Practical Ways to Manage Yourself (PragProg)

Lead and serve others with ease when you learn to manage yourself and become a modern manager.

Johanna Rothman @jrothman

This work was written and produced entirely by the author. We are proud to be distributing it.

Every management role requires you to change your role. In each case, you move from expert (at this level) to coach. Unfortunately, too many contemporary management practices don’t encourage those behavior changes. Instead, learn to become a modern manager and manage yourself. You’ll discover that when you manage yourself, you can lead and serve others with ease. Discover the questions and myths that prevent management excellence. Use the ideas in each chapter to study, experiment, and change how you manage yourself. Learn real modern management.

You can become an excellent manager when you manage yourself first. If you’re like most managers, you’ve never seen management excellence. You are not alone. Modern management requires we first manage ourselves—and that might be the most challenging part of management. Based on research and backed up by personal stories, you’ll see how you can manage yourself. Through questions, stories, and proven options, learn how you can:

  • Move from expert to coach.
  • Recognize and avoid micromanagement.
  • Support the people doing the work to solve more of their problems.
  • Make time to think so you can be your best self.
  • Trust the people you lead and serve.
  • And, much more.

With its question and myth, each chapter offers you options to rethink how you manage yourself. Become a modern manager. Learn to manage yourself so you and the people you lead and serve can deliver the results everyone needs.


Johanna Rothman, known as the “Pragmatic Manager,” offers frank advice for your tough problems. She helps leaders and teams do reasonable things that work. Equipped with that knowledge, they can then decide how to adapt their product development. With her trademark practicality and humor, Johanna is the author of 18 books about many aspects of product development. Find her Pragmatic Manager newsletter, articles, and blogs at jrothman.com and createadaptablelife.com.

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