At this point, you may be feeling that you are just not the sort of person who makes plans. You may think that devising plans sounds a bit mechanical, that your preference is to just go along with whatever life deals out. It can be good to take instant decisions and be ‘spontaneous? and we would not want you to stop doing this, especially if you know, from your past experience, that this can add fun and enjoyment to your life. However, particularly for ‘big? and important decisions it can be useful to balance spontaneity with some planning that is more thought through. Bear in mind that your personal plans for change can be a way to use your imagination and creativity.
We are also making the assumption that you probably do engage in some planning, if only because you have to in order to make it possible to balance the competing demands that there are on you. So you might have to have a plan in order to cope with all the things that are happening over the next few days. This plan may not be written down; it is likely to be ‘in your head?. Once you start thinking about how you go about managing time, you may realise that you do more planning than you may have thought. In a quiet moment, you might find yourself thinking about what you would like to be doing in ten years? time. You probably carry around with you lots of other plans too, such as planning what to do with the children during the next school holiday or budgeting for some new furniture next year.
You might even make these plans more specific. For example, you might put together a list of all the things you need to do and work through them, ticking them off day by day, or week by week. But it is less common to develop plans for achieving longer-term goals. This may be especially true if these goals focus on your needs for change and development. If these are your goals, you can increase the chances of achieving them if you go through a similar process. However, long-term goals can be different from many shorter-term goals. These are often about surviving the next few days, weeks or months. The goals we want you to develop in this section are not just about getting through a period of your life. They are, much more, about changing your life, giving you the confidence to explore different options. This means a much higher level of time and effort. So having a vision of where you want to be may help inspire you ? but it can also seem so daunting that you never get started. An important part of action planning is to break down your longer-term goals into manageable tasks that you can tick off on a regular basis. These small achievements can quickly become a substantial step towards your goal.
We encourage you first, therefore, to think large ? and to develop a vision that inspires you ? and then to think in smaller chunks as you develop some more specific goals to aim for.
Copyright © 2008 The Open University
