Personal Development Planning – Step 3 Create Plan

Introduction

One of the more important things you can do for yourself is to create a plan for your personal development.  For me the personal development plan is an ongoing activity.  Every 60 to 90 days I review the plan and adjust the plan as needed.

Background

Over the years I have tried to set both personal and career goals for myself.  As I have written before I like to learn and grow.  I use the format of a development plan as a way to help me stay focused.  It has also been a way for me to measure my growth from month to month or year to year.

Today’s blog entry will focus on what is a personal development plan and how to put one in place.  I will be writing a series of blog entries on this topic as I will write a blog entry for each of the four steps.  The four steps are the following:

  • Identify Need to Change
  • Accept Change
  • Create Plan (This Entry)
  • Take Action and Measure Progress 

Create Plan

This is the activity that you go through to write down the details of how to accomplish the goal.    You will want to identify the detailed steps that are needed to get the goal or activity accomplished.   A key to this task is to break the tasks down into enough detail that you understand what each task will accomplish.   (See Setting SMART Goals for details on creating measureable goals)

  • What to Track – The following are some pieces of information that I include in my plan:
  • Change/Goal – what you want to change
  • Activity/Method to achieve goal  – a description of the activity/step that is to be done
  • Status – what the recent status is of the activity
  • Target Date – date that I would like to complete the activity
  • Actual Completion Date – date that I actually completed the activity
  • Medium – record if this is a task, book, class, etc.
  • Where to Track – It can be on a piece of paper, an excel spreadsheet or another piece of software.  The key is to make sure it is available for you to see or review on a regular basis.
  • Example of Sample Development Plan

Conclusion

I hope this entry helps you to understand the value in being able to “Create Plan”.  This is the third of four (4) blog entries on the topic of Personal Development Planning.  I will continue this topic with one (1) additional entry to provide more details of the development planning process.    

Tim Meyer
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