Many of you have drafted, edited, and/or critiqued a strategic plan at some point in your career. What is a strategic plan and what does it do? It defines an organization, including its vision and values. It defines goals and objectives. It develops a concrete path on how to attain those goals and objectives. Organizations that do not have a cohesive strategic plan are much less likely to stay on track and achieve their goals. So why don’t we apply the same thing to our life?

The first thing I like to do is break down my life into categories to ensure my efforts to improve my life are not solely focused on two or three things while neglecting other categories repeatedly. I break it down into seven categories: social; family; health; career; financial; learning; and character. This allows me to ensure I am developing all aspects of myself, leaving opportunities for mental, emotional, and physical growth. 

Then I do the current analysis or assessment. Before you develop a strategic plan, you need to know where your baseline is. The same concept applies to your own life. If you don’t know your baseline, you won’t know how to measure your growth. This requires deep introspection and can be the most difficult part of the process if you don’t commonly check in with yourself and figure out who you are or what values you hold. If a category is currently inactive, be sure to write that down. For instance, if you’re not in school, don’t attend webinars, don’t take courses, and don’t read things with substance, under the “learning” category you can write “nothing” as your baseline. 

Next I do goal orienting and strategy formulation. For each category, I write my broad vision or my general desires. This is broken down into more concrete goals and organized as short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals. I consider short-term to be anything less than a year, medium-term to be 2-5 years, and long-term to be over 10 years. This is not a strict guideline so choose the length descriptions based on your personal desires and judgements. This step is primarily to organize your steps into achieving your overall vision and dreams in life. 

The next step is strategy execution. This is where your plan starts taking an operational approach. For example, my general goal for the financial category is to be completely secure and on track to retire early. My short-term goal is to be debt free, pay off my tuition, and max out my RRSP. I would add the amount I needed for the year in order to make that happen and divide it by 12. That is now the monthly minimum I need to save. Sometimes I like to dedicate a page for one category to list the goal start date, intended completion date, starting point, specific goal, steps to reaching the goal, what will help reach that goal, and a tracking system I can easily update. I like to add at the bottom how I will feel once I have reached that goal so when I am struggling, I can imagine myself at the finish line to remind myself the hard work is worth it. 

The final step is the evaluation or management. As time goes by and life throws curveballs, it’s important to update and adapt the plans. Sometimes goals change because our desires change and sometimes something unexpected happens, which derails the original plans. How frequently you do this depends on what’s going on in the world and what stage you are at in life. For instance, COVID was a curveball that changed most aspects of most people’s plans. I am also more likely to change my goals when I’m going through major life transitions since there will be greater unknown variables. 

By following these steps, you will create balance in your life and be more intentional with your goals. This allows you to achieve more, focus on what matters the most, and maintain consistency. It will help you develop strong habits, making you less likely to fail or revert your successes. 

Dancia Kendra Susilo is the Executive Director of The Missing Link Project. Dancia takes a vision and makes it a reality through sound strategy development. With almost a decade of experience with start-up organizations and businesses, Dancia intuitively empowers others into achieving their dreams. She has led strong international organizations and communities including 7Cups and Psych2Go. She is a MSc candidate at King’s College London UK for Psychology and Neuroscience. She has also obtained a PGCert from Wharton University of Pennsylvania in Digital Marketing and has a BA from the University of Ottawa in Psychology and Linguistics.