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Your Personal Development Plan: A Concise Guide to How to Write One by Rob Evanier Introduction Have you ever heard the expression that if you don’t know where you are going, then you won’t go anywhere? While it is true that even the best planner is often thrown off course, there are many benefits to taking the time to take a virtual inventory of your life and decide where you need to go from here in order to meet your goals. I was first introduced to the concept of a personal and professional development plan when I was in college, and it truly struck me and something that could prove to be very useful if done on a regular basis. My very first plan was done as an assignment for this class, and I have updated that same plan every six months for over ten years. At the very end of this guide, I have included a sample personal development plan that is based loosely on that of a close friend who doesn’t mind me sharing her work. Your Own Personal S.W.O.T. Analysis If you consider yourself a business person, you might have heard or seen a presentation about S.W.O.T. analysis. Usually, they are done for both small and large businesses. The acronym stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. A personal development plan involves both personal development and goal setting. We can use the S.W.O.T. analysis to help us decide what we are good at, where we can improve, opportunities that we can capitalize on, and potential threats that we might be able to take steps to avoid. This is the “development” aspect of the plan, and if done correctly, might help you spot some ideas for goal setting, which comes a little later on. How to do a S.W.O.T. analysis for yourself Strengths: This can be the most difficult part, because we are trained to self- critique, but not flatter ourselves. Are you a charismatic speaker? Artistic and creative? A good listener? Organized and self-motivated? List your qualities and own them, since you’ve worked for them. You can also list your educational, personal and professional accomplishments in this section - these are successes that will help you with the rest of the analysis. Weaknesses: Be honest with yourself. What do you think your weakest qualities are? What to you think you could improve about your skill set? What do you think your boss and your co-workers would say? What about your best friend? Opportunities: Using the list of strengths that you made and an honest look at where you are in your life right now, what could you be doing different today, or next week? Is there a promotion that you know you could apply for, but you have been convincing yourself that you aren’t qualified? In your personal life, you might be in a dating relationship. Is it time to take it to the next level? Maybe you have a great income, good credit, and property values are low - is buying some property a good next move for you? Threats: This can be a tough one to wrap your head around. Using your weaknesses, you can try to imagine where, if you don’t make improvements, you actually might be in danger of losing something that you currently have. For example, if you don’t have a college degree, and most people at your current company do, and you know that your industry has been going through some tough financial times, a threat could be getting laid off. The point of this exercise is to, after you determine your threats, take steps to mitigate the risk or threat. In the case of the worker without the college degree, the steps could be either to get the college degree or change industries. Major Elements of a Personal Development Plan Motto I am sure that you’ve noticed that almost all corporations and even small businesses have a motto. Your motto is the sum of your beliefs, or even your personal outlook about life. When choosing your own personal motto, try to think about the person you are and the person you would like to be. My favorite personal mottos tend to be philosophical quotes. The personal motto that I have chosen for myself is a quote from Ferdinand Foch, who was a noted French commander during World War I. He believed that “the most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.” This quote spoke to me immediately, since I believe that kindling the fire that we all have inside us is the key to reaching all of our individual goals. And Foch couldn’t have been more correct. A determined person, with a fire burning deep within their soul, cannot be stopped. I truly believe that, and that it why I chose this for my motto. Choosing a motto can help you hold yourself accountable to the standards that you set for yourself. Additionally, it helps form self-respect, which is invaluable. Mission Statement You might be wondering how a mission statement is different than a motto. The difference is simple. A motto sums up who you are as a person. A mission statement states a particular goal, or a set of goals. What statement briefly sums up your goals? It’s important to have a mission statement because it will help you form your long-term and short-term goals. For example, if my mission is to find a cure for cancer to help children, I can work backwards from here and figure out what my first steps should be. When choosing a personal mission statement, remember that you are writing this plan for yourself, and ideally, no one else will see it. It is not a time for feeling self-conscious or holding back. Think about where you would like to be in 10- 15 years, and go from there. Here is a sample mission statement, which belongs to a Latin pop star named Soraya (this is written in the third-person): “Latin pop star Soraya, is on a mission to educate women about breast cancer. She is hoping to inspire women to take control of their own breast health, by sharing her personal survival experience and life-saving message.” Goal Setting Note: I like to include both personal and professional goals in my development plan under separate headings. Some people, especially entrepreneurs, find that their personal and professional goals are one and the same. It is up to you to decide. You have a couple of choices when it comes to how to include your goals in your development plan. My opinion on the matter depends on how certain you are about your long-term goals. Option #1: The first option is to work backwards from your longest-term, most distant goal. For example, if you are in high-school and you know that you want to be a world-renowned brain-surgeon, we could all agree that reaching this level of education and recognition would be a very long-term goal. Assuming that the high-schooler is very resolute in his/her goal, we can then very easily plot the career backwards, deciding the 10-year goals, then the 5-year goals, the 3-year goals, and then the short-term goals. Option #2: If you are less resolute about what you would like your future to look like, as was the case with me, you can start with short-term goals, and then include the long-term goals that you feel fairly sure about. For example, if you know that you eventually want to be an executive at your company (or have a position at a similar level at another company) within ten years, getting an MBA degree might be on your list of 5-year goals. Additionally, depending on your industry, there might be certain certifications or sales goals that you will need to meet in order to have the chance to get the promotion. Since you are the person with the goal, you are in the best position to decide what the next steps are. Some people find that they can envision the long-term goal, but have genuine trouble figuring out what goals they should set to set themselves up for success. If this is the case for you, a good idea would be to search out and try to network with a few people who are actually doing the thing that you would love to do. This can be difficult, but if you can demonstrate to them how serious you are about learning how they got to where they are, they just might take a chance on you and give you some specific advice. The whole idea of breaking your goals down into levels is to help you make the right decisions today to help you get to where you would like to be in ten years. It’s a tough sell sometimes, but it is truly an effective goal-setting technique. Ultra-Short Term Goals (Less than 3 months) These are the very short-term goals that, ideally, you could use to help yourself make your daily to-do lists. What do you need to have done by next month in order to meet this ultra-short-term goal? For example, if I set a goal of becoming fluent in Japanese as my long-term goal, a good ultra-short-term goal would be to learn my first 50 words. If my ultra- long-term goal is to become a Hollywood actor, a good ultra-short-term goal would be to go to my first audition for something simple, like as an extra in a movie or a television commercial. For those of you who are exceptionally organized, the ultra-short-term goals can be very useful in setting weekly and monthly goals. In the case of the aspiring movie actor, if he knows that his ultra-short-term goal is to go to his first audition, he can probably figure out that within the next month or so, he should be getting headshots done and finding an agent. This is how this type of goal- setting works. (Note: If you like to get really into this type of thing, you can drill-down even further and set “micro” goals - by the month, and so-on. Don’t do this if you think you will be discouraged by it, however. It’s not something that I do, as I like to have my plan as something more fluid, and I simply check in with it a few times a year.) Short-Term Goals (Less than 1 year) Short-term goals can be defined in different ways, but I usually like to say that they are goals that you would like to accomplish in less than one year. If you know that you would like to be fluent in Japanese in five years, and you are planning to learn 50 words in three months, where would you like to be in a year? One of my first short-term goals from one of my first plans was to get a new job with a $15,000 pay raise. I was very determined to do this, and got a job offer within eight months for $13,000 more than what I was currently earning. I feel like had I not had this specific goal in mind, they would have offered me much less. Long Term Goals (Less than 5 years) It’s usually fairly easy for us to have a pretty good idea of where we would like to be five years from today. If you are having trouble, take a good look at your life now. Are you in a relationship that you think might lead to marriage? Are children in the future? This can be a five-year goal. If you’ve just started college, graduating with your degree and perhaps getting into a particular graduate school are very legitimate five-year goals. As far as career or entrepreneurship goes, take a nice, honest look at where you are. If you have a job, what is the typical career path for a person in your position? Do you like where it is headed? The goal-setting process is also a good time to take stock of where you are right now, and maybe even deciding to make some changes to get you off of the path you are currently on and headed towards the right direction. Ultra-Long Term Goals (Up to 10 years from now) These very long-term goals can sometimes be the most challenging to set, or even imagine. There are two different exercises that are recommended for setting these sometimes vague goals. It’s difficult; after all, if we don’t even know what we will be doing next week, how will be know what we will be doing in ten years? The point of developing this plan is that IF we can have even a faint idea of where we would like to be in ten years, THEN we might actually be able to make our actions next week count towards reaching that goal. Otherwise, we are kind of moving aimlessly. Suggestion #1: Close your eyes and imagine that you are 80 years (or 90, or 100) old. You are very satisfied with the life that you have lived, and you feel happy with yourself. Try to think back over this satisfying, fulfilling life that you experienced. What types of things did you accomplish? Where are you? Who is with you during those experiences? Imagining the type of life that you would like to to have lived can help you decide how to live your life. Suggestion #2: Write your own eulogy (keep it light, of course). What do you want your legacy to be? What do you want people to remember most about you and what you accomplished in your life? This can feel odd, but it can be a very helpful exercise. Timeframe This is basically a timeline where you can visualize your goals. You write a list of the dates of your major future accomplishments (i.e. goals). Include all of your short-term and long-term goals. I like to actually take this exercise to a piece of construction paper and draw an actual timeline on it, just like I did during a history project for school. Sometimes, I will add pictures or small drawings to it in order to help with visualizing my goals.