LifeHack

Success Mindset

How to create your road map to success (a step-by-step guide).

' src=

Everyone has their own definition of what success means to them. Well, at least we all should by the very fact that no two individuals are created 100% alike.

Our road map to success should be different to the person standing next to us. But we can get caught in the dangerous trap that someone else’s ideas of success should also be ours. Be careful.

Regardless of whether or not we’re talking about your working career, business or personal life, it is truly hard to resist the contagious excitement surrounding those fantastic dreams and goals you allow yourself to explore.

The ‘come-down’ after attending a euphoric state-inducing personal development seminar can often result in you feeling the slump of post-seminar blues. Worse still, your everyday circumstances don’t accommodate the changes you swore to make that weekend. Nothing changes.

Get ready to kiss goodbye the post-seminar blues and skip to each destination on your roadmap to your successes. By repeating over and over these simple steps, the quality of your life will improve.

You will want to use these steps as standard strategies to carry you toward further success in whatever shape or form you choose.

1. Define What Success Means to You

Is it just having enough money or more money than you might ever need that allows you to feel and judge yourself a success? Is it about having a beautiful house worth more than $2,000,000 on the upper east side of Manhattan?

Is it about having a loving partner who supports you in your endeavors? Do you equally support each other?

Is it through the tertiary education roadmap that you only feel valid you can make a meaningful and successful contribution to help the world economy turn? Is that your definition of success or is it someone else’s? Maybe your mom’s or your dad’s?

When her daughter Christina found her on the floor of her office, in a pool of blood having hit her head and breaking her cheekbone as she fell, CEO of Thrive Global and celebrated author of Thrive , Ariana Huffington had a wake-up call in more ways than one. [1]

The exhaustion and overwhelming stress which had led to her fainting drove Huffington to radically introduce new work ethics, values and rules at the editorial.

Ten years on from her accident, Huffington still leads the conversational charge amongst global leaders to change the badge of honor that successful people need to work 24/7, and give everything of themselves and more, even it means compromising their health.

As opposed to letting power and money be the two measurements of success, she explains wisdom, well-being, wonder and giving will give you greater success by nurturing your psychological well-being.

We can’t argue with Huffington that without that, we are proverbially dead in the water.

Warren Buffet stated the way he defines success nowadays has nothing to do with money:

“I measure success by how many people love me”.

You can’t but fall in love with the wisdom and nobility these words seem to reflect, but keeping it as your only definition of success is probably dangerous. Lacking today’s wisdom at 20 years of age, would Buffet have had the same definition of success?

Think about where you are on your journey. You are likely to have different goals and different measures of success as you navigate your roadmap. Huffington and Buffet explain non-tangible ideas of success are crucial for our overall success.

Let’s also not forget though that through tenacity, persistence and many other success habits, these business leaders also rate extremely high on the power and money metrics. However, that’s not all there is to it.

If you are not sure how you would answer if someone asked you what your definition of success is, here are some clues to get you thinking and feeling.

As your head hits the pillow and before you close your eyes, what’s most important is that you can internalize that you have chosen your definition of success and you can full responsibility and accountability for deciding upon it.

2. Review Your Progress and Satisfaction in Life

Review the main areas of your life. Not just those where you feel you need to make changes. Review all of them:

  • Your career vocation or business life;
  • Your relationships – your intimate or life partner, family and friends;
  • Money health and financial management strategies;
  • Commitment to your faith or religion and spiritual personal development;
  • Your physical and mental health;

What leisure or recreational activities you pursue for fun to energize your spirit and enrich your soul.

Do you have ideas of what success looks like for you in each of these areas?

Neglecting to look at even one area is like trying to restore function to a beautifully crafted Swiss watch, whilst failing to attend to a rusty-looking cog in the tiny internal workings that needs attention. Turn one cog, the others all turn. Ignore a damaged one, the system malfunctions.

For each area, give yourself a rating out of ten – one signifies the least satisfaction and ten signifies the most – and ask yourself the following questions to help you start identifying what’s important to you:

  • How satisfied or content with this area of my life am I presently?
  • Where would I like to live this current level of contentment to?
  • What would that new level of satisfaction look like, feel like?
  • How important is this area compared with the other areas of my life?

Regardless of what areas you recognize need to be your core focus, consider making personal development and improvements to your physical and mental health, and well-being a constant feature of your action plan.

You will need to continually recognize obstacles you’ll face from your outside world, as well as those internal psychological battles that will arise from within.

Without your mental and physical health intact, it’s unlikely the rest of the ‘cogs’ are going to turn properly.

3. Get to Know Your Values and Priorities

Don’t make the mistake of thinking goal setting can be done in one sitting. You want to make sure the pursuits you put down on paper aren’t fly-by-night moments of excitement that ebb and flow with the rise and fall of tidal trends.

Become better at identifying your priorities by exploring how you feel about each of your life areas. Think about the ratings of satisfaction you might have denoted for each. And now write down what you want to be, do and have.

Put aside your initial literary ramblings and revisit them in a couple of weeks or one month. Without looking at your initial thoughts, do the process again and see what consistencies show up. What keeps coming up as feeling important? Around what ideas is there the same yearning or emotional pull?

If you’re unsure about what you feel you wish to head towards, be in allowance of this. Don’t be jumping to quickly fill the void. The desperation is likely to have you catching the tail of the last exciting concept in fear of missing out, or trying to fill the void of excitement you yearn for.

Increase your practice of pausing and asking yourself:

Why does this resonate with me? Could this be a distraction which complicates the route I have mapped out? Am I becoming that person who proverbially chases two rabbits and catches none?

In his book The Heart of Love , Dr. John Demartini explains how becoming strongly aware of your values and priorities helps you understand why you are and where you are in your life at any given moment.

If you don’t know what you feel you stand for, look at where you direct your time, energy and attention. Look at your behavior and work backward.

You might think making money and creating financial wealth is high on your radar. However, if you spend more than you earn and allocate money to depreciating objects as opposed to appreciating assets, your behavior is inconsistent with those typical of someone who is financially astute.

Look back to your areas of life and ask yourself if the goals you have set are in alignment with your values. Look at your daily behaviors and ask yourself if the way you operate satisfies steps which take you further toward those goals.

If not, all is not lost. You’ve simply got some harsh truths and reality checks to face before you can go any further on your roadmap to success.

4. Make Room Deliberately to Work with a Coach

You have to come to terms with the fact that you’re likely to be swimming against the tide.

Once you make clear unwavering decisions about what goals you’re aiming for, prepare to be un-liked, unpopular, criticized and potentially ostracized. There’s a high possibility you’ll lose the friendship and support of some however you will gain new friends and the support of others.

Regardless of what area/s of life your goals pertain to, make room to work with a coach . Choose wisely who that person will be to encourage and walk beside you.

Whether it be a certified coach, a family friend/mentor or qualified therapist, find someone who knows how to work with the specific issues and challenges that lay ahead without any agenda other than your success.

Having that impartial guide can be an invaluable constant. This helps keeps you on the straight and narrow even if other areas of your life aren’t going swimmingly.

5. Get Highly Familiar with Your Habits and Behaviors

Despite the scientific evidence in support of it, we’re not recommending you need to start getting up at 5:00 am and exercising for an hour before you even think about starting your day.

You should start asking yourself these questions far more frequently:

  • How well do you know your habits and routine ways of operating?
  • Do you know what choices and patterned behaviors help or hinder you?

You know what you want to work on. Greater clarity on your values has enabled you to discern which priorities are high on your list and which ones are low. It’s now time to reinforce and reward the habits that carry you forward on your roadmap to success, and adjust those habits which delay or divert you staying on course.

Remember though that part of the joy of the human experience is to be fallible, so don’t suddenly shelve all those character-building ‘vices’. Your flaws are a necessary part of your unique success jigsaw puzzle; they are the inspiring reasons you’re going on this journey in the first place.

Demartini and New York Times journalist and author Charles Duhigg both explain in their books how recognizing your unhelpful behavioral patterns needs to take place first. You identify the emotional and psychological rewards which rule over whether you sustain, break or make a habit.

When you know the rewards that light you up like a Christmas tree, you link them to new or modified habits that support values you want to make a higher priority.

Say you love eating out. You love artisan cuisine and get giddy at watching the episode of Heston Blumenthal create chocolate water in his food chemistry laboratory. As much as you say you want to increase your investment in appreciating assets, your spending habits speak otherwise.

So, you might start looking for discount opportunities on your higher-end dining. The dishes may not rival Heston’s masterpieces, but your taste buds still enjoy a culinary roller coaster AND you also now to get feel-good allocating the discounted amount to a saving’s program.

Your tummy is singing as is your bank account. The whole experience goes well beyond short-term gratification and satisfies several values and goals.

Tweaking habits and forming new ones isn’t hard; it’s just a matter of finding a happy marriage. Take time to find it. There will always be ways.

6. Celebrate the Wins and Monitor Your Progress Along the Way

You must become good at deliberately rewarding yourself when you make changes that take you further along your roadmap to success.

Professor of cognitive neuroscience Dr. Tali Sharot explains how the brain responds and adapts far better to rewards than punishment when it comes to learning behavior and creating new habits. [2]

When we apply punishment, we reinforce the traumatic memory as being more important than the actual lesson we might have been meant to learn in the first place.

When we gamify rewards on our success journey, we inject fun and humor. We also reduce the stress that often comes with learning new things, habits and adjusting to new ways of being, doing and having.

Final Thoughts

If you hit a progress plateau at any point, you might need to allow yourself to plateau and switch your attention to another priority.

The switch may allow you to think more freely and clearly about how to move past your roadblock. Or it might simply be a good time to stop and smell the roses.

Your muscles grow stronger in their resting phase after a workout. Animals hunt profusely to build up their energy stores before going into hibernation.

Remember that continually forging ahead is not a natural rhythm. Repeat the cycle of rest, recovery and rallying forward then…start again.

More About Success

  • 20 Definitions Of Success You Should Never Ignore
  • 16 Productivity Secrets of Highly Successful People Revealed
  • 15 Inspiring Ideas to Boost Your Motivation for Success
  • 10 Personal Development Goals for Success and Happiness

Featured photo credit: Tabea Damm via unsplash.com

[1]^HuffPost:
[2]^Tali Sharot TEDxCambridge: 

how to use a planner

How to Use a Planner Effectively

how to be a better planner

How to Be a Better Planner: Avoid the Planning Fallacy

delegation tools

5 Best Apps to Help You Delegate Tasks Easily

delegating leadership style

Delegating Leadership Style: What Is It & When To Use It?

hesitate to delegate

The Fear of Delegating Work To Others

importance of delegation in leadership

Why Is Delegation Important in Leadership?

best tools for prioritizing tasks

7 Best Tools for Prioritizing Work

how to deal with competing priorities

How to Deal with Competing Priorities Effectively

rice prioritization model

What Is the RICE Prioritization Model And How Does It Work?

exercises to improve focus

4 Exercises to Improve Your Focus

chronic procrastination

What Is Chronic Procrastination and How To Deal with It

procrastination adhd

How to Snap Out of Procrastination With ADHD

depression procrastination

Are Depression And Procrastination Connected?

procrastination and laziness

Procrastination And Laziness: Their Differences & Connections

bedtime procrastination

Bedtime Procrastination: Why You Do It And How To Break It

best books on procrastination

15 Books on Procrastination To Help You Start Taking Action

productive procrastination

Productive Procrastination: Is It Good or Bad?

how does procrastination affect productivity

The Impact of Procrastination on Productivity

anxiety and procrastination

How to Cope With Anxiety-Induced Procrastination

How to Break the Perfectionism-Procrastination Loop

How to Break the Perfectionism-Procrastination Loop

work life balance books

15 Work-Life Balance Books to Help You Take Control of Life

Work Life Balance for Women

Work Life Balance for Women: What It Means & How to Find It

career mindset

6 Essential Mindsets For Continuous Career Growth

career move

How to Discover Your Next Career Move Amid the Great Resignation

lee-cockerell

The Key to Creating a Vibrant (And Magical Life) by Lee Cockerell

how to disconnect from work

9 Tips on How To Disconnect From Work And Stay Present

work life integration VS balance

Work-Life Integration vs Work-Life Balance: Is One Better Than the Other?

self-advocacy in the workplace

How To Practice Self-Advocacy in the Workplace (Go-to Guide)

roadmap to success essay

How to Boost Your Focus And Attention Span

roadmap to success essay

What Are Distractions in a Nutshell?

roadmap to success essay

What Is Procrastination And How To End It

roadmap to success essay

Prioritization — Using Your Time & Energy Effectively

roadmap to success essay

Delegation — Leveraging Your Time & Resources

roadmap to success essay

Your Guide to Effective Planning & Scheduling

roadmap to success essay

The Ultimate Guide to Achieving Goals

roadmap to success essay

How to Find Lasting Motivation

roadmap to success essay

Complete Guide to Getting Back Your Energy

roadmap to success essay

How to Have a Good Life Balance

Explore the time flow system.

roadmap to success essay

About the Time Flow System

roadmap to success essay

Key Philosophy I: Fluid Progress, Like Water

roadmap to success essay

Key Philosophy II: Pragmatic Priorities

roadmap to success essay

Key Philosophy III: Sustainable Momentum

roadmap to success essay

Key Philosophy IV: Three Goal Focus

roadmap to success essay

How the Time Flow System Works

roadmap to success essay

45,000+ students realised their study abroad dream with us. Take the first step today

Meet top uk universities from the comfort of your home, here’s your new year gift, one app for all your, study abroad needs, start your journey, track your progress, grow with the community and so much more.

roadmap to success essay

Verification Code

An OTP has been sent to your registered mobile no. Please verify

roadmap to success essay

Thanks for your comment !

Our team will review it before it's shown to our readers.

Leverage Edu

  • School Education /

✍️Essay on Success in 100,150 and 200 Words: The Power of Positive Mindset

' src=

  • Updated on  
  • Oct 26, 2023

Essay on Success

The concept of success is very simple; if you invest your time wisely and work hard, you will achieve success in no time. But success is not as simple as it sounds; what might sound like success to one might not be the same for another person. It embodies the realization of one’s goals, aspirations, and desires, often accompanied by a sense of accomplishment and fulfilment.

roadmap to success essay

Success is manifested in different aspects, such as career achievements, personal growth, or even the pursuit of happiness. It is a journey filled with determination, perseverance, and often a willingness to learn from both triumphs and setbacks. Ultimately, success is a subjective pursuit that reflects the unique path and definition of achievement for each person.

Table of Contents

  • 1 What Makes a Person Successful?
  • 2 Essay on Success in 100 Words
  • 3 Essay on Success in 150 Words
  • 4 Essay on Success in 200 Words

What Makes a Person Successful?

Being successful is very subjective and can vary from person to person. Therefore, here are some common factors which contribute to the success of a person.

  • Hard Work and Persistence: Success requires effort and dedication and one has the ability to face challenges.
  • Setting Clear Goals: It is very important for one to have specific and attainable goals which will provide direction and motivation. 
  • Networking: The person should have the capability to build relations and at the same time be open to opportunities which strike. 
  • Time Management: Managing time effectively and priorities is essential for productivity and progress. 
  • Self-Discipline: One should be very focused and maintain self-control which will help them achieve long-term goals. 
  • Management of Finances: Having a basic understanding of finances and managing them wisely is also very important for attaining financial success. 

Also Read: Essay on Water Conservation

Essay on Success in 100 Words

Success is the culmination of dedication, hard work, and determination. It is not merely the achievement of material wealth, but the fulfilment of one’s goals and aspirations. Success varies from person to person; for some, it’s a thriving career, while for others, it could be having a harmonious family life. 

To attain success, individuals must set clear objectives, persevere through challenges, and learn from failures. Success often involves learning, adapting, and embracing change. It’s the result of resilience and the willingness to keep pushing forward. Ultimately, success is a personal journey, and its definition is unique to each individual.

Essay on Success in 150 Words

Everybody wants to be successful in life, but are they willing to put in all their efforts? Success is not solely measured by wealth or fame but by achieving one’s goals and finding fulfilment. True success is often the result of determination, hard work, and resilience. Setting clear, achievable objectives and being persistent through challenges are crucial components.

Education is a common path to success, providing knowledge and skills that open doors to opportunities. Embracing failure as a stepping stone, learning from mistakes, and adapting to change are essential to achieving success. However, it’s important to recognize that success is subjective and can encompass a broader spectrum of achievements beyond material possessions.

Personal growth, happiness, and a sense of purpose are all part of success. Balancing personal and professional life is key to sustaining it. Ultimately, success is a journey, not a destination, and it’s about realizing your full potential and making a meaningful contribution to the world.

Also Read: Essay on Nature: In 100 Words, 200 Words, 300 Words

Essay on Success in 200 Words

Success is a multifaceted concept, often defined by achieving one’s goals and aspirations. It is a subjective and deeply personal notion, as what constitutes success varies from person to person. However, a common thread in success is the continuous pursuit of one’s ambitions, combined with determination and hard work.

Success is not solely measured by material wealth, but rather by the fulfilment and satisfaction that comes from reaching one’s objectives. It is the result of setting clear goals, developing a plan, and facing all the challenges. The road to success is rarely smooth; it is often marked by setbacks and failures. These obstacles are crucial for personal growth, teaching valuable lessons that contribute to success in the long run.

Moreover, success is not an endpoint; it is a continuous journey. It requires adaptability and the willingness to learn and evolve. Success can be found in various aspects of life, from career achievements to personal relationships and self-fulfilment. It is the balance and harmony between these different facets that lead to a truly successful and meaningful life.

In conclusion, success is a complex and individualized concept, rooted in determination, hard work, resilience, and personal growth. It is not defined solely by external markers but by the fulfilment and happiness, one derives from their accomplishments and the journey to achieve them.

Related Articles

Writing an essay on success requires you to describe this multifaceted concept. Success is achieved when one’s goal and objective is attained. Those who are successful, have fulfilled their highest ambitions in life and work, or are actively striving towards doing so. 

Happiness does not follow success. Contrary to popular belief, living a life that makes you happy can help you achieve your goals and be content. 

You gain from success because it gives you the things you want or need. Setting and achieving attainable goals results in a feeling of well-being. 

For more information on such interesting topics, visit our essay-writing page and follow Leverage Edu ! 

' src=

Malvika Chawla

Malvika is a content writer cum news freak who comes with a strong background in Journalism and has worked with renowned news websites such as News 9 and The Financial Express to name a few. When not writing, she can be found bringing life to the canvasses by painting on them.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Contact no. *

roadmap to success essay

Connect With Us

45,000+ students realised their study abroad dream with us. take the first step today..

roadmap to success essay

Resend OTP in

roadmap to success essay

Need help with?

Study abroad.

UK, Canada, US & More

IELTS, GRE, GMAT & More

Scholarship, Loans & Forex

Country Preference

New Zealand

Which English test are you planning to take?

Which academic test are you planning to take.

Not Sure yet

When are you planning to take the exam?

Already booked my exam slot

Within 2 Months

Want to learn about the test

Which Degree do you wish to pursue?

When do you want to start studying abroad.

January 2024

September 2024

What is your budget to study abroad?

roadmap to success essay

How would you describe this article ?

Please rate this article

We would like to hear more.

Have something on your mind?

roadmap to success essay

Make your study abroad dream a reality in January 2022 with

roadmap to success essay

India's Biggest Virtual University Fair

roadmap to success essay

Essex Direct Admission Day

Why attend .

roadmap to success essay

Don't Miss Out

Logo

Essay on How to Achieve Success in Life

Students are often asked to write an essay on How to Achieve Success in Life in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on How to Achieve Success in Life

Understanding success.

Success means different things to different people. For some, it could mean earning a lot of money, while for others, it could mean achieving happiness or personal goals.

Setting Goals

To achieve success, you must first define what it means to you. Set clear, achievable goals that align with your definition of success.

Hard Work and Persistence

Success requires hard work and persistence. No matter how many times you fail, don’t give up. Learn from your mistakes and keep trying.

Continuous Learning

Never stop learning. Knowledge is power and it can open many doors to success. Always be curious and seek to learn more.

Healthy Lifestyle

Positive attitude.

Maintain a positive attitude. It helps you stay motivated and overcome challenges. Remember, success is a journey, not a destination.

250 Words Essay on How to Achieve Success in Life

Defining success.

Success is a subjective concept, varying from person to person. For some, it may be wealth or fame, while for others, it may be personal satisfaction or making a difference in the world. Therefore, the first step towards achieving success is defining what it means to you.

After defining success, set clear, specific, and measurable goals. These goals should be achievable, yet challenging enough to push you out of your comfort zone. They act as stepping stones towards your ultimate vision of success.

Embracing Learning

Success is not achieved overnight. It requires constant learning and growth. Embrace every opportunity to learn, be it from books, people, or experiences. Remember, every failure is a lesson that brings you one step closer to success.

Perseverance and Determination

The path to success is fraught with obstacles. Perseverance and determination are key traits needed to overcome these challenges. It is not about how many times you fall, but how many times you get up and continue to strive.

Work-Life Balance

In conclusion, success is a journey, not a destination. It is achieved through a combination of defining what success means to you, setting goals, continuous learning, perseverance, and maintaining a healthy work-life balance. It is a personal and unique journey, where the true measure of success lies in the fulfillment and satisfaction derived from the journey itself.

500 Words Essay on How to Achieve Success in Life

Introduction.

Success is a multifaceted concept that is often uniquely defined by each individual. However, universally, it is often associated with the achievement of personal goals. The path to success is not linear, and it requires a blend of several factors including hard work, resilience, and a positive mindset. This essay aims to provide a roadmap on how to achieve success in life.

Setting Clear Goals

Embrace continuous learning.

In the journey to success, one must embrace continuous learning. In an ever-evolving world, new knowledge and skills are constantly required. This could be achieved through formal education, self-teaching, or experiential learning. By adopting a growth mindset, one becomes open to new ideas and perspectives, enhancing their adaptability in various life situations.

Hard Work and Perseverance

Hard work and perseverance are the bedrock of success. Success rarely comes easy; it requires effort, dedication, and an unwavering commitment to achieving set goals. Perseverance entails staying the course even in the face of obstacles and setbacks. It involves having the resilience to bounce back from failure and continue pursuing your goals.

Effective Time Management

Building healthy relationships.

Success is not achieved in isolation. Building healthy relationships with others—be it personal or professional—can greatly enhance one’s journey to success. These relationships provide support, mentorship, and can open doors to opportunities that would otherwise remain closed.

Self-Care and Mental Health

Lastly, the importance of self-care and mental health in achieving success cannot be overstated. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle, which includes proper nutrition, regular exercise, and adequate sleep, is essential for optimal functioning. Additionally, taking care of one’s mental health, through stress management and seeking help when needed, is crucial in maintaining the motivation and focus needed to achieve success.

In conclusion, achieving success in life is a journey that requires setting clear goals, continuous learning, hard work, perseverance, effective time management, building healthy relationships, and taking care of one’s physical and mental health. Each of these elements contributes to creating a holistic approach to success, enabling one to navigate the complexities of life and achieve their desired goals.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

roadmap to success essay

  • +44 (0) 207 391 9032

Recent Posts

How to properly write an essay outline using chatgpt.

  • Why Presentation Skills Are Important for Students
  • Tips on How to Make an Essay Longer
  • How to Structure Your Dissertation in 2024
  • How to Write a Research Paper Like a Pro
  • Academic Integrity vs. Academic Dishonesty: Understanding the Key Differences
  • How to Use AI to Enhance Your Thesis
  • Guide to Structuring Your Narrative Essay for Success
  • How to Hook Your Readers with a Compelling Topic Sentence
  • Is a Thesis Writing Format Easy? A Comprehensive Guide to Thesis Writing
  • Academic News
  • Custom Essays
  • Dissertation Writing
  • Essay Marking
  • Essay Writing
  • Essay Writing Companies
  • Model Essays
  • Model Exam Answers
  • Oxbridge Essays Updates
  • PhD Writing
  • Significant Academics
  • Student News
  • Study Skills
  • University Applications
  • University Essays
  • University Life
  • Writing Tips

roadmap to success essay

How to plan a winning essay

(Last updated: 7 May 2021)

Since 2006, Oxbridge Essays has been the UK’s leading paid essay-writing and dissertation service

We have helped 10,000s of undergraduate, Masters and PhD students to maximise their grades in essays, dissertations, model-exam answers, applications and other materials. If you would like a free chat about your project with one of our UK staff, then please just reach out on one of the methods below.

However you look at it, getting started on an essay can be a challenge. There are likely to be a whole bunch of ideas swirling around in your head. Knowing how to assemble these into some sort of sense, then write them down in the form of a good academic essay, doesn’t always come easy!

One way to make essay writing much easier is by planning ahead. Planning is crucial in order for success: failing to plan is planning to fail! Do not leave your work until the last minute, instead, use this post as an essay planning guide that can lead you on the path to success.

There are two stages to essay planning. First, you need to map out what your essay will include. By outlining the contents of your essay before you write it, you’ll ensure you don’t miss any crucial detail, and that you give fair weight to each of the points of your argument.

After mapping out your essay, you can then make a schedule for yourself, deciding when you will work on each section to ensure you get in done in good time. Breaking your work down into manageable chunks like this will mean you can make a little bit of progress each day, instead of cramming at the last minute.

So, if you’re here because you’re thinking, “how do I plan an essay?” or, “what does an essay plan look like?” – you’re in the right place! We’ll answer these exact questions for you in this article.

Essay planning step 1: Creating a structure

It may be very tempting to just sit down and write, especially if you are on a tight deadline to finish an essay . But it’s crucial that before writing, you create – as a bear minimum! – a structure that details what your essay will cover.

Hopefully, you already have an idea or argument that you might like to pursue. Next, you need to decide how many body paragraphs you need to make that argument (and to meet the word limit criteria).

When planning your essay’s structure, you want to make sure that every paragraph has a focus (we call this the topic sentence). A paragraph is usually somewhere between 6-10 sentences in length, meaning that it is likely to be around 200-250 words (or at least this is a good place to start).

So how do you decide how many body paragraphs your essay will contain? Your first step is to divide up your paper. Let’s say you have to write 1500 words. You would have 150 words for your introduction and 150 words for your conclusion. This leaves you with 1200 words, which would mean you would need between 5-6 body paragraphs in the middle.

Your next job is to come up with 5-6 ideas, one for each paragraph (we explain this in more detail in the next part of this post).

"Writing 6 paragraphs of 200 words seems far more achievable than a solid block of 1500 words – and you can have a mini celebration after you finish each one."

Not only does segmenting the essay like this help you achieve your word count – it also makes it much easier to handle. The thought of writing 1500 words might seem a bit daunting at first. But, break it down into sections, and suddenly you only have to write 200-250 words for each. That seems much less intimidating! As you move from section to section, you will quickly see your essay start to emerge.

Essay planning step 2: Brainstorming or freewriting

Once you know how many ideas you need, the next step is writing down what you know (and what you still have to find out).

There are many ways that this can be achieved. You can either create a mind map, or just write out all your ideas on a piece of paper. As you do this, also keep in mind any questions you have, and the things you need to look up.

If you cannot come up with 5-6 ideas, start reviewing your lecture notes, lecture slides, and do some reading to see if you can identify the main ideas. At this point, your paper might look really messy (and that is OK!). This messiness will help you as you begin to construct your outline.

roadmap to success essay

Essay planning step 3: Constructing a detailed outline

Once you have done your brainstorming, it is time to take the messiness and put it into a neater format. While you might have done the brainstorm on a piece of scrap paper, you should start to write your outline on the computer, because what starts as an outline will gradually evolve into your actual essay.

"With every change you make, just make sure that you are keeping the question prompt in mind. If you write an excellent essay, but it has nothing to do with the assigned topic provided by the instructor, you are unlikely to do well."

The outline is a living document, which means that as you start to work on it, you may need to make changes (and that is OK!). With every change you make, just make sure that you are keeping the question prompt in mind. If you write an excellent essay, but it has nothing to do with the assigned topic provided by the instructor, you are unlikely to do well.

Here’s how we suggest you write the detailed outline for your essay:

1. Write your introduction (or thesis statement)

When you begin to think about your essay, you are probably going to need some type of overarching argument or position. This is commonly known as a thesis statement. While you do not have to have an exact thesis in your essay plan, having an idea about where you want to start is always useful.

A good thesis statement contains an argument or position and is followed by a strategy (like a road map) that explains how this will be achieved. Remember, even though it is called a thesis statement, it might be more than one sentence (and can be 2 or 3).

2. Write topic sentences for every paragraph

Every paragraph that you write has to relate to your thesis statement (and your thesis statement is answering the question provided by the instructor). A topic sentence is the first sentence in your body paragraph. It provides an overview of what is going to happen in the paragraph. You might want to think of your topic sentence as a mini-thesis, presenting the argument for one particular paragraph.

3. Include evidence

Once you have established a clear topic sentence, you have to figure out what evidence you are going to provide in the middle of each paragraph to make sure that you are getting your point across clearly. This is where you might start to use your readings (your textbook, library resources, and Google) to help you figure out what to include. At the outlining stage, you might just want to list the possible sources that you are going to use, or you can write a few notes about what each paragraph might contain.

4. Conclusion

At this stage, you don’t have to plan what the conclusion will say or include, since you haven’t yet written your essay and come to your concluding argument. But just make a note that this section will present your key takeaway for the reader and highlight how you have answered the essay question.

roadmap to success essay

An essay plan example

An essay plan is usually linear. Let’s look at the example below to see how an essay plan might come together. In this case, we are writing a 1500-word essay, and we are attempting to answer the question: What role can citizen diplomacy play in mitigating difficult interstate relations?

Introduction (150 words) Thesis statement This essay argues that while citizen diplomacy through dialogue should be pursued, the Peace Research Institute in the Middle East (PRIME) has faced numerous challenges that have limited its overall impact in mitigating difficult interstate relations.

Section 1: Theory (400) Body paragraph 1 While many steps have been taken by governments to resolve the Israeli – Palestinian conflict, there has been a lack of sustainability between these two countries over time.

