Personal Development Plan Template – 5 Step Personal Action Plan
A good personal development plan template includes five steps that guide you to take action. When included, these five steps can make your personal action plan simple but effective.
In fact, keeping your personal development strategy simple is important when looking for a good template. Why is this important? Because when learning how to write a personal development plan (also known as a PD Plan), it’s easy to get “analysis paralysis” if your sample personal development plan is too complicated.
If you’re not familiar with the term “paralysis by analysis,” it’s where you get so caught up in your head that you keep spinning your thoughts without taking any action.
What we want to do here is identify the five key components to making a simple personal growth plan. These five steps, while they may seem oversimplified, are at the heart of any plan, whether it’s a personal leadership development plan, personal career development plan, or personal action plan.
Therefore, when looking for a good template, the simpler you make it, the faster you can “get down to business” and take action.
So what are these five key parts of your PD planning?
1. Identify goals
2. Prioritize the objectives
3. Action steps
4. Timeline for the first action
5. What happens if I do nothing?
IDENTIFY GOALS: When you begin your personal growth plan, you will of course want to identify what you want to achieve. However, this is where many people make their first mistake by not identifying goals that are really what they want or are realistic enough to achieve. Make sure your goals are what you really want at a deep, core level of your being.
PRIORITIZE GOALS: Once you find goals that are “what you want” and not “what someone else wants for you”, and these goals are realistic, there are certain steps to prioritize these goals using something called “reverse goal setting”. This is exactly what it sounds like when you take your “end goal” and work backwards writing down each step you took to get there. As if you are walking towards your goal backwards.
ACTION STEPS: Once you’ve established your reverse goal and have a step-by-step roadmap for your personal development strategy, an important part of your PD planning is finding a way to turn these “breadcrumbs” you’ve identified into a sequence of goals in a personal action plan. To do this, simply ask yourself, “What can I do today in ‘breadcrumb number 1’ to take action?”
TIMELINE FOR ACTION: Any sample personal development plan will tell you that you need to set a timetable for action. What you want to do is create daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly goals for yourself to stay on track. Make sure this part of your personal development strategy is realistic with everything else you spend time on in your life.
WHAT IF I DO NOTHING? When you want to develop a personal development plan, it’s easy to be highly motivated at first. His enthusiasm is extensive in helping you learn how to write a personal development plan and about the various parts of PD planning. After a while, though, it’s easy to let go of your personal action plan or personal growth plan, so one question you’ll want to keep in front of you for motivation is, “What if I don’t do anything? ” This question can help you get through the myriad of tasks to put your template to work.
While finding a good personal development plan template or sample personal development plan isn’t easy at first, using these five steps to learn how to write a personal development plan can help you get started. Then you can turn your personal action plan into action, instead of turning your thoughts around and “thinking” about taking action because your plan is too complicated.