How I am proactive in my personal development
After spending 16 years in education and starting my first job as a software engineer, I thought I would love the feeling of never having to study again. No more late nights trying to figure out the solution to an obscure mathematics problem. No more running to university to hand in coursework on time. And certainly, no more exams (yay)!
But soon enough, I was yearning to learn something new. To discover again, to improve my skills, and to become more confident in myself. So, I started focusing on becoming more proactive with my personal development.
Throughout my journey, I learnt a lot that I want to share with you. But first, let me explain why it is worth trying out.
Personal development affects all aspects of your life
Working on developing skills that matter to you lets your focus on what is you find important. It gives you a sense of achievement and confidence in your abilities which will help you to improve not just at work but also in your daily life.
Moreover, actively working on your skills will give you a path to achieving your goals. Whether that be a promotion at work or switching career paths, seeking opportunities to learn will help get you there.
So how do you start? Well, first you need to define your personal objectives.
Define your objectives
Having a clear outcome for your personal development will make figuring out how to achieve said outcome easier.
Sit down in a relaxed atmosphere and write a list of all the objectives you want to achieve. To make it easier, these can be based on outcomes, for example for a small business owner one could be ‘I want to be able to publish a website for my shop’.
Next, for each objective, you should think about what results will you need to do to achieve your objective. For the example above these could be:
- Design shop branding
- Input 100% of stock inventory into digital format
- Deploy website
Already you have broken down your big objective into smaller, achievable chunks. Well done you!
Using this list, it is clear to see what you can start doing to work towards the bigger objective. Aim to have around 3–5 results (but ultimately use however many works for you).
Every week, it is good to evaluate your progress. Check-in with yourself to see if you are progressing to where you want to be.
Remember that it is okay to start off small! The more practice you have, the easier it will become. This leads me nicely onto the next thing I do.
Schedule a time each week to spend on personal development
By actively setting some time aside each week to work on your personal development, you can not only hold yourself accountable, but it will make your goals easier to achieve.
Consciously making an effect to schedule time for personal development will help you to avoid distractions. Also, you will never use the classic “I left it to the last minute” excuse again (we have all been there).
Starting off small will help you to get going. Setting aside 1 hour a week purely for your learning is better than none. And you can always gradually increase how much time you do to see what works for you.
I found spending 3 hours on a Wednesday afternoon works out well as it breaks up the workweek nicely.
Most companies have a company-wide policy that each employee should be spending 10% of the workweek on dedicated learning. Check if this is the case in your company and use this as an opportunity to schedule this important learning time.
Speaking of scheduling, my final point will help with making sure you do it effectively.
Prioritise!
I am that person who has a TODO list for everything! One for things I need to do today. One for what movies I want to watch. And even one for stuff to mention in my daily work catch-ups.
For your personal development, try to write a TODO list of tasks you need to complete to achieve your results. In the small business owner example, for the ‘Design shop branding’ result we could have the tasks:
- Research common branding techniques
- Brainstorm logo design
- Download illustration software, etc…
There we go, looks easier to achieve already!
However, an important thing to do with lists to make sure you use them well is to prioritise effectively. I do this by using the ‘Important/Urgent’ technique.
If the task is important and urgent, it is the highest priority, and I must tackle it first. If the task is important but not urgent, or urgent but not important I should tackle it next. Finally, if the task is not important or urgent it gets done last. This makes deciding what you need to work on next clearer.
Of course, there may be times when something is easy to do and can also be done quickly. In these cases, I will bump them to the top of my list for a quick win (assuming they will help me to achieve my goals).
In conclusion…
You can use any of the above tips for personal development at work and even just in your general life. The key theme to successful people is their organisation: you can do anything if you put your mind to it!
Saying this, do not try to do everything at once, it can become overwhelming. First, focus on small achievable targets and work up from there.
And always remember to give yourself a reward and restful break when you achieve your goals (you deserve it after all).
Let me know if this post helped you to understand how to be more proactive in your personal development. Also, comment below any tips you have on how you stay proactive!
Thanks for reading my blog post, and if you enjoyed it consider following me for more! As you made it here, let me introduce myself:
My name is Katie, and I am an Associate Software Engineer at TomTom. I write code for this great navigation app called TomTom AmiGO (you should check it out by clicking here).
📸 Follow my daily life at @katiesaeyo
💼 Find out what I’m working on at https://www.linkedin.com/in/katieisnell/
👩💻 See what I’m coding at https://github.com/katieisnell/
(All illustrations designed and drawn by the wonderful Jessica, go support her @jy.paint)
