You will be able to break the plan into milestones you can tick off.
Open the plan you started in lesson 9.1, "Work back from where you want to be", and look at what you wrote for the first year. Next to each goal, write down what you would point to a year from now to show it was done. If you can't name anything, rewrite that goal. A plan only helps if you can tell whether you are on track, and tracking progress needs milestones. Intentions give you nothing to measure against.
Wei Ling wants to move into an analyst role. Her first draft of year-one goals read: "Get better at data. Grow my network. Move towards an analyst role." Each goal was true to what she wanted. But a year later she would have had no way to tell whether she had achieved any of them.
You could claim a goal like "get better at data" after watching one YouTube video, or deny it after finishing a whole course. Nothing in the wording says what counts as done.
A milestone is a specific, checkable event that shows you have made progress. To test one, ask whether someone else could look at the evidence and agree it happened. If the answer depends on how you feel that day, it is not a milestone. A milestone either happened or it didn't: the course is complete or it isn't, and you have the role or you don't. Milestones also motivate you more than vague goals do, because you know exactly what you are aiming at and when you have reached it.
To turn an intention into a milestone, ask "how would I know?" and write the answer as an event. "Get better at SQL" fails the test. Completing the SQL course and publishing a portfolio project using public data passes, since another person can check both. Other examples that pass are leading the dashboard rollout to the three depots, moving into a role with analyst in the title, and having informational conversations with five people in supply chain analytics.
When Wei Ling asked the question about "grow my network", her answer was to hold at least six informational conversations with people in supply chain analytics and keep in touch with each at least twice. She is working from the contact list she made in lesson 7.3, "Stay in touch without being a pest", and she can count both numbers as she goes.
Career progress comes from three sources, and a good plan has milestones for each of them.
Skill milestones show you have learned something: completing a course, earning a certification, building a project with a new tool. Experience milestones show you have done something in a real setting: leading a project, taking on a new responsibility at work, moving into a named role, presenting to senior people. Network milestones show you have built relationships: a number of informational conversations, a referral received, regular contact with a recruiter in your field, joining and attending a community or professional group.
Many people plan only skill milestones because courses are easy to sign up for and feel like progress. Employers hire on experience, and many opportunities arrive through people. A year spent only on courses can leave you better qualified and still no closer to the role.
Arjun is a school teacher moving into learning and development, and his year-one milestones cover all three kinds. His skill milestone is to complete the adult education course by September. His experience milestones are to design and run one workshop for adult learners outside school by November, and to have a learning and development role by the end of the year. His network milestone is to hold three informational conversations by June and keep in touch with each person.
Give each of your first three milestones a date. A milestone with no date is a wish with better grammar. Put the dates in your calendar and add a reminder a few weeks before each one. This step sounds simple, but it is one of the most effective parts of the plan. A milestone in your calendar comes up when you are deciding how to spend a Saturday. One kept in a document you rarely open is usually forgotten by March.
Start with three milestones spread across the year. Ten is too many. Three are enough to keep you moving and few enough to remember. When you reach one, add the next.
Pick one person who will ask about your plan and follow up on it. That could be a friend, a partner, a mentor, a former manager or someone from your informational conversations. Tell them your three milestones and the dates. They aren't there to judge your progress. When someone else knows about the plan, the commitment feels more real. A casual question over dinner, such as "How's the SQL course going?", gives you a gentle push in a month when you might be slipping.
Wei Ling told her cousin, who asks about her plan roughly once a month. Arjun told Priya, who had made the same move from teaching into learning and development and was glad to keep an eye on his progress.
Pick this person carefully. If someone is dismissive of your plans, or turns every update into advice you didn't ask for, choose someone else.
Checkable milestones, dates and one person who knows about them turn a plan from an idea into a set of commitments. In the activity you write three milestones for the coming year, each with a date and a way to check it was done.
Write three milestones for the next twelve months. Give each one a date and a way to check that it is done.
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