Whenever I discuss the process of career planning in this newsletter, I inevitably refer to the importance of well-thought-out career goals. They determine our direction and illuminate the road as we travel through our career journey.
It's fairly common for people to set their sights on more or less generic goals such as "become a millionaire" or "retire before the age of forty," which qualify as real goals but frankly aren't all that well thought out. Putting some serious thought into the selection of our goals and tailoring them to be our very own is time extremely well spent. Psychologists say there are at least three levels of goals. First, there are those that revolve around acquiring or achieving the things most people consider their "dream." They consist of a larger house, a long vacation in a tropical paradise, a shiny red motorcycle, or a fabulous new yacht. Second, there are the progress or signpost goals that we employ to measure our success as we work towards those achievements. Earning a salary of $X by the age of 30, being promoted to project manager and earning an MBA are examples. Deep inside, there's a third level of goals that are the driving forces behind nearly everything we do. They are the universal, comprehensive, somewhat abstract yearnings that are preprogrammed in us. Our desire for safety, security, acceptance, love and absence of pain are examples. They are the true basis and the underlying need behind our desire to accomplish and achieve. Identifying these primary forces that drive our achievement goals is not only very revealing, it's actually quite easy. Simply choose something you currently have in your sights and ask yourself why it's there. For example, yearning for a yacht to sail the high seas may be rooted in a desire to escape from a job we dislike. A red and chrome motorcycle may symbolize an escape from a boring job, or the need to break out of the everyday "work, eat, sleep, start over" cycle. Defining the underlying goals gives us the opportunity to better understand how we are preprogrammed and suggests alternatives that are perhaps more easily attained. It provides a level of clarity and understanding to our work lives that few people have. It can even make getting up at 5 a.m. every day much easier. And the biggest benefit of all is that recognizing our true goals will help ensure that when we get the things we thought we wanted, we'll be happy with them.RELATED LINKS
Amy Schurr is an editor for Network World's Management Strategies and Features sections. If you have any career topics you'd like her to cover or want to comment on this newsletter, you can reach her at aschurr@nww.com.
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