The Importance of Career Goals

In life, you have to make goals. You want to go to a certain college, get married, have children, etc. These goals help you to stay focused and help you progress and lead you to new and exciting opportunities. While many people will make goals for their lives in general, a lot of people fail to make goals for their career. They get into a rut thinking things like, “I have a job, so I don’t need to try and progress” or “There is no room for me to progress; it is safer to stay where I am.” These thoughts are ridiculous. Of course you should try to progress! You want to progress in life, so you should want to progress in your career. This is why career goals are so important.
Remember: When making goals, you don’t want to make one big goal without having smaller goals to achieve while working your way up the ladder. That would make your job much harder and a lot more disappointing. You need to have an ultimate goal, but you also need some small, short-term goals to get you up to that point. If your ultimate goal is to be an executive, then what do you need to achieve on your way up to that level?
These smaller goals may be simple. They may be things like making a goal to get a $0.50 raise before the year is over, or they may be a little bit bigger, like being in charge of a new project or managing a department. Establishing realistic short-term goals will keep you on the track to where your want to land professionally and will make your work experience much more enjoyable and meaningful.
Career goals help you keep focused, but they also make your job less monotonous and boring, because you are always working towards something. Having specific goals will make your daily work a little more exciting, help you feel like what you’re doing is worthwhile, and will add value to your life.