How To Max Your Career Goals For 2018!

The new year marks a fresh start and many people make resolutions to suit. You might wish to be more active, eat more healthily or read more books. Then again, it may be time to re-evaluate your career goals too.

Here are five steps to take when setting career goals for 2018.

Review last year’s goals

To help identify your goals for this year, start by looking at last year’s. Did you succeed in reaching them? Are they still ongoing? Or did you give up halfway through the year?

Decide whether you want to continue with any of last year’s goals. If so, what are you going to do differently to ensure you reach them? If you didn’t have any set goals last year then don’t worry; you can start afresh this year.

Set realistic goals

When you set your goals be clear, realistic and set an achievable time frame. A good way to do this is by setting SMART goals.

SMART is an acronym that stands for…

• Specific – simple, sensible, significant.
• Measurable – meaningful, motivating.
• Achievable – agreed, attainable.
• Relevant – reasonable, realistic and results-based.
• Time bound – time-based, time limited.

By using SMART you will be able to create more clear, attainable and meaningful goals. It will also help you create a action plan and have the motivation to actually stick to it.

Consistency is key

When you create an action plan to achieve your goals, ensure that you stick to it. If you’re not consistent when working towards goals then this will show in your results.

Whether you’ve got daily, weekly or monthly tasks to reach your goals, it’s important to keep the momentum going. Hopefully once you start it will become imbedded into your routine.

Remember: if you don’t keep the work up then you won’t reach your goals. When you feel like giving up, ask yourself how important this goal is to you.

Create a vision board

This is a great way to actually visualise your goals and see them every day. It’s also a cool way to be more creative with your goal setting. You can write down all your goals and the dates you want to achieve them by.

Print out photos which reflect your end goal so you can actually see where you’re heading. For example, if one of your goals is to write and publish a book, why not create the front cover of your book with your name on the cover as the author? This way you can see where you’re heading and why you’re putting all the hard work in to reach there.

You can put your vision board wherever you want, but ideally it needs to be somewhere you will see it morning and night.

Create a review system

To help keep you on top of your goals as the year goes along, it’s a good idea to review where you’re at every three months. There may be times when you have to readjust your plans; by reviewing your goals throughout the year, you can adapt them accordingly.

One thing to always keep in mind is that when it comes to your goals, always be true to yourself. At the end of the day if your goals don’t mean something to you then what’s the point? Especially when they’re career-related as it’s YOU who will be doing the work day in, day out.

Good luck with smashing them goals!

Haleema Khokhar (or Kimi to friends) is a journalism graduate working as a Freelance Content Writer. When she’s not writing she loves to dance and has a passion for fashion. She adores all animals and if she weren’t a writer she would have become a vet. Check out her website at myimpressiononline.com and give it a follow on Twitter at @MyImpression. Also pop by her personal Twitter and say hello at @KimiKhokhar.

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