A brand new year, 2018, will be upon us before you know it. So, now is a great time to start thinking about your professional goals.
How many of us just get so caught up in the day-to-day activities of life that we lose our long-term vision? When is the last time you sat down with yourself and asked: what do I really want?
So, why not take a minute right now to do it. If you could have anything you wanted, no matter how crazy it may seem, what would you want professionally? Go ahead and write it down.
Next, envision yourself five years into the future, having obtained your goal. What is your life like? How do you feel? What are you doing and who do you surround yourself with?
Now that you have a vision, lets put it into action by tweaking it just a bit. Use the following guide to transform your vision into achievable reality by turning it into a SMART goal:
- Be specific. Goals that are too vague can’t be achieved because we never really know when we achieve them. For example, instead of saying “I want to be happy in my job,” say: “I want to establish my private practice.”
- Make your goal measurable. You need a way to measure progress toward your goal. So, instead of saying, “I want a successful private practice,” say: “I want to earn $40,000 per year from my practice.”
- Your goal must be achievable. Dreams and visions get you started in the right direction. However if your vision is out of reach, discouragement can set in. So make sure you have the tools, skills, etc. to make it happen. For example, you cannot create a successful practice without some business knowledge or aptitude.
- Your goal must be realistic. For example, thinking you can establish a full-time private practice will still working full-time in an agency is probably not realistic.
- Lastly, your goal must be time-sensitive. An open-ended time frame on a goal can lead to endless procrastination. So, back to our private practice example: a time-sensitive goal would be something like, “I want to earn $40,000 by my third year.”
If you don’t want to take the time to go through this exercise, how about just taking a few moments to reflect on your feelings about your work situation? And then, think of one thing you can do in 2018 to make it better.
Yours in the Joy of Knowledge,
Dr. Barb LoFrisco
