Recruiters’ Jenny Darmody advises treating yourself with kindness to help make the most of your career goals this year.
While the start of the year is a great time to set some goals, it’s important not to beat yourself up for not starting on the very first day of the year. In fact, you can set career goals at any time of the year because once your goals have their own timelines, that’s all that matters.
When it comes to moving forward in your career, setting your own personal goals is key. Promotions and salary increases are great, but you shouldn’t wait around for external factors to determine your career path. On the flip side, you can’t just set yourself a bunch of vague goals such as ‘be more productive’ and hope for the best. So, how do you set career goals in such a way that they really will help progress your career?
Jenny Darmody. Image: Recruiters.ie
1. Self-reflect
Before you start setting new goals, it’s important to reflect on what you’ve already achieved. If you’re looking at goals for 2020, take a look at what last year was like for you. What did you achieve in that time? Did you acquire any new skills or break new boundaries?
It’s important to give yourself the praise you deserve for the things you have achieved as these might help build some new goals. For example, are there targets you achieved that you’re hoping to surpass in the next year?
Once you’ve figured out how you can expand on each of last year’s goals, you can look at where the gaps were. What did you not get around to last year? What’s missing from your list of achievements? How can you add them to this year’s plan?
2. Challenge yourself a little
Your goals should be a stretch for you. They should be realistic and achievable for sure, but they shouldn’t be too easy. Your goals should challenge you in a healthy way. If you achieved something last year, think about how you can push that a bit further.
Equally, don’t take on too much in one go. If you push every boundary to its limit, will it be that little bit too far to achieve them all? Perhaps one of your goals should be to maintain the same level in one metric, while introducing a whole host of new ones. That in itself is a stretch.
Only you will know what’s a doable stretch and what is completely unrealistic, but it’s important to evaluate each goal and know why you’ve set it. Question the motivation and purpose behind each goal before you set it in stone and, once you know that, you’ll need to make sure it’s realistic to reach it, which brings us onto our next point.
3. Make SMART goals
SMART stands for: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. So, when setting goals, you need to ask yourself those five questions.
Is your goal specific enough? This means your goal shouldn’t just be ‘learn how to code’ or ‘grow my email audience’. It has to go into detail about how you’re going to learn to code, what programming language you might learn and what you hope to achieve out of it, or growing your email audience by how much, in what timeframe and how?
Your goals should also be measurable, attainable and realistic. This means you should be able to track your goals in some way, be it with a checklist or through actual metrics. You also have to make sure it is actually possible to achieve the goal within your set timeline to avoid any disappointment.
Finally, your goals should be timely. Each one should have a realistic timeline and deadline attached to it, to help hold you accountable and to make sure you hit certain targets at certain times. This helps to avoid the dreaded ‘New Year resolution flop’, where you set goals with a vague end-of-the-year deadline and are left disappointed that you didn’t do anything or even think about them until November.
4. Seek help when necessary
Some of your goals will need support and it’s important to recognise this from the outset. Do you need extra help developing new skills? Do you need flexibility to attend courses? Always remember that you can ask for help and support in achieving your goals. Your employer should want you to progress and develop so supporting you on that journey will be in their interest.
It’s important to ask for help when you need it, but it’s even better if you’ve thought about what help you might need in advance. That means you can be prepared for certain situations when you will need support and if the people you need help from already know they will be needed, they will be ready and willing to help.
5. Regularly check in
Make sure to set aside some time at various intervals to review and re-evaluate your goals. It’s important that you can be flexible with them as you never know what kind of curve ball you might be thrown.
Being flexible does not mean giving yourself a licence to give up halfway through – that’s what the timely deadlines are for. However, it does mean reflecting on your goals at regular stages to see if they’re still achievable in the way you had originally set them. Are you on track? If you’re not, is it because of external factors and do you need to adjust your expectations?
Allowing some flexibility not only gives you the breathing room for unexpected occurrences, but it also means you can make room for goals that you had not originally thought of and now want to add to your plan. It may even mean swapping one goal for another. After all, it’s your plan, so you can make the rules.
6. Be kind to yourself
When setting your goals for the year, it’s important to always treat yourself with kindness. The purpose of ensuring all of your goals are SMART is to avoid goals that are too vague, unrealistic and unattainable, all of which should manage your expectations.
However, it’s important to remember that goals should be a challenge and aspirational. That means you may not reach them all, and that’s OK. Don’t be too hard on yourself when it comes to succeeding. Setting achievable goals to progress your career is an achievement in itself and any shortcomings can be learned from and added to a much bigger career development plan.
Jenny Darmody is the growth editor at Recruiters. A version of this article originally appeared on Recruiters.ie.
