By Adrienne Erin
Contributor, Online Career Tips
Achieving your career goals can often seem like a laughably impossible task. While many of us have at least a vague idea of where we want to be in five, ten, or twenty years, most of us have no clue how to get from where we are to where we want to be.
The trick to achieving your goals is simple: there is no trick. We tend to look for magical solutions when what’s needed is persistence and consistent work.
The key is to set a clear goal and to cultivate habits that work towards that goal.
Set a Clear Goal
Vague goals are difficult to achieve. Don’t set vague and cliché goals like “I want to be successful.” What does that mean? How will you measure your successes at being successful? If success means a certain paycheck, make that your goal. If it means a specific position or title, make that your goal.
Make your goals as concrete as possible. Once you have a clear goal in mind, it is easier to visualize and work toward it. In fact, studies show that having a visual element improves your chance of success. Once you set your goal, create a visual reminder of your dreams. It can be as simple as setting a picture of your dream company as your phone background, or making a small collage of images that inspire you.
Setting clear goals and providing personal, visual reminders are the critical first steps towards achieving your dreams.
Cultivate Good Habits
Achieving your goals in an hour a day isn’t meant to be a magic formula for success. It’s not meant to be a one time, one week, or one month experiment. Setting aside an hour a day to work towards your goals is about forming a lifelong habit that will help you realize your dreams.
This hour is strictly meant for our career goals to help combat one of the biggest stumbling blocks to success: procrastination.
There’s a reason devoting small blocks of time to a single task is a popular piece of advice. It works. Achieving your dream career can be overwhelming when you look at the big picture, or even when you look at the steps and to-do’s required to achieving the big picture. Setting aside one hour to work on your goal helps you focus on one small bite at a time. Plus, it keeps you from feeling overwhelmed.
Customizing Your Hour
How you use that hour may depend on your goal, on the day, the week or any number of factors. If you like variety, assigning a different “theme” for each weekday can help keep you from feeling bored or in a rut. Maybe Mondays you reserve for networking, Tuesdays for practicing a new skill, Wednesdays for catching up on current news or research in your field, etc.
Other days you may desire to focus on a single task until it is completed. Perhaps you’ll spend an hour a day for two or three weeks researching financial concerns for start ups. Once you feel you have a healthy knowledge of budgets or an understanding of your rights during a tax audit, for example, you might choose to focus on a different task for a few weeks.
Or maybe that hour will always be dedicated to a specific task. Have a long commute? Buy audio books about your field of interest, or by successful individuals in your field and use your commute to expand your knowledge base.
If you take public transportation, use that time to read industry articles or to start teaching yourself a new skill. Use your commute to start learning a new coding language, pick up tips and tricks for Excel or other programs you use, or take advantage of free apps to learn a new language.
You can’t achieve a goal if you never work towards it. Breaking your goals down into manageable pieces and devoting one hour a day to one or more of those pieces can help you reach your goal without becoming overwhelmed. What’s more, having a clear timeframe can help you manage your work goals and still have a personal life.
Don’t let procrastination hold you back and don’t let the big picture overwhelm you. Set your goal, create a visual reminder, and start attacking your to-do list: one bite-sized chunk at a time.
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