It’s never too early to start thinking about your goals. As summer begins to wind down we should start thinking about finishing this year strong and also looking ahead to 2023. Too often, IT Professionals don’t create career goals to help them develop a career roadmap. In this post, I talk about the Goal Setting process I use for setting Career Goals!
With 2021 wrapping up. It’s time to start looking towards the new year and what goals you would want to accomplish in 2022. Maybe you want to start a business, lose weight, or get out of debt.. This can be an exciting time of year to create your goals and have a plan for the next year. Allowing you to hit the ground running before the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Day. So let’s get started.
Yearly Review
Before we start making goals for the upcoming year. Let’s first assess how we did in 2021. If you made goals last year this will be a beneficial exercise to get those out.
Here are some questions to ask and it’s important to be as honest as possible.
- How did you do?
- Where did you fall short?
- What can you do better?
If you are behind or feel short on any of your goals. The year isn’t over yet. Use that to get back on track and end the year strong!
If you didn’t have any specific goals for this year. I still think it’s good to review the year by asking this one simple question and writing down your answers on a piece of paper.
What did I accomplish last year?
Don’t sell yourself short. It doesn’t matter the size or the number of the accomplishments. Too often we focus on the big things but we forget life and success is about small incremental improvements.
What are the Benefits of Goals?
“A goal is a dream with a deadline” – Napoleon Hill
Goals force you to start looking at your life and asking bigger questions. What do you want? What are your passions? What matters most? Why am I put on this planet?
Without goals, you become a victim of life by letting other people’s priorities, circumstances, and events dictate your life.
How do you create Goals?
There is a simple and proven strategy for goal-setting. It’s been around for a very long time because it works. It’s called SMART goals. The SMART in SMART goals is an acronym that stands for – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. A SMART goal is a framework that you should follow when creating goals. Let’s break down.
Specific:
This is the who, what, when, where, and why of a goal-setting. When creating specific goals that need to be clearly defined so we know what we are trying to accomplish.
Measurable:
How do you measure your results? How do you know when you have accomplished the goal? This is very important to know how to measure success. If your goal isn’t measurable, how will you know that it’s been accomplished? People tend to struggle in this area because not all goals are easy to measure.
Achievable:
You want your goal to be realistic. If it’s too difficult and not believable you will get discouraged and quit. You don’t want the goal to be too easy or you won’t benefit from the personal growth aspect of achieving a goal. You want something that will make you uncomfortable and stretch your abilities.
Relevant:
Does this goal really matter to you? Will it have a big impact? Does it align with your values? Will it make you happy?
This has a lot to do with motivation. Lack of motivation is the number one reason why I have struggled to achieve certain goals. That is why it’s really important to only choose a goal that is important to you:
Time-bound:
Your goal needs a deadline. Try to make it realistic. Don’t get stuck here. If all else fails, go with an estimate and adjust later.
For me, it helps if I break my goal into smaller projects and tasks. Then it’s easier for me to estimate how long it will realistically take to accomplish.
Here is an example of a SMART goal.
I will weigh 190lbs with 9% Body Fat by January 1st, 2023
I will be completely debt-free by June 1st, 2022
I will have a Net Worth of 1 Million Dollars by March 1st, 2025
Conclusion
Now that we have a solid foundation on how to create goals. Start creating your goals for 2022 and make sure they follow the SMART goal framework. Creating goals is only the first half of the equation. In my next blog post. I’ll talk about how to create a process to help you achieve your goals in 2022.
