Balance & Your Personal Development Plan

Incorporate Balance Into Your Personal Development Strategy

When you are working on your personal development plan, you need balance and this comes with creating goals that are going to further your efforts. There are three main questions that you need to answer when it comes to your goals. This will help to ensure that the goals you are making are in line with your development strategy and needs. It will also help you to determine if the goals are something that you are able to achieve and something that is feasible at this point in your life.

When you are creating your personal development plan, make sure that you take the time to write down the top goals that you have. Under each goal, you should create mini goals and a plan to execute each of these. This gives you a solid foundation that you can work from.

What Are Your Goals?

What is it that you want to accomplish? What category do these fall into? For example, are your goals related to your health, career, education, family, relationships, etc. You want to write your goals out clearly and succinctly. Make sure that they are detailed so that when you read them back at a later date, you know exactly what it is that you want to accomplish. This will help you to create the mini goals that you will use as steps to meet your big goals. It also helps you to develop the plan that is necessary to meet the small and large goals.

Why Do You Want to Meet these Goals?

This is the big question and one that you have to be able to answer in full for all of your goals. You need to have a purpose for every one of your goals. If you lack the purpose and passion for a goal, there is a good chance that you will not follow through with it until it is completed. Why you want to meet your goals will also help you to develop that plans necessary to achieve them. This is arguably the most important step in the process and one you must dedicate enough time to.

With each of your goals, write them down on a sheet of paper or in a word processor. Using bullet points, write down your purpose for each of the goals you have listed. Be detailed, but to the point. When you are working on achieving your goals, if you start to lack focus or motivation, you can go back to this, read it over and remind yourself why you want to accomplish these goals in the first place. This is a powerful tool and one that you definitely want to put thought into.

How Will You Achieve These Goals?

This is the question that is going to take the most time and effort because you need to be able to explain to yourself your exact plan for meeting your goals. This is a process and one that you do not want to rush through. You want to really think on it and create a plan for each of your mini goals. Your plan does not have to be overly long, but it should hit all of the marks. It should give you all of the steps necessary to meet each mini goal without any issues or roadblocks.

Make sure that when you are making your plans that you leave room for extra time. Things happen and you do not want to let one issue throw you off track completely. For example, if you think that one step in the plan will take you a day to complete, give yourself two days. If you do finish it in a day, simply move onto the next step early. This allows you to essentially bank some time so that if something unexpected occurs, you do not find yourself behind. Getting behind can zap your motivation so it is definitely something that you want to prevent.

Now you know whether the goals that you have are going to fit into your personal development plan. Make sure that you fully evaluate each of the goals that you create asking yourself the questions that are outlined here. It is important that your goals are something that you can accomplish and something that is going to bring you closer to the overall development needs that you have. This ensures that all of your goals have a practical purpose and one that will serve you long-term.

- Rosemary Kitchen

Resources
http://www.briantracy.com/blog/personal-success/work-life-balance-goal-setting-personal-development/
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