2.7.3       Dividing life into responsibility areas

• To be able to successfully manage and plan one's life, it must be dividend into parts. These parts are responsibility areas.
• What is a responsibility area?
  • Responsibility areas are those areas in life wherein is important for you to attain a result and perform any activities.
  • Determine responsibility areas means to divide life into a particular number of parts. Every part is called a responsibility area.
  • A responsibility area defines the set of tasks (results) in one direction of activity, e.g., selling, production, staff, new regions, finance, family, personal projects, social activities etc.

• Why is it necessary to establish responsibility areas?
  • To make a structure of many daily tasks and activities.
  • To determine priorities.
  • To better divide the time (incl., also work time).

• What are responsibility areas?
  • Responsibility areas cover all areas of your life, including personal goals.
  • Responsibility area means everything that is included in the scope of your responsibility. It may include the jobs that you do not perform, but which you control.
  • Responsibility areas are all-inclusive.
    • Any activity that you do in your life must be included under one of your responsibility areas.
    • An activity must not be simultaneously included in two or more responsibility areas.
    • Where responsibility areas overlap, (i.e., they contain a number of equal tasks or details of one job), they might be united into one area.
  • The names of responsibility areas must be short and concise. It should contain the area name (e.g., production) rather than the result to be attained in the area (e.g., increasing production capacity).
  • Responsibility areas are the large parts of life, not separate tasks or activities.
• There are several methods to determine responsibility areas:
  • Write down all your daily tasks and areas you are responsible for. Group them so that interrelated tasks or tasks with a similar characteristic are included in one group. These groups will be your responsibility areas.
  • Determine or revise the most important long-term and medium-term goals that have been set in your work or other areas of your life. Then determine the main activity areas to attain these goals.
  • Determine responsibility areas taking account of personal wishes, skills and opinions.
  • These methods may be combined.
• Sample responsibility areas for a head of an organizational structure of an enterprise: