It's easy to say, “I want to be successful” or “I want a better job,” but without clear goals, it can be difficult to know where to start. Setting goals gives you direction and helps you focus on the steps needed to move forward.
Long-term goals help you think about where you want to be in the future, such as building a career in a certain industry or starting your own business. These are the tricky ones, because unless you've done the research we spoke about earlier, you're not going to be able to set a long-term goal effectively.
Short-term goals help you take practical action now. They allow you to take smaller, manageable steps, helping you stay motivated, build confidence and move closer to your bigger goals – even if you don't know exactly what these are yet!
Ask yourself, what could you do in the next few weeks? Here are some examples of short-term goals you could set right now:
Give yourself clear, realistic deadlines for each of these.
Using the examples above as guidance, set yourself a goal to achieve in 1 week, 2 weeks, and 1 month from now. These goals should be focussed around helping you identify a specific role, industry, or career path.
Once you've achieved your short-term goals and you feel you better understand the career path you want to take, come back to this page and progress to the following activity:
Now it's time to think about your long-term goals. More specifically, can you answer the following?
To help you make progress towards these longer term goals, make a new set of short-term ones:
