Creating Your Personal Growth Curriculum

It may be nerdy, but it sure can add greater meaning and purpose to your life! Here are 7 steps - plus a bunch of examples - to help you create your own personal growth curriculum.

Jul 22, 2025

Many readers I know set up and stick to a monthly or seasonal TBR (To Be Read) list. They select what books they’ll read, then they actually read those books.

I love this in theory, but as a massive mood reader, I can’t for the life of me stick to a TBR - with one exception:

When I set up a syllabus for myself, as part of a personal growth plan or professional development project.

Maybe it’s because I went to school for approximately 150 years (give or take :-)), and because I’d happily be a ‘professional student’ for life (anyone else?), but I love getting excited about a topic, geeking out over how much I can learn and share and coach on it, then setting up a plan for myself - complete with book lists, questions I want to answer, a timeline, and the like.

A full-fledged personal growth (or professional development) curriculum, if you will.

Now, if you’re already thinking, ‘This sounds way too nerdy for me,’ you are very likely in good company, but you might be surprised at how enjoyable designing your own curriculum can be! You can choose any area of fascination, give yourself the level of structure that feels right for you, and decide for yourself the ideal end result. No gradebooks or final papers or presentations required - unless you want them!

Intrigued? Here are seven points to help you prepare a personal growth curriculum for yourself:

1. Clarify your why + what.

If you’ve known me for five minutes, my recommendation to start with your purpose - or your why - will come as no surprise. In addition, I suggest clarifying what, specifically, you want to learn or gain from your experience as well, which will help guide not only your book choices but your reflection questions, note-taking, and the like.

In what area/topic do you want to learn, gain, explore, or advance your knowledge? Why does it feel important for you to do so?

Some examples here, to prompt your thoughts:

You’ve been promoted to a leadership role at work, and while you know a lot about your job/industry, you’re new to leadership itself. You want to kickstart your knowledge so you can begin the role strong, lead as effectively as possible, and enjoy the experience.
In four months, you’ll be traveling to a country you’ve never visited before and you want to experience it beyond the tourist highlights. In addition to your sightseeing plans, your curriculum might explore the food, architecture, history, museums, culture, nature, and more of the area.
You’ve heard about a topic in the news or from a friend or family member, and you want to educate yourself so you can form your own knowledgeable opinions, take meaningful action, and engage in positive and forward-moving discourse.
You’ve discovered a new hobby and have become obsessed. You want to ride this wave of excitement and also find out other aspects of the activity, learn more about its history and community, discover the origins or unique facts, and keep immersing yourself in the topic even during the times when you’re not engaged in the hobby itself.
You are about to embark on a new adventure for the first time - perhaps starting a garden or adopting a pet. You want to prepare as well as possible and learn whatever you can to make the experience enriching and fulfilling for all involved.
You’ve read a book, let’s say by Jane Austen, and now you want to know what her life was like, what society was like during the time she lived and wrote, what influenced her writing, how the film adaptations compare to the books, and so on. This might be in preparation to lead a book club discussion, to write a blog post, or just to satisfy your own interest and curiosity.

You might also have a very obvious or practical reason for your learning project; maybe you’re completing a self-directed paper for a course, speaking on a panel in a few months, or crafting an article to submit to your local business journal, for instance. This process can help in those cases, too.

For example, your why for writing the article might not be ‘because it’s due,’ but rather ‘to provide area leaders with practical steps to address XYZ issue.’ Your why for your course paper again goes beyond just a due date or wanting a good grade, but maybe ‘to study new angles of this topic that I can immediately apply to enhance my communication at work.’

Clarifying your own meaningful why, and specifying what you most want to gain from your experience, can guide the entire rest of your process.

2. Define your desired end result.

While learning simply for the sake of learning is one of life’s great delights (and I highly recommend!), if you’re wanting a more structured development plan in a particular area, defining your desired outcome in advance can help.

What will a successful outcome of your project look like for you? Possible signifiers might include:

You’ve answered your question. That might be your ‘what’ from step #1 above, or you may have focused in even further. ‘Kickstart my leadership knowledge’ from our earlier example might become ‘Identify at least 5 points/actions that speak to me personally as a leader, implement them, and have a plan to reassess their effectiveness,’ for instance.
You’ve written a paper on the topic. Just like when you were in school - only this time, you get to decide what’s included, length, subject headings, and all the details! (I sometimes use my study book for a similar purpose.)
You’ve earned an A. Again, with a self-created curriculum, you get to decide what constitutes an A. Maybe it’s reading a certain number of books, watching a particular set of interviews, and being able to state facts or information that you couldn’t prior to starting your personal growth curriculum.
You see growth in yourself. On a scale from 1 to 10, how knowledgeable, confident, or clear do you feel on the topic? What was that number when you started? While growth is sometimes objectively measurable, don’t discount other forms of growth, too.

