Let’s jump right into creating an action plan for your personal goals.
(Sorry I am not really good at small talk. Ups.)
What is an Action Plan?
An action plan is a must have document for all goal achievers. You can create one in paperform or as a digital plan. It helps you plan all your tasks to achieve your goals. It is a very powerful project management tool.
A Simple Action Plan Definition:
An action plan is a step-by-step guide to help you achieve your goals. A personal plan of action is a simple way to break down what you want to accomplish into small steps. You’ll know exactly where you’re going.
Contents of an Action Plan
- A clearly defined goal.
- In-depth actionable tasks relevant to your goal.
- A clear timeline, with milestones and deadlines.
- It needs to show who is responsible for what.
- Which resources do you have/ need?
- You need to be able to check your progress.
Benefits of a Plan of Action
Especially if you have many tasks on hand and don’t know where to start, it is easy to get overwhelmed and procrastinate. The creation of an action plan helps you cut down your bigger task into smaller tasks: You’ll be able to:
- work more efficiently
- overcome procrastination
- know your exact next steps
- see how far you’ve come
- fewer missed deadlines
- less preassure
3 Questions You need to ask Yourself when Creating an Action Plan:
Who?
How many people are involved and what are their roles?
When?
When does the action plan start and end? And when are specific deadlines?
What?
What tasks are needed to accomplish your goals?
How to create an Action Plan:
Creating an action plan doesn’t have to be difficult. We’ll show you step by step how you can make your own personal plan.
Step 1: Set a goal
The first step is to set a goal you want to achieve by the end of the term. If you have no goal in mind yet, I recommend you to make a brain dump and write down everything that comes to your mind. What is the most important one you want to achieve?
If you already have your goal set, you are ready to get started. Just before we head to the next step I’d like you to rewrite the goal you set. I want you to adjust it, so that it is a SMART goal if you haven’t done so yet.
So what are the categories of a SMART goal?
Specific: Is your goal specific? Don’t just say you want to grow your Instagram followers by the next month. Add a number you are striving for! For example you have 500 followers and you want to grow 50% by next month which means you are aiming for 750 followers or additional 250 followers.
Measurable: how do you measure the progress to achieve your objective? Is it the monthly page views of your blog? Or the amount of products sold? Maybe even the chapters learned for your language course?
Achievable: Is it doable with your resources and the skills you have? It doesn’t sound achievable if you want to program an app within 3 weeks but have no programming skills or the finances to hire a programmer. Of course, you could still learn programming but you have to set a fitting deadline then.
Realistic: Is it realistic? 1 million youtube subscriptions in a month doesn’t sound realistic! But reaching a significantly lower number is! For example if you take 500 followers instead of 1 million. (Building your dream life can take time: most people are not an overnight success, never give up and one day you will get there!)
Timely: What’s the start and end date? What is the deadline? If you cannot assess how much time you would need to achieve your goal you can always look for experience reports. Not only will they help you estimate a proper time span but they also can help you find changes and tasks required to hit your goals even faster.
With a smart goal as basis you can create a smart action plan!
Step 2: Divide your goal into small actionable steps
Time to break your smart goal into tiny actionable tasks. Take a paper and brainstorm all tasks neccessary for achieving your goal.
Don’t worry if you need to do more research or you aren’t sure about certain steps. Write those unclear points down as well. You can tackle them along the way. A plan is always adaptable.
Step 3: Prioritize and add Deadlines
Having all your top points in front of you, it is time to find the most important/ urgent one and the least important / urgent one. Which tasks need to be accomplished before you can start the next step?
At the end you should have your steps organized. You can use a Gantt Chart to visualize the timeline or you use our action plan template below.
Step 4: Add Resources and Budget
Next step is to add resources and the budget needed to fulfill each task. For example, if you plan to create a blog and want it to be hosted you have to pay a specific amount based on your web hosting service company. If you want to create your own furniture, you need materials, knowhow and maybe a mode of transportation. During this step it is useful to look up several alternatives and find the best one fitting to your resources and finances. Enter your choice in the document.
Step 5: Monitor your progress
Once everything is clear and you have completed your document it is time to start taking actions. While you work from one task to another and hit your deadlines, it is also important to monitor your progress. Do you meet the deadlines? Did you do the correct task? Are you still on track? Is there something you have left out and still need to fit in?
Action Plans for Groups:
If you have more people involved in your action plan it is important to make the plan clear. You need to exactly write down which person does which task at which point of time. Additionally, you always need a good communication system and give important information to your team members. Miscommunication can make your progress slow down or even completely miss your objective. Also, a lack of communication can cause friction between team members .
Action Plan Template Excel: Click on it to create your own Action Plan!
Last but not least I want to add the 3 criteria for a good action plan by the community tool box:
- The plan needs to be complete
- Tasks need to be clear
- The “action plan needs to reflect the current work”
Now it’s time for you to create your own plan of action. Want us to improve the template? Tell us what you wish we’d include in the comments 🙂
Time to achieve your life goals.
What to read next?
- Here is our Ultimate Post on Goal Setting
- Need some Focus Tips Cause you are Overwhelmed?
- If you don’t know how to prioritize your tasks check the 80/20 Rule.
- Are you lacking motivation? Here are Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivators you wish you’d tried sooner.
- Struggling with Self-Discipline? Check out our tips.
- Here are some tips if you are a Procrastinator and need a little push.
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Love from Germany,
Carina and Julia
Good tips on project planning. I have mine every month on digital and physical journal. Thank you for sharing this.
Great tips, I like the idea of the three questions. It’s important and I will note that. Thank you for sharing!
I absolutely love your content. Implementing an action plan to grow and monetize my blog, which is my passion. It’s just so hard to garner traffic. Thanks for the encouragement.
Thank you so much 🙂 I know what you mean! I read your blog 🙂 Loved the post on FREE $ Perks. I didn’t know that you get coupons from amazon for surveys after reviews on products I purchased. When I first go to your page with ad block on I just see “welcome” and a big empty screen.