Professional goals help us to understand how to achieve our goals in a more fun and real way without overwhelming them. Check how to define yours
Here we are again to start a new year, and we have that feeling of creating new goals to accomplish during 12 months. When usually the year is finishing, it is time to stop and think if all your goals and professional targets have been achieved according to your beginner plans or if you need to change the way and method.
Being self-employed or not, does not mean you should not create professional goals, some companies are defining their own, but you as a person should think about yours and plan what to accomplish and how you are going to achieve those. Nevertheless, it is essential to remember your mission, vision, and values as a human and professional.
In today’s blog, we would like to help you on this journey of creating goals and how understanding what is essential to add and what is not. Professional goals are not only increasing your salary, changing your position, or if you are self-employed increasing your income. There is a background beyond it more significant.
We can define goals as something that we would like to achieve in the short or long term. And there is a difference between “goal” and “objectives” since we can understand that objective is the whole pizza and the goal could be for each slice of pizza to form the whole. So here we are not talking about an “objective” but little goals that can help you to achieve your objective.
And, yes you can also define your objective, singular or plural, however, if you define goals, you are going to remember that we start from little to have a long-term benefit. These specific professional goals will help you to measure what is necessary to accomplish your career or business objective and set them.
Later on, we will show you some professional goals, nevertheless, advancing to a leadership position, launching a new project, building your persona or company brand, developing a new skill, starting your own business, becoming a freelancer, traveling to a new country as a digital nomad, and many other goals can be considerable.
However, the goals can help you to focus your efforts and resources, waste less time and energy with no important task, provide a direction or roadmap for your career/business, motivate, give you something to work towards and strive for, set your journey, track the progress, measure the success and of course, it is personal growth since helps you to develop individually and professionally. Goals are necessary to build a successful career.
6 tips for defining your goals:
1 – Define your goals:
Stop for a second and write all your objectives, deciding them separate each objective into small pieces of goals. Consider your long-term or even short-term goals to accomplish your objective.
2 – External research
If you are a business owner or a freelancer, check your competitors and start to analyze any factor that may impact your plan. This can help in understanding your strategy and which tactic you are going to use.
3 – SMART:
Use accomplished techniques to write your goals: S (specific), M (measurable), A (achievable), R (realist), and T (time-based). Then any time you have a new goal, use this technique to define the steps.
4 – Outline a timeline:
Use milestones, deadlines, and dates to define your plan according to reality. Also, when you write a specific date, automatically your brain will base the plan to track the progress accomplished by that day.
5 – Clarify your budget
If your goal needs money for performing, then here your will determine how much money and write outlines your expected costs, revenue, and expenses during the progress. For example, if you would like to move to a new country, how much money you will need for each step of moving, including visa, tickets, rent a house, monthly food, etc?
6 – Determinate your strategy:
This is a space for you to understand your limits and time. How you are going to do for developing a new product, which tools you need, and how you are going to introduce your project to some investors. All these are only ideas for you starting to create simple plans that will be in-depth and detailed in the future.
By the end, do not forget to write your place, according to your logic and in a way that you will understand at any time. Do not be afraid to change your goals by the time comes, everything will always conforming your moment.
6 professional goals and a how to achieve them for freelancers
We separated 5 goals for you to develop your career as a freelancer this year. Also, for each one of them, you can read different content to help you during your journey
1 – Learn a new foreign language or improve your English
3 – Listen to your mental health
5 – Learn a new skill through free courses
6 – And if you are not a freelancer yet, become a freelancer using our tips
Tools and techniques to create your professional goals
If right now you are asking yourself how to write your goals we have 3 tips:
1 – Write a letter and send it to the future
Yes, on this website (FUTUREME) you can write a letter and send it to one, two, three, or five years later. Then you can analyze how you were when you planned those goals.
2 – Planning board
Adds all your plans to a board with pictures and details of how you are going to accomplish them, as the deadline and steps. You can put it near your workplace or in your room to daily you see and track your progress.
3 – Picture on the wall
If you are a visual person, cut some pictures or print them and add them to the refrigerator or as a cellphone background and daily you can see and remember what you have been planning to accomplish your objective.
4 – Apps
If so are a digital person, you can use your phone notes or sheets (Google or Excel), however, there are some apps for helping during this journey as Todoist, Asana, or Trello.
5 – Post-it
As we exemplified on the board, you can use “Post-it” to write your goals and how you are going to achieve each one. Use your creativity and colors.
The important is to write every detail about your goal and add them so do not forget about your deadline and track your progress.
The benefits of professional goals
We can list many reasons or benefits of creating professional goals, but all reasons will depend on your and your moment as we mentioned. So for example, if you would like to get more income as a freelancer, probably you should get more projects, or learn a new skill to get different projects.
However, when you define your goals, you are teaching yourself about resilience and self-development. It is important to understand that not always you will be able to achieve your objective, because of this you can analyze and track your progress, while you are learning and doing something for yourself.
Creating goals shows you the direction and your roadmap career. Sometimes being a success for someone is creating their own business, becoming a freelancer, or working for a specific company, because of this there are things only you will determine. Without mentioning the motivation along the way.
In brief, improving your decision-making, which means, setting your professional goals will make you clear and track your projects. By the end of next year, once more, stop and analyze all your progress. Do not forget to be grateful for yourself.
Remember to often analyze your goals, review your professional journey and ensure they are still aligned and relevant to your objectives, which means your long-term project. Along with that, if they are not, it is totally fine to change and maybe define a new one. Because of this, we mentioned in the beginning that it is important for to you have a vision of your life and objectives.
If your objective for 2023 is to become a freelancer, Remotify is here to help you in this journey, since you can apply, get a project, create an invoice and receive your payment through Remotify. Well, now we are curious. Are you going to define your 2023 goals?
