How can I set goals for my career?

How to Set Career Goals & Objectives

• Answer:

  Setting goals is an essential way to give yourself direction and purpose in your work life, and to monitor your progress along the way. Whether your goals involve earnings, the acquisition of new skills, the opportunity to travel, the achievement of status or more control over your own hours, you must be honest with yourself about what they are, and consistent about working towards them. Difficulty: Moderately Challenging Instructions Create a document on your computer or if you prefer, designate a notebook to keep your goals. Whether it's on paper or electronic, you should have a place where you can actually write down your goals. Be prepared for this to be an ever-changing, constantly evolving document too -- once you begin to set career goals, you should regard it as an ongoing process. Set aside 15 minutes of your day, and brainstorm your goals, writing them down as you go. Remember that what you're creating will be a private document, so don't be afraid to write down whatever comes to you even if it seems ridiculously small, or so big it's unachievable. Learn the SMART system, as a way to evaluate and refine your goals. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Results-focused and Time-bound. Go through each of the goals you wrote down in your brainstorming session, and apply the SMART parameters. Work on refining the wording of each goal until you can truly say that you have come up with a way to make it measurable and achievable within a set time-limit. This can be done even with seemingly vague or aspirational goals. For example, if one of your brainstormed goals is to retire early, you can quantify that by researching just how much money you need to save by a certain age to maintain your lifestyle. Prioritize your goals. You will probably have come up with some goals that are achievable within a few weeks or months. Work on those first to give yourself a sense of forward motion. This will make your larger goals seem not so far out of reach. Create a short-term bullet-pointed action plan extrapolated from your private goal document you can post somewhere visible. This should contain specific practical tasks that will carry you towards one or more of your goals. For instance, if one of your long-term goals is to gain more recognition at work, this might lead to a short-term action plan item to submit your latest project for an award competition by a particular deadline. Tips & Warnings Tip: As you work through your short-term "action" lists, check back with your goals document, and update it. Use it to create new action lists to continue your forward momentum. You should set aside a short amount of time for this each week. Think of it as career maintenance. Warning: Don't forget that over time, as you mature and your career changes, your own personal goals may shift. Where once you wanted to maximize your earnings, you may now want to limit your working hours. Don't be afraid to drastically revise your goal document if it no longer reflects your personal desires.