When you’re busy with work, maintaining a social life and hobbies outside of work, it can be difficult and time-consuming to step back and decide whether or not what you’re doing is helping you work towards your overall career dreams. However, a new year is a perfect time to set goals and begin working towards them.

Here, we will look at short term career goals vs long term career goals and how to establish a path that will help you achieve your dreams sooner.

Realistic vs unrealistic goals

When you’re setting goals, you should be ambitious but approach with realism. You would’ve heard the old saying, ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’. The same goes for career goals. 

If you want to achieve your goals, make sure that you’re working within your limitations. If a certain role you’re aiming for requires a higher education qualification that you don’t hold, investigate how you could realistically achieve that rather than just applying and hoping for the best.

Short term vs long term career goals

Alongside setting realistic goals, you should also make them time orientated. Short term career goals can help you reach milestones on the way to achieving your long term career goals.

That’s why it’s so important to establish and focus on the short term, to begin with. For example, if your long term goal is to become a manager in your organisation, your short term goals might be gaining experience working with and managing people or undertaking management training. 

Once you’ve decided on a long term end goal, you can break this down into smaller tasks that will help you move closer and closer to your end goal. 

Your achievement plan

So, where do you start when it comes to achieving your career goals? A good first step is to write them down. This can help you to solidify them in your mind and can provide you with a definitive focus. 

You should also share your plan with others – perhaps not with everyone you work with, but a few select people who can encourage you and keep you accountable.

Don’t be afraid to dream

The final state of beginning your career goal journey is to visualise your success. While your goal should be realistic, this doesn’t mean you can’t dream a little and visualise what it will look like and how things will be once you have achieved your end goal. How will your life change, what will you do with your success? How will you feel? This kind of visualisation can make the end goal feel more real and achievable and encourage you to push forward.

Are you ready to make 2022 your year? With this goal-orientated approach, you should be well on your way to achieving exactly what you want.

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