3. Design your syllabus.

Create the list of books (and additional resources, if applicable) that you want to read. I typically start with a fairly hefty list of possibilities, then read a few pages of each or scan the tables of contents to see which ones will likely serve my purpose best, narrowing it down to a reasonable amount from there.

You can get ideas from a librarian or bookseller, an expert in the field, an academic syllabus, or even the references and citations in your favorite book on the topic. Online lists may help too, especially if you are familiar with the source. For example, I shared a list of ten of my favorite memoirs a while back, so if you’re exploring something in memoirs, that list might offer you fresh ideas.

Consider other learning routes too, such as a reputable online course, a few sessions with a coach or expert, interview recordings (or interviewing people yourself), articles, videos, events… the list goes on.

This Reading And Purpose article is available to the public, so feel free to share it with others!

4. Determine your timeline.

Many of our Reading And Purpose Nonfiction Book Club members mention how they love that the club provides a suggested time frame (a book per month, plus additional related titles if they want more), and they can use the meetings - or even just the knowledge of when the meetings are, if they are unable to attend - to offer a framework and additional accountability. They also receive a breakdown of weekly reading ‘assignments’ for each book, reflection/discussion questions, and more - all of which can streamline the experience and pace it out, making it structured yet flexible.

Similarly, now that you’ve determined your desired outcome, you can decide when your ‘semester’ will begin and end. If you’ve booked your departure date for your travel to a new country for November 1, you’ve pretty much got a built-in date and can set up your curriculum accordingly. The new leader wanting to start strong may decide to focus their learning project during the first six months of their role.

In my academic experience, a semester is often four months; a quarter, three months; a grade level, nine months or an academic year. You can pick one of those or go rogue - it’s your own project!

5. Craft your action plan.

This step could easily be its own article (let me know if you’d like to see that in the future), but a few components that can set you up for success and help you stay on track:

A project calendar breaking down your program into manageable pieces.
Due dates for when you’ll complete certain parts of your curriculum.
Milestones - and how you’ll celebrate them! These might be monthly, ‘midterm,’ per book/resource, or whatever suits your learning and motivation style.

You might set much of this up digitally for ease, but I’d also recommend something - even just a one-page overview with milestones and due dates - printed out on paper or on a white board. There’s something oddly satisfying about physically checking things off a list once in a while. Or, if you want to really delight your inner-second-grader, get a pack of gold foil stars to mark your progress!

6. Secure your accountability.

As students in school, we typically have accountability at the ready - teachers and classmates who help support us along the way. When we set out on our own learning and development projects, however, we need to intentionally seek out the accountability and additional support. This might include a coach (my Engage Your Purpose program would be an excellent option here), an accountability partner who is on a similar timeline and/or learning path, or a text buddy that you message once a week with progress updates.

Having a cheerleader - someone to remind you of your why, and of your awesomeness, if you start to falter - can also provide great benefit in an independent project like this.

7. Set up an inspiring learning environment.

I love the cottagecore aesthetic (or my own version of it, anyway) and have designed my home office accordingly. I call it my ‘cottage office,’ and in it you’ll find plants, scented candles, lamps, books, stationery, and the like, amidst my business and technology needs. It’s an absolute delight to be in there, and I definitely feel more inspired and productive there than in many other spaces.

Maybe you have a space already suited for your development project - a craft room, a cozy study, or a vintage writing desk near a picture window, for instance. If not, let finding or creating one become part of your project: Perhaps you select a different coffee shop to visit each week for your reading/study time, or designate a comfy chair in a quiet corner as your study area, or reserve a conference room at your local library periodically (which is where I am currently writing this very article, in fact!).

It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, but being intentional about your environment, rather than, say, haphazardly incorporating your project on the side during a night of TV watching, can add to your learning experience.

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There you have it - some helpful components to launch your own personal growth curriculum! Do you have a topic in mind? Are there other elements that would help with your development project? Feel free to share your ideas and any questions below!

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