Personal Responsibility – Key to Success
There are a number of doors that lead to success, and personal responsibility is a key to most of those doors. Personal responsibility is an ability to handle issues, tasks and problems on one’s own. Personal responsibility is very important. Responsible people know how to balance their school, work, and personal lives, keeping their lives in harmony. Responsible people know how to prioritize and schedule their time accordingly, so that they rule the day and not allowing the day to rule them. Responsible person may fall into perfectionism, but there are strategies and techniques to avoid such pitfall. Personal responsibility is the key to success.
Responsible people know how to prioritize and schedule their time accordingly. Things that are urgent and important need to be done first, while things that are not urgent and not important can be saved for later. People who are responsible take charge of their day, instead of allowing the day to control them. Ellis (2011) stated, “When you set goals and manage time, your life does not just happen by chance. You are on equal terms with the greatest sculptor, painter, or playwright. More than creating a work of art, you are designing a life” (p. 74). Indrawan agrees, “freedom is found in personal responsibility” (Indrawan, 2011, para. 2). According to Indrawan (2011), when her clients decide to take personal responsibility for who they are, what they do, and what they think, as opposed to coming up with excuses for their situations, they no longer feel that life happens to them, they make life happen. If the planning is not done, one can spend most of their time working on mundane tasks that are not important and are not aligned with the big picture. Ellis (2011) calls it the “C Fever” (p. 72). According to Ellis (2011), the symptoms of C fever include an urge to drop work on high priority tasks, and cross as many lower priority items off the to-do list. Presently, the author prioritizes and schedules work and personal projects a week in advance in addition to having a one to two month larger picture. School projects and time for study has already made its way into the author’s Outlook calendar (and iPhone) with the appropriate priorities. School has now become a part of his planned life, replacing some, but not all of the leisure time.
The most important reason that personal responsibility is the key to success is because the responsible person knows how to balance their school, work, and personal lives, so they live in harmony. If there is no balance, and work dominates one’s life, this creates stress, which can impact one’s health, which will impact one’s academic success. If one spends too much time on leisure, the grades and work performance go down. Ellis (2011) said, “When students don’t balance extracurricular activities with class work, their success in school can suffer. They can also compromise their health by losing sleep, neglecting exercise, skipping meals, or relying on fast food” (p. 16). The book offers numerous tips and tricks on how to balance the things in one’s life, but the most important is really careful planning. Planning the schoolwork, and personal projects in advance and allowing time for “unplanned work” creates a less stressful environment for the author, and as a result this creates more positive atmosphere for him at home, at work, and at school. One other thing that Ellis (2011) recommends is saying “no” to the activities that fail to create value for you. Sadly, the author is not yet proficient at the art of saying “no,” but he is making a conscious effort to reduce those project that yield him little or no benefit.
Sometimes the responsible people develop a habit of perfectionism. Not so much a habit as a style of procrastination that hard-working, responsible people are prone to. This occurs, when a person either does not start the work on the project / task, for fear of making a mistake, or if they do take the task on, he or she focuses on making the task so perfect, that they spend too much time on the small details and they lose track of time, so they are unable to finish other aspects of the task, or other projects. Ellis (2011) offers a nice strategy for getting un-stuck if one finds themselves in the procrastination mode of perfectionist: “Ask: ‘is this a piano?’ … Perhaps you do not have to apply the same standards of grammar to lecture notes that you would apply to a term paper” (p. 82). When working on a project, the author frequently stops and does quick time checks. How much time was spent on this project, compared to how much time has been allotted for this project. The author checks periodically if he is out of line, and whether he needs to improve the quality or re-evaluate the time allotment.
Personal responsibility is the key to success as long as the person does not get stuck in the perfectionist mode. Responsible people are good at prioritization and scheduling of their time. They control life instead of allowing life to control them. They live in harmony, balancing out their school, work, and personal lives. Since the author already plans the professional and personal life one to two weeks in advance, incorporating school into this schedule is relatively easy. The author just has to make sure not to dwell on unimportant details, and spend reasonable amount of time on appropriate things.

References
Ellis, D. (2011). Becoming a master student (13th ed.)P.72,74,80,. Boston, MA: Wadsworth.
Indrawan, A. (2011, August). How stepping into your power can change your life. The Life Change Network. Retrieved from http://www.thelifechangenetwork.com/how-stepping-into-your-power-can-change-your-life/