A guide to achieving your career goals in 2023

The New Year comes with setting resolutions and new goals in your personal and professional life. These resolutions come with rethinking your career and if your goals are taking you in the right direction. You may begin to wonder if where you are in your career, is where you want or need to be.?

The beginning of the year is the perfect time to review your life and ask yourself important questions about your career and personal goals. In our latest article, we look at possible career goals and explore how to achieve them this year.

Types of career goals

Career goals come in various shapes and sizes and look different for everyone.? Some examples of career goals are:

• Getting a high salary
• Moving up the company ladder into a managerial/supervisory position
• Upskilling or reskilling?
• Becoming a thought leader in your industry
• Venturing out and starting your own business
• Switching career paths to a new sector
• Moving from being a contract or part-time worker to a more permanent position

Whatever your career goals look like, they are not just important to you, but are also of interest to your current employer, and your future employer.

You need to know what you want for your career. Potential employers want to know what your goals are to determine if the advertised role fits into your career vision and if your vision aligns with their needs.? Your current employer has been invested in your career from the moment you received your offer letter. Your goals will also regularly come up in performance reviews.

Know your career goals so that you, your current employer, and potential employers know if and how they can contribute to your success.

SMART goal planning

SMART goals are as the name suggests. Smart.

SMART goals are a strategic way to help you clarify your thoughts, direct your efforts and how to use both your time and resources and ultimately improve your chances of achieving all your dreams. Let’s look at these goals in detail.

Specific. Write your goals down and be specific about each of them.

Measurable. What will success look like to you? How will you measure your progress?

Attainable. Try and set reasonable goals. There is nothing wrong with dreaming big but be realistic about what is possible to achieve. Make sure they are attainable to be achieved within the timeframe set for yourself.

Relevant. Make sure the goals you set for yourself align with your values and will help you achieve your long-term objectives.

Time-bound. It’s important to set goals with a realistic timeline. Your goal of occupying that corner office is valid. Aiming to get it within a year could be challenging.

Setting SMART goals for personal and professional lives help you set targets, and gives you purpose and a sense of fulfilment.

Tools to help you along the way

What we know for sure is that we all have dreams and aspirations. . Some are so big they scare us. Others we don’t dare try for fear of failure. Having goals without the tools to fight the fears and challenges that are bound to come your way is setting yourself up for failure. And it shouldn’t be this way. There are many easy-to-use tools available to help push you along your journey to attaining your goals. Read below for a few examples:

Eat the frog

Popular author Brian Tracy developed this idea of how to beat the enemy – procrastination. Something we are all familiar with. In this concept, the “frog” is the absolute last thing you want to do. Just get up, bite the bullet and do that “thing”. Like Mark Twain said, “eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”

Visualise

Create a vision board. Seriously. Buy a board, collect magazines, and dedicate two hours to creating your vision board for the year. And then place it where you will see it every day. A constant reminder to go out and work towards your dream. You can’t run away from something you’re forced to face every day.

Reframe

Believe it or not, failing at something is not the worst thing in the world that can happen to you. Not trying is. When you try something and it doesn’t work out, you haven’t failed. You have simply discovered how not to do it. Change the way you view failure and with this shift, you remove any fear that comes with it that keeps you from trying. Change your mind – change your life.

Learn

Even the smartest guy in any room can still learn something from someone. When you learn, be it a new course to upskill yourself, learning a new hobby, or language, or how to decorate a cake, you engage your mind and keep it active. With this, you improve your thinking capabilities, and memory, and give you the physical and mental boost you need to keep going after your goals.

Go digital

There are hundreds of apps you can download that are designed to help you stay on top of your goals. Whether your goals are personal or are for your team’s success, there is something for everyone. Some of these are Hive, Strides, GoalsOnTrack, Habitica, Todoist, and LifeRPG.

Tips & hacks

Things can get a bit much. Where to start with your goals, how to achieve them, and how to keep going when the new year steam runs out. We’ve rounded the top 10 tips to help you achieve your dreams:

• Be confident and have a positive attitude
• Keep your eyes on the prize
• Have fun along the way
• Be consistent
• Don’t be afraid to take on challenges and necessary risks in pursuit of your goals
• Drown out the voices of the naysayers
• Set up a good support system to push you
• Upskill yourself
• Set a clear path and stick to it
• If you fail, fail forward

You always think you can’t do it until you realise you can. And the best way to come to this realisation is to simply do it.?

5 courses to make it easier

Changing your life often begins with changing your mindset. We are used to one way of doing things but with the ever-changing times we live in, we may need to rethink the way we think to get where we need to.

Having dreams is one thing. Setting goals to help you reach those dreams is another. Knowing how to set them and what actions you need to take will help get you where you need to be.

One of the factors that get in the way of our progress is managing our 24 hours. Time is the only thing we can control but have little skill in using it well. Our Time Management Mastery course will help you be more productive with less time.

Once you’ve figured out how to manage your time, you need to learn how to maximise your productivity . If you know your peak productive hours, you can get big tasks and meetings done efficiently and effectively.

The truth is, in working towards our goals, we won’t always feel and be motivated to keep going. What will keep you going during the dips in motivation is discipline.

We are all still fresh off the 2023 starting block. And until 31 December 2023, you have time to keep forging ahead in pursuit of your career goals. With the right planning, tools, tips, and resources in the palm of your hand, nothing is stopping you from achieving your career goals in 2023.