In both professional and personal spheres, planning is a cornerstone of success. One of my informal mentors has a saying often attributed to Benjamin Franklin: “Failing to plan is planning to fail.”
At its core, planning provides direction, enabling us to set clear goals and identify the steps necessary to achieve them. It transforms abstract ambitions into tangible, actionable objectives, encouraging a sense of purpose and clarity.
Additionally, planning enhances adaptability and aids confidence.
2025 marks the start of a new three-year CPD cycle, and our article explores how to get ahead with planning and integrating learning into practice. Optometrists will be planning their own development, creating their own personal development plan in their MyCPD account. Andy Miller, Head of Post-Registration at the College, provides expert tips and encourages us when undertaking learning to reflect and ask why and how.
Like all good processes, this plan can be adjusted and updated along the way – a cycle of continuous improvement. As Kathryn Marshall MCOptom advises, we should be open to opportunity and change to our CPD during the cycle.
Optometry is a diverse profession, and optometrists have many opportunities and roles open to them once qualified. The sight test may be an essential skill for optometrists but it is not the limit professionally. Speaking with several experienced practitioners about how they widened their career horizons, our article explores a number of avenues to consider and how to access them to map out a career path. For newly qualified optometrists, the article endorses gaining experience in a variety of settings early on in your career and emphasises how knowledge and skills developed in one setting can help support your success in other settings.
Beyond contracted employment, voluntary work, conversations with experienced optometrists (and if you are an experienced optometrist I would highly recommend conversations with younger ones too) and consulting guidance on professional development are all steps toward career diversity.
Planning your own personal development, and ultimately your career, is vital, but when the time is right, so too is planning your retirement. For me personally, this has very much been part of my own personal development plan over the last few years – and an exciting and positive choice. Our article shares some of my own thoughts and reflections on retirement, along with those of colleagues who have reached similar stages in their careers, and what we might tell our younger selves!
Many of our allergy patients would benefit from forward planning to help prevent, or at least reduce, symptoms during their peak allergy months. In our article, Professor Stephen Till explains how allergy patterns have changed in the last 30 years, with a significant increase in tree pollen, so many more patients experience symptoms in early spring and would benefit from timely advice. A helpful read to refresh your knowledge of ocular allergens and explore relevant College resources, including a useful pollen calendar.
Planning for individual patients needs our attention too. Our article explores how optometry settings can provide the best level of service to those who are unable to communicate verbally.
So, whether in daily clinical practice or considering a longer career pathway, planning is not merely a tool – it is a vital strategy for achieving ongoing success and navigating an increasingly complex world for both ourselves and our patients.
Of course, not everything goes to plan – life is unpredictable, and flexibility will be required along the way.
