Coach Laura O’Shaughnessy answers your questions on how to make an effective five-year plan
What is a five-year plan?
It’s essentially a roadmap for the next chapter of your life, both personally and professionally. To be both motivating and meaningful it needs to build towards a vision of where you want to be in five years. A beautiful image of your future life, one that you can cultivate in your mind’s eye with visual references, feelings, and achievements. Your five-year vision is your North Star, and it’s the heart-led spark that stimulates the all-important practical planning and groundwork.
A well-devised five-year plan can transform sketchy ideals and dreams into glorious, realisable goals. Undertaken with both passion and pragmatism, it will ensure that you don’t depend on tiresome New Year’s resolutions – the ones that dissolve by spring. Instead, you can thrive on purposeful plans, ones that form the backbone of your decision-making, driving you into directional action at every meaningful crossroad you take.
What should be included in a five-year plan?
It’s important to assess all aspects of your life that are affected by your vision. Typically, this means an audit and subsequent plan is needed for your finances, health, career, and relationships. Account for all the slices of the pie that make up your life, which is why a planning tool such as a ‘wheel of life’ may help. A strong five-year plan features visions, goals and tasks, with target dates for goals and progress reviews. Here are three useful questions to ask yourself:
1. What changes need to be made and developments need to happen in all areas to get me where I want to be? Think about new skills you need to learn, conversations you need to have, places you need to go and compromises you might need to make.
2. What does this look like in terms of actual goals, and how will I know when I’ve achieved these? Look at the measures of success and the costs involved to get there.
3. How does this translate into my daily routine? Consider the small steps you’ll take every day to get you closer to where you need to be.
Can a coach help to keep me accountable?
Yes, a talented coach can make a whole world of difference to the accountability of your five-year plan. A study from the University of Scranton, Pennsylvania, found that only 8% of us who set goals actually achieve them. That’s a worrying statistic. It highlights that once a plan is made, we ironically find it easier to let life get in the way of the things we need to achieve in order to live more meaningful, happier lives.
A coach can undoubtedly be a powerful game-changer. Coaches help you keep the dream alive and energise you into remembering why the effort is worth it. Your coaching ally can help you to identify the stepping stone goals to the other side of your river where your visions await. A coach will help slay dragons with you when things get hard. Most importantly, a coach will non-judgmentally hold space for you every step of the way.
What are your top tips for building a five-year plan?
I think the most important thing is to enjoy the exercise, rather than treat it like homework or life admin. My top three tips are quite simply:
1. Keep it real. Build a plan that is both aspirational and exciting, but is also based on a reality that you can – and want to – create. Know your talents, and your capabilities, and ask yourself how they can propel you forward.
2. Keep it alive. Don’t hide your plan in a drawer or a folder on your laptop. Keep it close and remember to energise it with review sessions, adapting your plan to work with any real-life curveballs that will inevitably come your way!
3. Stay true to you. Design your best life, and not the one you see other people have. Tap into your values or ask a coach to help you. The greatest joy comes from living a heart-led life that is true to your own guiding principles.
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