A model for personal development
W O R K I N G    H Y P O T H E S I S
The meditative ruminations of Kyle Parton
SEARCH BLOG
FOLLOW BLOG
Join 31 other followers

Contact Us

A MODEL FOR PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
 9/5/2016 by Kyle Parton
10 minute read
SUMMARY:

An adaptable personal development strategy that you can use to balance work/life, strengths/weaknesses, and create on-/off-seasons. Download a free copy and see if it works for you. 

Recommended pregame coffee intake: 2 cups (of 4)
INTRO:

I love learning about personal development plans, but I’ve never found one that perfectly manages my bad habits and cognitive disorganization. After about a year of tinkering with the common elements found in many models, I finally drafted a developmental strategy that seems to work for me.  
I redacted the specifics from my milestones (the boxes inside the cyclical calendar),
but the rest is my personal strategy. If the content of my plan doesn’t make sense to you, just ignore it — the point is the structure.

This model provides a broad structure to balance personal development and personal achievement. It splits the year into two seasons (the vertical line): one season to influence oneself and another to influence one’s environment. I’ve found it difficult to do both really well, simultaneously, over an extended period of time. I believe it’s better to be strategic and focus on each element in separate phases.

The model also splits one’s activities into two dimensions (the horizontal line): one addressing any external work we do (vocational) and one addressing any internal or relational work we do (psychosocial).

[Design note: While the four components of the model (Vocational, Psychosocial, Developmental, and Operational) form a meaningful quadrant, the point is not necessarily to divide the year into quarters. This is an unintended implication. So rather than think of the year in 3-month quarters, emphasize splitting the year in half with the vertical line when looking at the calendar.]

WHY THIS MODEL WORKS FOR ME

Maybe you don’t need to be this premeditated in how you spend your time and energy. Good for you. I do.

Here’s the problem: I put an enormous amount of pressure on myself to constantly grow. I also feel an unbearably intense desire to “change the world.” While these two impulses are not mutually exclusive, they do need to be balanced. This model is one way to do that. I hope those who feel a similar urge to continuously develop and also feel driven to make a difference in the world will find that this model can help partition some of those pressures. Yes, there are 15 books I want to read — I’ll start those in August. Yes, I want to volunteer at the suchandsuch nonprofit — I’ll start that in February. This structure referees the noble forces that violently battle for our time and attention.

This format also helps me see the whole year in one glance. Because time seems to be moving at a multiplier of 1.5 these days, I need to keep the big picture before me.

HERE’S HOW IT WORKS

The model operates on the following core assumptions. If you don’t agree with the majority of them, it may not be the right approach for you.

Assumptions

1.  If you are going to change the world, it will be from leveraging your strengths.
If you have amazing analytical skills (a strength) but terrible teaching skills (a weakness), you should seek to positively influence your environment on the basis of your analytical aptitude. It takes substantial time and energy to learn to become a great teacher, and even then, there’s no guarantee teaching will be an activity that is rewarding and energizing for you. So seek to create change on the basis of your strengths.

2.  If you are going to achieve healthy relationships and inner peace, it will be from overcoming your weaknesses.
Let’s say you realize the primary reason you’re a crappy teacher is because you have no patience. By developing more patience, you may very well nourish your relationships and reduce your irritation when helping others learn. However, to again reemphasize the first assumption, it’s unlikely you’ll change the world on the basis of your newly cultivated saintly patience.

3.  Thoughts become actions, actions become habits, habits become path.
So if you want to influence your ultimate path and identity (downstream), it begins by deliberately managing your thoughts (upstream). You must create the causes of who you want to be. This allows you to operate on habits rather than willpower, and that is a gamechanger.

4.  If you don’t learn new skills, you will burn out.
Many high-performers fail to make this connection. The tricks and tactics that got you where you are won’t necessarily work in the face of future obstacles and constraints. You will plateau.

5.  If you don’t develop (and sustain) key relationships, your success will ultimately be limited.
This isn’t about getting someone reputable to write a letter of recommendation to a college; it’s about the mutually beneficial exchange of resources, advocacy, support, and challenge.

Next, here are the definitions of the key components of this model.

Definitions

Developmental Season: The time to grow. This season is focused on improving oneself, learning to manage existing weaknesses, and creating new habits. Ideally, few major events or milestones occur in this season, which hopefully means a little more whitespace on the calendar.

Operational Season: The time to execute. This season is focused on influencing one’s environment by leveraging one’s strengths. Ideally, the majority of key events or milestones occur in this season, which means this is the peak busy season of the year.

Vocational Dimension: This is the “work” in work/life balance, but it’s more than just your day job. I’m using this term in a more Catholic sense, which ties to your greater purpose on this planet. It refers to anything you physically do. In this definition, “work” is simply anything that needs to change. The result is that work and personal life become less segregated and more of a spectrum. The Vocational dimension of this model refers to anything you might externally change.