Body paragraph 2 While the Israel – Palestine conflict has extended for decades, the role that citizen diplomacy can play in large scale negotiations is minimal (Kaye, 2001).

Section 2: Example and Application (800) Body paragraph 3 The Peace Research Institute in the Middle East (PRIME) is a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that was created in Frankfurt in 1998 by Palestinian and Israeli academics seeking to build peace through joint research projects and outreach initiatives (Yaniv, 2013). Body paragraph 4 Because the academics in PRIME are focused on strengthening the civil societies in both Israel and Palestine, they have published extensive literature since inception. Body paragraph 5 When applying concepts of citizen diplomacy to PRIME, it is important to assess the impact of the intervention being employed. Body paragraph 6 The creation of the Shared History Project was completed and introduced in schools in the early 2000s.

Conclusion (150 words) Present my key takeaway message for the reader and highlight how I have answered the instructor’s question.

Sources I might use Course reading: Kaye, D.D., 2001. Track two diplomacy and regional security in the Middle East. International Negotiation, 6(1), pp.49-77. Additional reading: Yaniv, L., 2013. People-to-People Peace Making: The Role of Citizen Diplomacy in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. CPD Best Student Paper Prize in Public Diplomacy, University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy. NB: a 1500-word research essay might have between 6-12 total sources in the reference list when it is completed.

roadmap to success essay

Final thoughts

Once you have written an essay plan, you can begin to actually write out each of your body paragraphs into the corresponding sections. As you write, it might be simplest to start with the paragraphs that you think are going to be the easiest and move to the more difficult ones later.

Leave the introduction and the conclusion until the very end. By leaving these parts until last, you can make sure that the thesis that you wrote for your essay plan is still applicable for your essay. You can also make sure that your introduction and conclusion are providing the same messaging creating coherency and flow throughout.

Remember, there are lots of people who are willing to help you with your essay, so take advantage of the help of your university writing center or the academics at Oxbridge Essays. While writing an essay can be a challenging task, creating an essay plan is certainly one way to make the process easier!

roadmap to success essay

Essay exams: how to answer ‘To what extent…’

roadmap to success essay

How to write a master’s essay

roadmap to success essay

Writing Services

  • Essay Plans
  • Critical Reviews
  • Literature Reviews
  • Presentations
  • Dissertation Title Creation
  • Dissertation Proposals
  • Dissertation Chapters
  • PhD Proposals
  • Journal Publication
  • CV Writing Service
  • Business Proofreading Services

Editing Services

  • Proofreading Service
  • Editing Service
  • Academic Editing Service

Additional Services

  • Marking Services
  • Consultation Calls
  • Personal Statements
  • Tutoring Services

Our Company

  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Become a Writer

Terms & Policies

  • Fair Use Policy
  • Policy for Students in England
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
  • [email protected]
  • Contact Form

Payment Methods

Cryptocurrency payments.

roadmap to success essay

7 Steps – How To Create A Roadmap To Success

We all want to be successful. 

We all have a hope or vision for how we’d like our lives to turn out.

But of course, figuring out how to do it is quite another thing entirely.

This is where the concept of a roadmap to success becomes invaluable.

When you’re born into this life, you don’t come with an instruction manual for how to succeed.

From the beginning of our existence, we embark upon a grand adventure to find our own way. 

And sometimes this isn’t easy.

Creating your own roadmap to success makes all the difference in the world. 

When I started my journey, I had big plans for how I wanted my life to turn out.

But see, I didn’t just stagnate or drift around in circles. I started writing down my goals—and then I started working hard to achieve them.

Now, I’m happy to say that I’ve more than doubled the level of success I hoped for back when I was 20 years old. 

I’ve literally achieved twice as much as I wrote down on my goal-setting sheet back when I was young.

I’m very grateful and happy for this success. 

But looking back on my life, I can see how none of it came automatically. 

It’s plainly evident to me that the act of setting goals and writing those goals down was the true catalyst for all of my life’s success. 

And all of it comes back to this concept of creating a roadmap to success . 

So in this post, I’m going to teach you exactly how to do it—in 7 crucial steps.

What Is The Purpose Of The Roadmap To Success?

The purpose of creating a roadmap to success is to give you a series of steps that you can follow to help you increase your odds of creating the life you desire. 

Without a map, even the best ship will drift aimlessly at sea. 

Life is admittedly confusing. Sometimes, the straight path forward towards success isn’t abundantly clear. 

This is the purpose of a roadmap.

When you create a roadmap for your life, you literally craft a plan for success that you can follow on a daily basis.

Not only does it matter, but I believe it to be crucial.

How Do You Create A Roadmap For Success?

This is actually the tough part.

The answer to the question:

“How do you create a roadmap to success in your life?” 

…isn’t necessarily automatically abundantly clear. 

A lot has been written on this subject. 

Many philosophers, successful entrepreneurs, and historic figures have left behind wisdom to help later generations figure out how to do this. 

As it turns out, there’s a bit of an art to writing down your goals and pursuing them. 

And in this post, you’re going to learn the seven-step method that I’ve used to help create a legitimate roadmap to success in my own life that actually worked . 

And I 100% believe that it can work for you as well.

7 Steps For How To Create A Roadmap To Success

1. figure out what you want in life.

ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY quote

This is the first and most basic question to ask yourself:

  • What do you really want? 
  • What does success look like for you? 

A lot of people define success too loosely. 

They may say they’d like to:

  • Make more money
  • Get married
  • Own a house someday
  • Be financially self sufficient
  • Have more freedom in life

But these answers aren’t really specific enough to give you the kind of fuel you need to craft dynamic goals for yourself. 

I have one student who got super specific with his goals. 

He started by setting very specific income goals that he tracks on a month-by-month basis. 

He’s also been working on drafting the plans for the house he wants to build. 

See, he’s not even to the point where he could start building the house yet, but he’s already drafting the plans because he’s that sure that his goals will come to fruition. 

He also has a very specific plan for what he’d like his marriage and family to look like in the future. 

He knows, for example, that he wants to have family dinners around a large wooden table in the dining room, and that he wants to be able to sit with his wife and kids in front of his open living room fireplace and talk together, read stories together, etc. 

He has a very specific vision for how he wants his life to turn out.

This, to him, is what success looks like. 

And getting that specific with those goals helps him to craft incredibly detailed plans for how to accomplish them . 

The more specific you are with your goals, the more efficient your process of achieving them can be. 

So figure out what you really want in life. 

Don’t be afraid to dream big . 

Also Set Specific Deadlines

It’s also in your best interest to set specific deadlines for your goals as well. 

Of course, these deadlines need to be realistic. But they should also push you to take immediate action. 

For example, I have one student who’s given himself four years to reach the $100,000 income threshold. 

He has also crafted a four-year plan for getting his body into really awesome athletic condition. 

See, he understands that slow and steady wins the race. 

He also understands the need to set realistic goals with specific timeframes that help him to track his results, stay motivated, and adjust as needed.

2. Create A Written Vision For Your Life

abraham lincoln quote

Once again, this speaks to the specifics of what success looks like for you. 

But instead of just figuring it out, this is the step where you write it down . 

As you dream big and come up with a specific picture of how you’d like your life to be, start writing down a specific vision for what that life will look like . 

Write down:

  • How much money you want to be making. 
  • What kind of family you’d like to have. 
  • Your specific career goals. 
  • What you’d like your life to look like when you reach the age of retirement. 
  • What you’d like your physical health to look like. 

Whatever you want to achieve for yourself, it’s important that you create a specific, vivid vision of that future, and that you write it down. 

This is so fundamentally important.

Physically Writing Out Your Vision Is Important

Writing it down, in fact, may be the most important part of the entire process. 

Writing down the vision for your life requires you to take ideas out of your mind’s eye (the realm of hopes and dreams) and manifest them as a physical plan in the real world . 

This is the beginning of the process of turning your dreams into goals , and your goals into reality. 

You really can’t skip the step if you want to achieve success for yourself. 

It’s absolutely in your best interest to create a written vision for how you want your life to look.

3. Determine Your Life’s Purpose

Figuring out what you want is one part of the process. 

But figuring out why you want it is another crucial component.

For every individual thing you want to accomplish or achieve in your life, also answer the ‘why’ question. 

  • Why do you want it? 
  • Why do you want to achieve it? 
  • What about that thing or achievement is important to you? 

It’s in your best interest to define the ‘why’ along with the desire so that you can get really clear about your life’s purpose. 

This speaks to how you want to change the world and give back to your community. 

See, life isn’t all about possessions, money, and things. 

It’s also about making a difference, creating a better world, serving others, and leaving a lasting legacy of greatness. 

Every roadmap to success should include a purpose along with the vision. 

Even Arnold Schwarzenegger, who achieved incredible things over the course of his lifetime, said that his sixth rule of success was to “give something back.” 

This Is Also An Important Thing To Write Down 

Write down how your vision for your future will also make the world a better place, create happiness and opportunity for other people, and leave a lasting legacy of greatness when you’re gone.

I believe that this is so important.

4. Start Setting Goals To Help You Achieve Your Vision And Purpose

BRYANT MCGILL quote

Now it’s time to start creating the actual roadmap. 

You’ve identified the destination, and you’ve figured out why that destination matters to you . 

Now it’s time to start making a plan of action. 

What steps will you need to take to get from ‘point A’ to ‘point B?’

As you look ahead to your future, and you visualize what you want your life to look like, you’ll want to figure out a step-by-step plan for how to get from where you are now to where you want to be . 

This is goal setting.  

Personally, I believe in using SMART goals to help you achieve success.

SMART goals are basically goals that are:

  • M easurable
  • A chievable
  • T ime bound

To make it super simple, you can start setting SMART goals by answering the five ‘W’ questions when setting each specific goal, and then writing down the answers. These questions are:

  • What do you want to accomplish?
  • Why is this goal important to you?
  • Who will need to be involved to help you accomplish this goal?
  • Where will you need to be to accomplish this goal?
  • Which resources and/or challenges will you need to work with and overcome?

5. Write Down And Review Your Goals On A Daily Basis

HABEEB AKANDE quote

Creating a plan in life is a great first step in building a roadmap to success. 

However, once again, it’s vitally important to write down your goals . 

As I said in the previous point, I recommend writing SMART goals for every item on your vision list.

For everything you want to achieve, create a written set of goals that’ll help you to work toward your plans for the future. 

This helps you to structure your days and utilize your resources in the manner that will be most likely to lead you to success. 

However, it’s also important to continue to revisit and review these goals on a day-to-day basis. 

Personally, I believe that reviewing your goals first thing in the morning, every single morning, is a vital component to success. 

This doesn’t have to be complicated, and it doesn’t have to take very long. 

Just get out your goal-setting notebook or journal, open it up, and read your goals every single morning. 

Then, write out your daily to-do list, making sure to include plenty of activities that will help you to make progress toward the things you want to achieve. 

Goals are generally best accomplished when broken down into short, medium, and long-term goals. 

You set shorter-term daily goals to help you reach your medium-term goals.

Then, medium-term goals, when added together, add up to the fulfillment of long-term goals over time.

This is how you actually flesh out and complete your roadmap to success. 

It isn’t, however, the final step in the process.

6. Stay Consistent, And Don’t Give Up

Dale Carnegie quote

Writing down your goals to make a plan for success gives you a massive advantage. 

This will set you up for a far greater chance of success. 

According to one study , people were significantly more likely to succeed in their goals if they wrote them down . 

However, writing down goals is still only half of the process. 

The other half involves actually doing the work to create results. 

This is why it’s so important to stay consistent with your goals, and not to give up. 

Goals should become a daily habit that you honor on a daily basis. 

Stay consistent with it. 

If you mess up and fail to follow through on your goals for a day, make sure that you refocus yourself and return to them the next day. 

If you slack off on your goals for a whole week, or even two weeks, make sure that you refocus yourself and get back on track. 

There’s No Such Thing As Perfection 

We’re all going to make mistakes along the way. 

We’re all going to get sidetracked to some degree as we’re working toward our vision for the future. 

However, the truth is simple. 

The more consistent you stay with pursuing your goals, and the more energy you put towards the things you care about, the more likely you’ll be to experience actual, real long-term success for yourself. 

It’s also important to understand that you’ll probably get discouraged along the way. 

That’s okay. 

Sometimes, you may need to give yourself a little break and rest. 

But if your goals really matter to you, then it’s crucial not to give up on them. 

Even if the going gets tough and your confidence begins to waver, remember that the only real way to fail is to give up .

If you keep making forward progress, you’re bound to keep moving forward. 

That’s as simple as it gets.

7. Review, Revise, Adapt, Pivot

Chinese Proverb

As you pursue your long-term goals, you may come to realize that your plans will change slightly.

For example, one of my students started out with the plan to create a specific type of online business for himself. 

However, a full year into the process, he decided that he wanted to shift his business idea very slightly to cover a different niche.

See, shifting your focus to hone in even closer on the things you care about isn’t a bad thing. 

Sometimes you need to pivot in order to stay true to the vision of your future that you want for yourself, and to honor your passion for what you’re trying to achieve. 

This is much different from giving up. 

As you go about the process of pursuing your goals, you may find that you need to make adjustments. 

You may realize that some of your goals leave you feeling like you’re slamming against a brick wall. 

Maybe your plans need to be changed a bit to give you a better chance for success. 

Maybe you’ve learned that your talents can serve you better if you change directions slightly.

Every situation is complex and different. 

In many ways, there are no two paths or roadmaps that are going to be exactly the same.

Every human is unique. Every human brings a unique set of talents, passions, gifts, and personality traits to the equation. 

For this reason, it’s vitally important for you to find the path that fits you the best. 

In order to do this, you must be willing to be adaptable and flexible as you pursue success. 

To learn more about finding the meaning for your life, read this post: The Meaning Of Life Is To Find Your Gift – Is It True?

Sometimes, it pays to be stubborn and consistent.

But sometimes, it pays to be flexible and fluid. 

Bruce Lee may have described this the best. 

“Be water, my friend. Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless, like water. You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it into a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow, or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

There you have it. 

7 steps for creating a roadmap to success that’ll actually help you to achieve what you desire in life. 

Of course, at the end of the day, it all really comes down to a few simple steps. 

Figure out what you want, turn your dreams into goals, write down those goals, and then review, revise, and keep going. 

The most important thing to remember is that you can do this.

You’re likely far more talented than you give yourself credit for. 

And you’ve got what it takes to create the life you want.

All you have to do is meet that vision with goals and a hard work ethic—and you’ll soon begin to see positive results. 

Now get out there and make it happen. 

You’ve got this. I believe in you. 

Best wishes… 

Jay O’Donnell

Roadmap to Success

roadmap to success essay

Step One: Unpack the Topic and Plan 

You need to highlight the key terms

Brainstorm synonyms 

Connect words and phrases to the text

This is the start of you building/creating your lines of argument AKA the reasons your contention is true

IMPORTANT: Arguments/Topic Sentences and Contention 

1.Ensure your topic sentence clearly indicates what you will discuss in your paragraph

2.Check to make sure your topic sentence aligns with your contention

3.Avoid character based topic sentences and focus on the themes these characters are utilised to explore

Your contention is the basis of the entirety of your essay. Your topic sentences are opening statements written with the purpose of helping you develop a discussion that follows your contention which addresses the question.

roadmap to success essay

Miss Gladman's Example

Argument 1: In the absence of adult authority and rules, the boys on the island struggle to maintain order and leadership.

