To get anywhere in your career, you'll need clear, actionable goals. Every day that you don't set a goal, you push yourself towards something you consciously didn't choose, which is risky.
Why are Professional Goals Important?
Setting professional goals can help you:
Prioritize your work since you know what you are looking to achieve.
Plan work with your team and other stakeholders.
Measure success and set expectations.
Hence it becomes critical that you set the right goals for yourself.
We also, recently wrote a list of short term goals to improve your professional life, so do check that blog post out.
Professional Goals Examples
Coming up with reasonable professional goals for work can be challenging, so ask yourself what are project objectives examples and how can you use them to set your goals. Here are some examples to get you started.
Boost your professional network: Growing your network in the domain you operate in can be one of the biggest boosters of your career. For example, you can have a goal of connecting meaningfully with X number of product managers or CXOs by the end of the year.
Become a thought leader: It is advantageous to be considered a thought leader in any business or technology domain. You can have an actionable goal of writing ten posts every year on the future of your domain and getting them published in a reputable publication.
Gain a new skill: When you stop learning, you stop progressing - it is that simple. So an excellent endeavor to pursue could be picking up an in-demand skill in your industry and finding ways to showcase it. Also, make sure that this is time-bound.
Win an accolade: Getting recognized by a prestigious entity from your industry can open many opportunities for you in your career. You can target applying to X number of relevant awards every year and working towards them.
Improve presentation skills: Learning to articulate and present your ideas to others can be a game-changer in your professional life. You can think about this in terms of either working with a presentation coach or improving individual aspects of giving a successful presentation yourself.
Research competition: Knowing what your competition is up to through research and helping your organization gain an edge in the market can do wonders for both you and your company. Your goal here could be to run a monthly assessment presentation on your competition based on your research.
Practice time management: How you manage your time will likely define success in your professional life. So, learning to allocate and utilize time effectively can be a worthy goal. You could look at a target of saving X amount of hours every month.
Increase the scope of your role: An excellent way to increase the range of your job is by picking up tasks that align with or are close to your responsibilities. For example, if you are a content writer, doing your competition's SEO audit could potentially increase the range of your job beyond merely writing.
Become a better team player: If your colleagues like your work and feel that you are an essential part of your team, you are in a good place career-wise. Your aim here could be to get a high score on your annual or semi-annual 360-degree reviews.
So those were some of the examples for goals for work that we thought would help you explore this idea of professional goal setting a little more. While setting goals is important, it is also critical to do a GTD weekly review so that you don't go off track.
You can get started right away by firing up your Routine console and listing down things you want to achieve, both in the short-term and long term. You can also list actionable tasks that'll help you get there and view them right in Routine's Universal Inbox.
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