Short Long Term Career Goals

Short Long Term Career Goals It’s November and we just entered the last two months of the year. It’s time to reflect on our career goals for the year (remember setting your 2012 Career Management goals?) and see how successful you have been thus far. Regardless of how successful youve been with accomplishing your career goals, it is NOT too late to make a change before the beginning of 2012! Consider taking the following actions: Re-assess your goals. Are they still relevant? The goals that seemed important in January, may no longer be of interest. If so, make them relevant and actionable. Measure your attainment. If you didnt accomplish all of your goals then be honest with yourself in answering to this question: why didn’t you take action on your goals? Did you lack the time? Did you lack the drive? Did you prioritize them lower than other items you needed to accomplish? Then answer the following question: how will I work on them this time around? At this stage, you need to schedule specific time each week to work on these goals. Evaluate your goals. Are they broken down into manageable tasks? For example, if your goal is to find a new career, identify ways you are going to achieve that goal. If your goals are not broken down into tasks, it is easy to become overwhelmed with the thought of accomplishing them. Finding a new job or career takes many steps so start listing specific steps for each goal. Prioritize your task list. What are the most important tasks for you to accomplish? How quickly do you want to achieve them? Since there are only two months left, schedule specific due dates for each goal. Take action. Start with one task and complete it, then move to the next. Will you achieve your goals by the end of 2012 as you had planned? Maybe. Maybe not. It depends on your goals. Oftentimes, the hardest part to achieving a goal is getting started. If you know you cant achieve your career goal by the end of the year, at least get started on it. Taking action now, will create momentum so you can be well on your way to achieving both your career goals, both short term and long term, by the end of next year.