Argument 2: As rules and the resemblance of civilisation break down, the boys become increasingly violent and aggressive.

Argument 3: The boys' descent from well-behaved children to savage hunters highlights how the absence of rules leads to a loss of civilization, ultimately turning them into beasts driven by primal instincts.

Contention: Throughout the text, Golding illustrates how the breakdown of rules and the absence of adult supervision lead the boys into a state of uncivilised behavior, emphasising the critical role of rules and structure in upholding order.  

Unpack the  topic, (previously known as the ‘prompt’)

Identify key terms

With these key terms

Brainstorm synonyms and how the key terms connect to LOTF

Create your 3 lines of arguments which will form your topic sentences

Using your annotations from unpacking the topic creates three reasons that aims to answer or resolves the topic.  These three different arguments will become you topic sentences.  

You need to summarise these lines of argument to be included in your introduction.

Write your contention - think of the contention as 'main character energy'

This is one strong sentence that your 3 arguments should connect to

Your entire essay should connect to the contention

Your contention is your rock star sentence, it has ‘main character energy’

Introduction

Do not use character names or specific examples in your intro, leave this for your TEELs

Context : You must formally introduce the text, provide a short overview of the book and connect this to the topic. You need to include the author’s full name - William Golding and the text - Lord of the Flies (underline the title when handwriting an essay)

Miss Gladman’s Example: William Golding's allegorical novel, Lord of the Flies, explores the dark side of human nature, depicting a group of young schoolboys who are left to establish rules and social structure but eventually succumb to their primitive and barbaric instincts.  

Arguments : The three arguments you came up with need to be summaried and added here, you could combine two and then leave the third as a single sentence or summarise all three.  Just ensure you do not repeat the exact same sentences when writing your topic sentences.

Miss Gladman’s Example: In the absence of adult authority and rules, the boys on the island grapple with maintaining order and leadership, but as the rules and signs of civilisation break down, they descend into increasing violence and aggression, resembling 'beasts' driven by primal instincts, showcasing the detrimental impact of a lack of rules on civilization. 

Contention: You have alrady written this during the planning stage! Yay!

Miss Gladman’s Example Ultimately , Golding illustrates how the breakdown of rules and the absence of adult supervision lead the boys into a state of uncivilised behavior, emphasising the critical role of rules and structure in upholding order.  

So all together my introduction is: William Golding's allegorical novel, Lord of the Flies, explores the dark side of human nature, depicting a group of young schoolboys who are left to establish rules and social structure but eventually succumb to their primitive and barbaric instincts. In the absence of adult authority and rules, the boys on the island grapple with maintaining order and leadership, but as the rules and signs of civilisation break down, they descend into increasing violence and aggression, resembling 'beasts' driven by primal instincts, showcasing the detrimental impact of a lack of rules on civilization. Ultimately , Golding illustrates how the breakdown of rules and the absence of adult supervision lead the boys into a state of uncivilised behavior, emphasising the critical role of rules and structure in upholding order.  

Office Timeline Pro is here!

Create impressive Swimlane slides and Roadmaps with the Pro add-in.

Roadmap: Definition, Tools, Examples

A thorough guide to effectively building and using a roadmap through definitions, examples, tools and tutorials.

Make project roadmaps in PowerPoint

  • Getting Started with Roadmaps

Strategic planning is an essential part of managing projects or activities of any kind, and it's especially important in implementing your business vision. A simple visual like a roadmap provides a clear overview of your strategic tasks and milestones and helps you define a long-term plan for reaching your goals .

We've put together some resources to make it easier for you to create and manage your project or product roadmap. Here, you'll find all you need to know, from what a roadmap is to useful examples, friendly tools and free roadmap templates  so you don't have to build them yourself. Let's get started!

What Is a Roadmap in Project Management?

Simply put, a roadmap is a strategic planning technique that places a project's goals and major deliverables (tasks, milestones) on a timeline , all grouped in a single visual representation or graphic. You should always remember that a roadmap planner differs from a regular project plan in that it doesn't contain all the details of a project; instead, it's a high-level, easy-to-understand, strategic tool.

  • Characteristics of a Roadmap

Defining an overall goal along with the major steps needed to reach it, a roadmap helps articulate the why behind the desired outcome and the plan for getting there within all kinds of strategic initiatives.

To better understand the role of a roadmap, let us review what this strategic tool is and is not.

What a roadmap is

A high-level plan that states an overarching objective and captures the major steps to achieve it – a valid roadmap makes a persuasive case for undertaking any specific action towards the main objective and paints a clear picture of how these underlying activities interconnect to bring the desired outcome.

A communication tool that conveys a product’s/project’s strategy – when using a concise and convincing rationale for taking a certain step/including a specific feature, a roadmap proves essential to the effective coordination of cross-functional teams around a common goal, and for gaining the approval from company leadership, partners, and customers.

What a roadmap is not

Difference between a roadmap and a backlog – a backlog is a to-do list consisting of all the tasks required to carry out a strategic initiative, usually arranged based on their priority; meanwhile, a roadmap translates a collection of backlog tasks and ideas into a high-level strategic vision.

Difference between a roadmap and a project management tracker – a project management tracker is a compilation of all the tasks and associated details (the individual assignments, the staff responsible for each task, planned meetings to discuss major milestones, deadlines for each critical phase, etc.) that are related to the completion of an initiative; in contrast, a roadmap summarizes the main efforts that need to be undertaken in order to achieve the planned results.

Difference between a roadmap and a list of features – when it comes to product development and management, many managers mistakenly confuse a list of features with a roadmap, but a list of features doesn’t articulate the strategic thinking that supports building a product in a specific way, whereas a roadmap shows how all those features come together and yield a product that meets specific company goals.

  • Why Do You Need a Roadmap?

Creating a well-thought-out roadmap helps businesses and project/product managers judiciously decide to what they choose to commit. Aligning each work item to the overall objective, roadmaps ensure that time and efforts are invested wisely and provide a strong foundation in terms of:

Clarity – by answering the question “what are you working towards and why?”, a roadmap clarifies strategic goals and how the involved work is linked to the overall strategy.

Communication – sharing the strategy of an initiative, a roadmap shows direction, visualizes timing, and helps drive conversations with key parties around challenges in a transparent manner.

Coordination – in large or complex projects, a roadmap enhances collaboration between multiple participants within an organization as it can help track dependencies and identify bottlenecks.

Accountability – sharing what needs to be delivered and when, a roadmap makes it easier for everyone to follow through on the plan.

Alignment – clearly stating the vision and the objectives of a project, a roadmap aligns teams, portfolios, or areas of the same business.

Impact – highlighting how each area of investment ties to a high-level goal, roadmaps easily illustrate the impact of a team’s progress.

Prioritization – focusing on what is most important, roadmaps help project/product managers make tradeoff decisions and prioritize the work that brings the greatest benefits more easily.

Showing the why behind a planned initiative, a roadmap benefits any type of business because:

It clarifies business strategy .

It communicates company-wide initiatives to internal teams.

It links department goals to those of the business.

It shares general plans with external audiences such as partners and advisory boards.

It tracks organizational performance .

Serving as the reference point for everything a team will focus on, a visual roadmap is extremely useful for product/project managers in high-level meetings with clients and executives because it helps you:

Illustrate how business strategy ties to company goals.

Translate product goals and initiatives into features and requirements.

Communicate with leadership, cross-functional teammates, and customers.

Prioritize new functionalities and enhancements.

Report progress and status as the project is moving along.

  • Roadmap Examples

The structure of a roadmap may vary from one project to another, but there are some key elements you should include in all your roadmaps. These are:

Goals and initiatives – defining the value that your product or project brings and how it delivers on business objectives.

Releases and milestones – stating when work will start and be delivered.

Features – showing the efforts that are prioritized based on their overall value.

Dependencies – highlighting interrelated work that might impact delivery.

To briefly recap, no matter the type of initiative it illustrates, a roadmap needs to tie together your strategy (the “why”), the actions that you need to take to achieve your goals (the “what”), and a timeline for completion (the “when”).

Take a look at the sample roadmap visual below to explore these key elements.

Business Roadmap Example

Roadmaps have a flexible format for presenting strategic information, so there's no industry standard we should follow. Each strategic initiative - from Marketing to HR, Operations, or IT - can adopt a different approach, but over time we've seen that most professionals use a roadmap creator to build one of the popular types of roadmaps below.

To help you save time, you can download these examples for free (we've built them using PowerPoint and the Office Timeline  add-in) so you can get started right away.

E-commerce program roadmap

High-level roadmap with an overview of project, teams, and activities for an e-commerce program.

Clinical trial roadmap

Simple roadmap showing the trial phases and key milestones in a drug approval process.

Product development roadmap

A colorful roadmap with key milestones and sprint schedule for better planning a SaaS product.

Platform roadmap

Roadmap slide with swimlanes and project details for effective management of a platform development process.

OPEN GALLERY

DOWNLOAD SLIDE

There are many ways you can use these roadmap examples to make better decisions around your strategic initiatives. Explore the roadmap templates  page to discover which one fits you best, then download and customize them as you like.

  • How to Create a Roadmap

Here are the main five steps to building an effective roadmap:

Define your strategy – this step requires you to outline the overall vision, goals, and initiatives. In-depth research into buying personas, product positioning and competitive analysis helps create critical context and the foundation for your strategy.

Review and assess potential features – use a scoring mechanism to weigh potential features and decide which of them bring the most value to your initiative.

Prioritize and determine requirements – break down the activities that best support your strategy into smaller units of work.

Organize work into phases – group your ranked list of features or major efforts into major releases or stages and define their duration.

Choose your roadmap view – decide the level of detail and manner in which you want to illustrate all of the above over a specific time frame. For example, you might want to highlight specific features or cross-functional dependencies that influence the course of your plan.

Once you have covered all the steps above, you can then proceed to actually building your visual either by using a roadmap template or a dedicated roadmap tool .

For comprehensive demonstrations on how to make a roadmap using various office tools, check out our collection of step-by-step tutorials.

Roadmap Templates

  • What Is a Roadmap Template?

A roadmap template is a pre-built roadmap sample that can be easily updated with custom data to fit your needs. It provides an already-done framework to specific cases, helping you save time and effort in creating such a visual.

  • Why Use a Roadmap Template?

Using a roadmap template makes it easier for you to capture and communicate your product/project plans as it offers a pre-made structure to your own data . Available in a professionally designed format, roadmap templates help you to quickly build a timeline on which you concisely illustrate your goals and initiatives, the efforts that support your strategy and the due dates for work completion. Moreover, you can easily update them as often as necessary and even re-use them for future initiatives without having to start from scratch all over again.

Start building your first roadmap with our free downloadable roadmap templates  that you can easily tailor to your requirements. While some of them allow you to share high-level business goals, others are more suitable for conveying a more detailed view of your initiatives. You can also find examples designed for certain types of industries or organizations.

Simply download your preferred model, input your project/product data, and enjoy a presentation-ready roadmap.

Ready-Made Roadmap Templates

A variety of professional, stand-alone templates that you can instantly customize into your own beautiful roadmap.

Roadmap templates for PowerPoint

EXPLORE TEMPLATES

Roadmap Tools

Whether you are starting a business, launching a new product, or coordinating a cross-functional project, a roadmap will enable you to visualize your strategic plan and turn it into reality . It represents the output of your planning process and will serve as the main tool to communicate your initiative to stakeholders in a compelling manner.

This is why it is crucial to use purpose-built roadmap software that will allow you to easily develop and customize high-level visuals that you can effortlessly share with important audiences (executives, team members, other groups in your organization, and clients).

One such dedicated roadmap maker is the PowerPoint add-in called Office Timeline . This intuitive tool helps you automatically generate clear, stylish roadmaps as PowerPoint slides that you can quickly update as often as necessary and share or present in meetings.

CREATE YOUR OWN ROADMAP

  • How to Choose a Roadmap Tool

With so much at stake when it comes to creating your roadmap, it's no wonder that deciding which roadmap tool to use proves to be such a challenging task. To make it easier for you to choose a roadmap software, here are the top 5 things to consider when you review the many roadmap tools available on the market today:

Time-saving . Does the roadmap app make it easy for you to create and update your project visual? You may have very little time to prepare your presentation for an important meeting with a client or a manager. That's why you need an agile roadmap maker that helps you automate your work with just a few clicks.

Customization . Each project is different, so is it a good idea to use the same colors and shapes for all of them? Certainly not. Go with an agile roadmap software that allows you to customize every detail: colors, shapes, fonts, date formats, etc. and lets you style your roadmap to make it unique and distinctive.

User-friendly . Most work is collaborative nowadays and you're always in close contact with a client or team. Therefore, you'll need a roadmap tool that works the way your clients and colleagues do, and the resulting roadmaps are easy to view, edit, download, or share by anyone, with their usual office tools.

Integrations . If you use popular project tools like MS Project or Wrike, you'll want to choose a roadmap creator that integrates smoothly with your usual project management software so you can build roadmaps straight from your data. A Refresh function that helps you update your roadmap every time there are changes in your documentation may be very useful, too.

Visuals . We can't stress this enough: you need simple, clear visuals that your audience can understand. So, choose a software that makes roadmaps that have the right blend of professionalism and beauty to help you stand out and impress your clients or managers.

Need more guidance in choosing a roadmap tool? Check out our dedicated section on roadmap tools .

Best Practices for Roadmaps

To serve the purpose for which it was created, a roadmap needs to be:

actionable,

up-to-date,

relevant and easy-to-understand for the intended audience,

and visually compelling.

So here are a series of guidelines on how to effectively update, share and present impactful roadmaps that convey relevant information in a quick and clear manner.

  • Tips on How to Share or Present a Roadmap

For product/project managers to efficiently present and share their roadmap, they need to consider their audience – who they are, what they need to know and why. This way, they can adjust the structure and level of detail of their visual so that the right information be conveyed to the right people in a visually appealing way.

Here are the elements that make for an impactful roadmap presentation :

Audience-awareness – customize your roadmap according to your intended public and outcome. Depending on the audience, you will establish what to highlight during your presentation. For example, when you present to executive or advisory boards, your roadmap should focus on timelines of major bodies of work, whereas an engineering or IT team audience will be interested on details about features, requirements, and release dates. A customer-facing roadmap presentation, on the other hand, might show only a general description of features and approximate release dates.

Agenda – once you determine to whom you will present your roadmap, set an appropriate agenda of what core aspects you will capture and discuss. This gives your audience the right expectation for what they will see along the way.

Purpose – a good roadmap presentation needs a goal. To build an informative and well-received presentation from a goal-first approach, answer the questions “why is this information shared with this particular audience?”, “what should be the intended takeway?”, “what feedback would be useful?”

Vision – include information about the product’s business model, goals, personas, and competitors to place your strategic plans in the context of the broader product strategy and direction.

