What Is the Importance In Developing Long-Term Career Goals?
Not everyone who dreams about a career actually reaches her goal. Be the one who makes it by developing long-term career goals. Not developing clear, long-term career goals can take your life and career in a direction you don't want. Instead of barreling down the wrong path, take your first steps down the right one by creating clear, actionable goals.
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Long-Term Goals
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A long-term goal is one that focuses on where you want to be many years in the future. When you create long-term career goals, they should guide you, step by step, down the career path you've envisioned. Create short-term goals as steps to help you achieve your long-term goal. Each goal should be actionable -- it should be something that can be completed. Saying "I will do better at work" is weaker than saying "I will clear my inbox daily, double-check all spreadsheets for mistakes and take notes in meetings." A goal that you can actually do in the short term is one of the first steps to developing a long-term goal.
Motivation
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Long-term career goals provide you with motivation to make changes at your job. If you've been arriving late to work and submitting reports at the last minute, setting a short-term goal that you will submit reports two days early and show up 15 minutes early gives you an action to complete. Understanding how the changes you make will affect your career in the long term can be extremely motivating.
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Clarity
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Creating a long-term career goal is the first step in having a clear idea of what you need to do. If you know you eventually want to be a physicist, you won't study English in college. Try writing a list of steps you must take to get from where you are now to your goal. Once you see them in writing, you will know what must be changed about your current activities and performance.
Effectiveness
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Setting long-term career goals will make you more effective. Instead of wasting your time on endeavors that don't push you toward your ultimate objective, you will pursue endeavors that put you nearer to where you want to be. While others flounder without a plan, a set of long-term career goals will sharpen your focus and let you expend your energy on the things that matter.
Tips
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Look at a superior you admire or someone who is already doing the work you seek. Make a list of his qualities. A successful model of where you want to be in five years gives you a picture of what to aim for. Talk to people who have achieved the long-term career goal you want to attain and find out how they did it. Ask what goals they set for themselves. Some of the goals they used may work for you as well.
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