Here's how you can change your life with a 5-year plan

Many people only know the 5-year plan from business, but it is now also experiencing hype in the world of personal development. We'll tell you how you can use it for yourself.

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Personal development follows a fixed principle: Every person can change and become the person they want to be. With the 5-year plan you go one step further. This means that every person can achieve this goal in just five years. We'll show you how it's supposed to work and why you should give it a chance.

Why should you make a 5 year plan?

If you don't have a plan, you'll just languish and end up somewhere later. If you act according to plan, you will end up where you want to be. At least that's the theory. However, with all the everyday to-dos that arise, it is really easy to lose focus and put personal goals aside.

Instead of studying part-time or starting the business we always wanted, we only focus on things that are important in the short term. The cake bazaar for the club, the meal with the in-laws, the laundry – things that are important in the long term are pushed into the background. To ensure that this doesn't happen and you get a little closer to your dream goal, you use the 5-year plan.

What is a 5 year plan?

The 5-year plan actually comes from business, for example when it comes to the development of a company or an entire economy. However, the term is now being redefined in personality development.

The 5-year plan is intended to be a tool with which you can set predictable goals for yourself. Everyone has dreams of what they want in their life. The problem with a dream, however, is that it often remains a dream because it is not concrete enough and does not have a deadline that motivates us to act. However, that's exactly what you do with the 5-year plan.

Step 1: Imagine what your life will look like in five years. In step 2 you then break the big picture down into concrete interim goals, at least one every year. Ideally, the annual goal should then be divided into 12 milestones - one for each month.

You decide for yourself in which areas of your life you want a change. This can be fitness, success, finances, but also love or family. The point of the whole thing is that in the end you know exactly what you have to do every month for the next five years in order to ultimately achieve your goals.

Step by step: How to create your personal 5-year plan

1. Where do you want to be in five years?

When you create a 5-year plan, the first step is to define your goals. What do you want to have achieved in five years? What job do you have then? What does your family look like? What do you do in your free time? To do this, you take the classic pen and paper in your hand or open a Word document – ​​the main thing is that you can write everything down.

Focus on the areas where you want to change and imagine exactly what you want. But please be very detailed. This will help you figure out what needs to change later.

Danger:This step is not about thinking about how to achieve these goals. It's just a matter of determining the end goal. If you don't know where you want to go, you can't plan the trip.

Anyone who thinks about “how” at this point often gets lost in it, becomes demotivated and ultimately fails to set big goals.

We often wildly overestimate what we can accomplish in a year (think New Year's resolutions), but we dramatically underestimate what we can accomplish in five or ten years. So have no inhibitions and really write down everything you want to achieve.

2. Analyze what you wrote

Now you look at what you wrote and filter your dreams into specific goals. Let's say in your mind you'll be "happier" in five years. Then your job is to scan your text for the things that made you happy in your imagination. Was it more money? Was it a partner? Was it more free time?

If you want, you can also use different highlighters. For example, you can mark yellow for success, green for fitness and pink for love life.

3. Break your dreams down into milestones

After you have analyzed your text, you are very close to your goal of creating a 5-year plan. Now you should be able to express your dreams into concrete goals. This could be, for example, that in five years you see yourself owning your own home with two children and running your own business. You have now formulated your milestone goals. Now all you have to do is assign each milestone to a year. Ideally, you focus on just one big goal per year.

To stick with this example, you could concentrate fully on building your business in the first year, then on your home in the second year and then on family planning, etc. The order is of course entirely up to you.

The point of the whole thing is that you have a schedule that you can stick to later. Similar to a roadmap where you know exactly which goal you need to focus on each year. This way you ensure that your full attention and energy stays on one thing at a time. This increases the likelihood that you will achieve this goal.

Tipp:You can have more than one goal per year, but you should always set a priority. Each year should have a single main goal. This way you can make sure that you know which task is more important when you have to decide between two areas because you only have enough time for one thing.

4. Research the necessary intermediate steps

In this step you look at your five individual milestones and research what you would have to do to achieve them. Let's say your first goal is to start your own business. Then you would have to figure out how to raise the start-up capital, how to register a business, what insurance you need, how to produce something, how to advertise it, etc.

Maybe you first have to decide what kind of company you want it to be. That's okay too. Set your interim goals so that they exactly suit you and your annual goal.

By the end, you should have a list of concrete steps you can take to start your own business. You then divide this list into 12 months. You can also break it down into 52 small steps - so you would have a small goal for each week of the year.

The advantage of this method is not only that you end up with concrete tasks that, if you complete them, will bring you closer to your goal. You have also automatically set deadlines for these interim goals. Deadlines help us force ourselves to actually complete a task. This way you get a little closer to your goal every week, but at the latest every month.