Preparing a plan, in whatever format you choose, involves working through a series of steps to help sort out what you think.  The next step is to work out how to achieve the goals you have set. 

People generally find it helpful to record their planning so that they can share it with others and look back at what they have planned - sometimes to celebrate what has been achieved. 

There are many different ways to record your planning.  Many organisations prefer to use a particular planning tool or template.  None of these are 'magic bullets'.  Any planning tool or template will include questions or guidelines to prompt your thinking. 

The important thing is that  you are able to say and record what you want your life to look like in a way that makes sense to you and the people close to you.  This can be through speaking, writing, drawing or using a combination of styles.  

Click on these resources for suggestions and practical guides to help your planning. 

• Planning and Aspects of Life includes a planning template and suggested ways to use it
• From Dreams to Reality: ideas and strategies for planning is a resource directed to family members but contains some practical explanations and examples of what planning can look like in preparation for self-direction.  It includes an example of notes from a facilitated group planning session. 
• The article, Thinking about PATH, (Planning Alternative Futures with Hope) describes one family's experience of using the graphic planning process, PATH.
• The article, Being at the Centre of my Life describes how one young woman's life changed for the better once she started "thinking about what I need and want separately from the needs my disability creates and then breaking these into identifiable roles." 
• In pursuit of ordinariness describes one family's experience of "having a formal planning session (which) gave us space to 'land' the ideas and put some structure around our 'planning mindset. It took us through, step by step, how some of the thoughts we had always had might actually be put into action."

Read more about What goes in a plan?