Feedback – presenting a roadmap creates the perfect opportunity for a product/project manager to get valuable insight from both internal and external audiences. Make sure to allot time for questions, answers, and comments.

Shareability – the value of your roadmap goes beyond its presentation as it may act as a reference point for any decisions going forward. As such, it is important to allow the appropriate access permissions and expectations for how frequently it would be updated.

  • Tips on How to Use or Update a Roadmap

As a high-level plan that describes the work required to achieve a goal along with a corresponding schedule, your roadmap should include a series of visual elements to be successfully used:

Timeframe – include a timeline to highlight the upcoming work within a relevant time period. If your initiative is planned to happen over a three-month interval, it doesn’t make sense to use a year-long timeframe. For easier comprehension, this timeline is usually presented at the top of the roadmap.

Hierarchy – when working with complex initiatives, take the time to logically organize and break down the work into smaller units that you can then display according to start and end dates, status, priority or that you can group by categories.

Progress – indicate the status of different work items and the overall progress towards goals by using shaded bars, colors, checkmarks or % percent complete indicators.

Colors – assign different colors to different work components (by team or owner, for instance) to better differentiate stages of your initiative and communicate them visually.

Symbols – subtly convey extra details with shapes, arrows, and other custom elements. For example, you can use a diamond to indicate important milestones or an arrow/line/connector to highlight task dependencies. Whatever symbols you choose, make sure they are consistent so that your audience can decode them.

Since plans change and new opportunities or challenges may arise along the way, you will want to create a flexible and dynamic roadmap that you can effortlessly update when such instances occur, not only quarterly or according to release status. To this end, choose an interactive dedicated tool that will allow you to:

quickly reflect ongoing transformations and evolution on your roadmap visuals;

swiftly integrate with other systems used in your organization;

easily share it at a company-wide level;

customize and style relevant details into unique visuals.

Frequently Asked Questions about Roadmaps

Here are the answers to the most frequently asked question about roadmaps.

What is a roadmap?

A roadmap is the high-level, visual representation of the lifecycle of a business initiative , complete with the end goal, steps to take and milestones to reach along the way. The roadmap is primarily used for the strategic planning of projects and the development of new products.

What is a project roadmap?

A project roadmap is a strategic overview of a company-wide operation . It can define the scope, deliverables, high-level scheduling, milestones, challenges, and risk factors. Project roadmaps are slightly less detail-oriented than project timelines. The primary concern is respecting the original deadlines and adjusting deliverables to meet them, when required.

What does a roadmap include?

A typical project roadmap should cover the following elements:

Long- and short-term objectives;

Tasks, milestones, and dependencies;

Resources required and their allocation strategy;

Timeline of the project’s lifecycle;

Risk factors and challenges.

Why is a roadmap important?

Roadmaps allow all involved parties to evaluate the competitiveness of a strategy, raise issues and reveal gaps, correctly prioritize resource allocation, and set realistic targets based on market data. They provide the framework for interdepartmental collaboration . Without roadmaps, every venture is a journey into the unknown and the risk of project failure grows higher.

How do you create a roadmap?

Starting off with a specialized roadmap maker application like Office Timeline can save you hours of work, allowing you to focus on the project specifics rather than graphic design. Here are the basic steps for creating a roadmap:

Define the timeline and project phases.

List the tasks, milestones, and dependencies.

Break down the workstream using logical containers like swimlanes.

Keep updating the roadmap with new developments.

  • FAQs about Roadmaps

Roadmaps made easy

Office Timeline helps you quickly turn complex project data into clear PowerPoint roadmaps that are easy to follow, but hard to forget.

Make roadmaps free in PowerPoint

START MAKING ROADMAPS NOW

  • About Project
  • Testimonials

Business Management Ideas

The Wisdom Post

Essay on Success

List of essays on success in english, short essay on success – essay 1 (100 words), essay on success: definition and how to achieve success – essay 2 (250 words), essay on success: parameters, qualities for achieving success and conclusion – essay 3 (300 words), essay on success: what is real success – essay 4 (500 words), essay on success: success and hard work – essay 5 (500 words), essay on success: education is the road to success – essay 6 (650 words), long essay on success – essay 7 (1000 words), essay on success: intro, success in life and success for students  – essay 8 (2500 words).

The students should be able to distinguish between true success and success of ill deeds. The short essays for students shall enlighten them with the true meaning of success. The essays written in simple language are very informative and shall prove to be beneficial for students of all classes.

Success is much more than riches, power or fame. Success is simply the feeling of satisfaction and happiness one gets from leading a particular way of life or carrying out a particular activity. Success in any field or aspect of life can only be achieved through serious hard work and a little bit of opportunity. One of the most important recipes of success is determination and it might as well be the most important secret of success. To become successful, it is necessary to never give up until the aim of happiness and satisfaction in life is fully met. The happiness and satisfaction can be found in very different things in different people.

‘Success’ is a very powerful word. Many of us run behind it; most of us want to conquer it. So, what is success all about? Does this mean acquiring money or fame? Success means different things to different people.

Definition of Success

The Oxford dictionary defines success as “ The accomplishment of an aim or purpose ”.

This is the definition of success in theory, but in reality it differs according to people’s interests and goals.

It is very important for every individual to define their own concept of success rather than following someone else’s footsteps. We must analyze what makes us happy, what gives us contentment, and what motivates us . No one can list out our needs better than us.

True success means understanding our dreams and working joyfully to make those dreams come true.

How to Achieve Success

Many great people have suggested various ways to achieve success. But the real secret ingredient to nail success is to believe that we are already successful . With this strong affirmative thought, success can be easily achieved if we follow these three success factors:-

  • We should follow our passion because that is where our heart and soul is. When we follow our passion there is no need for us to put any extra effort.
  • The path to success is always challenging. We should build confidence to face any challenging situations.
  • The third and most important success factor is discipline . When we work in a disciplined manner, things will automatically fall in place.

If we stick to these three factors, nothing can stop us from tasting success. Success is a journey which continues even after the goal is achieved.

Success is perhaps the most desired feeling that all of us want to experience in the pursuit of our goals and also in day to day life. Apparently, every individual has his or her own definition of success.

Parameters of Success

None can deny that the world blindly respects and trusts wealthy people. Money is the prime dynamic force that drives this world. The sooner we acknowledge and appreciate this fact the better. Academic success is a prime concern for all in the initial part of life, especially in the school days. For those who continue perusing studies, academic success is the epitome of everything. It is mostly observed that success in personal life becomes a tough task for those who have all the riches. Here is where the common people feel successful to have a happy personal life.

Qualities for Achieving Success

One should not regret their decisions taken in the past and must refrain dwelling in the past. We must give deep thought before taking any decisions and uttering words from the mouth. For making a successful decision one must ask questions to oneself like: What Do I Need To Do? What Will Be The Outcome? Will It Be Worth Doing? One must keep the emotions for success and failures intact and should not showcase it to others. Successful people never wait for applause or acknowledgement of their work as they eventually get it. To become successful one must keep friends close and enemies closer. A successful person never demeans the weak and never underestimates anyone.

To become successful one has to understand what is important in that instant, recognize and work on the weaknesses, take criticism and hold on to the strengths. From a broader perspective Success defines the contentment, peace of mind and sheer happiness that is achieved. One should remember that only perseverance can lead the path to success.

Introduction

Real success is something we should all strive to attain. Real success can simply be said to be achieving a higher position or very high position in our chosen field or area; it can be politics or business or even education. In the world we live in today, we have equated success to riches, prosperity, fortunes, cars, houses and so many mundane things. We believe that once a person has enough money to be able to afford what he or she wants, the person is successful. This is a total and complete misconception that will be discussed here.

Money isn’t a measure of success?

While it is important to note that having money is a part of being successful and you can classify as rich person as being successful, money is not all that success is about and we have a lot of people around us that are seemingly rich but still count themselves as not successful. In fact, sometimes we see wealthy people and conclude that they aren’t successful. If this is true then we can safely conclude that success is deeper that money or other superficial and physical things can we might acquire or own. Money is very important to success in life but it is not a necessity and neither is it the only key to success in life.

What is real success?

Real success is way beyond the physical things we can see, real success is all about the feeling of satisfaction we get when we accomplish a task or do something, it is the happiness we get just by remembering what we have achieved and how we did it, real success has to do with a lot of positive feelings about ourselves and pride in what we have been able to do. As we can see, real success can only be achieved within one’s self and that is why a lot of people who we think are successful still believe they aren’t just because they aren’t happy with what they are doing or they feel they can get so much more out of life. From this, we can see that it is very important to attain true success in life.

How one can attain real success

For one to be successful, the first and most important thing one needs to do is to set goals and objectives. Only through the setting of goals can one really have something to pursue and claim success when we got those things or meet the set goals and target. A very important ingredient in achieving real success is determination. If one is going to get real success, one has to be determined to never give up no matter what the situation might be. Another very important ingredient is hard work as we can’t expect to be successful if we don’t work hard and do all it takes to meet all of our set goals. It is important that we get all the skills that are required for us to be successful in our chosen field.

The yardstick of success varies from people to people. The success story of an individual begins from the moment of his/her birth. A human child begins the winning streak by challenging every obstacle from the moment of conception to delivery. So no human is ever a failure, and hence confidently we can say that the very existence of every human in this word bear an element of success.

At the primary level, success lies within the parameters of cracking competitive exams and identifying one’s aptitude as to which profession the individual can flourish. On broader terms, a successful life is indeed a happy life reflecting upon how far one has reached. Success is not just related to material success.

How to become successful in life?

Nobody has ever become successful within a split of a moment. It is not an arduous task either. Strong determination coupled with hard work is the key to success. The first step to any attempt is to set the goal. There can be short-term goals, and long-term goals and both play a significant role on your road to success. Once the target set, then you have to do strategic planning. It is advisable to set a time frame as well. It will enable you to evaluate yourself on a regular basis. Fixing a time frame can also check into our procrastinating nature.

The next most important factor to become successful in life is hard work. It is the key to success. The adage rightly says that ‘no pain, no gain.’ You need to keep in mind that nobody else is going to do what we ought to do. If we put little effort and saw the seeds of hard work and perseverance, then we are sure to reap success and bounty. If you have strong willpower and the fire to ignite your dreams, then nothing can pull you back.

Stay focused on your objectives rather than hoping:

You can inspire yourself by being a self-motivator and critic. It opens room for self-improvement and appreciation. As it is said that ‘well begun is half done,’ do not hesitate to sparkle a start. Once we get a push, the rest will fall right in place. Even if we stumble down a couple of times, do not let go of our dreams. Failures are part and parcel of any successful entity. Mistakes are quite common and what needs to do is that we acknowledge them, and bear them in our mind. It ensures that we learn from the mistakes and in turn do not repeat them.

Nobody has ever been successful overnight. Patience is yet another golden rule. Just convince your mind that you are strong enough to be successful, though not today, at least some day. Never be disappointed if you lose. Trust in yourself and believe that you will reach there and you deserve to reach there. Your strength and weakness define the person you are, and the realization of it is rather important. Selfless dedication and hard work will definitely get you there.

Once you achieve your goals, you can be a strong inspiration to others. There is a warrior in you and never shut it down. You are capable of climbing higher and boom into a fantastic personality. Whatsoever, live a humble life, spread positivity and bear the torch to others’ road to success.

Saying education is the road to success is just another way of saying education is very important for all of us in life, without education there would not be a lot of progression in both our individual and collective lives as human. It is very important that we get education in order to get success in life. Most times, people generally limit education to the four walls of a classroom or a school.

Education has roots in every area of our existence; education can be said to begin from the home, parents and family members educate and train the children on good characters that they should imbibe and teach them to remove some habits and characters. All of these good characters imbibed by the child through education at home can help the child become very successful in future.

We all know that without good characters and morals, it is extremely hard to become successful or make it in life as people would not want to be associated with such person. We are also educated on good communication and interpersonal skills that are very necessary for us to make it and become successful in life.

Importance of education to success

We need to know the true value and worth of education. Education helps to facilitate our skill, knowledge and learning; it gives us a different view of the world and refines our personality, helping us to build very positive attitudes. Education is a totally essential tool in ensuring a bright future.

Education can serve as a tool in achieving anything and everything good about life. When we get a high level and degree of education, we earn respect and recognition from our family and the society at large.

Education can go a very long way in changing our thoughts and level of reasoning; it broadens our worldview and provides us with the opportunity to get knowledge and technical skills that are highly needed in life. We can improve our knowledge level and skill by watching educational documentaries and programmes on the TV, reading the news and keeping up to date with all of the happenings all over the world, reading a lot of books that can educate us. Education can go a long way to make us into more rational and civilised people. Education guarantees our place among people in the society and can help us achieve all of our dreams and aspirations in life.

Education and success

Success is the goal of all of us and it is our mission. Life can sometimes be full of different opportunities and challenges. Success can only be attained if we have all of the required and needed tools.

The most important tool for success is education because without education, we wouldn’t be able to have a wide view of the world and be able to innovate and develop. A lot of youths and children today cite the examples of the successful people that didn’t graduate from school and still went ahead to be successful in life. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook famously did not graduate from Harvard university but still went ahead to become very successful. The truth is even though Mark didn’t graduate, he was well educated and wouldn’t have been able to start Facebook if he had no knowledge of coding and wasn’t enrolled in Harvard at all. From him, we can learn that education isn’t limited and can basically be any way of widening our knowledge and improving ourselves. We should never confuse education with getting a diploma or a degree. Only education in or out of school can make us be successful in life and give us the true career we want.

Without education, life would be totally meaningless without education. The only path to true success in life is education, every one that has been, is and would be successful in life needs education to do that.

The modern world has a way of doing things, that is, modern man has his own particular view on how things should look. That view is completely different from the perspectives upheld by those who came before us, so to say. Like the ancient Greeks were obsessed with performing heroic deeds, or medieval European Christians with martyrdom and upholding saintly principles, we can argue that modern man has an obsession with success. Or more precisely, one aspect of that new worldview is to compare people between each other through the notion of success.

In a way, the beginning of the 21 st century is preoccupied with the concept of success more than ever before, both individual and collective. That fact can is seen in many aspects of our daily lives, people are not just oppressed with celebrities and successful people they want to live that lifestyle or achieve some sort of greatness. Looking at the current state of things one is encouraged to analyze the situation further and to find the reason behind these phenomena, or at least to offer a new perspective on worldwide trend.

What Makes a Person Successful?

There are many ways a person can be successful. Most people will think of celebrities, politicians, artists, entrepreneurs, etc. They will think of someone who is known the world over because of the thing they do, the thing they are good at. That’s all fine, but there are successful people who do not like to be celebrities and there are, most definitely, celebrities who cannot count as successful people.

What then makes a successful person? Is it how they do things? Is it what they get in return? Is it in the number of things they can amass in their life? Most of those things can count as some part of our overall image of such a person. But, how can we define it? What is it actually?

What I like is simple answers, they are usually correct and the most practical at the same time. Even though not all answers can be simple, this one is. When you look up the word success in any dictionary you will find that it is considered an accomplishment of an aim or a purpose.

