Increase Your Likelihood of Making Your Professional Development Plan a Reality | by Debra Charles

How did I go from not believing in myself to receiving an honorary doctorate in science for my contribution to my UK business? 

It was, without a doubt, because I chose to invest in my personal development. In this blog, I'll share with you a model I created that enabled me to make huge strides in my personal and professional life. I call it Vision Hunting and Trackback Planning.

Many people move transactionally forward, hoping that opportunity will come their way, bumping from one place to another. Some succeed, others don’t.  In "Alice in Wonderland", Lewis Carroll says, "If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there." 

Having a clear vision increases your chances of fulfilment and, ultimately, happiness.  American systems scientist Peter Senge (born 1947) said, “A clear vision can offer the freedom to explore. It’s not an idea; it is a force in people's hearts, a force of impressive power.”

Here’s a Quick Guide to Creating Your Vision: 
First things first, making time to focus on yourself is essential. We most often think about others first. When we think about ourselves, it's a ‘nuts and bolts’ thought rather than really thinking about what we want from our lives. Just when I think I’ve got a moment to myself, I hear, “Moma, I love you. Can I have some Warhammer Stormtroopers, please?” Well, he’s nothing but polite!  So, I urge you to create an environment, your favourite place, where you can luxuriate in thinking about your vision of your future.

Step One: Check in With Yourself: Take some paper and draw a line down the middle. 

• Call the left-hand column ‘Away From’—list words/values you are feeling and would prefer to move away from, such as pain, fatigue, and uncertainty. 
• In the right-hand column, call it ‘Toward’—list values you want to move toward, such as pleasure, empowerment, and ambition. 
• List as many as you can on both columns. 

Step Two: Gaining Understanding will enable you to explore where you’re at and what matters to you.

• Once you’ve exhausted your list, circle your top 5 values (from either list) and ask yourself the following questions about each value:
  • What is important about <insert value>?
  • What do I get from <insert value>?
  • What does <insert value> do for me?
  • What does <insert value> enable me to avoid?

Step Three: Visualising Your Perfect Day: By visualising your perfect day, you are immersing yourself in the life you want, including your work, family and friends.

Find a safe and comfortable space where you can let your mind be free. Think of a moment in the future, for example, a couple of years from now, using today's date and time. For instance, it’s 13:00 on Wednesday, March 11th, 2026. Savour the joy of your imagination, immerse yourself in that moment in time, and ask yourself (in that future state). 

• Where am I? 
• What’s around me? 
• What have I achieved? 
• What have I overcome?
• Who is with me, who is not? 
• What am I proud of? 

Capture your thoughts. Write, draw, paint, or sing them, whatever works best for you. Keep going back to them. When you’re happy with them, pop them in an envelope and post them to yourself. Don’t email it, it needs to be a physical activity.

Step Four: Trackback from your vision: Once you know your vision, you can work backwards to set your milestones. I call that a trackback plan. Let’s look at the steps to creating your trackback plan.

• Take the Vision of your Perfect Day that you received in the post, along with a notebook and pen and go to the safe comfortable space you chose or another place of your choosing. For example, let’s say you chose your local park, and you loved a particular tree. 
• Go there, open and read your Vision of your Perfect Day, and place it on the ground (you might need a stone if it’s a breezy day—you don’t want to be running around chasing it!). 
• Next, get some sticks or stones and walk on an imaginary line away from the tree, using the sticks or stones to mark the milestones (see the diagram below) as you walk away. You might not want to walk more than 20 paces away from the tree. 
• Walk back to the tree, stand on the imaginary line at your milestone nearest the tree and look toward your envelope and the Vision of your perfect day.

• Ask yourself what you need to have done at that point to achieve your vision.
• Continue working backwards from each milestone, asking yourself, “What do I need to do to get to that milestone?”
• Remember to note down the actions you are coming up with. The nearer you reach today, the shorter the milestone distances. Then, you look at it from today and have your plan. Play with it. It’s yours, and you can go down the layers of detail as much as you want.

Hey presto! You have your vision. And, when you play your trackback forward, you have a plan to achieve your perfect day (your vision). Remember, things change. That’s OK. Go back to your vision of your perfect day and your trackback plan and embellish it as you wish.

Finally, remember that You Own Your Life. Taking time to think about you and what you want from life and your career is vital to achieving success. This PDP plan is my ‘go-to’ when I’m unsure or need inspiration. 

Debra Charles is a Level 3 Data Insights For Business apprentice at Multiverse, based in London, UK. She’s writing for the Apprentice Lens as part of the Blogging Team. Here’s more about Debra: My mission is to inspire others to believe in themselves and seize the possibilities that await us. Together, we can channel our unique strengths and talents to ensure a brighter future for our planet and humanity.