Steps to Set Your Career Goals

How to set career goals that turn to reality? Tips to help you get to your dreams

Close your eyes and think about where you want to find yourself in the next five or ten years. Do you see yourselves sitting at the same desk, or do you see yourself being promoted? Now, ask yourself, are you doing enough to reach where you want to? What more can you do? Do you have a plan?

Most people lack a plan, due to which their careers become stagnant after a while. Keeping career goals challenges your brain to achieve more, and gives a feeling of novelty. This feeling of novelty will make you want to jump out of bed every day. 

Now how do you achieve this novelty? The most important step is to fall in love with boredom. While setting goals is important, it is also critical that you do not chase unrealistic goals in a short time period. 

It is also important that you ask yourselves the right questions and embed your answers to your career goals

1. Be accountable to yourself

It is human to accuse the circumstances or anyone other than you if something goes wrong. It’s never too early or late to start working toward your goals. But make sure that you confess to yourself that something went wrong because of you, and do not pin that on someone to save yourself from blame. Being accountable to yourself can help you understand your flaws and

2. Create short-term goals

Have you ever taken a new year’s resolution to decrease your screen time and eventually ended up increasing it manifold? Ever wondered how that happened? It usually happens because you put too much pressure on yourself. Taking tiny steps can go a long way in fulfilling your goals rather than having an unrealistic one. Thinking about how much you do in a week as against a year can help bring you closer to your career goals

3. Make your goals challenging

Your goals should be something that makes you jump out of bed. It shouldn’t be something very mundane or something easily achievable. Your goals should be the reason that you love every Monday. Hence make sure that whatever your goal is, it remains relevant to you and is not a passing phase in your life. It should be significant to you all through your life.

4. Be specific about what you want.

Your goal shouldn’t be to make money. You must be specific about your goals and what you plan to achieve in the near future. Aim for what you actually want, write it down on a piece of paper, and remind yourself about it every time you have a bad day at work

5. Reward yourself

The human mind works much better when you reward it. We are all wired to a complex work-reward system. That is, if you treat yourself to a little reward following every small victory you make, your brain will motivate you to work harder than before.

6. Visualise your goal

Close your eyes and picture yourself after you have achieved your career goal. Take a moment and comprehend what it means to achieve your goal. Visualize this every time you are going through a rough patch in your life, and tell yourself why you are putting yourself through the hardship

7. Focus

It goes without saying that to achieve your career goals, you have to be focused on your destination and let go of everything that interferes with your will to work hard. The first step to concentrating on your goal is understanding the disturbances that break your focus. Then find the best ways to overcome them

8. Avoid procrastination

Procrastination is an evil that we are all victims of. The problem with procrastination is that it feels so good, while it is detrimental to your mental and physical health. Avoiding procrastination and getting your work done in time can go a long way in helping you set your career goals

9. Setting Deadlines

If you don’t set deadlines, then your goal is to go on lagging for a long time. Hence ensure that you set realistic deadlines to get to your destination on time. Setting realistic deadlines and micro goals can go a long way in ensuring you do not lose focus. On the contrary, unrealistic goals can cause you to be stressed and depressed. 

10. Find someone with a similar goal.

Having a “goal partner” can encourage you to try harder because now you have someone with a similar goal working hard alongside you. Having a good goal partner can give you a healthy competition and encourage yourself to reach your goal quicker. 

Trying to set career goals? Looking for a career change? Mentoria Assessment test can help you identify your aptitude after which, we will walk you down the aisle to the career that is best suited for you.