Personal Development Process

Personal Development Process

Personal development is the process of development thyself, planned to achieve the target and evaluate the performance. Here, if the performance is not satisfactory than change thyself by taking training to developed thyself more to achieve the target. It covers all activities which improve awareness to identify and develop talents to build human resources and facilitate their employability and enhance the quality of life. Personal development can take place in any path of an entire life. Personal development concept involves a formal and informal way for developing thyself or developing others like a teacher, manager, mentor, etc. It is the methods, techniques which support human development at a personal level for the organization. (Allen, 2015)

Personal Areas for Development

First of all, I have to set my mindset that change is possible. Sometimes, I suffer from indecisions and cannot control my mindset to make the change easily. I should never give up any pending work rather I should keep patience and perseverance to do work. I have experienced previously that sometimes change is not easy rather it requires a steely determination not to quit when the going gets tough.  (Main, 1985)

 Activities, processes, and tools used in designing My Personal Development Plan: 

Designing Activities for personal development

1. I should give time to myself for planning and organizing my abilities and controlling the resources to get the work done properly.
2. I should give time to learn something new every day

• Sometimes need to take a break to breathe myself as if I give time without a break it reduces my productivity.

1. If I cannot do work after taking several chances than I should do something else
2. Organized people can do more tasks faster and better, so in some cases, I need to be more organized.
3. I should do my best in every work, every time to get a better output. (Kolb, 1994)

Process of personal development

In every development, there is a process that we need to perform sequentially. In my personal development, I think there have seven steps that need to follow.

1. Developing a vision

Vision is the ultimate destination where I want to see myself in the long run. In the long run, I want to see myself as an entrepreneur.  (Verfasst, 2018)

2. Identify development needs

To develop myself now I am doing business courses so that I can understand the business techniques.

3. Identify learning opportunities

From my academic courses and teacher guidelines, I get the opportunities to learn about business techniques.  (Verfasst, 2018)

4. Formulate an action plan

Now I have a plan to score a good result from my academic life through gathering diversification of knowledge.

5. Undertake the development

After completing my graduation I am going to undertake my decision to become true. Before that, I have to develop my score every semester. (Verfasst, 2018)

6. Record the outcomes

In any semester my reports are not good enough I have to record it for further studies to have a good score.

7. Evaluate and review

In the end, I have to evaluate everything in a small portion, and when any result comes unsatisfactory than review it for further examination and takes new strategies. (Verfasst, 2018)

Tools used in personal development

1. Dreams and Goals inspire me to keep moving towards them
2. A proactive approach helps me to go after what I really want to do
3. Focused on a specific target help me to achieve it
4. Do the task which I love to give me a better output
5. Another tool I can use is my potentiality to do tasks
6. Find out the SWOT analysis of thyself (Main, 1985)

SWOT analysis of myself:

SWOT analysis means finding out strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and Threats.

My strengths are:

1. The professional certificate which gives me enough knowledge about entrepreneurship
2. Quick decision-making ability

My Weakness is:

1. I do not get inner peace until I finish a task successfully
2. I do not have the proper guidelines to become an entrepreneur

My Opportunities are:

1. My father and relatives are going to support my activities
2. Government incentives for the new entrepreneurs

My Threats are:

1. When I will in the field there may be many competitors
2. Government and bank rules and policies may change.

Findings:

As my ultimate vision is to be an entrepreneur so I think it will not be easy to do so. Because I found it difficult that I have a good academic background but do not have any practical knowledge of these areas. I found it easy to divide my long term vision into separate short term missions, goals, and objectives. First of all, I do not have any problem to score good results. But to be an entrepreneur I do not find any mentor to get instructions because most of my relatives are doing government jobs or involved in the private sector. So, I have to start from the beginning. I talk with my father who initially tries to help me financially and mentally. I have a plan to take a loan from the bank and paid it through long term installments. Moreover, I want to talk with some industrial people to gather knowledge from them. If I get the chance it will be very helpful for me to take instruction about several techniques and plans from them. (Swann, 1998)

Personal Learning Style (Honey-Mumford Learning Style):

The different person prefers different learning styles and techniques. Some people may use multiple learning styles to learn. I preferred Honey-Mumford Style.

Peter Honey and Alan Mumfor developed the Honey-Mumford style based on the work of Kolb. When we learn something new first question that arises is what we learn very few of us ask how we learn it. Based on these types of characteristics here, they identified four styles; Activist, Theorist; Pragmatist, and Reflector.   (Chickering, 1969)

How did you use what you learned about your Personal Learning Style to help you design your Personal Development Plan? (Give examples of what you did).

Activist

Activists are those people who involved themselves in the task and learn new things by doing things. They love teamwork and try to lead people by showing how the work should perform. They love to take new challenges, to take risks to innovate new things. (Chickering, 1969)

Theorists

Theorists are the people who think carefully and logically about situations and prefer to work within a given system. They analyze the situation first then formulate it with a system model before doing it. They work based on their learning, concepts, and methods. (Chickering, 1969)

Reflectors

Reflectors are the people who like to learn by observation. They do not prefer to go into action and making decisions. They take the action after some time when some other people already find a conclusion. They can learn through interviews and observational activities. (Chickering, 1969)

Pragmatists

Pragmatists learn through testing and experimenting with ideas and solving problems. They do not prefer to take part in any discussions about how theories work or how theories come. Rather, they would like to put things into action. They try to apply the theories into action.

Here, I think I have all the four styles in my learning. Because sometimes take action immediately without knowing the details, sometimes takes some time to see what other people do, sometimes just do what the theory says, sometimes take action after analyzing the situations. But most of the cases I perform as an activist. I want to do the things first than any other, want to lead others. For example, when an assignment is given by a teacher I do it as faster as I can and I try to instruct other students. (Chickering, 1969)

Identification and evaluation of the time management techniques and strategies I use in my personal life:  

1. I start my day with a clear focus on what I am going to do today. I try to accomplish my task at anyhow within the given time frame.
2. I have the plan to diversify my tasks list and update it on a regular basis.
3. I try to minimize interruption and try to keep my focus on the tasks.
4. I gave some time to review my day and try to find out problems faces to do the tasks.
5. Sometimes I need to do multiple tasks at a time. So I prefer to plan separate those tasks within a time frame. So that both works can be done effectively.
6. I try to find out my urgent and important tasks first to solve it first.
7. I do not waste my time Idle. Rather if I am getting the idle time I spent it to learn new things. (Kolb, 1994)

As I have a clear focus on my work and change my plan everyday basis it helps me to do my urgent task first. I am learning many things by not wasting idle time. It improves my personal life. I do not schedule two tasks at the same time which helps me to achieve my goals effectively. (Allen, 2015)

References

Allen, D., 2015. Personal development planning. Journal of Economics, 12(6), pp. 01-06.

Chickering, A., 1969. Education and Identity. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Kolb, D., 1994. Experiential Learning as the Science of Learning and Development. New York: Prentice-Hall.

Main, A., 1985. Reflection and the development of learning skills. London: Kogan Page.

Rowson, M., 2000. Learning to learn: more than a skill set. Studies in Higher Education, Volume 25, pp. 225-230.

Swann, J., 1998. How can we make better plans?. Higher Education Review, Volume 31, pp. 37-55.

Verfasst, 2018. The Importance of Personal Development. Journal of Management, pp. 01-10.

Written by

Md. Shadequr Rahaman

Email: [email protected]