Creating an effective learning plan

The world is forever changing and, you can change with it; if you want to make the change. One of the biggest mistakes that you can make is to view the world with a sense of permanence i.e. the way things are is the way they will always be. It can be detrimental to confidence and self-belief but it can also be very damaging to your ability to make progress in your life. Real progress and success in life is not about major things like founding a billion-dollar business overnight. It is about being a little better today than you were yesterday. It is about taking a series of small steps towards your end goal. Sure, if you get the opportunity to take a giant stride, that is fantastic but in the main, you will achieve your goals through persistent and consistent action i.e. a series of small steps. One of the best ways to ensure that you keep taking those small steps is to have an effective learning plan.

An effective learning plan and performance

If you want to achieve more than you are currently achieving, some things are going to have to change. One of those things is you. You must improve your knowledge, skills and attitudes to allow you to perform to a higher standard. With so much new technology constantly coming onto the market, you need to keep learning new skills just to stand still and maintain your ability to do your job. So, if you want to do more and improve your results, you need a learning plan to ensure that you keep pushing forwards.

An effective learning plan and confidence

While self-esteem is mainly internal i.e. what we think of ourselves, confidence is mainly external and situation specific i.e. your belief in your ability to perform a particular task. As tasks and jobs evolve they demand more skill and knowledge. If you fall behind, you will find it more difficult to do the job and this will impact negatively on your confidence. As your confidence drops, your opinion of yourself (your self-esteem) may also suffer.

If your lack of confidence extends to your communication and relationships building skills, an effective learning plan is just as important as it is still all about learning skills, implementing them and improving them.

Creating an effective learning plan

The following 5 steps are crucial when you are developing an effective learning plan.

1. Know your purpose

You cannot learn everything as there just isn’t enough time to do so. What’s more, there isn’t any need to learn everything as you would never have any need to use the majority of what you learn. So, the first thing you need to do is to get specific about what you need to learn and what you don’t.

The 80/20 principle tells us that there are only a few things in your life which produce the great results that you really want. A common mistake that people make is to focus their learning on trying to improve their weaknesses. But it may be easier to assign this work to others and instead focus on further improving your strengths which will bring you much better results. Some simple examples to illustrate where there is no need to improve your weaknesses:

Instead, you want to focus your learning on the areas which are going to get you the results you want. The first step towards this is to know your purpose i.e. what you are trying to achieve with your life? What is the underlying theme to your life? How are you going to make the world a little bit better for you having been here?

When you take the time to get clear on your purpose, you start to discover what is important and needs your focus and attention. These are the areas where your learning should be focused. Just as importantly, you discover the many areas of life which are unimportant to you so that you keep them out of your learning plan.

If you are unclear about your purpose, check out the Living Purposefully Workbook.

2. Know your goals

While your purpose gives you the overall theme of your life; your goals are more specific. When you are clear about your goals; you know exactly what you are trying to achieve in getting the results you want from life. This is where most of your energies should be focused.

Each goal is basically a project and every project should have a project plan. For any reasonable sized project, serious consideration needs to be given to the knowledge and skills required to complete each step of the plan. Anywhere that there is a skill shortage, there may be a reason to make additions to your learning plan. And that is an important point about an effective learning plan. It is a living document which is constantly evolving to meet your needs. It is not something that you complete once and store in some forgotten folder on your computer.

Your goals are the place where you will see the greatest need for training and education because when you create great goals, you are challenging yourself and requiring yourself to grow. Learning and development play a critical role in personal growth. So, set great goals and back them up with an effective learning plan. When you put both in to action, you will see greatly improved results.

If you haven’t set great goals, check out the Ultimate Guide to Goal Setting.

3. Training needs analysis

Training needs analysis is where you define the knowledge and skills required to perform a job to the highest standard and; you compare that list of requirements to the skills and knowledge possessed by the person in the job. The gap between the requirements and the current situation is the training need i.e. where training is needed.

So, after creating your goals, you have identified some required skills which you do not possess. Should these be labelled as training needs and added to your learning plan? Not necessarily.

Just because skills are needed to complete a job/goal/project; it does not automatically mean that you should be the one to possess those skills. Imagine your goal was to run a marathon but you have not been doing any exercise for several years. The first step on that goal should probably be to get a medical examination to ensure you are in good enough health to undergo a training regime. If you are not a doctor, are you going to attend medical school so that you can gain the knowledge and skills needed to conduct that examination? Of course not!

When deciding whether a particular skill or knowledge should be added to your learning plan, you will need to consider other factors such as:

Where there is some real effort required to learn; it is important to assess the realistic benefit of the learning before undertaking it.

4. Identify the right solution

If you are going to spend time, money, energy on learning something new, it is important that you spend a little time to identify the correct learning solution. You don’t want to spend too long and you can usually narrow down your options by getting some good recommendation from friends, colleagues etc. who have already undertaken the training.

You definitely want to consider the following:

There are many other things which you may consider depending on your specific circumstances. One thing I would suggest is that you don’t get too carried away with qualifications and accreditations e.g. I have a Master’s degree from a very highly ranked University but most of the best trainings I have undertaken are not accredited and do not award qualifications. They were really valuable because they taught me exactly what I needed to know.

5. Schedule time for implementation

Once of the critical factors in taking any training is deciding when to take the training. With any training, there is a learning curve which continues after the actual training has taken place. You are going to make some mistakes and you are going to need to refer to your notes and learning materials to make sure you are doing it right. This is naturally going to slow you down a little so consider this when you are deciding when to undertake your training.

When deciding the right time to undergo training; you must also make sure that you are going to be using the knowledge and skills gained immediately upon your return from the training so that you get the opportunity to reinforce the learning in a real-world setting. If you are not, you will have forgotten some of what you learned before it is time to use it.

Allowing for a period of implementation following learning also allows you a period to evaluate your learning and performance, identify and adjustments which may be required and; make those adjustments.

If you haven’t got an effective learning plan, Accelerate Your Performance will set you on the right track.

Conclusion

Life is constantly changing and the world around you is changing too. If you are not changing and striving to make improvements; you are standing still, at best. Though you are more likely regressing. That’s why having an effective learning plan is so important. Not only does it help to boost your performance but the steady progress is vital for your confidence too. No matter what you are trying to improve, you are going to have to do some learning to make it happen. You will make some giant strides from time to time but the real progress comes from taking small steps daily towards your goals. Consistent and persistent action will ensure that you continue to improve your knowledge and skills in every area of your life. This allows you to make the most of your good times and minimise the damage suffered during your tough times. An effective learning plan is that critical.