Psychosocial Dimension: This is the “life” in work/life balance, and it specifically emphasizes your psychological and social habits. It refers to the combined elements of your mental routines, emotional wellbeing, personal relationships, and even spiritual practice. This encompasses areas like your education, self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and the amount of energy and attention you invest into your relationships. The Psychosocial dimension of this model refers to anything you might internally change.

Retreats: These are special events, trips, or workshops where attention is exclusively given to growth and refocus. Retreats are a time to take one step back so that we may take two steps forward. Many spiritually inclined people enjoyed retreats in their youth (church camp, etc.), but seem to outgrow them at some point. Why do we stop doing this? Do we think we don’t need it any more? Consider, the key figures of almost every religious tradition took retreats — even in their prime. Christ withdrew to the desert. Buddha withdrew to the forest. Muhammad withdrew to the mountains. We’re fooling ourselves if we think we don’t need an occasional retreat to recalibrate our souls. (And it needn’t be seven days in an ancient monastery; a two-day local retreat can often do the trick.)

With those assumptions and definitions in mind, this model is also structured around one other major concept.

THE OFF-SEASON

Professional athletes have an off-season. This developmental model operates under the same premise: You are not a machine. You have to recharge, recover, rebuild, and replenish. After ultramarathon world record holder Croix Sather ran across the entire US, he took six months off. Olympic triathlete Matt Reed uses his off-season to plan his race schedule for the next year and play with his kids. He says this is critical to recharging himself mentally and rekindling his enthusiasm for the sport. If your annual milestones and events allow you to engineer in an off-season, it’s in your best interest to do so.

Do you know what will happen if you try to save the world 24/7?

You will become sensually intimate with four new sadistic lovers: Obsession, Burnout, Anxiety, and Depression. It doesn’t even matter how altruistic your endeavor or mission is. Once your enthusiasm has burned all the fat off your body, it will start to consume muscle. Then bone. Then relationships. Then soul. Many people know they need a break, but fail to implement it. It won’t happen automatically. You have to force it.

Every peak is followed by a valley — or it wasn’t a peak in the first place. So you can leave it up to your environment to introduce these valleys, or you can schedule them yourself. I choose the latter.

I know, I know, “My schedule is so busy that the concept of an off-season is absurd.” Welcome to the club. There is a solution: Cultivate the skills and relationships that will empower you to create an off-season. That’s what this whole model is about. Create the causes of an off-season. But again, you have to force it.

HOW TO USE THIS MODEL

Use these six steps as a starting point to develop your own personal development strategy. Wherever my method stops making sense for you, stop and design your own structure from that point on. I doubt my model will work perfectly for everyone, but you should be able to find a few helpful concepts in it.

1.  Identify and list out all annual major milestones or events in your life, job, and relationships.
What are the recurring tasks or occasions that are most significant for you? These will be the boxes inside the calendar.

2.  Plot these milestones and events on the calendar.
Rotate the calendar graphic so that the Operational Season contains as many of these milestones as possible. This creates your peak time.

3.  For the Developmental Season, identify a desired frame of mind, attribute, or habit to cultivate (for instance, patience).
Don’t simply try to develop patience outright — that is impossible. Rather, create the causes of patience (perspective taking, self-awareness, and compassion). These are the perspectives you will deliberately practice during the Developmental Season, eventually resulting in the desired outcome.

4.  Identify a skill to develop that will be needed in the Operational Season.
These can be soft skills such as conflict mediation or hard skills such as learning to use new software.

5.  Identify and list key activities for the Developmental Phase that provide you the knowledge, awareness, and relationships most critical to your mission.
Mine include heavier reading, longer meditation sessions, counseling, investing time into my wife and kids, etc.

6.  If there is a phrase, verse, or image that captures what you ultimately want to do or become, enshrine that thought in the middle of the calendar.
Mine is a line from a Rumi poem. It reminds me to set an intention for everything I do, which in this case is to help all living beings reconnect with the Divinity that is closer than their skin.

FREE DOWNLOAD

If you think this model has some potential to help you, please download a free customizable copy. Opt-in to my email list and I’ll send you a file that you can edit to create your own tailored calendar. And don’t worry — the point of the email list is to pass along tools and resources like this (rather than push spammy affiliate products and propaganda).

So tell me your thoughts! Do you take retreats? Is this model usable to you? What is unclear? This format is definitely Version 1.0, so let me know what changes might be helpful.

May this tool help others enrich their environments, 
strengthen their relationships, 
and cultivate inner peace.
RELATED RESOURCES

Flow (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)
A classic discussion of how we can structure the information in our mind upstream to create happiness downstream. Great for the Developmental Season.

An overview of how to structure our attitudes and thoughts for maximum success and fulfillment. May help you create the mental habits and routines needed to be successful in the Operational Season.

(Affiliate links)
SHARE THIS POST:
(Refresh page if icons don't display)
Share by: