Personal Development Planning

Personal Development Planning

    We as kids are usually told to create a schedule or a timetable for our studies

before we start preparing for our exams. We most of the time ignore what was told and

try to do what we think best, overlooking the fact that our elders may know better and

may have been practicing the same thing in their lives and not just for the studies.

Personal Development Planning (PDP) is just the elaborated way of what we

have been told to do as kids.

                    

To define, Personal Development Planning is the process of creating an action

plan based on awareness, values, reflection, goal-setting and planning for personal

development within the context of a career, education, relationships or for

self-improvement.

The PDP usually includes a statement of one's aspirations, strengths or

competencies, education and training, and stages or steps to indicate how the plan is to

be realized.

                  

Importance:

When you don’t have a vision, plan, or goal, your attention diverts to

entertainment and distraction. The primary question when creating a Personal

Development Plan is: Where am I going to place my attention and awareness?

A right practice of PDPs helps you to focus and attain your goals, which results in

your growth in your personal as well as professional life.

In higher education, PDPs typically include a portfolio containing evidence of the

skills gathered over a particular time frame. It is presumed in education that undertaking

PDPs will assist in creating self-directed independent learners who are more likely to

progress to higher levels of academic attainment.

PDPs are often a requirement for employee CVs. Employees who participate in

business training are often asked to complete a PDP.

Scott Jeffrey, a writer, describes way of creating your own PDP in his book ‘How

to Craft a Personal Development Plan That Inspires Lasting Results’ with the help of

following seven steps:

Seven Step PDP:

1. List Your Potential

2. Create Your Vision

3. Areas to Focus

4. Determine Practices

5. Establish Goals

6. Schedule

7. Progress Feedback

           

1. List Your Potential:

First step is to list your potentials. Rather than discovering your potentials one at

a time, try an integrated approach. It will help save your time as most of our skills are

related to each other. But do keep your list open to add more of your potential as you

discover and learn more over a period of time.

Human potentials are segmented into different categories, following are some

categories which will help you discover your potential:

● Lines of Intelligence

● Skill Development

● Lifestyle Management

● Behavioral Change

● Personality Development

2. Create Your Vision:

By completing the first step, you will have a list of possibilities to create your

vision. Creating the list of your potentials gives you greater sensitivity and clarity of the

world of opportunities around you. Your vision will inspire you to achieve

self-actualization and self-transcendence.

It is important to be truthful while setting your vision and not be influenced by

what you should want or what we think others approve of, such a vision will lack

inspiration and will be meaningless. So, it is important to keep in mind your list of

potential while creating your vision.

3. Areas to Focus:

After setting your vision, you will get a certain level of clarity. Even if you have a

lot of potential or the areas your expertise in, it is not healthy to set too many goals at

the same time. It is important to decide on a few areas to focus on. It is a challenging

process to select the areas of development to focus on because of the time limit and

vast options.

At the start, it will be beneficial to select top 3 areas of your interest to focus on. It

is more productive to select initial goals from different areas of development; in a way it

will help you to stay focused on your goals and not to lose interest over a short period of

time. You can select a goal from 3 different categories mentioned in step 1 each at the

same time and allot a certain time daily to learn to master these potentials in you.

4. Determine Practices:

A lot of researches state that talent isn’t usually born but cultivated through

deliberate practice.

Once you have selected the areas to focus on, the next step is to determine

practices to achieve these goals. These practices are the actions you are planning to

gradually develop in your pre-decided areas of interest. e.g. to improve your writing,

write at least 1,000 words daily.

You may be unaware of what practices to follow in the beginning, but investing

some time researching different topics through books and articles will help you start.

This exploration will help you to pick your practices. You may also seek guidance of a

coach or trainer to help you establish your practices.

5. Establish Goals:

It is always better to set mini goals rather than setting big goals from the start.

You can set the big goal as your PDP and can set small milestones to achieve that big

goal which will be a more realistic approach. It will help you build momentum because

mini goals are more readily achievable than big ones. These types of personal

development goals will inspire your practice.

6. Schedule:

Now it is time to develop a schedule to achieve your goals. It is important to

commit a reasonable and practical time to achieve a goal. You must be realistic while

preparing your schedule and stick to the calendar that you designed.

While preparing your calendar, try to fit your schedule when there are fewer

interruptions and fewer distractions. Your schedule needs to be consistent for you to

practice to achieve your goals.

7. Progress Feedback:

It is important to get timely feedback for your practices. Feedback facilitates the

learning process. Make sure that the feedback you get is honest, may it be from your

own self or from anyone else. You should not have a fixed mindset which will hinder you

from receiving honest feedback.

Conclusion:

Finally, Keep checking your PDP weekly and keep adjusting your practices

according to your achievements.

It’s important to keep your PDP simple, try to fit this on a single page template. It

will help you in the future to maintain and update your plan.

Make your PDP attractive by structuring it with tables, charts, graphs, emoticons,

etc. Have fun while achieving your goals :)

our same chanel in Marathi language:-

                  developmentisthepriority.blogspot.com