Introduction to Ultimate Career Goals
Career goals are what a person hopes to achieve in their professional life. Ultimate career goals are a person’s highest aspirations for their career and represent the “why” behind their work.
If you’re starting, maybe you would have heard this while sitting for interviews – “What are your ultimate career goals?” Do you have any career planning strategies? Perhaps you need to learn what they’re all about. You thought in the interview room and gave a partly ambiguous answer. You might have said something well-articulated if you had prepared for the ultimate career goals interview. But do you have a clue how we can define ultimate career goals? What do you want to be in your career? Do you have any career change options? Not only freshers, there are people in their mid-careers who are also searching for ultimate career goals, trying different things, and figuring out what works. And during this passion-ate period, all professionals are running after passion instead of understanding what works and doesn’t. No, we’re not against being passionate. But we have something to say if your contentions are to do work, you’re passionate about and nothing else. Following this guide makes setting and achieving your ultimate career goals significantly easier.
First Things First!
Before we begin with the guide about how to set and achieve your most cherished career goals, let’s see what goals are all about.
Organizations set their targets to expand their horizon, grow multi-fold, and increase their shareholders’ value. Likewise, as a professional, you should aim for something higher to broaden your horizon, become more valuable, and increase your net worth. And what you use to reach your most cherished destination are your goals.
Let us get this straight. Most people need to set goals. They need to learn what goals are all about. So, by reading this, you’re recruiting yourself as the top 10% of the population. If you choose to set your goals by following this guide, you will be among the top 3% who set and achieve highly spirited career goals.
But we know that you are still skeptical about this phenomenon. Let’s see why you and every professional should set goals at every point in their career.
Why Set Ultimate Career Goals?
The answer is, why not?
There are two kinds of people who don’t set goals.
- One who is too confident that setting career goals don’t work because they’ve tried it once or twice and it didn’t work. So, they’ve given up on this goal idea.
- Two, who need clarity of vision about what they would like to be in their career. Thus, they don’t dare to try setting goals and feel miserable about not achieving them.
Hang on. Why are we encouraging you to set goals?
1. Clarity
So by setting goals, you’re making it clear to yourself that you are on your way to climbing your summit, and you have enough clarity about that. If you don’t know what you want to do in your career, you will not be able to achieve it. Will you?
2. Discipline
Once you set your goals, you will see that you have a sense of urgency, and you’re moving faster, getting better, and working harder. You will be more disciplined and eager to see the light of the day to work more.
3. Attitude
You will see a significant difference in your attitude at work. Before setting career goals, you used to feel lethargic, didn’t want to do the job, and the boss and everyone around you seemed annoying. But your attitude will drastically change once you set goals. You will feel happier and do work as if you were born to do so and will move beyond your comfort zone because you know the clock is ticking.
4. Becoming
When you set goals, you will not only achieve magnificent things, but you will also become something as a result. Business Philosopher Jim Rohn said – “Think about what they will make you become instead of thinking what they will make you do.”
5. Pulling mechanism
Sometimes you don’t want to get out of bed, and things are hard. But if you set high career goals, they will lift you up and pull you through the tough times. Ultimate career goals will inspire you to get out of bed, search for opportunities and make yourself count even if things are hard and despair looms.
6. Learning
To achieve the desired career goals, look at your self-development skills. What seemed like hard work before now would seem easy. Reading books and listening to audio in your car or public transport is fine. You will learn a ton, and your knowledge, skills, and absorbing ability will drastically increase. You will be much more intelligent than people who don’t set career goals.
7. Lifestyle
Your lifestyle will change drastically. Lifestyle change is not about earning more money but a better thought process. You would start to spend more time learning a skill than watching an hour of television after work. You will begin to spend more time with your inner circle, who encourage and motivate you and stop mingling with friends who criticize your ambition. You will find yourself in a place where everything will seem possible, and you will be unstoppable.
You probably know why we insist on you setting ultimate career goals. The next section will discuss setting ultimate career goals to make achieving them easier.
