!

The more I thought about what he said I realised that its so true. I’m a big fan of time management theories but in this case, based on what Ian and I had spoken about previously, it sounded more like it was a policy of his not to get angry and to focus on other more meaningful things in his life. It was almost like his Personal Policy.

For those of you who don’t really know about what policy is, think of it like a set of rules and regulations designed to guide decision making on a particular topic. For example, at work there will be tons of policies about appropriate computer usage, or policies on annual leave. Policy serves as guidance to decision makers when faced with a particular decision. Sometimes the decision making process can be very clear cut however at other times you really need to examine policy to ensure that the decisions made are concurrent with the rules of that particular policy. On the flip side, if you find that policy is hindering your ability to make good decisions then it might be a chance to review that policy and update it.

So how does this relate back to Personal Policy? Well if you think about it, in life we’re faced with many decisions and we base our decisions on our experience and the experience and advice of others around us. So by developing our Personal Policy we are able to make better decisions especially in less than ideal circumstances. For example, if you decide that you want to save up for a deposit on a house and all your friends want you to go out with them and spend money, then you might be more inclined to stick to your policy and save the money instead. You formulate your policy on what is most important to you and work from there.

So this week I challenge you to come up with 5 rules that you wish to incorporate into your Personal Policy. They might be something simple as “My policy is to spend more time reading Dream Build Inspire Lead!” or something more complex as “My policy is to improve my connections with people who can influence my career”. Whatever it is, write it down and stick to it. You’ll find your decision making becomes a lot clearer when you have your Personal Policy to guide you along the way.

Dream, Build, Inspire, Lead!

AJ~

Author: AJ Kulatunga

Category:

personal policy, inspire, young achiever awards