From Vision to Plan to Reality By Mike Cosentino At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

Write it down. If there is one action that makes the vital link between your vision and it really happening, it is writing down what you want to do as a personal development plan with clear and meaningful objectives. It obliges you to think through what you want to do, to structure your ambition and to start giving it solid attributes that will allow it to take form and become reality. Remember to use the SMART definition for your objectives, so as to make them specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound.

Specific personal goal setting should explicitly state what you want do or the result you want to achieve. Walking the Great Wall of China is one example; improving my sales revenue by applying effective prospecting techniques could be another. Measurable goals are at the same time goals that also allow you to see how much you succeeded, or if you succeeded according to a certain standard. For the Great Wall of China, you might want to specify ten miles for example, as walking all of it might be too much. For improving your sales revenue, doubling it compared to last year is a simple measurement or standard that you could apply.

The difference between achievable and realistic

Achievable life goals are then what you can reasonably do or achieve. Walking ten miles on the Great Wall of China is reasonable for most people. Doubling your sales revenue by more effective prospecting may be ambitious, but still reasonable (unless you already own 100% of a replacement market, in which case you may want to think of something else). Realistic personal development goals are those that truly make a positive, significant and relevant difference. Walking ten miles along the Great Wall of China may not see much in itself, but this implies getting to the Great Wall in the first place, which for many people is a significant undertaking. Doubling your sales revenue should be positive, significant and relevant as long as this corresponds to sales goals that you have or associated objectives.

Finally, the time-bound aspect means giving yourself a deadline to achieve the items on your life goals list. Perhaps you’d like to walk on the Great Wall of China within the next three years, or double your sales revenue over the coming year. Just make sure that your time frame to achieve these personal development goals is compatible with the aspects of achievability and realism.

At a glance planning

Now set your objectives out on a time line to see what you’ll be doing and when. You can do this in a PC application such as a spreadsheet or personal development project management software, if you have it, but you can also use a pen and paper to great effect as well. When you lay out each item in your life goal list on a horizontal timeline on separate lines on your paper, one above the other, you’ll quickly see where the most activity is occurring. For lower priority objectives, or those that can’t be started right away for other reasons, you’ll be able to push the start date off to the right to better balance the total amount of effort required at any one time. When you have a configuration that gives you activity reasonably spread out over the foreseeable future, then make a copy with clearly marked start and stop dates for each action and keep it in your planner for example, where you can use it to jog your memory every day.

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