Let’s dive in.
How to Set Ultimate Career Goals?
First, describe a few things and then articulate a step-by-step process. These things are essential to discuss, and it’s also important for you to keep in mind.
- When setting career goals, you must figure out where you want to reach. Even if you have ideas, they will be vague and lack clarity. So, expect that.
- Ensure your career goals align with your professional achievements and personal goals. They are for you, and they should cater to your fulfillment. If you set career goals and ideas for your significant others, you will need to be more motivated and dedicated, and chances are you will leave those ideas away once the motivation runs out. If you set personal career goals and ideas, you will never run out of fuel.
- Ultimate career goals can make you compromise your comfort zone. Set hard career goals, not too hard even to attempt. Most people set career goals too high that they overwhelm them even initially.
- Before setting your career goals, check your resources and environment. It’s important. Remember, if you set practical career goals and objectives, it will work; otherwise, it won’t.
- Don’t set career goals and objectives with the intention of having a load of money. If externals like money, status, and position dictate your career goals and ideas, they will dry out soon.
Now, let’s talk about the steps involved.
1. Start with a theme
If you notice, you will see a theme in your life. People who love writing, reading, publishing, and designing are somewhat attracted to book clubs, libraries, new designs, and covers of books, and they even like the smell of the pages of new books. To find out your theme. What do you like to do more often? A better way to put it is what attracts you most during the day:
- The CEO‘s chair, or
- Papers on strategy, or
- Selling xyz in the market
- Champions around you
Find a theme first. Then set your career goals accordingly.
2. Set 10-year ultimate career goals
Make a list of 3-5 career goals you want to achieve once you know your theme of life and career. But make sure it does not exceed 5. First, you’re starting with a simple theme and a vague idea about what you want to be in your professional life in the next 10 years. So make sure they are concrete and easy to count. Don’t set career goals like – “I want to be a company chairman in the next 10 years.” Instead, write something like this – “I am ready to take over the position of the chairman of the company.” The significant difference between the above two statements is havoc.
- You are just scratching the surface in the first statement, but in the next statement, you can handle the position.
- Secondly, in the first sentence, you are about to do it in the future, but in the second statement, you’re ready already.
- Thirdly, the first statement discusses something beyond control, but you’re prepared to take up this role in the latter sentence.
Words matter. Make sure you pay enough heed to words and how you use them.
3. Chunk down
Divide the career goals ideas into 5 years, 3 years, and 1-year goals. Then divide 1-year career goals into monthly and weekly goals. Don’t set daily goals because the measurement would be too tiny, and you would often put too much for the day than for the whole week.
4. Shift often
It would be best if you learned how reality changes. Once you start working on your smart career goals and objectives, you can realize how high or how low career goals and objectives you’ve set for yourself. Thus, when you know that your career goals are too high or too low, make amends for your career goals. Make a new list. It would be best if you were very much flexible to be able to achieve your goals.
5. Forget passion
Career goals lead you to your passionate area of work. To be able to achieve your goals, there will be things that you must do. So if you’re too bothered about whether these things belong to your passionate work areas, you cannot move ahead.
6. Do the thing that you need to do
Don’t overwhelm yourself too much. Do something right in your hand each day, each week, each month, and each year. Eventually, you will reach there or a better place.
7. Set rules
No, you don’t need to follow the rules of anyone. Set your own rules for doing things. That will make things easy. You will streamline your work, and you will be able to accomplish much more than you think is possible for you. Stay moderate if you work somewhere. Use your common sense. Setting rules are for making your work easier, not for making fun of your company.
8. Trust yourself when no one does
Sometimes, even your dear and near ones will not believe in your vision. They will doubt you and make you feel incapable of achieving what you set out to achieve. But never mind. Keep your head high and trust yourself. Your career goals and ideas are yours, and even when no one believes in your vision, keep moving forward. The time will come when people will see the results. Till then, work. And trust.
It’s in your hands to be what you would like to be. Shoot for it.
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