The image below shows the Life and Career Planning Model© in its entirety as presented in the book Time To Get Real! In this blog series, we have presented one part at a time, isolated from the rest of the model, but when you see how the various sections work together, you can see how your Self and Work/Career sections can influence each other and your personal vision, and you can see how analysis of what you’ve learned can lead to the development of the plan, and when you take action on what you’ve planned, you will influence the Self and Work/Career parts of your life. They are all connected. You really cannot separate your work and career from your life outside of work. The ultimate purpose of using the Life and Career Planning Model© is to better understand your personal life and career and how they are integrated.
Planning, Action, and Renewal - Writing Your Strategic Plan
In this series of blogs, we have taken you through the Life and Career Planning Model© found in the book Time To Get Real! and you have learned about each model topic and then how to analyze and learn from the work you would have done with each tropic. The final phase of life and career planning is to create your personal and professional strategic plan. Whether or not you have read the book and followed through on the model, the information in this blog will still help you to think about what it would take to create a life and career plan for yourself.
The first thing you would need to consider is how far in advance do you want to plan. We recommend that you look ahead at least two years but no more than three years. The reason for this is that things have a way of changing with a level of rapidity we can seldom predict--you lose a job, you obtain a new job, there’s the birth of a child, illness strikes someone in the family, a new home is purchased, and on and on.
Analysis and Learning - Putting It All Together
If you have been a reader of our blogs, you know that we have been taking you through the Life and Career Planning Model© which is in our book Time To Get Real! Assuming that you completed each part of the model you would arrive at this point, which means that it is time to start analyzing what you have accomplished so far, documenting the sessions you have learned and beginning to think about your action plan. When you complete each section of the model you develop important findings and lessons and from them, you note actions that you might take as well as changes in your life and career that you need to implement. In other words, if you use the book Time To Get Real! and the model you arrive at a point where you’re about to take the steps that are necessary to bring about the changes you desire in your life and in your career. This section of the book allows you to respond to specific questions which you have read in the book or completed using the model.
The Power of Your Personal Vision
Most individuals have an easier time thinking about what the next month or year might be like for them. It gets a bit more difficult when peering into a future that could be three, five, or ten years from now. For some people, it’s hard to do this since we are asking our minds to picture a state of life that’s quite intangible in the present time. However, just as a company or organization develop their vision, an individual is no less in need of knowing what their future is expected to look like. This is the focus of the chapter Personal Vision in the book Time To Get Real!
The Ladders Interview with Alex Plinio
Alex Plinio was recently interviewed by The Ladders, a United States-based company providing career news, advice, and tools and an online job search service. Erica Lamberg, a business, health, and travel writer whose work appears in Gannett, US News & World Report, Bankrate, MSN, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Reader’s Digest and NBC News, spoke with Alex about the book Time To Get Real! The interview appears in full below:
Crossing Age Groups and Cultures
In your life and career, you will come into contact with many individuals who may not view life in the same way you do. The chapter in Time To Get Real! titled “Crossing Age Groups and Cultures” addresses this reality. When you activate your life and career plan, it is important to recognize that you are a part of many different cultures. You have a family culture, business or organization culture, a state or national culture, or maybe even a sub-group culture, like a club you belong to or a subset of human beings.
In addition, you, as does everyone, belong to a specific age group that has distinct characteristics--many, but not all, of which you may embody yourself. It is helpful when deploying your life and career plan to understand the generational differences among groups of people, and also gain a better understanding of intercultural competence.
The Critical Importance of Financial Planning
A life without a financial plan is like a boat adrift in the sea. You just won’t know if you can weather a storm, or where your boat will land, or if it will land at all unless you have a plan. Financial Planning is a critically important chapter in the book Time To Get Real! The contents of this chapter are one of the greatest gifts that we can give to a reader because all of your life plans should be based on a realistic view of your financial life. Your financial position will either support your plans or cause them to crumble.
Too many people shy away from thinking about their current and future financial status. Our day-to-day worries and financial concerns eat up our time and prevent most of us from thinking ahead more than the next several months or a year. In our practice and in our teaching we have met too many people who are financially ill-prepared no matter what their career. In addition, financial planning is important at every stage of life.
The Importance of Relationships
The chapter entitled Relationships in Time To Get Real! focuses on the key relationships in your life, their importance, and how they can help you to gain unvarnished feedback on your decisions and plans. The chapter also includes advice about relationships in general that can either help or hinder you in building a fulfilling life.
Key relationships occur with those people with whom you can share your innermost thoughts and plans about life and career. These are people you trust and whose advice and counsel you would want to seek. They are willing to tell you what you need to hear even if you do not want to hear it.
Life & Career Planning is now an online course through Thomas Edison State University
We are pleased to announce a new online course available through Thomas Edison State University. See the link below for registration information. This course, Leading an Intentional Life, is based on our book Time To Get Real! and the Life and Career Planning Model©. Taking this course will help you take control of your career and your life so that you can intentionally move forward in a direction that leads to personal and professional satisfaction and fulfillment. Click here for more information.
Do You Have a Match? Organization Mission, Values, and Culture
This chapter in the book, Time To Get Real! asks you to consider the company you work for and any organizations for which you volunteer. It doesn’t matter if you are working for compensation or freely giving of your time and effort in a volunteer activity, work is work. Whether it is a business, government, or a nonprofit organization, a mission or purpose, values, and culture will exist within that organization. Aligning yourself with your organization, whether receiving compensation or not, is important for your own personal comfort and commitment.
Look at the mission of the organization for whom you work or volunteer. In the book, we ask you to compare it to what you have learned about yourself – values, purpose, life balance, etc. Does the organization's mission help to maximize your strengths while providing development opportunities? Does the mission conflict in any way with your own purpose or is it complimentary? Research has shown that when people match their personal values to the values of the company, employees are happier and more engaged. In addition, mission and values alignment is a quality that is common to high-performance organizations.
Discovering My Personal Values
This topic in our book, Time To Get Real! will ask you to consider the personal values that you could not live without, those that you value the most. Values are ways of behavior, or basic tenets people would find exceptionally difficult to live without. They help determine who we are and who we want to be. It is important for you to understand your own personal values: what they are, what meaning they have in your life, and how they affect your behavior.
Why is this important? More than anything else when you read our book, you will learn that your values are going to determine much of your future. Holding on to them, being true to them, and making sure others see them in your behavior will send the most important messages you can send to anyone, be they your spouse, significant other, child, employer, friend, mentee, casual acquaintances, or just people you come across in your day to day life. In other words, since values show up only in behavior, they tell others who you are. It doesn’t matter who you say you are, your demonstrated values make clear who you are.
Finding Your Frequency with Life and Career Planning
Thank you to VoiceAmerica's Finding Your Frequency podcast for inviting Alex Plinio to be the featured guest this week. Host Ryan Treasure and Alex talk about living a more intentional life by using the powerful Life and Career Planning Model© and discovering how to develop your own personal strategic plan outlined in our new book Time To Get Real!