How using an individual development plan can map your path to achieving long-term goals
This simple framework can give you control over your goals in life, break them up into manageable chunks, and take the stress out of long-term planning.
Recently at my day job, I went through a process called an “individual development plan.” It’s essentially a framework to help employees figure out where to focus their development in order to achieve their long-term career goals.
While that’s all well and good in a corporate context, I’ve always felt that the structure could work just as well for personal goals and missions. I decided to try it out with a friend who was at a difficult crossroads on where she wanted to go with her life.
What we found was this framework worked really well to break down personal long-term goals into manageable chunks and take the anxiety or stress away from walking the path from where you stand to today to where you’d like to be in the future.
With that all in mind, I’ve created a template for anyone to apply to their life.
You can copy it here, and the guide below will walk you through how to use it. Keep in mind, everything in this guide is just a starting place. If the timing or organization of ideas doesn’t perfect match what you want, change it to fit your purposes.
Start with your one major Long Term Goal ( 3–5 years or longer)
This is your north star, your point on the horizon, your moonshot. You could have a few long-term goals, but for the first time you do this process, try to pick one major one.
Some examples could include:
- Start your own company and become completely self-employed
- Buy a house
- To get into post-secondary school
- To get married
- To go traveling for a year / live in another country
- To successfully stop smoking/drinking/doing XYZ habit
The goal here is to make it big enough to represent a major achievement and goal in your life, but vague enough to not limit the path to getting there.
For the purpose of this guide, let's use “Start your own company and become completely self-employed.”
Midterm goals (~1–3 years)
These are your major stops on your way to the Long-Term Goal (LTG from here on out). Think of them as milestones that are concrete enough to work towards within the next year, but still flexible enough to approach a number of ways.
Using the “Start your own company and become completely self-employed” LTG, let's come up with some example midterm goals:
- Save up $15,000 to launch the business
- Find 1–2 co-founders to work on the business with you and compliment your skillset. Incorporate the business together and define your roles/ownership stake.
- Launch the business part-time to start building up experience and customers.
- Launch a Kickstarter for your business to raise money and interest
All of these represent significant milestones on the way to the end goal, but they don’t get you all the way there. Make sure they align with your Long Term Goal
Short term goals (1 — 6 months)
These are specific goals that you need to achieve in the next 12 months to be on the way to hitting your Midterm goals. You want them to be “SMART” goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) so that they are really tied to reality.
Let's focus on a single midterm goal and break it down. “Save up $15,000 to launch the business” could be achieved in a lot of different ways:
- By this time next year, I will have impressed my boss/company enough to get a promotion/salary increase. Save the extra money in your start-up fund.
- Within the next 6 months, I will find a new job that allows you to make good money while also giving you the flexibility to work your side-project business.
- I will start a personal budget and cut down my monthly expenses by 20%. I will continue at this spending level until I’ve reached my savings goal.
- Within the next 6 months, I will move to a cheaper living situation and use the difference in living costs to save up the needed amount.
- Within the next month, I will set up an auto-deposit system with my bank so that money gets deducted from my paycheques automatically and invested safely until it’s time to launch the business.
As you can see, there are many different ways to think about the savings goal. Only you can know which ones are the right path for your situation. The key is to settle on a couple of strategies and track your progress.
The Positive Feedback Loop
This process is mostly about giving you a way to focus on smaller achievable tasks, rather than the big long term goals. You may find that after completing many of your short term goals, you may want to change your medium or long term goals. That’s ok! It’s a great practice to constantly check in with your larger goals as you walk the path towards them. You’ve probably learned a lot and want to shift or clarify them. Maybe your original LTG “Start your own company and become completely self-employed” becomes something more specific like “Start your own ad agency working in the not-for-profit space”. This is exactly what you want: more specific long term goals that allow you plan you medium term and short term goals with better clarity.
To help you get started with all this, I created a free Google Doc template that you’re welcome to copy and use.
I hope it helps!
PS — Shout out to my colleague Ashley Thompson Daly for her advice and guidance with this process.
