Personal development is a lifelong process. It is a way for people to assess their skills and qualities, consider their aims in life and set goals in order to realise and maximise their potential.

This statement helps you to identify the skills you need to set life goals which can enhance your employability prospects, raise your confidence, and lead to a more fulfilling, higher quality life. Plan to make relevant, positive and effective life choices and decisions for your future to enable personal empowerment.

Managing Your Personal Development

There are a number of steps to take in managing your personal development.

1. Developing a Personal Vision

Personal development can simply be for fun. Most of us, however, find it easier to motivate ourselves to learn and improve if we have a purpose in doing so. Developing your personal vision - a clear idea of where you want to be in a few months or years, and why - is a crucial part of developing this purpose.

There is more about this in our statements on Developing a Personal Vision, Refining and Narrowing Your Vision, and Setting Personal Goals.

2. Planning Your Personal Development

Once you are clear about where you want to be, you can start planning how to get there. Drawing up a personal development plan is not essential, but it does make the planning process more realistic.

For more about this part of the process, take a look at our statement on Planning Your Personal Development.

If you are struggling to identify which areas to target for development and improvement, you may find it helpful to read our statements on Personal SWOT Analysis and Identifying Areas for Improvement.

3. Starting the Improvement Process

There are a number of different ways in which you can learn and develop.

Our statement on Improving Performance – Some Specific Techniques explains some ways of learning, including a technique called expertise transfer.

Our statement on Learning Preferences suggests how different types of learning process may be more effective for certain people. You may also find our statement on Learning Styles helpful in understanding how you like to learn.

4. Recording Your Personal Development

It is often a good idea to keep a record of your personal development. By writing down key developments in your learning and development as and when they occur, you will be able to reflect on your successes at a later date.

There is more about this on our statement, Recording Your Personal Development.

This reflection may well help to motivate you to learn more skills in the future. Try keeping a learning log or journal as you develop your skills and knowledge.

5. Reviewing and Revising Personal Development Plans

Our statement on Learning Styles uses The Kolbe Index (Instinct Test) to show that learning is a cycle. For more effective learning, it is important to reflect on your experience, and consider what you have learnt from it. Regular review of your personal development plans, and your development activities, will ensure that you learn from what you have done. It will also ensure that your activities continue to move you towards your goals, and that your goals or vision remain relevant to you.