Preparing for Career Resolutions

New Year’s resolutions generally include one or more goals for professional growth. If you are new to goal setting or find that you rarely achieve the goals you’ve resolved to achieve in a year, focus on one goal to achieve in the coming year.

Determining what goal should be focused on for the coming year is the first step in the goal setting process. The second step is creating a SMART (specific, measurable, agreed to, realistic and time phased) goal statement. Once the SMART goal statement has been written, an action plan for goal achievement can be created. At the end of the process, it is important to celebrate achieving the goal.

Step 1: Choosing a New Years Professional Resolution

If you have multiple professional goals, you will need to prioritize your goals. First determine what the end result of each goal will do for your career and which of these end results resonates most closely with your top five career values. For example, let’s say your top value is being highly compensated for your work. If one of your professional goals is to complete your Master’s degree and having your Master’s would mean an automatic pay increase, then this goal should be a high priority. This may be the year you start to research and plan for your educational goal.

Step 2: Creating SMART Goal Statements

The second step is to create a SMART goal statement around the goal you’ve decided is your number one priority. Write your goal statement carefully so that it is truly a SMART goal. Be very specific and build into your statement measurable markers of your progress.

Step 3: Creating an Action Plan

The third step is to create an action plan to carry out this goal. Creating the goal statement without a detailed plan of how you will carry out the process of achieving the goal will greatly decrease the chance that the goal will be met. Start by creating a list in MS Excel of all the tasks that will be needed to achieve the goal. Working backwards from your goal target date, assign goal markers along the way by assigning each task its own deadline. Also create a column for the estimated time it will take to complete each task and another column for the actual time it takes to complete the task. Schedule each task to a specific date and time. Creating this detailed timeline will help you see if your target goal date is realistic.

Step 4: Celebrating Career Goal Achievement

The final step in preparing for career resolutions is to determine how you will celebrate achieving the goal. Achieving a career goal is an important accomplishment and to let it pass without formal recognition is akin to not stopping to smell the roses. Make the achievement meaningful and you will be more likely to achieve future career goals as you’ll recognize that sense of accomplishment.