Posted In General | Posted On 26 August 2020 | Posted By Stacy Braiuca

“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail,” so the saying goes. Even if we understand this quote that Benjamin Franklin penned, many still struggle to understand that this quote applies not just to work but to work as well. Yes, your work life and the relationships that you have with your coworkers are important, but it’s important to take care of one’s goals and dreams that you still have. 

Have you ever wanted to write a book? Have you ever wanted to learn another language? When you put off your dreams and goals that you deem aren’t important enough to do right now, you might be putting off something that could be achieved. However, by incorporating these dreams into your development plan, you create a plan that enables you to go through each day with intent, knowing that it’s going to help you achieve your goals. 

When you create a personal development plan, you start by asking yourself to identify where and how you will focus your actions that will ultimately lead you to succeed in reading the goals you set that will allow you to live a life with purpose. When you invest time in planning, you’ll attain valuable benefits that you would not have otherwise such as gaining more self-awareness and better focus to name a few. You’ll grow increasingly more focused when you’re able to identify the goals that you truly want to achieve which can increase your overall happiness to have this new-found sense of purpose in your life. 

Before you get started on making your plan, one important thing to point out is plans fail can be from not setting goals correctly or not having a backup plan. It’s important to set up SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-Limited) goals. Sure, you can start by saying “I want to write a book,” but you will need to add on to this goal to incorporate SMART criteria such as “I will write 500 words every other day so that I can achieve my word count by the end of the year.” Formatting your goals in this manner can help you develop a clear path that you can travel down. 

Another reason a plan can fail is forgetting the backup plan. When you are creating your plan, one of the first steps is to figure out your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) for any area that you want to improve upon. When you accomplish this, you can create “what if” scenarios so

that you’re ready for the backup if you need it. For example, “What if I can’t write that day? I have a wedding/birthday/some other event I need to account for in the future…” 

Is it ok to go off plan some days? Of course! We’re human, we can’t be expected to do everything perfectly. However, when we do go off the script, we need a foundation to come back to. “While I told myself I will write 500 words, I will admit that I am busy this entire week and can’t write. I will come back to writing when the time is appropriate.” Be kind to yourself, it’s not the end of the world if you don’t do everything on your to-do list.

For more tips and advice, check out Stacy Brauica’s free SMART goals worksheet here.