Do you have trouble with sticking to your goals? Developing an action plan may be beneficial to you! But what exactly is an action plan anyway? An action plan is a document that lists what steps must be taken in order to achieve a specific goal. An action plan clarifies what resources are required to reach that goal, while also providing a timeline that outlines when tasks need to be achieved.
You may be asking yourself, “how do I create an action plan?” Stanford University has taken the guess work out of creating an action plan by developing an application that will help you to self-manage your long-term goals or chronic illnesses right from the palm of your hand. My Action Planner is available on both iTunes and the Google Play Store. This app is designed for both Apple and Android devices.
My Action Planner is user friendly. Once you have downloaded the app, each week you simply describe your plan and then update your progress daily. At the end of the week, you then evaluate your progress, and that’s it!
Designed by Stanford, the same institution who brought us the Chronic Disease Self-Management Program, My Action Planner will help you manage your health and help you make the changes you want to in order to live a happier, healthier life! Visit the My Action Planner website to learn more or to view a tutorial for your device.
In case you want to develop an action plan on your own, make sure it includes:
- What you are going to do
- How much you are going to do it
- When you are going to do it
- How many days a week you are going to do it
For example: This week I will walk (what) around the block (how much) before lunch (when) three times (how many).
A good action plan should also include how confident you are in what you are doing. Rank how confident you are on a scale from 0-10 (0 = not at all confident; 10 = totally confident)