How to Identify Two of Your Long-Term Education or Career Goals

Determine your long-term goals by ranking your interests.

Identifying long-term goals is the first step to achieving success in life, regardless of your definition of success. Once you identify your long-term goals, you can begin to implement them by breaking them down in smaller, manageable segments that can be completed over time. For most people, long-term career goals must be identified before educational goals since education is often used as a catalyst to achieving career aspirations.

Instructions

1. Take a personal inventory of your interests at the present time and write them down in list form. Don't overlook or exclude an interest because you think that it is unattainable or too difficult to pursue. Be honest with yourself and disregard any items that you are not personally interested in, but may feel compelled to include due to societal or outside pressures. For example, if your parents consistently push you to pursue a career in law, but you have absolutely no personal interest in it, do not include it on your list.

2. Review your list and rank your interests in terms of how important each one is to you. If you are passionate about community service or travel, rank that as your number one interest. Likewise, if you merely "like" shopping or making crafts, rank it lower on the list.

3. Take your top two interests and brainstorm career options for each selection. For example, if one of your top two interests is "travel", some career options that would include travel are becoming a travel agent, an international real estate agent, a travel guide author, or joining the military. Spend some time to fully develop a list of career options. Ideally, you should come up with at least 15 diverse options for each of your top two interests. Once your list is complete, strive off the career choices that you would not consider and rank the rest in order of importance and personal appeal. For example, even though joining the military involves your travel interest, that might not be a career option that you would consider. After ranking your options, you will be able to identify your top two career goals.

4. Determine if you will need to pursue additional education in order to achieve your top two career goals. If one of your goals is to become a teacher, you will need to go to a college or university for at least four years and receive a teaching certificate in your state. If your goal is to become an entrepreneur, you may not need to pursue additional formal education, but you will need to learn business basics and research the product or service that you want to develop. You top two educational goals will be an apparent and organic extension of your top two career goals.

References

• cmcismentorprogram.com: Identifying Goals and Objectives
• Career One Stop: Create Career Goals
• Mindtools: Personal Goal Setting