- Creating Your Action Plan Part One
There’s an old, wise saying which goes something like this:
Those who fail to plan, plan to fail.
I’ve written some articles about how important it is to plan and to set goals (you can check some of those by clicking here, here, and here). Based on the response I’ve received over these articles, I have put together a series of articles on how to create something I call an Action Plan which will help you not only set and achieve your goals but also help you design the life you dream about having.
What Is An Action Plan?
An Action Plan is similar to a business plan. A business plan is written to help a business owner analyze, plan, and make projects for their new or established business. An Action Plan, on the other hand, is a business plan for a person and their life. An Action Plan will help you analyze your life and goals, it will help you set goals along with steps on how to successfully reach those goals, and it will also help you design your future and desired lifestyle.
An Action Plan is comprised of inspiring, powerful questions which will help you think through your goals from all angles. Similar to a business plan, an Action Plan starts with a mission statement and is divided into sections dealing with finances, goals for different areas of your life, career, and so on.
Why You Need An Action Plan
Here are some reasons why you should do an action plan:
It motivates you to take action
It isn’t an academic, by-the-numbers document which you will just put away somewhere, never to be read again
It helps you focus on things which will help build your the life you want to live and experience
It contains milestones to help ensure your goals are proceeding as planned
As you read through the rest of the series, you’ll see that with a couple of tweaks, the Action Plan can also be used as a plan for your blog or online business. I created an Action Plan for this blog when I decided to create it and it has been an immense help! I refer to it every couple of weeks to make sure I’m on track.
The building blocks of an Action Plan share some similarities with sections found in a business plan. Here is a breakdown of an Action Plan’s building blocks:
Mission Statement
Financial Goals
Personal Goals
Thing Goals
Experience Goals
Professional Goals
Your Strategy Plan
Timeline
To get things started, we’re going to take the first step and put together an inspiring and motivational mission statement for your Action Plan.
What Is Your Life’s Mission Statement?
Similar to a business plan’s mission statement, this section is where you write down what you envision for your life from today to a certain date in the near future. I would limit this vision to the next six to twelve months because as with most things in life- things change. Plus, limiting it to within a year gives it a sense of urgency. Which sounds more exciting and more likely to make you take action: getting a new BMW within the next year or getting it within five years?
Your mission statement should be a snapshot of your financial, personal, thing, experience, and professional goals. It doesn’t have to go into detail about them (you’ll be doing this later) but it should give you a solid idea of what you want to see happen within the next year.
The length of your mission statement depends on you. If you feel a paragraph is enough- then go for it. Same goes for taking two or more pages to write your mission statement. What matters is to write down where you see yourself within the next year after you reach the goals you will be adding to your Action Plan as we go through the series.
In part two, we’ll dive into creating your Action Plan by talking about your financial, personal, thing, experience, and professional goals. These will be the building blocks of your Action Plan and will play a significant part in which direction your life goes! With that said, thanks for reading and feel free to leave your thoughts in the Comments section below. Thanks!
Photo courtesy of Robby van Moor
