Life After College: Setting Goals For Your Career

Setting short-term and long-term career goals is one of the most challenging and taxing parts of graduation and starting your future career. The best way to approach setting goals is to use the SMART method. SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. This is a great way to start to create goals for yourself in any situation no matter if it is a short-term goal or a long-term goal Short-term goals and long-term goals are two different things.

When we set short-term goals for ourselves, we are usually thinking about everyday things like taking some time to learn new things about your job position or trying to finish your work a little earlier every day. These short-term career goals are small but they can have a huge impact on your work and life balance. When you start knocking off these small short-term career goals, you will feel more motivated to keep working and completing these goals. Short-term career goals will make your work life so much easier no matter what your position is or what line of work you are in. In the end, working to complete these short-term goals will help you when it comes to completing your long-term goals. Most of the time your short-term goals are little stepping stones to your big long-term goals either in life or in your job.

Some examples of these long-term goals can be anything you want them to be but some examples are learning to improve public speaking, obtain a new degree, improve work-life balance, start a business, or retire. All these are great examples of long-term career goals that you can look to achieve. These long-term career goals can be something that will take months and maybe even years. Now that may seem daunting but take a step back and take a look at those short-term career goals. Use those short-term career goals that you can complete in a few days to help build up to tackling those longer-term career goals. Taking on your goals in bite-size pieces is key to completing your career goals. For example, if one of your long-term career goals is to retire early, then one of your short-term career goals could be to save a little more money each week or each paycheck. Another example of a long-term career goal could be if you want to get a masters degree. This is a daunting task for anyone. However, if you set little short-term goals for yourself such as making sure you have some time throughout the day to work on assignments and work on exams then you should be set.

Even if you have not graduated yet but when you start to think about short-term and long-term goals then you will be able to take on the workforce full steam ahead. It is not easy and people will most likely come up short of completing goals like I did several times. You just have to make sure that you are still setting those goals for yourself and work on completing them and you will be set when it comes to your career.