In order to create the kind of career you want, it helps to have a clear picture of where you're headed — your personal mission. It's equally important to carefully plan how to get there — how to make your dreams come true, one day at a time.
To help you do that it is a good idea to learn how to set goals and objectives for yourself. Your goals are the things you want to do over the next several years. Your objectives are the smaller steps you're going to take — tomorrow, next week, next month — to get there.
By writing down goals and objectives for yourself you are taking a big step toward making them happen. The next step will be to actually do these things — and keep a record. This is something you and your mentor can work on together over time.
Writing Goals
Here are some of the kinds of goals you might be interested in setting:
- Education: Where do I want to be in several years in terms of my education? Do I want to pursue a PhD?
- Career: What setting do I want to pursue? What population do I want to work with?
- Work: In what direction do I want to go in terms of my future career?
Writing Objectives
Objectives are the steps you take to make progress toward your goal. To be useful, objectives need to answer "What will change, by how much, by when?"
Usually objectives work best when they are written for the next few months to a year. It's hard to know what will change beyond that time frame, so it's hard to set realistic objectives for several years from now.
Example:
Let's say you're (place yourself here) and you want to (place your goal here). Some good objectives might be the following:
- I will begin pursuing this goal by (date).
- I will talk to (name of person) to help me (name of task) by (date).
Take some time to write the goals you just developed, and then write several objectives for each goal. You can do this with your mentor or on your own and then go over them together.
Here's a tip on how to test if your objectives are solid: Ask yourself if they are SMART. SMART stands for:
|
Specific: Do I know precisely what has to happen?
Measurable: How will I know if I've achieved this objective?
Attainable: Is it realistic or doable?
Result-oriented: Will it really move me toward my goal?
Time-limited: Does it have a due date? |
If your goals are SMART, they're solid — now go start doing them!
Example:
Goal: __________________________________________________
Objectives:
Adapted from MENTOR/National Mentoring Partnership's "How to Build a Successful Mentoring Program Using the Elements of Effective Practice" (2005), available at Mentor.