What is a personal development plan and how do you create one?
A personal development plan is like any plan - a series of steps laid out in a consistent and logical order with the aim of achieving one or more specific goals. In this case the focus of the plan is self improvement.
As with any endeavor, we need to establish our objectives in order to work towards them. And our own personal growth is no exception. What follows are some thoughts on how to approach this planning process.
Identify Your Goals:
Let's start at the beginning. What do we want to achieve? What do we want to change. What habits would we like to acquire and what habits would we like to lose? What do we like about ourselves and our lives and what would we like to change or improve?
This is a great opportunity for us all to take a step back and give serious consideration to where we are in our lives. As the days and weeks go past, it's easy for us to get so immersed in day to day activities that we lose sight of what's really important. But, by taking the time to consciously decide what it is that we want, we can re-focus our energy and efforts on what's really important to us.
Establish Priorities:
One of the dangers of personal development planning, or of any planning for that matter, is that of coming up with a wish list so long that we'll be overwhelmed. Many of us when faced with a lengthy to do list will get bogged down. Where do I start? How can I possibly get through all of this?
Sometimes we just end up back where started - or even worse off because we now have this extra list of things to do hanging over our heads.
So we need to establish priorities. What is most important to us? what needs to be done first? Is there a logical order we can establish.
One approach is to choose the top 3 things to work on and park the rest for the time being. Devote your energy to getting these things done before reviewing your goals again and choosing the next 3 highest priorities.
Another approach is to break your goals up into short medium and long term. The period is somewhat arbitrary, but short term might be within one year, medium term less than five years and long term being longer than that.
Set A Time Line To Reach Your Goals:
This leads neatly into setting time lines. Part of the planning process involves placing deadlines against tasks on the plan. And once again, planning for personal development is no exception.
Rather than just having a vague idea of what you want to do by when, give yourself a kick start by setting a due date. This will help you to get motivated. A self imposed deadline can be worthwhile if you hold yourself to it. And achieving that goal within that time-frame provides further motivation. You will feel better about yourself and be ready for the next challenge.
However, not all goals are well suited to setting completion dates. While you can give yourself a date by which you want to lose ten pounds, quitting smoking is a different proposition. Habit based goals are normally based on some sort of permanent change.
In this case, you might like to set duration based time-lines. What I mean by that is to establish a period of time over which you would like maintain a new habit. For example you might like to set yourself a goal of getting up one hour earlier everyday for the next 30 days. Once you've met that goal, you might like to extend it to 90 day or 180 days, although by then, hopefully the habit will have become permanent.
Be realistic:
While it's important to set aggressive goals, we don't want to make them so lofty that we have little chance of achieving them. Whether it's the size and scope of your goal or the time you've given yourself to achieve it, be realistic. Failing to achieve your goals can be a demotivating experience.
Take action:
It's all very well to sit down and formulate a plan, but you still need to do the work. Don't spend all of your time analyzing and planning. You will need to take action. Start at the beginning. It's amazing how motivating the feeling of making progress can be. You never know - you might enjoy it.
Review Your Plan:
The last step in the personal development planning process is to review your plan. Measure your progress against it. Anniversaries are a common time to undergo the review. It could be your birthday or the coming of a new year. These are times when we tend to be reflective anyway, so take the opportunity to review what you've achieved in the previous year and think about what you want out of the upcoming year.
Hopefully this article has given you some new ideas - or maybe reinforced some existing ones. Or at the least you will now be familiar with what a personal development plan is.
What Is A Personal Development Plan?
What Is Personal Development?
What is personal development and what does it mean to you?
It an attempt to put a framework in place for this website, I went looking for a definition of personal development. I was looking for a generally accepted understanding of what it means - a standard, one-size-fits-all description which I could just reference and use as a starting point for discussion.
But I was surprised at how difficult it was to find such a thing. While there are plenty of websites which have taken a stab at it, I couldn't find an authoritative source which I felt captured the essence of what personal growth and development is about. Even the ever-reliable Wikipedia didn't offer much help.
So then I thought - I'll just write my own definition. I figured I could do as good a job as anyone else. I've given the matter a great deal of thought over the years and indeed taken a number of steps to improve myself. I should be able to distill my thoughts and experiences in this area into a succinct and useful definition. But when I sat down to pen my definition, it hit me. Personal development is different for everybody.
Is this a cop-out? I'd like to think not. I know what personal development means to me, but I couldn't presume to put a label on it for everybody else. Broadly speaking, personal development is an activity undertaken by an individual in an attempt to improve one or more aspects of themselves or their lives. It might relate to such areas as health and fitness, personal productivity, relationships, personal finances, spirituality or just a general sense of self.
For me, this is the key. Everyone has different priorities - and people's priorities change over time as their circumstances change and as life experiences shape each individual's outlook. While career advancement or pursuit of their first million dollars may drive some people, for others losing weight or gaining self confidence might be more worthy goals.
What follows are some areas of personal development which I'd like to explore in more depth. I intend to do this in upcoming articles on this blog.
Health and Fitness:
Most of us would like to be healthier and fitter than we are currently. Your goal might be weight loss for the sake of your general health and wellbeing. You might want to give up smoking. Or maybe you aspire to running a marathon or achieving some other feat of physical and mental endurance. As with most areas of self improvement, priorities will vary greatly for each individual.
Personal Productivity and Organization:
Do you get as much done each day as you'd like to? Have you ever thought there must be a way to organize your time in such a way as to maximize the tasks you can complete each day. Many people (myself included) want to improve their time management and organization skills so they (and I) can get more done. I'm aware of a number of systems which can be adopted in an effort to maximize your personal productivity. I'll explore these in detail in the near future.
Wealth, Money and Personal Finances:
There's a lot more to life than money. I can't emphasize this point too much. However, the reality for most of us is that we will need to manage our limited financial resources (both money and our ability to earn money) to provide an adequate, if not comfortable, lifestyle for ourselves and our families. This is a very broad topic and covers everything from basic budgeting and day to day money management to wealth generation with a view to achieving financial freedom.
Motivation and Goal Setting for Success:
Getting started can be one of the hardest things about personal development. How do you motivate yourself to do more? What drives you to achieve your goals? Just as importantly, how do you set your goals? Do you have a structured approach? Are your goals (and the time-lines you've set yourself to achieve them) realistic? Do you have a plan - a clear idea of what you want to do and how you're going to do it? For me, motivation and goal setting are inter-related. I find the act of setting goals helps motivate me and achieving these goals spurs me on to do more.
Happiness and Self Esteem:
For me, this is ultimately what personal growth and development is all about. And that's why it's such a personal and individual thing. What makes you happy may not - in fact probably wont - make the next person happy. But there's more to it than that. Do you really know what will make you happy? What is happiness anyway? Is it something you can strive for and once achieved will be permanent? Or is it a temporary or even fleeting state?
These are some of the topics I'd like to explore - and anything else that takes my fancy. I think I've rambled more than I'd have liked. But to be honest, I don't think there is a simple answer to the question - What is personal development?
