How to turn a goal into an action plan

How To Turn Your Goal Into An Action Plan - Monday Motivation - PropelHer

PropelHer was created to support ambitious women to set and achieve massive professional goals. If you need help setting a goal then you can access the FREE #goaldigger guide here. But, once you have got your goals defined you need to create an action plan and start taking action!

 

List all of the actions you will need to take

The first step is to take a large piece of paper. At one end write down where you are now in relation to your goal and at the other end write down the end goal. Then in between write down all of the necessary actions you will need to take. Now obviously depending on the goal the number of steps and your knowledge of the necessary steps will vary. If you have some gaps in your knowledge about how to achieve your goal you might include steps like “talk to xx about yy” assuming that xx will be able to fill that knowledge gap. At this stage you will be trying to put them into a rough order, but it’s not strict.

 

Create an action timeline

Once you have written all of the actions that come to mind it is time to make the timeline. First, go back through your list and try to work out the order that actions need to happen. Some things can happen simultaneously, but some things have to happen sequentially. For example, if your goal is to launch a website. You can be writing the website content and having your photoshoot in the same week. However, you would need to have bought your hosting, before you can build the website. So go through the rough list and work out the order for your actions. Then estimate the time each step will take and you should be able to work out the length of time you will need to achieve your goal.

 

Milestones

So now you have an action plan, but I don’t want you to have any action plan. I want you to have an amazing action plan. So grow through the plan and mark out milestones. These will be key dates that you can plot in your diary or calendar to ensure you are staying on track. These dates should match up with when you should have done a certain action by. Therefore, if you get to that date and see a reminder in your calendar, you check your action plan and quickly see if you are on, behind or ahead.

 

So that is it. To turn your goal into an action plan you need to: list all of the possible actions, create a timeline and then highlight key milestones.

 

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  • Claudia Crawley
    6 May 2017 at 9:32 am

    Hi Charelle, great reminder that action plans are what make goals happen and that they need to be amazing. But isn’t the precursor to this a properly written and effective goal?

    • Charelle
      7 May 2017 at 9:09 pm

      Hi Claudia,

      You are absolutely right that you need to have a properly written goal. Goal setting is something I have discussed a lot and the #goaldigger guide walks you through how to set great goals. However, great goals are not enough. You need to take the time to plan how you can make that goal a reality and that is why this week’s focus was on the action planning part of the process.