Three Keys To A Here-And-Now Personal Plan Built For Leaders

The continuing pandemic has hit entrepreneurs and business leaders hard. According to a 2021 study from the Business Development Bank of Canada, 39% of business owners surveyed said they felt depressed at least once per week. In my experience coaching many business leaders, I’ve seen time and time again that when they struggle with their own mental well-being, their businesses can suffer as a result. It can become a downward spiral in which both life and business begin to unravel.

Creating a strong personal plan is one way to break the cycle. A personal plan involves incremental goals for your future informed by your past. In “The Gap and the Gain,” author Dan Sullivan explains that when you judge yourself based on the horizon and ignore the past, you set yourself up for unhappiness. After all, the horizon contains all your unmet aspirations — the more you wish you were there, the less you like where you are now. Consequently, you feel bitter and exasperated.

A personal plan gives you a way to measure where you are now and take stock of what you’ve already accomplished to appreciate your progress so far. In that retrospective, you can see that all expectations have been met and find happiness in what you’ve done — instead of losing yourself in what you still have to do.

Mastering Your Personal Plan

A personal plan should align with the purpose of your organization. If your values don’t align with your business objectives, you’re unlikely to find fulfillment as a leader. That’s why in a perfect world, every professional would have a personal plan before diving into entrepreneurship — to ensure their business could be a vehicle for achieving their personal vision and goals.

But entrepreneurs and leaders who are struggling to get out of a rut are already in the working world. Fortunately, it’s not too late to create your personal plan retroactively. These steps can help:

1. Begin At The End

This might sound like a morbid exercise, but it’s a great way to reflect on where you’ve been and where you’d like to go: Picture your own funeral and imagine what people who know you might say about you. What do you hope they say? The answer to that question can help show you what you value most. From there, use your values to create a checklist of what you’d like to accomplish in the next 10 years. Ask yourself: What are those things that I hold dear? What are my passions? What lights me up? What’s my purpose?

Stopping at that step, however, will pit you against the horizon in a dreadful spiral of unfulfillment. To develop a truly effective personal plan, you must break those 10-year goals down into smaller goals for the next one to five years. Focusing on what you can accomplish incrementally will give you more opportunities to see progress and find fulfillment.

2. Reassess Every 90 Days

Next, break out your one- to five-year goals into personal priorities you can focus on for the next 90 days. These priorities should add up to help you accomplish your larger goals over time. For example, if a 10-year goal is to make a lot of money, your one-year goal could be to reach a salary benchmark, and your 90-day priority could be to create a plan for getting there. Ask yourself what you need to do each quarter to get closer to your one-year plan, which will bring you closer to your 10-year target.

When you assess your priorities every 90 days, be sure to take stock of your accomplishments toward your personal stack of goals. Use this sense of accomplishment to push you forward to your next 90-day priorities. Before you know it, you’ll have years of progress behind you that you can rely on to motivate you further.

3. Take the punches as you go.

Remember that your plan might not unfold on the exact timeline you’ve established, and that’s okay. The key is to face your setbacks head-on and with the confidence that you can overcome them to reach your goals.

The story of Adm. James Stockdale illustrates this concept well. The admiral is a Vietnam veteran and was a prisoner of war for more than seven years, but he survived by accepting his situation and eschewing idealism or unfounded optimism. Many of his comrades sat still and perished as they waited for rescuers, constantly defeated by disappointment when they did not come. Stockdale, on the other hand, accepted the brutal facts of the situation and learned to cope with them. Instead of living every day like he was leaving, he confronted reality and learned to adapt.

This story is particularly meaningful today as professionals continue dealing with the pandemic. Those who accept the current reality will prevail over those still yearning for past times. A personal plan can help you stay grounded in reality and adapt as you go. As you evaluate your progress every 90 days, consider whether your goals remain realistic in the context of the world around you.

The best way to deal with inaction is action. Doing something is always better than standing still when you’re in a funk. Grab a piece of paper, open up a new doc and start your personal plan. You’ll be surprised at how pure momentum can have a positive effect on your outlook.