Identifying and managing your resources

Identifying and managing your resources

“You cannot afford to wait for perfect conditions. Goal setting is often a matter of balancing timing against available resources. Opportunities are easily lost while waiting for perfect conditions.”

— Gary Ryan Blair

Have you ever been in a situation where you had to do something out of necessity but had limited resources even to start, let alone complete the task? What happened next? Did you start? Were you able to see it to completion? If yes, how did you do it?

Whenever you want to carry out a task, your resources are all the things you require to initiate and complete that task successfully. Now, I want you to imagine this; if scientists hadn’t discovered the importance of crude oil, would it be of any significance today? Or, if burning fossil fuel and the possibility of its depletion wasn’t a threat to our existence, would we think of alternatives or conservation? I doubt that, but the fact that those challenges exist is what ignites the fire of our resourcefulness. After all, electricity had been available before crude oil. Similarly, there are resources that we haven’t identified in our lives, resources that can help us achieve our goals and change our lives for good. The question is, do we have to wait until our current resources are depleted or become obsolete before we identify and start utilizing them?

So, how do we identify these resources? I’m not trying to be vague, but everything you have, money, energy, time, experience, etc., and everyone you know, are resources. However, linking them to their use or importance is where the work is.

The second face of the coin is putting the resources to fair use or effective management. To o this, let’s go through the scenario below.

You have a task, and it involves having a one-on-one meeting with the new president. Easy right? The standard procedure will be to go to the white house, apply for a meeting with the president, and wait. For how long, I cant specify. But with that approach, you will need lots of information, do a lot of persuasions, and do a lot of waiting. However, what if you used your knowledge and experience to help someone a while ago, and it turns out that the person now knows someone who knows another person, who knows two more people, who can link you to someone close enough to arrange a meeting with the president. With the right moves, it should be a problem solved, and you can see that connection was a more valuable resource than money at that time.

So, you see, everything is a resource. What’s left is for us to identify the proper use of it.

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