Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Setting Goals That Work for You

I have been working in the field of Career Development for the past 7 years and the number one question that I find so hard for my clients to answer is “What kind of position are you looking for?” When still working within non-profits and social service agencies I’d often get the answer “I’ll do anything”. Which most times turned out not to be the case. Now that I work at a college I get a more generic answer, "anything within a corporate fashion office" or "marketing", "anything in fashion except retail". It’s very had to create a strategic plan for accomplishing these goals when the goal itself is still fuzzy.

                                      Image:freedigitalphotos.net ("Business Success" by renjith krishnan)
Setting clear goals with dates is one of the keys to being productive. Even before we are clear on what we need to do in order to make our dream a reality we need to define the dream. I think some of the most productive times in my life have been when I had to set clear 3 month goals in every area of my life, including, relationships, career, finance, community and personal development. I know that even if I could consistently set goals in 2 or 3 of those areas I would be on my way to manifesting big dreams within my life.

I personally have overall goals and then I break each of these goals down into mini projects with dates. This too has been exceptionally helpful when I had deadlines to make and events to plan. I think when looking at our own careers and where we want to go it’s important to define our overall career goal and then break it down into the categories we will need to succeed. Making sure the take a look at things like cultivating our network, personal branding, marketing materials, and performing research. All these things can sound like daunting tasks but simply setting a few goals with dates in each area can totally improve your productivity.

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