What do you think about when you think about your career goals and more importantly, how do you plan on getting there? Are you the sort of person who rolls with it, who’s happy to wait and see what’s around the corner or do you have a clear goal in mind and are doing your best to work towards it?
While you may feel like planning ahead requires a lot of hard work, having some ideas in mind on where you want to be and how you want to get there can help inspire you to make some great decisions in your professional and personal life. Join us in this blog as we take a look at five reasons why you need to plan your career goals.
You Won’t Settle For Second Best
You know your boss doesn’t rate you as highly as they should and you know that you’re not commanding the salary you should so why put up with it? If the answer is because you don’t know how to change the situation then you need a plan in your life. Don’t worry about how you’ll get there but just take that first step of recognising that you do really want change.
With that in the back of your mind you effectively set the clock ticking. The duration that you’re prepared to put up with the job you’re in becomes ever shorter and you’re able to start planning for the light at the end of the tunnel.
You’ll Take Charge of Your Own Destiny
Rather than hoping that your career knight in shining armour will appear and turn things around for you, you’ll start accepting that the change needs to come from you.
Instead of feeling daunted and like the job is too big, when you take responsibility for your own happiness, both professionally and personally, you begin to realise the power that you have over your own destiny. This feeling can be liberating and the trigger point for transforming that feeling of helplessness into tangible action points that are going to change your life.
You Narrow Down Your Options
When you know you want to change things up but aren’t sure how, creating a plan can help narrow down your options into a more realistic and focussed goal. You may want to change career completely and head back to university to pursue your dream of working for a design company, teaching or simply wanting to progress further up in the job you’re in.
Whatever your goal is, narrowing it down to one outcome is going to help you plot the actions you need to take to get you there.
You’ll Get Help
When you know where you need to get to but can’t quite figure out how to do it, having a clear plan might also include finding some guidance. This might be getting together with a contact in the industry and quizzing them on their own career path, it might be talking to university guidance officers to find out what help might be available to find jobs post-graduation or might be just talking things through with a friend or relative.
Having a plan is exciting and you’ll want to find someone who can help you take the first steps. Plan to find someone who’ll help you take that next step along your intended career path.
You’ll Be Braver
If you intend to move up the ranks of your existing profession then you may find that having a goal inspires you to take a chance and talk to your boss about the possibility of taking on some more responsibility or when the next chance of a promotion will take place.
Get the case for your promotion together in a professional, corporate document, with the help of https://www.templafy.com/ and present your point of view to them in a way that you know makes the best business sense. Your boss will see very quickly how serious you are and have to contemplate whether it’s worth losing you as is inevitable when employees become frustrated over a lack of career movement. Pick your moment well and go for it.
Not everyone is driven by their career but a lack of ambition can quickly lead to boredom and a sense of being unfulfilled and this can quickly have a knock-on effect on your personal life too. It’s easy to become uninspired and lose all your drive. Take the time by yourself to really think about you want to achieve and go for it.
