To achieve your goals you need a personal action plan.
Your individual action plan is all about taking your SMART goals and working out the steps required to achieve it. Some goals are straightforward and you know instinctively the steps you need to take to complete them. Yet even with simple goals it can help to get your thoughts in order by working through the steps required.
This process often highlights extra things that may need to be done, dependencies on other people or it can help identify unrealistic timescales.
Start by writing your goals in the first box with its target date.
You can either work from your goal backwards until you come to the first step or from the first step through to the goal.
If you struggle to get started with your action plan start with the goal and precede it with ‘in order to...’. Keep working backwards until you get to your first step. You may use more than one action plan if it helps, such as when you have two sets of actions to achieve one goal. For example a goal related to improved health may include an exercise plan and a diet plan.
Break each step down into singular activities and preferably ones that you can achieve in a week or less. Download an Action Plan Template or create your own based on a similar format to the one shown below.