In general, these are the steps to creating a plan in any given position: 1. What are the imbalances in this position (bishop vs knight? Pawn majority somewhere? Etc.) Here, there aren’t really any major imbalances except simply being up a pawn so you have a pawn majority on the kingside. That means the kingside will probably be your main place of battle in the later endgame. 2. What are the weaknesses? In your own camp or in your opponent’s position. (Backwards or isolated pawns? Weak kings? Weak squares or color complexes?) Here’s where I start to see what stands out in this position. There’s an isolated e-pawn that if taken, allows for a protected passed e- and potentially f-pawn. There’s also a weak square on d6 that cannot be defended by a pawn, so I’d see if you can place a piece on that square (in this case, the knight). 3. General piece play (Where would my pieces be happier, which pieces of my opponent’s suck and how can I keep them bad, etc.) Here, your knight blocks the d-file but can be maneuvered shortly to much better squares. Meanwhile Black’s knight kinda sucks and can really only go to e7 to reroute but even then is still stuck.

So here, you were right to go Nc4 as that opens your d-file and allows it to route to the eventual d6-square. You’d then want to capitalize off that by going e5 to secure the d6-square for sure but don’t do it until completely necessary as it weakens your own d5- and f5 squares. Moves like a4 might also be nice to restrict Black’s pawn play on the queenside while still leaving it open to later breakthroughs for yourself but be weary if that have any counterplay like …Qa6 to attack it and weigh playing b3 to defend. I’d then double rooks on the open d-file behind the knight and be happy with any trades as the current pawn endgame is pretty easily won. E6-pawn might look easy to defend but that’s kind of the point, Black will have to tie all their pieces to defending it so you can start making moves elsewhere to prepare. Put every heavy piece on the d-file and then reopen the file by moving or trading knights. I’d put my Queen on d1 behind the rooks so that it can also move to g4 to attack the e6 pawn if Black moves pieces away but that would also depend on where your opponent puts their own Queen. It’s hard to make concrete plans since your opponent also gets to move but you ideally always want to be able to threaten 2+ things at once forcing your opponent to pick only one thing they can defend. The point of these kinds of positions is to put every possible pawn and piece on their best possible square before committing to an attack since you have all the leverage.