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Do you ever set goals or think of things you want to do differently, but then forget about it a month later?
Me too.
That’s where a personal development plan comes in. A personal development plan gives you structure to make sure you meet your goals.
If you’re still struggling, you can learn more about staying motivated to meet your goals here.
Let’s get into why and how to create a personal development plan in 2022.
What is a Personal Development Plan?
Before we get into the why and how, what even is a personal development plan? A personal development plan is a document that keeps you accountable for meeting your goals and finding out areas you can improve in.
You can use a personal development plan for any area of your life- Professional, physical health, mental health, financial, spiritual, etc. You can look at some specific goal ideas in this read about simple ways to improve your life.
Having a personal development plan is something I learned in occupational therapy school that I still use to this day.
Why do you Need a Personal Development Plan?
One of the biggest goal setting mistakes is that we set a goal, but we don’t make a plan for how to achieve your goals.
Creating a plan allows you to assess what goals you need to set and visualize exactly what you’re going to do to achieve them.
You can use it to keep track of your progress and see where you are in terms of your timeline of self-improvement.
How to Create a Personal Development Plan
Now, let’s get into how to create a personal development plan. Here are some personal development plan ideas.
Do a Life/Annual Review
Before you write down where you want to be, you have to take a look at where you’ve been.
Some questions you should ask yourself and reflect on are:
- Do I like where I’m at right now? Why?
- What was your biggest challenge this year?
- What was your biggest accomplishment?
- What didn’t go as planned this year and why?
- If you could go back a year, what would you tell yourself?
- What were your favorite things about this past year?
- What were your least favorite things about this past year?
Determine your Strengths
Next, it’s time to assess your strengths. Think of things you like about yourself. Or positive things others have said about you.
I feel like this is the hardest part because we’re always so focused on the things that challenge us. We forget about all of the strengths we actually have and how we can use them to our advantage.
Figure out what you Need to Improve
The first step in creating your personal development plan document is finding out what you need to improve.
I know we’re all our we’re out own worst critic, but be easy on yourself. Think of areas of improvement in a positive light that you’re excited about getting better at.
For example, some areas I’d like to improve in are decreasing social anxiety, eating healthier, exercising more, reading more books, saving and making more money, keeping my apartment cleaner, and feeling happier.
Set Specific Goals
The big secret to setting goals and achieving them is making them specific. If you set a goal to eat healthier, how would you even know if you met it? You wouldn’t.
Set several small goals if you have to. Instead of setting a goal to eat healthier, you could set a goal to only eat out once a week or to go to the gym 3x a week.
One of the best methods to setting goals is using the SMART method.
S- Specific
M- Measurable
A- Achievable
R- Relevant
T- Timely
Create an Action Plan
Now that you’ve written down your specific and measurable goals, you need to write down your plan to achieve them.
List the steps for each goal for exactly how you’re going to achieve it.
For example, if my goal is to read more books, my action steps will include putting 30 minutes to the side a day to read at least one chapter. It could also include writing down the books I want to read next and how many to read per week.
Set Criteria to Measure your Success
One of the most important parts of a personal development plan is setting criteria to determine whether you’ve set your goal.
If you make your goal measurable, this could be the same as your goal.
For a goal of reducing stress, your criteria could be that you reduced the number of days you feel stressed in a mood tracker to 8.
Set a Target Date
The last thing you need to do is set a target date for each of your goals.
This is so you can achieve them in a timely manner.
You can use short-term goals and update your personal development plan more often, or you could use long-term goals, like a year or longer.
Make sure that it’s reasonable to achieve your goals in the time you write down.
Time to Start your Journey!
You can get a personal development plan template here if you don’t want to make your own!
Now that you’ve designed your self improvement plan, you have to follow through (or at least try to). You can get started with this 30 day personal growth challenge.
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