New Year’s Resolution – Or Genuine Career Goal?

Why your New Year Resolution for your Career may be doomed to failure

It’s that time of year again – the time when we all take a long hard look at every aspect of our lives to see what we’d like to change.

For most people, it’s a good opportunity to put their career under the microscope, to see whether they are progressing in the way they had hoped. We all know that it’s easy to become complacent in our roles, but there is another danger you should be aware of too – especially if you are naturally a go getting type of person.

Career coach, Kish Modasia from HRM Coaching says, “the danger comes in aiming to achieve too much too soon. We all have our ambitions, but if we’re not careful they can trip us up.”

For example, you might enjoy managing your team and achieving goals together. But if you have your eye on the next rung up the ladder before you are fully ready to take on that responsibility, you could end up taking your eye off the ball (and your team) and making a crucial mistake in your current job role.

It’s a fact of life that the majority of New Year’s Resolutions people make are broken long before they even get to February. Why? The reason is usually because they are not yet ready to make their resolutions a reality.

The website http://www.achieve-goal-setting-success.com/ contains plenty of information which goes into the mechanics of goal setting in more depth, but it is important to understand that your career has its own pace – one which isn’t dictated to by the simple fact that the calendar has clicked over to 1st January 2008.

Planning is the key to a successful career – that and identifying the precise goals you want to achieve and breaking them down into manageable chunks. That’s why the majority of New Year’s Resolutions are doomed before they even get going; the people who make them have no plan and nothing to fall back on except determination.

And as you probably know, that can run out pretty quickly.

So while the New Year shouldn’t be an excuse to aim for promotions you might not yet be ready for, it can be an excellent time to review your career and see where you could advance to next.

Some long term goal setting now might mean you’re celebrating next New Year’s Eve, and looking forward to achieving still more in 2009. For now though, put in some practice at setting realistic and achievable goals in order to boost your confidence and your experience within your current working environment.

What better way to start off the New Year than that?

© Copyright Hannah McNamara 2007-8

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