Personal Development Ideas

Personal growth planning: Genuine Progress Indicator April 29, 2014

In our ongoing work on our personal growth and development programs we need to be mindful of the dangers of making strong progress in one area of our improvement program only to have our success in that segment of our plan have a negative effect on other components.

For example, if we are trying to achieve a goal of financial betterment, and as part of that we take on three extra part-time jobs for increased income, we could negatively affect another goal, such as spending more quality time with our family.

This goal versus costs dichotomy has become apparent to governmental financial and fiscal planners in their efforts to reconcile apparent growth in gross domestic product (GDP) figures with costs relating to other factors associated with increased GDP.

To figure out impacts, economists devised the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI).

An example would be comparing real economic growth in manufacturing in a country versus the associated environmental and energy-production and/or transportation infrastructure costs.
Positives in one area have to be calibrated in relation to the negatives in another associated area, in order to get a true picture of genuine progress.

Similarly in our self-improvement efforts, we need  have our own personalized version of a genuine progress indicator.

We can do this by making sure we are aware of the impacts of achieving success in one area compared with possible losses in another.

An example could be: augmenting our personal  educational goal to acquire new skills by taking and paying for numerous seminars and courses, and comparing the costs of this with the negative financial effects produced in another area of our program, such as building up our savings in order to have a financial safety valve for emergencies.

As with most aspects of developing an effective personal growth program, this dichotomy requires using moderation in achieving any particular goal component within our overall personal growth efforts.