Success breeds complacency, personal development plan prevents it

A personal development plan is a map of your self development journey. It is basically a goal setting practice, but specifically for the area of personal development. It is planning for your aspirations in regards to personal development. Among other things, it involves identifying what skills you need to learn, the aspects of yourself needs to be improved, abilities that are you lacking and areas which needs to be given priority for improvement.

Although it is in essence a goal setting plan, however due to the nature of personal development, a slightly different approach would be more suitable and effective as opposed to using the goal setting method. Hence, the reason for having personal development plan.

For many people who are serious about success, goal setting is a must. However, many do not set goals for the area of their personal development. People normally have financial goals, health goals, career/professional goals, spiritual goals and relationship goals. However, they have no goals in regards to their personal development.

This is not ideal because as you get more and more caught up in achieving your goals, you will unconsciously neglect learning & improving further. Additionally, when people start seeing success, many get complacent and stop their development. It is this complacency that usually causes many successful individuals to consequently fall back to their previous level.

How does it work?

Here’s the gist of having a personal development map. High achievers focus effort on achieving their goals. That is very good, except that many times they neglect working on what’s most important to their success…. That is themselves. Their skills, abilities, knowledge etc. Goal setting takes care of what we want, but it does not take care of what we need. Having this plan helps to ensure that we are continually working on ourselves.

In a nutshell, the basic premise of a personal development plan involves ; 1. Identifying where you are right now – What are your strengths, weaknesses etc

2. Identifying where you want or need to be – What needs to be worked on for you to get to the next level. Which weaknesses need to be addressed. What area is to be given priority.

3. Coming up with a plan to fill that gap – identifying resources, scheduling etc.

It is a powerful practice. Though the basic premise seems quite simple, it is important that you spend some time on it and come up with a good plan so you’ll be headed the right way and not waste time.

On to the creation...

For creation of a PDP, first understand more about writing personal development plans. Things like how to discover your strengths/weaknesses, knowing what to prioritize on etc. Then proceed to create your plan.

I have created a template which you can use to create your own personal development plan. Just follow the sections in the template and you’ll be on your way. (Make changes to the template if you feel it’s necessary, or come up with your own template if it’s more suitable. Remember nothing is written in stone. However, try to not to lose the essence of the template)

It is a good idea to look at an example PDP as a reference. Check this out if you’re having trouble with any part of your plan. But in the end, use your own common sense judgment. A little flexibility is good, don’t follow everything to the word.

Final thoughts...

Having a personal development plan helps you make sure your knowledge, skills and abilities are constantly upgraded. Because when all is said and done, it is your knowledge that ultimately affects the quality of your lives and your level of success. Don’t neglect it.

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