Surely people were able to accomplish an aim or a pulpous in their lifetimes, even several, before the 21 st century. Why is it that this noun has such relevance for the classification of people in this age?

History of Success

If we take a look at history, as I mentioned before, we can see that every age has a different occupation. When we talk about the ancient Egyptians, we do not talk about single individuals who made this country so great we talk about the collective in general. But also, we do not know the names of the people who actually accomplished the construction of the pyramid we remember the person who ordered it and did nothing to build it.

Sometimes when I think about all the great artists whose names I do not know, that built humanity in the name of kings, it seems as if it was forbidden for individuals to be famous if they were not born into some sort of noble family.

That drastically changed with the return of democracy to Europe and the liberation from the old-world view that separated people into casts, genders, and races. The new perspective born from revolutions gave every man the right to control their destiny and therefore the right to become successful, to achieve one’s dreams and ideals. Celebrating success can be seen as a collective celebration of the boundless human potential to do incredible things. Is it always so shiny? Or is there a dark side to the story?

Can Success Harm us?

We all know that being successful has its price and the people on the top can often be alone, because of the many sacrifices they had to make to get there. There are also countless examples of people who have achieved success professionally but their health and social lives fail because they cannot handle the strain that comes with maintaining that image of perfection that is expected of them.

Then there is also the psychological pressure any person can experience when they become obsessed with succeeding in the things they do. This emotion can cause such discomfort for people that they can freeze in key moments when they should be at the top of their game. Not to mention the depression some people experience when they come in contact with the images of people that exist on social media. There is a lot in being successful that we put under the carpet, or we just consider it as part of the game, something that we should bear. It does not have to be that way.

Sharing Success

People are made to be in a group and therefore everything they do they should do for each other; however, this fact of human existence has also been a breeding ground for nationalism and other group-oriented ideologies that made the 20 th century so dark. The striving to be successful, the best, the most dominant will make people perform incredible and inspiring things but it will also make them give legitimacy to the worst monstrosities. How do we draw the line between the good and bad aspect of wanting individual and collective success?

Maybe we should stop looking at success as part of domination and make it part of what makes us authentic as human beings. What do I mean? If we start celebrating everyday people when they express themselves or make something that is fulfilling for them and makes other people grow we will support others to develop this aspect of their humanity and not concentrate on domination and subordination. We should support the celebration of collective endeavors that strive to enhance the human race as a whole and not adore individual examples as if they were the meaning of life.

The secret to success is not in money and fame, but in reaching that feeling of fulfillment when you know you have accomplished something that truly matters to you and other people around you. Dreaming big and then having it, it’s not impossible.

If you’ve been feeling a little low lately, this essay on success is sure to boost your motivation levels and set the goals right for you! We hear about so many successful people from all the areas. Some of them may be our favorite singers, actors, scientists, writers, social workers, politicians, and what not. Their achievements inspire the hearts of many and urge them to do better.

While we tend to focus on the sensation of the final outcome, the journey toward the goal is what matters the most. Sadly, human nature forces us to look at everything through the eyes of instant gratification. But the stories of success are not created overnight. In real life, any small big achievement demands tons of efforts and sacrifices.

If success is a building, consider each effort to be a brick, that has to be put in day and night tirelessly. Dreaming about achieving a goal in life is a lovely idea. Nonetheless, working on it every day is more than just a fantasy. You have to make it happen.

Do you pray or meditate? What happens at that moment? You sit quietly and focus all your attention and energy into the prayer or in watching those thoughts. Prayer commands sincerity. True worshipping is when the heart is pure and honest.

In the same way, success is a conscientious phenomenon. It asks for dedication and ethical diligence. For a real success, there are no shortcuts and there is no quitting too! Yes, we all get tired and hopeless. That doesn’t mean we have to give in to those feelings and quit. Keep working no matter what!

At times, when you feel that you can’t go on anymore, take a break. Rejuvenate yourself, talk to your loved ones, rest a lot, create a fresh perspective. And come back again with a greater force and zeal. You never know when the efforts will turn into the sweet fruits of success. One thing common in all the great personalities was that they never quit!

Personal Definition of Success

There is no fixed definition of success. You see, success is quite a relative term and its meaning changes from one person to another. However, it is sure to say that being able to feel content with your life and achieve what you dreamed of, is what makes you a successful person!

A prosperous life is not strictly about having all the materialistic comforts around. To some extent, this may be true. But, all in all, it’s only a microscopic way to measure someone’s success.

Let us introduce you to some of the most powerful quotes on success given by the different eminent personalities.

Everybody’s favorite, the great feminist and poetess, Maya Angelou says, “Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”

Winston Churchill quotes it as, “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”

Not to mention, America’s former first lady, Michelle Obama who expresses her own views on success. According to her, “Success isn’t about how much money you make. It’s about the difference you make in people’s lives.”

In the words of Albert Einstein, “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.”

Anne Sweeney, who remained the president of the Disney Channel from 1996 to 2014. In her words, “Define success on your own terms, achieve it by your own rules, and build a life you’re proud to live.”

It is evident enough how these miraculous and charismatic visionaries have described success in various terms and that there is no particular way to define it. The only authentic parameter should be your own satisfaction and happiness.

What is Success

We have understood that success is an abstract notion. Now, it is time to get to the bottom and explore some basic questions about it. Have you ever tried to inquire into what success means to you? What are the things that would make you convinced that you are a successful person now? Does your heart yearn for fame, money, peace, joy, love, or something else?

These questions are crucial. They make your mind clear and set your priorities more effectively. Always remember that a virtue that appeals to you may not mean the same to another person. Everybody has their own preferences and goals in life.

The bottom line is regardless of what the goal is, we can each be successful in our lives as long as the achievement makes us happy and content. It could be your education, a well-paying job, having a loving family, social security, or freedom to live the way you want to.

Anything, no matter how small or big, that fills us with a sense of purpose and gratifies the heart leads to success. If you are a happy person and love your life, then success is yours! For a long time, our minds have been trained to believe that money is the greatest source of joy. However, it’s not true!

Undoubtedly, wealth is a strong means to create comfort and security for us. But if it was the only thing needed for success, why do the richest people still deal with depression, anxiety, fears, and failures? Have you ever thought about it?

Physical wealth does not guarantee an insusceptibility to dissatisfaction and failure. Thinking otherwise would only create a bottomless void within you. People madly run after money and career. And yet when they are well-established, they still may not feel the joy and peace within. What is the missing piece in their lives?

Success in Life

Life is a rollercoaster, isn’t it! We all have our own strengths and weaknesses. Overcoming your flaws and frailty is a victory in itself. If you are thinking of coming out as a winner in life, don’t confine yourself to monetary values. With money, you may feel “technically” rich and yet have no access to the truest joy.

There are many dimensions to success. But everything depends upon our ability to recognize them. What are these dimensions, by the way! Let us explore a few of them.

You must have heard the famous quote, “Health is Wealth”. We need to understand the hidden value of this quote today more than ever. Ask yourself, if you would be able to enjoy anything in the same way if you were suffering from an acute or chronic illness? No, but such physical ailments are a bitter truth to many. To these people, achieving a partial or full recovery, having a long and respectful life is a success.

For the emotional souls, having their loved ones around, giving them a quality life, and taking care of them is what counts as the real victory. A person who cares about the whole society, for him/ her the true meaning of succeeding would be providing the basic amenities to the underprivileged, fighting for human rights, or creating awareness.

And yes, the biggest of the aims could be as simple and meaningful as leading a peaceful life. It could be about not having regrets and ill feelings toward others. They could also be as big as winning a gold medal in the Olympics, breaking the stereotypes, getting out of a toxic relationship and having a stable life.

The point is, success cannot be put into a singular category. And comparing one’s goal with the other person would be like comparing apple to an orange, or fruits to vegetables. Each person is unique. Their journey of life is different and so are their goals and parameters of success.

Success for Students

The keys to successful academic life are open secrets. As a student, your progress depends on the level of self-discipline, dedication, and hard work. If you are able to pull off these habits in long-term success would never leave you. Right? Nonetheless, the matter is not so simple.

In today’s time, students are looking for “success” more desperately than ever! Considering the cut-throat competitions, it is quite understandable also. The pressure of family’s expectations makes things even more complicated. The students have no option except to excel in their studies, but at what costs?

First of all, academic success is dependent on a limited number of subjects. The true potential of a child or a young one cannot be fairly measured based on such a narrow line. Moreover, somehow we have come to believe that excellent grades are a must for a student’s survival in this world. Fortunately, that’s not completely correct.

The practical life is much more than a few subjects. Most of the things we learn at school and colleges are plain theories. The bookish knowledge hardly proves to be of any help in the real world. What makes you rich is the experiences you gain on a daily basis.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that grades and books shouldn’t be taken seriously at all. You need to understand that these things play a partial role in forming the ladder of success. The better word to focus on would be ‘growth’.

If winning the race and grabbing a seat in some reputed college takes a toll on your mental, physical, and psychological health, then, we are seriously doing something wrong here. After all, these are the same factors leading to the rising number of suicides among the youths.

Not getting good marks doesn’t mean that you are not good enough for anything. It just means that you haven’t explored everything yet. There are many great personalities like Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, J.K. Rowling, who were a failure on the scales of conventional methods. But they proved everyone wrong.

All you need to remember is that never lose faith in yourself. If you really love what you do and consistently pour all of your energy into that task, then, definitely success is waiting for you! Make a routine of your choice and follow it religiously. Stay punctual. Fix your eyes on the goal and keep working.

Success and Hard Work

You can only work hard when you are fit overall. A good health is not just about having a strong body but also a strong mind and willpower. For all these things, you need energy. So, pay attention to things that you are feeding to your sensory organs. This includes from the proper diet to releasing stress, stay positive, working out, having those around who believe in you.

Don’t just work hard on your curriculum only. Take charge of other aspects too. As much as possible, include healthy foods in the diet. Staying positive induces good hormones in the body and the effect clearly shows in your performance. To strengthen your mental health, meditate every day.

Sitting around greenery, talking to your loved ones, reading positive books, are some of the other ways to replenish your energy levels. Make sure to work out every day, or at least go for a 30-minutes walk. Keep yourself hydrated. Drink plenty of water and other fluids.

Apart from focusing on the positive steps, be careful of the negative factors too. For instance, any negative conversation or toxic people in your life may suck away all your energy and charm. Try your best to avoid these triggers. Not only that, distractions like television, online chats, social media, parties, etc. should not be underestimated.

Keep your body and mind clean like a temple. It will help you work harder and with more effectiveness. There are no shortcuts to success. However, prefer to work smart rather than work hard. Never ever neglect the amount of sleep you get. There is no substitute for proper sleep.

Lack of sleep makes you cranky. Your concentration and memory become poorer. The learning becomes slower. So, a million dollar advice would be to get sufficient sleep, that means up to 8-10 hours. A few hours may be up and down depending on the person’s body requirements.

It is okay if the hard work makes you tired. However, the whole idea of hard work should not suffocate you. They say that if you love what you do, you don’t have to work a day in your life! If the set goals don’t well-align with your heart, explore something that does. Your goals should be set by you and not anyone else.

Success and Failure

Do you fear failure? What is the definition of failure according to you? How important is a failure for success? Let us find some answers to these amazing questions and doubts that we all face within us. To make things easier, here are a few great quotes for you!

“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” – Robert F. Kennedy

“Giving up is the only sure way to fail.” – Gena Showalter

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas A. Edison

Must have changed your perspective a bit! Well, it won’t be wrong to say that failure is a part of success. It is an inevitable part of that process. Like two sides of a coin. You cannot expect to taste success until you have learned to embrace the failures.

There is an interesting story about it with a strong message. There used to live a guy who owned a grand and luxurious car. That car always stayed inside the house. The man never drove it. One day, one of his friends visited him and asked the reason for not taking the car out on the road.

Do you know what the man replied? He said that he would take the car out when all the traffic lights are green. He was waiting for an impossible thing to happen! Can you believe that? It’s ironic but yes, we all do the same metaphorically.

When we don’t take steps due to the fear of failure, subconsciously, we are waiting for everything to be perfect. So perfect that there would be no tiny scope for failing. That means there would be no red lights at all. How is that even possible!

Leave the fear of failure behind. The only thing you should be scared of is not making efforts. Because that kills even the slightest chance of success. Be humble and embrace failure. Learn from your mistakes. These lessons are valuable. No book would teach you the way your experiences will.

Success is a cumulative and relative term. Without peace and love, money and fame don’t count as success. True success would satiate your soul. It would fill your life with joy. Shrug off the idea of comparing your life with someone else’s. Every person follows a different path and journey. That is why the meaning of success also varies from one individual to another.

No matter how difficult or impossible seems the goal, never quit. Keep working and one day you would succeed. Don’t confine your ambitions to just making money. Listen to your heart and follow it. The voices within us are our guiding lights!

Try to be a good person before becoming a successful person. Only an individual who has earned the love and respect of all has achieved the truest success.

Get FREE Work-at-Home Job Leads Delivered Weekly!

roadmap to success essay

Join more than 50,000 subscribers receiving regular updates! Plus, get a FREE copy of How to Make Money Blogging!

Message from Sophia!

roadmap to success essay

Like this post? Don’t forget to share it!

Here are a few recommended articles for you to read next:

  • Essay on Statue of Unity
  • Essay on My Best Friend
  • Essay on Solar Energy
  • Essay on Christmas

No comments yet.

Leave a reply click here to cancel reply..

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Billionaires

  • Donald Trump
  • Warren Buffett
  • Email Address
  • Free Stock Photos
  • Keyword Research Tools
  • URL Shortener Tools
  • WordPress Theme

Book Summaries

  • How To Win Friends
  • Rich Dad Poor Dad
  • The Code of the Extraordinary Mind
  • The Luck Factor
  • The Millionaire Fastlane
  • The ONE Thing
  • Think and Grow Rich
  • 100 Million Dollar Business
  • Business Ideas

Digital Marketing

  • Mobile Addiction
  • Social Media Addiction
  • Computer Addiction
  • Drug Addiction
  • Internet Addiction
  • TV Addiction
  • Healthy Habits
  • Morning Rituals
  • Wake up Early
  • Cholesterol
  • Reducing Cholesterol
  • Fat Loss Diet Plan
  • Reducing Hair Fall
  • Sleep Apnea
  • Weight Loss

Internet Marketing

  • Email Marketing

Law of Attraction

  • Subconscious Mind
  • Vision Board
  • Visualization

Law of Vibration

  • Professional Life

Motivational Speakers

  • Bob Proctor
  • Robert Kiyosaki
  • Vivek Bindra
  • Inner Peace

Productivity

  • Not To-do List
  • Project Management Software
  • Negative Energies

Relationship

  • Getting Back Your Ex

Self-help 21 and 14 Days Course

Self-improvement.

  • Body Language
  • Complainers
  • Emotional Intelligence
  • Personality

Social Media

  • Project Management
  • Anik Singal
  • Baba Ramdev
  • Dwayne Johnson
  • Jackie Chan
  • Leonardo DiCaprio
  • Narendra Modi
  • Nikola Tesla
  • Sachin Tendulkar
  • Sandeep Maheshwari
  • Shaqir Hussyin

Website Development

Wisdom post, worlds most.

  • Expensive Cars

Our Portals: Gulf Canada USA Italy Gulf UK

Privacy Overview

CookieDurationDescription
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional11 monthsThe cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance11 monthsThis cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy11 monthsThe cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.

Web Analytics

Talk to our experts

1800-120-456-456

  • Success Essay

ffImage

Success is “The accomplishment of aim or purpose”, but is this definition universal? Can it be applied to each and everyone living on this planet? In this success essay, we are going to discuss the various perspectives on success. Success is a very unique concept and a powerful word. We live in a society where people compare and compete with each other’s success or we could say that we live in a success-driven society. A person is judged on his or her success but what does this word imply? Let us try to delve deeper into its meaning via this article.

Long Essay on Success for Students and Children

Success could be considered as the fuel on which the whole world functions efficiently. The perspective of success is different for every individual. For example, for one person success could be to get his or her dream job whereas for others it could be to spend a couple of hours with the family. In this essay on success important points such as how time management leads to success and how hard work and failure are related to success are discussed. This Success essay for students and children explains all the factors that determine success.

One of the most important factors that lead to success is time management. Time is considered to be the most precious asset of our lives. Time is everything and it’s an invaluable entity and once spent it never comes back. So it is important to learn how to manage your time. Time management refers to the process of planning and executing the task and goals to get the maximum. If done properly would lead a person to be successful in his or her life. The amount of time a person invests in improving himself will directly improve the chance of success.

Success and Failure  

“Success is not final; failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.”

Success and failure are inversely proportional to each other. If a person is successful he or she will directly drift away from failure. Achieving success is not easy, if it was easy everyone would have done it, but it’s not impossible. It’s important to know that the road to success is filled with failures and through those failures one becomes successful. It should be understood that failure acts as a stepping stone for success and gives the will to work harder towards his/her goals.

Success and Hard Work 

Success is directly proportional to hard work. The harder one works towards his or her goals the easier it is to achieve success. Hard work doesn’t mean to do laborious work or work that will make you sweat. Hard work means not only working on your goals but also being optimistic towards life and believing in yourself that even if the journey is difficult it can be achieved.

Everyone should keep in mind that the road to success is not easy and it’s difficult but it’s not impossible. Besides working on your goals that would lead a person towards success it is very important to push your limit every day, take charge of your life, and keep learning. 

It is very important to take care of your mind which could be done by eliminating negative thoughts and negative people from your life. Staying positive is a key to success.

How Can You Attain Success?

We have discussed what being successful depends on. Now, let us take a look at what we can do actively to attain that position in our lives. 

Be a risk-taker: Good things come to those who are unafraid of taking risks. You must venture out of your comfort zone and try new things if you ever wish to experience new things and fulfill your goals.

Surround yourself with people who uplift you: Having the right kind of peers and friends is very important if you want to achieve success in life. These people will motivate you and help you strive to do better when you are struggling.

Learn from your mistakes: Failures act as stepping stones. If you do not learn from the mistakes you have made, you will never be able to grow and prosper. Do not be disheartened if you do not succeed in doing everything the first time itself. 

Believe in yourself and keep working hard: There is no shortcut to success. You have to work hard and never give up. 

Learn soft skills: Nowadays, you need to enhance your communication and your time management skills to be able to handle everything life throws at you. Work on bettering your soft skills too.

Remain dedicated: You cannot give in to distractions if you aspire to do well. Take short breaks but never let your mind wander away from the task at hand. Complete your work on time and stay dedicated to your goals.

Short Essay on Success for Students and Children

Success is achieved by those people who work harder every day and manage their time properly. Students should understand the importance of time management. Managing time properly is the key to success. Loss of time is considered to be a loss of opportunities. Time management is what most successful people like Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk do. It is important for students to know what they want to achieve in life and should have a clear vision of their dreams. If a person has a vision in the life of what they want to become, they don’t drift around and will not end up in the wrong place. After having a vision or dream one should invest his or her time in making that dream a reality. That could be done by putting in constant hard work. Sometimes even if one is not talented one can achieve success through hard work and determination. The road to success is not easy it is filled with failures and it is important to understand that through those failures one leads to success. In conclusion, it could be said that managing the time every day and working on your dream even if there are failures in your journey is considered to be the ideal formulae for success.

How Can Success Harm You?

We are all chasing the idea of success but it is important to understand that too much of anything can become toxic or harmful in the long run. You might become so obsessed with being successful that you start disrupting your emotional and physical well-being. This can have rather negative long-term consequences. Moreover, failures are a part of life. If you do not stumble even once, you might become boastful and arrogant. This will drive away even your closest family members and friends. 

There is another side to this debate. If you chase success too much, you will not be able to handle failure. This can lead to depression and the development of several severe mental-health issues. To avoid this, you must focus on all the aspects of success and not run after materialistic accomplishments.

arrow-right

FAQs on Success Essay

1. How can Students be Successful in Academics?  

For students, success in academics could be getting good marks and exceeding everyone’s expectations. Students could achieve success in academics by planning everything accordingly. The first step for excelling in any exam is to know your syllabus completely. The second step is to make a timetable to differentiate what to study. when to study? and to know how much of a particular topic studied is important for the exam. The third step after completing the syllabus is to practice effectively. It is very important to be positive and believe in yourself.

2. What Can be the Impact of Success on People?

Success can have both negative and positive impacts on people. You must know how to navigate the ups alongside the downs in life. It is foolish to presume that success can be attained without sacrifices. People achieve professional success but they fail in achieving mental, physical, and social success. This might cause major mental issues like depression and loneliness. We must learn how to cope up with both our personal and professional lives without giving in to undue stress and anxiety.

3. Why should Young Students be taught the Importance of Hard Work?

As we have discussed in this article, there are no shortcuts to success. You have to keep persevering to be good at what you do. Success cannot be attained overnight. However, inculcating discipline can go a long way in teaching students how to handle whatever life throws at them. Hard work and discipline go hand in hand. You must be disciplined and work hard to achieve your goals. If young students are made to understand this from a tender age, they can go on to achieve great things in life.

4. Why can Success Sometimes Prove to be Harmful?

A famous quote states that you always pass failure on your way to success. We can never learn if we do not make any mistakes. One must learn to take failure in their stride and not let it affect them too much. Success can prove to be harmful when you put too much unnecessary pressure on yourself to do well. This can lead to a decline in your emotional well-being and affect you mentally. Everyone has to face ups and downs in life but you must try to learn something from every experience and grow.

5. How should Students Gain Inspiration to be Successful in Life?

Inspiration can be found anywhere if you try hard enough to look for it. People like Steve Jobs and Sundar Pichai did not become successful in one day. They kept trying out new things and did not shy away from taking risks. Ultimately, their hard work and dedication paved the way to their success. Students should take inspiration from such men and women who have overcome a lot of hurdles in life to reach the position they are in now. This will motivate them to do better too.

Home — Essay Samples — Business — Planning — Planning – Is the Road to Success

test_template

Planning - is The Road to Success

  • Categories: Planning Strategic Planning Success

About this sample

close

Words: 525 |

Published: Aug 30, 2022

Words: 525 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Works Cited

  • Drucker, P. F. (2008). The Practice of Management. HarperBusiness.
  • Mintzberg, H., Ahlstrand, B., & Lampel, J. (2008). Strategy Safari: A Guided Tour Through the Wilds of Strategic Management. Free Press.
  • Blank, S. G. (2013). The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company. K&S Ranch.
  • Covey, S. R. (2004). The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change. Free Press.
  • Gino, F. (2018). Sidetracked: Why Our Decisions Get Derailed, and How We Can Stick to the Plan. Harvard Business Review Press.
  • McKeown, G. (2014). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. Crown Business.
  • Allen, D. (2015). Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. Penguin Books.
  • Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The Story of Success. Little, Brown and Company.
  • Sinek, S. (2009). Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action. Portfolio.
  • Vanderkam, L. (2016). What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast: And Two Other Short Guides to Achieving More at Work and at Home. Portfolio.

Image of Prof. Linda Burke

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

  • 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
  • Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

author

Prof. Kifaru

Verified writer

  • Expert in: Business Life

writer

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

4 pages / 1927 words

3 pages / 1208 words

2 pages / 1223 words

3 pages / 1700 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Planning

Event planning is a dynamic and essential profession that plays a significant role in the success of various types of gatherings, from corporate conferences to weddings, festivals, and fundraisers. It involves meticulous [...]

Organizing and hosting an event, whether it's a corporate conference, a charity fundraiser, a wedding, or a community gathering, is a complex undertaking that requires meticulous planning, coordination, and execution. A [...]

Emergency preparedness for mass casualty incidents in hospitals requires meticulous planning, regular training, effective coordination, and clear communication. By addressing these key components, hospitals can enhance their [...]

Financial planning links the goals a business wants to achieve in the future and the resources it will need to achieve these goals. It is also concerned with evaluating the financial resource of a business. Financial [...]

Personally, I use self-directed learning in my daily life and there are five steps of self-directed: Firstly, setting goals. Typically, I would set two types of goals: short-term goals and long-term goals. Short-term goals [...]

Target is a retail general merchandise giant, represented by its bullseye mascot, with locations in the radius of ten miles in seventy-five percent of the United States’ population. This retail giant employs approximately [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

  • Instructions Followed To The Letter
  • Deadlines Met At Every Stage
  • Unique And Plagiarism Free

roadmap to success essay

Learn these best practices for roadmap building so you can achieve even the most ambitious goals.

A crucial step in launching a new product or service is determining its ideal impact on your chosen market. Setting a clear end goal for whatever you’re launching gives your team a unified objective toward which to work. The next step is to create a high-level strategy that outlines, in broad strokes, the measures needed to make your product a reality. You’ll need to do so while minimizing miscommunications that cause delays. That’s why you should know how to build a roadmap.

Creating a product roadmap can help you avoid mishaps in the planning stage. Your map will also work as a guidepost for every phase of development up until the release date. To create an effective map, you’ll need a clear focus on the future and an uncanny ability to master task management . Keep reading for several helpful tips on how to build a roadmap for your next launch. 

What is a roadmap?

What types of roadmaps are there, why is roadmapping important.

  • What should be included in a roadmap?

9 tips on how to build a roadmap

Mistakes to avoid when building a roadmap.

A roadmap serves as an overview of how your product will impact the market, along with the milestones needed to get there. It serves an essential role in product strategy because it allows for more precise estimates on when you’ll achieve certain objectives. It also gives your team something to reference so they’ll know when to shift priorities toward a new goal. It’s basically a Gantt chart that’s also capable of holding your team members’ hands from start to finish.

roadmap to success essay

One source of truth

Always stay on track of progress and have a source of truth for decisions made and action items with a tool like Fellow!

roadmap to success essay

There isn’t one universal strategy for reaching the market. (If there were, you’d probably look just like your competition!) Each project requires a unique development plan to ensure it receives relevant input from all involved teams. That’s why there are several types of roadmaps that reflect the diversity in strategic planning. Picking the roadmap that best meets your project’s needs is essential in creating a successful product. Some of the most common roadmaps include:

  • Marketing strategy . A marketing strategy roadmap outlines the markets in which you’ll launch and promote your product. It will also show how you’ll develop your product over time to meet your customers’ needs. Hint: Actually listening to your customers as they use your product can be super helpful here!
  • Visionary. A visionary roadmap visually represents the changes happening within your industry and society at large. It indicates trends in these areas and describes how the company’s product will fit into the big picture and remain relevant despite shifting interests.
  • Technology . Technology roadmaps help companies plan future initiatives regarding their technical infrastructure. These initiatives can be narrower in scope, like when the IT team needs to roll out updates for their software. But these roadmaps also allow you to plan broader technological objectives and get a fair amount of use when creating entirely new tech.
  • Platform . Platform roadmaps outline the technical specifications needed for your product or service to run successfully. For example, Windows operating software needs hardware to run on, or else no one has any use for the product.
  • Product (internal and external) . Internal and external product maps sketch out the evolution of the product. Internal roadmaps detail development priorities among your teams, helping to get everyone on the same page. External roadmaps communicate the benefits of your product to customers, press, and analysts without getting too technical or specific 

Building a roadmap is key to your strategic planning, as it solidifies how your team will transform your product ideas into actual things. A well-built roadmap can also help your team stay focused. Its ideal final result can prove pretty motivating when you’re deep in high-intensity tasks. 

Everyone from development to marketing and even upper management will see the roadmap, which is subject to change as the product requirements evolve. Your map might help your team understand why you’ve made certain decisions along the way. 

Above all, the key takeaway here is that roadmaps show your vision and how to get there. They can drive employee engagement through meaningful shared goals. Plus, they can convince skeptical or potential stakeholders that funding your company is a worthwhile investment. Just follow your map to make good on that promise.

What should be included in a roadmap? 

The most critical components in a high-quality product roadmap include:

  • Vision . Your roadmap should address how your product will ideally affect your target market and improve the end user’s day-to-day life. It’s the why to the how .
  • Strategy. Your strategy comprises the steps that serve as your primary development guideposts. It gives your team goals to reach, spells out what you’ll need for a successful launch, and hints at the product’s potential financial benefits. 
  • Requirements . Your requirements transform customer desires, needs, and feedback into what’s necessary for a successful product. Your marketing and sales teams can help you determine these requirements. You can also speak directly with customers! Online communities and email surveys are two simple ways to reach out.
  • An overarching plan. These are the x your team should reach to make your vision a reality. The order you present them in is just as important as their actual content. After all, how can you reach a goal if you start walking in the wrong direction?
  • Metrics . A roadmap should also include relevant, real-world data available now alongside ideal long-term metric goals. These numbers can help you determine the product’s success (or lack thereof) and what features need to be updated or removed.

Whether you’re new to product management or a seasoned vet, making the most precise product roadmap possible can come with some challenges. But these obstacles are far from insurmountable! If anything, with your team at hand, you can overcome your challenges and create a roadmap that starts improving your processes right here and now. Start with the below nine tips on how to build a roadmap.

  • Choose the type of roadmap
  • Share your “why”  
  • Tailor your roadmap to your audience
  • Prioritize the right themes 
  • Stay flexible 
  • Use the right roadmapping tool 
  • Make the roadmap clear and compelling
  • Assign broad timeframes for milestones
  • Gather and utilize feedback

1 Choose the type of roadmap that best serves your needs

As mentioned previously, several different types of roadmaps exist. Each one displays different information – for example, marketing strategy roadmaps focus on the market impact of the product. On the other hand, a visionary roadmap helps you shape your business strategy on how a product might fit the big picture. Your choice of roadmap should reflect your target audience rather than your products or services. 

2 Share your “why” 

Ask yourself: Why are you building this product, for this market, at this time? It’s a question that drives a large part of the product development process, and you should discuss it with your team before putting anything in writing. Articulating your product’s impact on a particular market – with thorough research behind your statements – can help stakeholders see why your company is a worthwhile investment. It can also help you make a more powerful impact on customers when you go to market.

3 Tailor your roadmap to your audience

A roadmap is shared with internal teams and the general public. Don’t conflate having multiple audiences, though, for needing solely one roadmap. Developers, stakeholders, and the public have different expectations for how a product will perform upon release. A one-size-fits-all approach offers only the bare minimum of information to all parties involved.

For best results, create a development roadmap that focuses on how building the product will affect your team’s day-to-day responsibilities. Then, make a roadmap that demonstrates trends in the market and how they portend financial success. Finally, create a simplified roadmap for your consumer base that shows how your product will benefit their lives as the product evolves.

4 Prioritize the right themes 

There are many aspects to consider when developing a product strategy. For example, as you build a product roadmap, including every little thing can make for a cluttered document that does more harm than good. Try using themes to better organize information within a product roadmap and improve your decision-making during the creation process. 

Themes are the main strategic objectives you hope to achieve with your product or service. After determining your themes, you can further break them down into “epics” (yes, epics ) that detail the work needed to accomplish a goal. 

5 Stay flexible 

Roadmaps can change over time based on several factors. Your access to resources can fluctuate, a competitor can release a similar product – the list goes on. That’s why, when you build a product roadmap, you should leave room to accommodate sudden changes. This way, you can be proactive, not reactive – and nobody likes having to deal with a problem they could’ve solved ages ago.

6 Use the right roadmapping tool 

Several roadmapping software programs expedite the creation of high-quality roadmaps. The features of this specialized software include:

  • Enhanced visualization . Using a roadmapping tool gives you greater control over your map’s visual style and organization. Most roadmap programs come with various fonts, colors, and graphic templates to help you make something visually appealing that keeps the information clear. 
  • Extensive detailing. Roadmapping programs can typically cater to multiple levels of detail so you can include or exclude certain information depending on the audience. You can tweak your roadmap in real-time to provide relevant data to your team, your stakeholders, and other strategic partners.
  • Increased shareability . Roadmapping tools make sharing information with relevant parties more manageable. Simply share the roadmap like you would any other file and voila – everyone who needs it should have it! 

7 Make the roadmap clear and compelling 

A roadmap’s primary purpose is to provide information on the company’s product strategy and the stages necessary to stay on track . Sounds kind of dry and uninteresting, right? Well, it doesn’t have to be – and your strategic partners and stakeholders certainly engage more when things are clear and compelling. Making your roadmap stand out as such involves prioritizing the use of interesting visuals and riveting copy. One idea on the latter front: Pretend you’re writing this blog instead of a rigid internal document. 

8 Assign broad timeframes for milestones

Committing your team to hard deadlines might not leave much room for adjustments or unexpected innovations. As a result, your service or product might reach its release date with serious bugs or errors that you could have avoided with proper testing. Instead, set broader timeframes or omit deadlines altogether. (Or at least save deadlines for your project management software, not your roadmap.) This way, your team can work at an optimal pace and increase their chances of releasing a great product.  

9 Gather and utilize feedback

Your job isn’t done after a product’s release date. Your product or service can continue to evolve after its initial release based on feedback from your consumer base. After all, a roadmap is fundamentally liable to change as your product goals shift, and public opinion might be your single greatest selling factor. So engage with your customer support and sales teams – or directly with your customers – to identify what to bring back to the drawing board.

The paramount importance of roadmaps means that any mistakes or poor wording can easily halt forward momentum. Don’t be that person – avoid this trap by getting to know the below common oversights with product roadmaps.

  • Not making your plan front and center 
  • Failing to include evidence that supports your plan
  • Including dates too far out on your roadmap
  • Not accounting for items left out of the roadmap

1 Not making your plan front and center 

The basis for the themes included in your roadmap may seem obvious when you’re writing them. But the human mind is fickle – knowing your themes well now doesn’t mean you’ll remember them in the long term. And that’s a shame: You and your team will constantly refer back to the roadmap throughout the development process. So state the reasoning behind your strategic goals now. That way, your roadmap remains an efficient tool for driving more efficient development.

2 Failing to include evidence that supports your plan

Having goals and the reasoning behind them on the roadmap is an excellent first step, but you’ll need to support your conclusion. After all, one of the primary reasons to make a roadmap is to build faith in what you’re making. Sure, stakeholders might see the motives behind your goals, but motives are different from evidence of potential success. The former means much less without the latter.

3 Including dates too far out on your roadmap 

Never assume your team will follow your roadmap to the letter. Roadmaps are too flexible and broad for that! Priorities and resources can shift many times during the typical development cycle, and setting firm dates doesn’t support your team’s ability to adjust. So if you do include dates within your roadmap, make sure they’re broad enough to accommodate unforeseen changes. A Q4 target allows much more flexibility than an exact date.  

4 Not accounting for items left out of the roadmap

A good roadmap is clear and appealing enough to keep one’s attention. Losing focus, though, can be inevitable in a document too jam-packed with information. Some product features or services will inevitably need to be excluded to keep things clear. 

At the same time, ignoring these items altogether is less than ideal because someone might question why you excluded a particular item. That’s why you should proactively explain why certain things didn’t make the cut. It won’t make everyone happy, but it does show that each topic was given fair consideration. Overall, it’ll make for better meetings.

The roadmap to success

Knowing how to build a high-quality roadmap can make several disparate teams work like a well-oiled machine as they move toward the same goal. You’ll find that, when stakeholders support your efforts and your team has clear guidance, the quality of the final product improves. That’s even more true when you throw strategic meetings into the mix, especially with Fellow at hand. With Fellow’s meeting agenda , execution, and follow-up tools, all your ideas will become steps on your roadmap before you know it.

Related stories

How to Welcome New Employees: A Guide for Leaders and Executive Teams 8 min read

Stakeholder Management Strategies for Better Relationships 6 min read

Is the MOCHA Project Management Model Right for Your Team? 7 min read

Keep Reading

Roadmap Meeting: Everything You Should Know + Helpful Tips

Roadmap Meeting: Everything You Should Know + Helpful Tips

The 4 C’s of Effective Technical Documentation

The 4 C’s of Effective Technical Documentation

The 5/25 Rule: How to Apply It [+ Example]

The 5/25 Rule: How to Apply It [+ Example]

Operations Goals vs. Strategy Goals: How to Set Each + Examples

Operations Goals vs. Strategy Goals: How to Set Each + Examples

Vision Meetings: The Ultimate Guide (+Tips)

Vision Meetings: The Ultimate Guide (+Tips)

The Ultimate Guide to Collaborative Decision Making

The Ultimate Guide to Collaborative Decision Making

7 Ways to Achieve Company Goals and Objectives

7 Ways to Achieve Company Goals and Objectives

27 Workplace Buzzwords You Need in Your Next Meeting

27 Workplace Buzzwords You Need in Your Next Meeting

Strategy Meeting: A Guide For A Planning Session

Strategy Meeting: A Guide For A Planning Session

Free meeting templates.

PI Planning Meeting Template

PI Planning Meeting Template

Strategic Planning Meeting Template

Strategic Planning Meeting Template

Executive Meeting Agenda Template: Structure & Format

Executive Meeting Agenda Template: Structure & Format

All-Hands Meeting Agenda Template

All-Hands Meeting Agenda Template

Quarterly Planning Meeting Template

Quarterly Planning Meeting Template

SWOT Analysis Meeting Template

SWOT Analysis Meeting Template

Monthly Leadership Meeting Agenda Template

Monthly Leadership Meeting Agenda Template

Social Media Strategic Planning Meeting Template

Social Media Strategic Planning Meeting Template

Agile Project Kick-Off Meeting Template

Agile Project Kick-Off Meeting Template

See how leaders in 100+ countries are making meetings more productive and delightful.

Say goodbye to unproductive meetings. Fellow helps your team build great meeting habits through collaborative agendas, real-time notetaking, and time-saving templates.

End every meeting knowing who is doing what by when. Assign, organize, and prioritize all your meeting action items in one place.

Give and get feedback as work happens. Request and track real-time feedback on meetings, recent projects, and performance.

uber

IMAGES

  1. My roadmap to success

    roadmap to success essay

  2. The 6 Steps to Roadmapping

    roadmap to success essay

  3. Roadmap To Success

    roadmap to success essay

  4. THE 5 PARAGRAPH ESSAY ROADMAP TO SUCCESS Before

    roadmap to success essay

  5. NAS Plan Roadmap for Success

    roadmap to success essay

  6. My Road to Success Essay (300 Words)

    roadmap to success essay

VIDEO

  1. Roadmap to Success

  2. Roadmap to Success

  3. Beginner's Roadmap to Success in Coordinate Gaming

  4. Academic Essay Tips: First Roadmap Point

  5. Roadmap to Success

  6. Academic Essay Tips: Roadmap Points

COMMENTS

  1. What the Road to Success Actually Looks Like in Reality

    In considering the road to success, one has to first come to understand that failure is a part of the equation. It is through our failures and miscues that we learn lessons about life and the pursuit of betterment within that life. Each time we are knocked down by the circumstances of life, we have an important decision to make.

  2. Roadmap to success essay

    Roadmap to success essay My first semester is half way over and I've definitely learned a lot in this short amount of time! There've been lots of fun experiences and some not so great ones too. Before February 2022, I had no clue I'd be going to Texas Tech. One of my closest friends, Layla, had been trying to convince me all fall and kept ...

  3. What The Road to Success Actually Looks Like

    The road map to being successful is not easy in life and the obstacle are harder than a person can imagine to reach a person maximum potential in life. The difference between disappointment and being successful is not giving up on the challenges, but rather, the drive to overcome them. ... Extended Definition: Success Essay. Success is a ...

  4. My Road to Success Essay (300 Words)

    My Road to Success Essay. My Road to Success Many people believe that natural ability is of pivotal importance for success while others argue that hard work is the key factor. However, the person, who has a gift of ability but lack of experience gains from hard-working, may not succeed. In my opinion hard work is still more important as it ...

  5. How to Create Your Road Map to Success (A Step-By-Step Guide)

    As your head hits the pillow and before you close your eyes, what's most important is that you can internalize that you have chosen your definition of success and you can full responsibility and accountability for deciding upon it. 2. Review Your Progress and Satisfaction in Life. Review the main areas of your life.

  6. How to Become Successful in Life: [Essay Example], 842 words

    Thus, the roadmap to success is one of continuous exploration, learning, and growth, a journey that is as individual as it is universal, painting a rich tapestry of human endeavor and spirit. ... A Man's Struggle To Achieve Success Essay. Life is a struggle for single father Chris Gardner in 1981, San Francisco. ...

  7. Essay on The Road to Success

    The Road to Success Success does not come easy. It takes hard work and dedication. I learned this from my parents. These hard-working people taught me the many ups and downs of life. They showed me that when opportunity arises to succeed, you take it with full pride. Throughout my whole life, I have seen my parents work hard, even if they are ...

  8. Education: The Key to Success: [Essay Example], 552 words

    Conclusion. In conclusion, education is undeniably the key to success, both at the individual and societal levels. It empowers individuals to achieve their goals, fosters innovation and progress, and contributes to the betterment of society. As societies continue to evolve and face new challenges, the value of education as a transformative ...

  9. Essay on Success in 100,150 and 200 Words: The Power of Positive Mindset

    Essay on Success in 100 Words. Success is the culmination of dedication, hard work, and determination. It is not merely the achievement of material wealth, but the fulfilment of one's goals and aspirations. Success varies from person to person; for some, it's a thriving career, while for others, it could be having a harmonious family life.

  10. Essay on How to Achieve Success in Life

    250 Words Essay on How to Achieve Success in Life ... This essay aims to provide a roadmap on how to achieve success in life. Setting Clear Goals. The first step towards achieving success is setting clear, tangible goals. Goals serve as a roadmap, helping one to remain focused and motivated. To make your goals effective, they should be SMART ...

  11. How to plan a winning essay

    Essay planning step 2: Brainstorming or freewriting. Once you know how many ideas you need, the next step is writing down what you know (and what you still have to find out). There are many ways that this can be achieved. You can either create a mind map, or just write out all your ideas on a piece of paper.

  12. 7 Steps

    7. Review, Revise, Adapt, Pivot. As you pursue your long-term goals, you may come to realize that your plans will change slightly. For example, one of my students started out with the plan to create a specific type of online business for himself.

  13. The Path To Success Essay

    The Path To Success Essay. Decent Essays. 536 Words. 3 Pages. Open Document. The path to success There are several qualities to have to be successful in college. These qualities can range from attending class to going above and beyond what's expected. Success comes from the journey taken or the path chosen. Success also comes from being prepared.

  14. PDF Creating a Roadmap

    Creating a roadmap of your dissertation early in the process can help you sort out what will be included in the final document and also where each piece might fit in relation to other pieces. The roadmap can help you in several ways as you draft the document: It can help you clarify your thinking about the topic.

  15. 9E Lord of the Flies

    Context: You must formally introduce the text, provide a short overview of the book and connect this to the topic. You need to include the author's full name - William Golding and the text - Lord of the Flies (underline the title when handwriting an essay) Miss Gladman's Example: William Golding's allegorical novel, Lord of the Flies, explores the dark side of human nature, depicting a ...

  16. Roadmaps

    Starting off with a specialized roadmap maker application like Office Timeline can save you hours of work, allowing you to focus on the project specifics rather than graphic design. Here are the basic steps for creating a roadmap: Define the timeline and project phases. List the tasks, milestones, and dependencies.

  17. Essay on Success: Top 8 Essays on Success

    Essay on Success: Education is the Road to Success - Essay 6 (650 Words) Introduction. Saying education is the road to success is just another way of saying education is very important for all of us in life, without education there would not be a lot of progression in both our individual and collective lives as human.

  18. Success Essay for Students in English

    Short Essay on Success for Students and Children. Success is achieved by those people who work harder every day and manage their time properly. Students should understand the importance of time management. Managing time properly is the key to success. Loss of time is considered to be a loss of opportunities.

  19. Planning

    Planning - is The Road to Success. Planning is probably the most important element of any successful business venture, and it should be taken very seriously. A solid plan will help you to organize your goals and ambitions, and you can then break them down into a plan that will work for you. You need to know the different factors that need to be ...

  20. How To Build A Roadmap: A Guide of Examples and Tips

    Then, make a roadmap that demonstrates trends in the market and how they portend financial success. Finally, create a simplified roadmap for your consumer base that shows how your product will benefit their lives as the product evolves. 4 Prioritize the right themes . There are many aspects to consider when developing a product strategy.

  21. The Road To Success Essay Speech Example

    The heart that is the building block of the road we are to hit, the road to success. The eminent book writer, Paulo Cello once said, "Listen to your heart. It knows all things, because It came from the soul of the world, It will always guide you on the right track". Now allow me to introduce to your knowledge a new well-guaranteed strategy that ...

  22. My Road to Success Essay

    My Road to Success Essay. Many people believe that natural ability is of pivotal importance for success while others argue that hard work is the key factor. However, the person, who has a gift of ability but lack of experience gains from hard-working, may not succeed. In my opinion hard work is still more important as it helps us to attain the ...

  23. Free Essay: My Roadmap to Success

    These things are very important to me in my quest for a joyful life. Lastly, earning my bachelor's Degree will provide a sense of self-gratification. I went away to college right after high school. I dropped out after a year because I wasn't mature or focused enough on the benefits of receiving a degree.